The banging of the b.u.mpers grew louder and louder until they hammered against the ships like thunder. Howard gripped the rail until his knuckles turned white, not comprehending what was happening. Staring in shock, he watched as one after another of the four twenty-four-inch loading arms broke free of the ship, spewing a river of crude oil in all directions. A nearby shout creased the air as Howard spotted a platform engineer clinging for life aboard the swaying terminal.

As far as the eye could see, the steel terminal rocked and swayed like a giant snake, battering itself against the huge ships. Alarm bells rang out as the oil transfer lines were torn away from the other tankers by the rippling force, bathing the sides of the ships in a flowing sea of black. Farther down the quay, a chorus of unseen voices cried for help. Howard peered down to see a pair of men in yellow hard hats sprinting down the terminal, shouting as they ran. Behind them, the lights of the terminal began disappearing in a slow succession. Howard stood unblinking for a second before realizing with horror that the entire Sea Island terminal was sinking beneath their feet.

The clanging of the terminal against the Marjan intensified, the mooring dolphins physically mashing the side of the tanker. For the first time, Howard noticed a deep rumble that seemed to emanate from far beneath his feet. The rumble grew in intensity, roaring for several seconds before silencing just as quickly. In its place came the desperate cries of men, running along the terminal.

A tumbling house of cards came to Howard's mind as the footings of the terminal gave way in succession and the mile-long island vanished under the waves in an orderly progression. When he heard the cries of the men in the water, his horror was replaced by a newfound fear for the safety of his ship. Tearing off across the deck, he pulled a handheld radio from his belt and shouted orders to the bridge as he ran.

"Cut the mooring lines! For G.o.d's sake, cut the mooring lines," he gasped. A rush of adrenaline surged through his body, the fear pushing him to race across the deck at breakneck speed. He was still a hundred meters from the bridge house when his legs began to throb, but his pace never slowed, even as he hurtled past a river of slippery crude oil that had splashed across the deck.

"Tell ... the chief ... engineer ... we need ... full power ... immediately," he rasped over the radio, his lungs burning for oxygen.

Reaching the tanker's stern superstructure, he headed for the nearest stairwell, bypa.s.sing an elevator located a few corridors away. Clambering up the eight levels to the bridge, he was heartened to feel the throb of the ship's engines suddenly vibrate beneath his feet. As he staggered onto the bridge and rushed to the forward window, his worst fears were realized.

In front of the Marjan, eight other supertankers lay in paired tandems, divided minutes before by the Sea Island terminal. But now the terminal was gone, plunging toward the Gulf floor ninety feet beneath the surface. The supertankers' mooring lines were still attached, and the force of the sinking terminal was drawing the paired tankers toward one another. In the midnight darkness, Howard could see the lights on the two tankers in front of him meld together, followed by the screeching cry of metal on metal as the sides of the ships sc.r.a.ped together.

"Emergency full astern," Howard barked at his executive officer. "What's the status of the mooring lines?"

"The stern lines are clear," replied Jensen, looking gaunt. "I'm still awaiting word on the bowlines, but it appears that at least two lines are still secure," he added, gazing through binoculars at a pair of taut ropes that stretched from the starboard bow.

"The Ascona is drawing onto us," the helmsman said, jerking his head to the right.

Howard followed the motion, eyeing the Greek-flagged ship berthed alongside, a black-and-red supertanker that matched the Marjan's length of three hundred thirty-three meters. Originally moored sixty feet apart, the two ships were slowly moving laterally together as if drawn by a magnet.

The men on the Marjan's bridge stood and stared helplessly, Howard's labored breathing matched by the quickened heartbeats of the others. Beneath their feet, the huge propellers finally began clawing the water in a desperate fury as the tanker's engines were rapidly brought up to high revs by the frantic engineer.

