In Extremis, a Novel

Chapter 1

At last light and with the mother ship a small, grey blotch on the horizon, the leader gave the signal to commence the attack. With a twist of the accelerator handles on each of the three special operations craft, their powerful engines roared to life. Their composite carbon-fiber hulls pounded violently off the wave tops as they raced toward the large tanker in the distance they had tracked since late afternoon. The timing was perfect. The solar storms were at their peak and provided cover from satellite surveillance.

On each of the boats, six men had a hard grip on the lanyard that ran around the pontoon gunwale and prevented them from being thrown overboard by the jarring impact with the crest of the waves. An automatic weapon hung by web gear on each man’s torso. Through the eye holes of their head masks, save one, the Mongoloid eye folds and dark eyes of the Asian races were visible. The leader’s eyes were rounder and blue.

By now, the boats would be fixed on the tanker’s radar, and they would be the focus of alarmed attention by the officer at the helm of the tanker. With his free hand, the leader pulled out his infrared binoculars to see whether the tanker was changing course. If the tanker turned to the same heading of the approaching attack boats, it would be making a run for it. The steady position of the tanker’s green starboard running light told him the target had not yet reacted and was still headed southeast off the coast of Sumatra and down the Strait of Malacca. In this upper part of the strait, ship traffic had not converged into the congested narrows to the south, and the tanker was alone.

Mariners knew the Strait to be the shortest route between Middle Eastern oil ports and ports in East Asia. Its waters formed the passageway between the coasts of Sumatra and Malaysia, forcing ships to pass the countless bays, coves and villages along each shoreline. For centuries, these places harbored pirates exploiting the Strait’s waters of uncertain jurisdiction.

In his mind, the leader ran through the range of anti-piracy tactics the tanker might adopt. He had enough weapons at his disposal to take the target ship, but its cargo was both precious and flammable. He couldn’t run the risk of extensive damage to the ship. It had to be navigable afterward with its cargo intact.

The tanker headed down the Strait directly at them. That meant its master was confident the ship could run the gauntlet. The leader assumed the tanker carried an armed guard and probably sound and water cannons as well. The cat and mouse game had begun.

It took six minutes for the boats to close with the large crude carrier. The leader inhaled the heavy, fragrant air of the tropical sea as lightning flashed from thunderheads in the east too distant to be a factor in his operation. The M/V Energy Future’s name in white letters against its black hull came into focus, and it flew the Panamanian flag of convenience. The ship likely had already reported the attack via its ship security alert system, and its location was continuously transmitted via satellite. Somewhere in Panama, the alert was registering with the ship’s agents there, a matter of little concern to the leader. He judged it extremely unlikely that Panamanian monitors could communicate promptly with naval authorities in all three countries having possible jurisdiction or that any of them could manage a timely intervention, especially after dark.

He steadied himself with one hand on the lanyard of his circling boat and continued to study his quarry through binoculars. He could see a machine gun crew setting up on the stern and two others on the boat decks on either side of the bridge. At least two guns would face directly toward almost every position around the tanker’s hull. The bow and the stern, both obscured by the flare of the hull, were the exceptions. The attack boats were now well within the range of the ship’s machine guns, and it was not slowing down.

A flare went up from the tanker’s bridge, brightly illuminating the surrounding water. The leader welcomed the light to exhibit all three of his boats. Two men on each boat stood with a rocket propelled grenade launcher in full display. He put down the scope and picked up a megaphone.

HEAVE TO! WE HAVE INCIDIARIES AND WE WILL USE THEM IF YOU DO NOT STOP! I REPEAT, HEAVE TO. The amplified command was given in English and repeated in Chinese.

The leader directed the boats to fall off as he watched the giant tanker for signs of the master’s reaction. He could see men taking cover around the machine gun positions.

It will take more than threats to get this oil, he thought.

An ear-splitting jet of sound hit the leader’s boat and a green laser moved between the other two boats, but the ear protectors and goggles of the attackers, together with their speed, rendered those anti-piracy measures ineffective.

When the flare died out astern the tanker, it was replaced by another. The leader spoke into his mic, and all three of the attack boats began to run along the tanker’s starboard side with the attackers firing automatic weapons at the bridge. Machine guns from the vessel returned fire, their bullets pinging off the composite hull and cockpit of the boats, and puncturing the pontoon gunwale on the leader’s boat.

The tanker’s water cannons surged on, creating an oscillating stream of water under pressure strong enough to knock a man overboard. The leader’s boat and one other peeled off and crossed the wake close under the huge, squat stern of the big ship. The third boat fell back, aiming its covering machine gun fire at the tanker’s stern gun position while the first two boats moved in under the slight flare of the blunt stern on the port side of the rudder, blocking lines of fire from the tanker’s machine guns.

At the leader’s order, each of the two attack boats under the stern fired a rocket propelled grenade at a water cannon directly overhead on the port side. Both were direct hits, destroying the nozzles to the water cannon and creating huge fountains forty feet apart and obscuring the view of the tanker’s gun positions. The two boats then ran close alongside the hull, and men on each boat threw a satchel against the hull. Powerful magnets inside the satchels snapped onto the steel hull in two locations above the water line and remained firmly attached. Then the attack boats retreated under cover of the spraying fountains of water at the two destroyed water canon locations.

The leader’s boat fired an RPG at the port wing, striking it with a violent explosion, shattering the glass on the bridge and tearing the radio direction finder from its stanchion. A hail of automatic weapons fire was directed from the other boats at the machine gun position on the port boat deck.

The leader could see the ghostly red images of the crew take cover and grinned. Not professionals.

He could see that there was no important damage to the ship. The leader spoke into his mic, All boats fall off and await my order.

He stood upright in his boat as it kept pace with the tanker and again directed his megaphone to the bridge. AHOY, ENERGY FUTURE. HAVE YOUR CAPTAIN CALL ME ON THE MARINERS’ CHANNEL.

After a moment, a burst of static emitted from the leader’s phone.

This is the captain.

Have a crewman look at your port side aft, captain. We will not shoot at him. He will see two satchel charges attached to the hull. If you do not heave to within five minutes, I will blow your rudder and propeller pods to pieces, and then we will board you. The five minutes begin now.

You’re bluffing, came the answer in accented English. You wouldn’t risk blowing up the ship or even damaging its steering. You would lose your ransom. Captain, if we disable your ship, we can still take survivors as hostages and still get our ransom. If we let you go, we’ve gone through all this for nothing. If you survive, you will have to explain to your owners and their insurance companies why you gambled and cost them hundreds of millions in ship damage, lost cargo, and oil pollution liability. Either way, we get our money. You survive with your career intact only if you cooperate. You now have four minutes.

The leader absentmindedly felt his neck for a pulse.

Sixty Eight. I used to get excited during an operation.

A man previously a part of the tanker’s stern gun crew ran to the rail and looked down at the satchels attached to the hull on the port side beside the rudder, and then ran back to take cover talking into his radio handset. In less than two minutes, the vessel began to reduce speed, finally steadying with just enough power to maintain navigational control of the big ship. A Jacob’s ladder was lowered to accept the boarding party. It was over.

***

Three hours later, after the leader’s reconnaissance of the tanker and its machinery and disabling the global tracking system required by Panamanian law, a lifeboat was lowered. The lifeboat, minus all lights, flares, radios, cell phones, and navigational aids and with its engine disabled, settled into the calm sea. Four oars remained on board. All but one of the crew descended the port gangway and into the life boat. All had survived the firefight with only minor injuries. Those who had sought the safety of the ship’s panic room voluntarily elected to join the rest of the crew aboard the life boat rather than be taken hostage.

The crew would spend the night rowing toward the nearest shore lights without the ability to signal distress or communicate ashore. If naval or police boats from Sumatra had been alerted of the attack by radio or by the explosions, they would be ill equipped to search in the dark for a lifeboat adrift in the Strait. By morning, the tanker would be gone.