The initial movement astern was imperceptible, then, slowly, the huge ship began to creep backward at a sluggish clip. The momentum slowed for a second as the bow mooring line drew taut, then suddenly the line broke free and the ship resumed its rearward crawl. Along her starboard side, the Ascona drew closer. The Korean-built tanker had nearly a full load of crude and rode a dozen feet lower in the water than the Marjan. From Howard's perspective, it looked as if he could step right off the side of his ship and onto the deck of the neighboring tanker.

"Starboard twenty," he ordered the helmsman, trying to angle the bow away from the drifting tanker. Howard had managed to back the Marjan three hundred feet away from the sunken terminal, but it was not enough to escape the adjacent ship.

The impact was gentler than Howard had expected, not even felt in the wheelhouse. Just an extended low-pitched screech of metal signaled the collision. The Marjan's bow was almost amidships of the Ascona when the two ships met, but the rearward motion of Howard's ship had deflected much of the force at impact. For half a minute, the Marjan's bow sc.r.a.ped along the other tanker's port rail, and then suddenly the two ships were clear.

Howard immediately cut his engines and lowered a pair of lifeboats over the side to search for any dockworkers in the water. Then he gingerly backed his ship another thousand feet away from the melee and watched the carnage.

All ten of the supertankers were damaged. Two of the big ships had locked decks and were so intertwined that it took two days before an army of welders could cut them free. Three of the ships had their double-hulled plates bashed though, leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil freely into the gulf as the ships listed to one side. But the Marjan had escaped with minimal damage, none of her tanks compromised in the collision thanks to Howard's fast action. His relief at saving his ship was short-lived, however, when a series of m.u.f.fled explosions echoed across the gulf waters.

"Sir, it's the refinery," the helmsman noted, pointing toward the western sh.o.r.eline. An orange glow appeared on the horizon, which grew like the rising sun as a series of additional explosions rocked across the water. Howard and his crew watched the spectacle for hours as the pyre marched along the sh.o.r.eline. It wasn't long before thick plumes of black smoke mixed with the odor of burned petroleum wafted over the ship.

"How could they do it?" the executive officer blurted. "How could terrorists have gotten in there with explosives? It's one of the most secure facilities in the world."

Howard shook his head in silence. Jensen was right. A private army guarded the whole complex in a tight web of security. It must have been a masterful infiltration to take out the Sea Island terminal as well, he thought, though there were no apparent offsh.o.r.e explosions. Thankfully, his ship and crew were safe, and he intended to keep it that way. Once the search for survivors in the water was completed, Howard moved the tanker several miles out into the gulf, where he circled the big ship slowly until dawn.

By daylight, the full extent of the damage became apparent as emergency response teams from around the region converged on the scene. The Ras Tanura refinery, one of the largest in the world, was a smoldering ruin, nearly completely destroyed by the raging fires. The Sea Island offsh.o.r.e terminal, capable of feeding eighteen supertankers at a time with raw crude oil, had completely vanished beneath the gulf. The nearby tank farm, providing storage for nearly thirty million barrels of petroleum products, was mired in a waist-deep sea of black ooze from dozens of cracked and fractured tanks. Farther into the desert, countless oil supply pipelines were broken in two like twigs, soaking the surrounding sands black with thick pools of crude oil.

Overnight, nearly a third of Saudi Arabia's oil exporting capability was destroyed. Yet a raft of terrorist suicide bombers was not to blame. Around the world, seismologists had already fingered the cause of the destruction. A ma.s.sive earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, had rattled the east coast of Saudi Arabia. a.n.a.lysts and pundits alike would lament the happenstance of Mother Nature when the quake's epicenter was computed to be just two miles from Ras Tanura. The shock waves caused by striking at such a critical locale would ultimately ripple far beyond the Persian Gulf, shaking the globe for many months to come.

-11-

HANG ZHOU DREW a last puff from his cheap unfiltered cigarette, then flicked the b.u.t.t over the rail. He watched in lazy curiosity as the glowing ember flittered to the dirty water below, half expecting the murky surface to ignite in a wall of flames. Heaven knows, there's enough spilled petroleum in the black water to power a small city, he thought as the cigarette fizzled to a harmless demise alongside a belly-up mackerel.