After the lifeboat drifted off into the dark waters of the Strait, the leader turned to face the remaining crew member still aboard.

Come with us, he said in perfect, American-accented English.

The Chief Engineer, a portly but powerfully built German named Fischer, was escorted by the leader and three men, all still wearing their head masks, to the engine control room. In the control room, an array of video monitors and digital displays around three sides of the room provided images of each of the giant diesel engines, generators, a boiler, and access passageways. The fourth wall contained the chart table and supply cabinets. The leader directed his men to tape over the clock and the digital display for compass bearing with duct tape.

We have kept you on board for insurance, Herr Fischer. Not as a hostage as you might be thinking, but as a technical advisor. We may have questions about these controls.

Why should I help you? Fischer responded, his eyes wide. You will kill me anyway.

The leader returned the engineer’s gaze, but the leader’s was without fear.

You will help us because we will certainly kill you if, but only if, you don’t cooperate. You have seen how we put all of the other crew safely into life boats. You have seen us cover the screen and clock here in the engine room. That is to prevent you from observing our course changes and the time. The only reason we would do that is to prevent you from reporting that information later to our pursuers. And the only way you could report our bearings and the time between course changes is if you were alive after having been set free, am I right? We just want the ship and its cargo. When the time comes, you too will be put safely into a life boat, and then you can begin writing your exciting memoir. What could be more reasonable?

The engineer nodded after a moment. Okay. Are these three your engineering crew? inclining his head toward the men holding their guns on him.

They are. They speak good English. You will be handcuffed in that chair over there and answer their questions. If you need to get up to show them something, one of them will keep his gun on you while you are out of the chair. If you do your job, you will be treated well. Clear?

Fischer nodded.

The leader turned to one of the men in black. We will get underway immediately. Are you and the bridge in communication?

The man nodded. Yes, sir. Standing by.

Good. I’ll be up on the bridge. Call me if Herr Fischer is uncooperative or you think he is giving you bad information.

The leader stepped into the engine room elevator and pushed the indicator button for the bridge. As the elevator door closed, he removed his head mask and absentmindedly scratched the scar that ran into his sand colored goatee.

Responding to commands from the bridge, the big diesels brought the giant ship to full ahead, and it resumed its southeasterly course down the Strait. One blip on the radar screen revealed another nearby vessel on course to intersect the tanker’s heading. The mother ship was closing to recover the three attack boats. It had been successful and clean.

The Engineer told his captors where the ship’s paint locker was, and they located a large store of black paint for the hull and several buckets each of white and green paint. At dawn, the ship eased behind an island at the mouth of the Kampar River opposite the Strait from Singapore. During daylight, the ship’s homeport of Colon was painted over and replaced with Vasco de Gama, an obscure port in what is now the Indian province of Goa, sometimes used as a flag of convenience. Then, the crew used black paint to cover the yellow band around the top of the stack and the letter M below it that served as a logo for the German owners. A small, ambiguous green palm tree was painted on each side of the stack. "M/V Asian Glory" was painted on both sides of the bow and on the stern.

The vessel now looked generic. Most importantly, it would not be recognized as the hijacked tanker by any other vessel who might glimpse it from a distance during its short voyage. The leader assumed that the lifeboat containing the crew had been found by now and that its passengers were telling their story.

After sunset, the tanker resumed its southeasterly course. Soon, the verdant coastal mountains faded into the dusk over the fantail. Flashes of lightning again illuminated the dissolving afternoon cloud cover and brought the daily showers that fed the teak forests of Sumatra.

***

The leader watched the sunrise and drank coffee from the captain’s mug. He looked at his watch and picked up the handset to the engine control room.

We’ll be at the berth this afternoon.

Yes, sir, came the answer. The Engineer showed us how to operate the bow thruster and the mooring winches. We’re ready.

The leader then took the elevator down to the engine room and pulled the black head mask over his face before stepping out of the elevator.

Well, Herr Fischer, you will be happy to know that we have reached your disembarkation location. You should be able to reach the coastline in a few hours even without rowing. There is a strong current that runs toward land here. The leader pulled a Glock from his shoulder holster. Let’s go.

The Chief Engineer looked anxious getting in the elevator with a gun pressed into the small of his back, but seemed reassured by a glance at his captor’s mask.

On deck, Fischer inhaled the fresh, salty mist in the headwind and his spirits lifted. The hazy coast line was not far and the weather was fair. He knew nothing of who his captors were or what they intended to do with the ship, but at least he could tell the authorities that the vessel seemed to steer a steady southerly course with what he thought were some turns to the east. He could tell by the change in the ship’s roll as the southeast swell struck the vessel from changing directions. Brunei sounded about right.

The leader pointed to a lifeboat from which its covering tarp had been removed. The boat was properly positioned over its set of blocks rigged to lower the boat to the water. Fischer lifted his leg to climb into the boat when the bullet struck him behind the ear. He fell back to the deck coming to rest face up with a puzzled look on his face. His mouth made an effort to form words. The leader fired another round into the engineer’s sternum, and the man was still.

The leader peeled off his head mask. It was much less trouble this way, Herr Fischer. You were comfortable while you were with us, and we got your much-needed cooperation.

His men unbuttoned the front of the engineer’s coveralls and inserted a heavy engine room wrench down his pants leg. Then, using his shoe lace, they tied the cuff of his pant leg containing the wrench tightly to his leg. That would prevent the wrench from slipping out when the gasses from his decomposing body gave it buoyancy later.

The leader’s benediction was brief. That should hold you down on the bottom nicely.

It took three men to pick up the heavy body and throw it overboard.

Restow the lifeboat and clean the deck, the leader ordered. Then spill diesel fuel on the deck where the blood was. If anyone asks, the damage to the ship was caused by an unsuccessful pirate attack off Oman."

The three men nodded and fell to.

***

It was late afternoon when the pilot came aboard and guided the tanker into its berth. The crew, dressed in ordinary work clothes, lowered the ship’s gangway onto the long wharf jutting out from the refinery. The leader walked down the gangway and shook hands with a Caucasian man standing apart from the native men attaching the giant hoses through which the oil would be unloaded.

Chapter 2

The State Department’s daily intelligence bulletin conspicuously stamped SECRET dropped into the IN basket of Captain Vincent Long, United States Marine Corps, an hour later than usual. By the look of it, it was thicker than usual too, although it been growing over the last several weeks. The American Embassy in Beijing had resumed hard copy dissemination of the bulletin after an embarrassing hacking incident indicating that the Chinese had been reading them on-line.

It was delivered by Jeff Bell, Second Secretary of the Embassy, who immediately preceded Long on the intelligence bulletin routing.

Vincent, be glad you are here in Beijing rather than in Washington right now, Bell said. The power outages continue. The Northeast is getting the worst of it because it has most of the oil-fired power plants.

They must be in a world of hurt, Long responded. No one realizes how logistically infeasible cities are until their systems break down.

I gather that the high rise buildings pretty much have to be cleared out after a few hours without power, Bell said. With the blowers off, the air gets stale and hot in those sealed up buildings. At least it’s spring. Heating and air conditioning aren’t so critical.

Bell glanced at his watch and grimaced. Blast. I’ve got to go over to the Foreign Ministry and take some more crap off of those guys about our blocking their attempts to buy the Canadian oil sands.

Well, tell them go pound sand. Pun intended, Long said, grinning. Hydrocarbons in Canada belong to us. Monroe Doctrine and all that.

Yeah, well, you jarheads may have to go up to Canada and surround the place before this is over. The Canadians are getting uppity about their sovereignty and their God-given right to sell to the highest bidder. Maybe we should have treated them with more respect over the years. See you later.