As the dead fish could attest, the dank waters around the Chinese port of Ningbo were anything but hospitable. A flurry of construction activity along the commercial waterfront had helped stir up the polluted waters, already contaminated by the steady stream of leaky containerships, tankers, and tramp freighters that frequented the port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta, not far from Shanghai, Ningbo was rapidly growing into one of China's largest seaports, in part due to its deepwater channel that allowed dockage for giant three-hundred-thousand-ton supertankers.

"Zhou!" barked a Doberman-like voice, whose owner more resembled an overweight bulldog. Zhou turned to see his supervisor, the operations director for Ningbo Container Terminal No. 3, high-stepping down the dock toward him. An unlikable tyrant by the name of Qinglin, he wore a permanent scowl painted on his pudgy face.

"Zhou," he repeated, approaching the longsh.o.r.eman. "We've had a change in schedule. The Akagisan Maru, bound from Singapore, has been delayed due to engine problems. So we're going to allow the Jasmine Star to take her berth at dock 3-A. She's due in at seven-thirty. Make sure your crew is standing by to receive her."

"I'll pa.s.s the word," Zhou said and nodded.

The containership terminal where they worked operated around the clock. In the nearby waters of the East China Sea, a steady stream of transport ships milled about, waiting their turn at the docks. China's abundant labor pool ground out an endless supply of cheap electronics, children's toys, and clothing that were immediately gobbled up by the consumer markets of the industrialized nations. But it was the lumbering containership, the unsung workhorse of commercial trade, which empowered global commerce and allowed the Chinese economy to skyrocket.

"See to it. And keep after the loading crew. I'm getting complaints again about slow turnarounds," Qinglin grumbled. He lowered his clipboard and slid a yellow pencil over his right ear, then turned and walked away. But he stopped after two steps and slowly wheeled back around, his eyes widening as he stared at Zhou. Or at least Zhou thought he was staring at him.

"She's on fire," Qinglin muttered.

Zhou realized his supervisor was looking past him and turned to see what he meant.

In the harbor surrounding the terminal, a dozen ships milled about the area, an a.s.sorted mix of huge containerships and jumbo supertankers overshadowing a handful of small cargo ships. It was one of the cargo ships that distinguished itself, trailing a heavy plume of black smoke.

Through Zhou's eyes, the ship looked to be a derelict, well overdue for an appointment with the sc.r.a.pyard. She was at least forty years old, he guessed, with a tired blue hull that in most places had turned scaly brown from the onslaught of rust. Black smoke, growing thicker by the second, billowed from the forward hold like an inverse waterfall, obscuring most of the ship's superstructure. Yellow flames danced out of the hold in random leaps, occasionally bursting twenty feet into the air. Zhou turned his gaze toward the ship's prow, which cut a frothy white wake through the water.

"She's running fast ... and heading toward the commercial terminals," he gasped.

"The fools!" Qinglin cursed. "There's no place to run ash.o.r.e in this direction." Dropping his clipboard, he took off sprinting down the terminal toward the dock office in hopes of radioing the impaired ship.

Other ships and sh.o.r.e facilities had already witnessed the fire and were filling the airwaves with offers of a.s.sistance. But all of the radio calls to the smoking vessel went unanswered.

Zhou stayed perched at the end of the container dock, watching as the burning ship steamed closer to sh.o.r.e. The derelict narrowly skirted between a moored barge and a loaded containership in a deft move that Zhou considered miraculous, given the blanket of smoke engulfing the ship's bridge. For a moment the ship appeared headed for the container terminal adjacent to Zhou's, but then the ship made a sweeping turn to port. As the vessel's path seemed to straighten out, Zhou could see that the ship was now headed toward Ningbo's main crude oil loading facility on Cezi Island.