Bell executed a decent about-face for a civilian and left Long’s small office.

Long stared at his sword mounted in its escutcheon on the wall facing his desk. It never failed to trigger a sense of the Corps’ history-rooted traditions. Called the Mameluke sword, it was a replica of one presented to Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon by a desert chieftain of Mameluke warriors in Tripoli. O’Bannon led a Marine detachment in a successful assault against the fortified city of Derna in Tripoli in 1805. The raid eliminated pirate activity that had been interdicting American shipping in the Mediterranean from the shores of Tripoli. The Marine officer’s sword was the oldest weapon in the United States military arsenal.

He picked up the intelligence bulletin. It was routed to him in his capacity as commander of the Marine security detachment for the Embassy. It alerted him to developments affecting the Sino-American relationship, especially those likely to kick up security threats at the Embassy—usually in the form of orchestrated demonstrations.

America’s transportation modes run on oil, it said. Small towns and rural areas in America were said to be in better circumstances than cities because locally grown food supplies would be more accessible over the coming growing season, and sparse development made housing more habitable in the current circumstances than in the cities. In the cities, acute gasoline shortages were disastrous. All subsistence supplies must be distributed by truck, rail and air transport, all of which were operating on reduced schedules. Ship schedules in port cities grew increasingly unreliable as bunker fuel scarcity choked off imports. Prices for early spring produce from the Southwest and Mexico escalated wildly if any could be found at all.

One paragraph described a conflict that had surfaced in New Jersey. A major oil company complained that the City of Newark had begun requisitioning its needs for gasoline from the company’s local refinery. The company protested the City’s payments for the gasoline at prices well below market price. It claimed that it was being coerced by the City’s refusal to provide police and fire services to the refinery if it did not comply with the City’s requisition practices. The refinery found itself continuously under siege by people desperate for gasoline, and the company could not control the determined looters without city police protection. Newark officials, in turn, alleged that the refinery’s extortionate price increases violated its contract with the city.

The President was quoted excoriating those guilty of price gouging or hoarding scarce fuel and food supplies and thereby compounding the situation. They were, she said from the Rose Garden, as un-American as any foreign enemy seeking to destroy the country. She appealed to the country for calm in what Long judged to be a mixed message after having condemned the practices of retailers in purple language.

Citing the Department of Energy as its source, the bulletin reported that natural gas, geothermal and wind farm power plants continued to operate normally, but they could not begin to meet the country’s needs. Coal fired plants were experiencing frequent down time as trains that supplied them with coal increasingly struggled to procure a steady supply of diesel fuel for their engines. When oil and coal fired power plants stuttered, blackouts and regional grid failures resulted.

Long turned to his computer and did a search for alternative power generation. An energy blog run by a charitable foundation stated that the output of hydroelectric power had been falling for years as climate change-induced drought in the Midwest and Southwest lowered the level of reservoirs below dam intake tunnels. Also, nuclear power plants around the country were forced to shut down for days at a time during more the more frequent temperature spikes in recent years.

Long picked up the State Department intel bulletin again and put his feet up on his desk.

A Department of Energy report on fracked shale gas was excerpted in the intel bulletin. Natural gas supplies on which the utility industry had placed heavy bets were facing declining production, due, in major part, to the fact that some shale rock turned out to be tighter or less porous than originally thought, yielding less gas. Many coal fired plants had been replaced by gas-fired ones in prior years on the rationale that gas was a cleaner source of energy. However, the fracking boom had ended after saturation drilling peaked about fifteen years earlier in the early 2020s. Gas shale reserves depleted more quickly than conventional gas wells because of shale’s low porosity. The situation had been compounded by newly feasible LNG infrastructure that made natural gas transportable by ship, thus driving America’s natural gas prices up to world market levels. Previously, methane distribution was limited to places served by pipelines within North America, the only means of delivery. Environmentally, the hydro-fracking boom had worsened the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses by making natural gas temporarily abundant and cheap, accelerating its use.