Oddly, he noted that there were no men on deck fighting the flames. Zhou scanned the length of the ship and even got a glimpse of the bridge through the smoke as the ship turned away from him, but he couldn't catch sight of any crew members aboard. A shiver went down his spine as he silently wondered if it was an unmanned ghost ship.

A pair of deepwater tankers straddled Ningbo's main crude offloading terminal, which had recently been expanded to accommodate four supertankers. The burning derelict took a bead on the leeward tanker, a black-and-white behemoth owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Alerted by the frantic radio traffic, the tanker's executive officer let loose a blast from the ship's deafening air horn. But the burning freighter held steady. The disbelieving exec stood peering at the flaming vessel from his outside bridge wing, powerless to do anything more.

Alerted by the warning blast, the tanker's crewmen scrambled like ants to flee the floating incendiary tank, converging onto the lone gangplank. The exec stood and watched unblinking, now joined by the harried captain, who stared waiting for the rusty ship to slice into them.

But the impact never came. At the last second, the flaming ship wheeled again, its bow swinging sharply to port and just missing the flanks of the supertanker by a few feet. The freighter seemed to straighten, running parallel with the tanker and taking a bead on the adjacent docking terminal. A semifloating ramp built on sectional pylons that ran six hundred feet into the harbor, the terminal carried the pipelines and pumps used to off-load the tanker's supply of crude oil.

The rusty derelict now ran as straight as an arrow, the flames from its hold engulfing the entire forward deck. No attempt had been made to slow the vessel, and she, in fact, appeared to have actually gained speed. Striking the end of the terminal, the rusty ship's bow tore through the wooden platform like it was a box of matches, sending splintered pieces of the dock flying in all directions. Pylon after pylon disintegrated under the onslaught, barely slowing the vessel as it plowed forward. A hundred yards ahead, several crewmen who had been fleeing the big tanker froze on the gangplank, unsure of which direction to find safety. The answer was presented a few seconds later when the ship drove through the base of the plank. Hidden by smoke and flames, a jumble of steel, wood, and humanity that was the gangplank surged underwater and was quickly lost beneath the churning propellers of the ship.

The ship continued to drive forward, but, at last, began to stagger as a tangled ma.s.s of debris piled up before the bow. Yet the old ship had legs and plowed ahead in the last gasp of its life, fighting to reach sh.o.r.e. Mashing through the final pylon, the spent ship made a final surge onto the sh.o.r.efront off-loading and storage facility. A thunderous crash, accompanied by waves of black smoke, echoed across the island as the mystery ship finally ground to a halt. Those who witnessed the carnage let out a sigh of relief that the worst was apparently over. But then a m.u.f.fled blast erupted deep in the bowels of the ship, which blew the bow off in a wall of orange fire. In seconds, flames were everywhere, devouring the spilled crude oil that flooded around the ship. The fire raced across the layer of floating oil that reached into the harbor and climbed up to engulf the moored tanker. The entire island was quickly clouded in thick black smoke, which hid the inferno below.

Across the bay, Zhou stood in astonishment as he watched the flames spread across the terminal complex. Staring at the decrepit freighter as it wallowed and rolled onto its side after the fire inside melted its innards, he grasped to comprehend what kind of suicidal maniac would destroy himself in such a rage.

A mile away from Zhou's dock, a faded white runabout motored slowly off Cezi Island. Concealed beneath a low-slung canvas tarp, a coffee-skinned man lay on the bow, surveying the burning holocaust ash.o.r.e through the lens of a small telescope affixed to a laser sight. Appraising the damage with an upturned grin of satisfaction, he disa.s.sembled the laser device and accompanying wireless transmitter that minutes before had relayed course directions to the rusty derelict's automatic navigation system. As smoke drifted over the water, the man hoisted a stainless steel suitcase over the gunnel and gently let it slip from his fingers. A few seconds later, the suitcase and its high-tech components found a permanent home under three inches of soft mud in the murky depths of Ningbo Harbor.