Experts were saying that the current energy shortage was not self-correcting and could be expected to deepen with the passage of time.

Long looked up at his Mameluke sword.

How do we fight this enemy?

Long’s attention was next drawn to an item at the top of the international part of the intel report. A large tanker carrying Chinese-owned crude had been hijacked by well-armed pirates in the Strait of Malacca two nights ago and was now missing.

Long pulled his feet off the desk and planted them squarely on the floor as he continued to read. Only yesterday, the Minister of Energy in Beijing condemned the black market for crude that had sprung up and stated that the missing shipment of crude was likely to find its way into the markets of China’s Asian neighbors. The implication was that Japan would benefit from this black market trade in stolen crude, if it was not an actual perpetrator of the piracy. The Minister stated that Japanese electronics manufacturers were reportedly unable to meet their delivery obligations to the American Defense establishment for essential components for missiles, smart bombs, aircraft and naval weapons systems and drones. He said that Japan could no longer count on future sales of rare metals from China to meet its manufacturing needs.

It was the talk of the foreign embassies in Beijing that China’s carefully erected structure of agreements with oil-rich, volatile, middle-eastern regimes which were locked in conflict with the America and the West gave China preferential access to the production and exporting capacities of those oil-producing countries. China had also built a pipeline from oil fields in Kazakhstan over China’s western border and across the entire width of the country to Shanghai and other cities on China’s populated eastern coast.

Also, in a major shock to the American administration, China and Russia had recently renewed China’s pipeline license from Russian oil fields in Western Siberia into Manchuria. The State Department had hoped that, upon expiration of China’s prior preferential license to Western Siberian oil, that oil would become available through the new Russian pipeline to the Pacific port of Nakhodka and by tanker via the relatively short Great Circle route to the U.S. Pacific Coast. Now that China had successfully perpetuated its rights to that oil source again, the America lost that opportunity to increase its depleting sources of oil.

Long’s musings were interrupted when the intel report slid off his lap onto the floor with a slap. Retrieving it, his thoughts returned to the tanker hijacking. A tanker had to be in navigable waters and would, by definition, be within the strike capability of the amphibious Marine Corps. Where was it? If the missing tanker were to be located, perhaps quick military action against energy pirates could be employed. Since the oil was apparently owned by the PRC, any such operations in Southeast Asia could be expected to involve the Beijing Government. The American Embassy in Beijing would necessarily also be involved. And, of course, the Navy and Marines.

He stood up and performed several squats to inject some life into his legs. Then moving toward the solitary window in his office, he looked down at the guard house near the entrance of the Embassy. At this time of day, there were three Marines on duty in the security office. Incongruously, directly in front of the Marine detachment’s security post, on a small, raised island of concrete facing the public street, a single Chinese policeman stood guard. The great weight of the People’s Republic was represented by that lone guard who stood as an ostensible protector of the diplomatic mission of America, China’s ideological and economic competitor. Protector from what? Threats from whom? Only the monolith of the People’s Republic and its multifariously tentacled agencies had the power to threaten the American Embassy. Long operated on the assumption that the man dressed as a Beijing City policeman was a poser. He was likely Red Army or state security. Whoever he was, he could be relied upon to report Embassy traffic to one or more state security services.

As Long watched, a Mercedes taxi pulled up at the front gate and a lean Caucasian man with a blonde buzz haircut and a short goatee stepped out of it. The Chinese police guard made no visible response whatever to the man’s arrival, confirming the ambiguous nature of his duties. The man was dressed in a well-cut, dark suit and moved with athletic grace to the Marine guard office to show his passport. Shortly thereafter, having been issued the necessary pass for entry into the Embassy, the man moved quickly to the front door, turning his head to scan the mirrored front windows of the Embassy. His penetrating blue eyes glanced at the window behind which Long stood unseen.

Long turned away and walked into the corridor, following it to the office of the naval attaché. The door was half open, and the thinning hair on the top of Commander Jerry McMasters’ head was visible as he