John Schettler - 9 Days Falling, Volume I

She didn’t often address him by his first name, and the sound of it was welcome. He wanted to move closer, offer something more to reassure her, but found the distance between them imposed by their roles as Captain and CEO too difficult to bridge.

“We don’t know that yet,” he reasoned. Men always needed to fixed things, he thought. Every problem was met with a potential solution, some workable alternative in the mind of a man. Elena Fairchild, for all her discipline and the hard edge to her character honed by business dealings, was nonetheless a woman. She processed things quite differently. MacRae was sensitive enough to understand this, and took a different tack.

“Here,” he said. “A bit of good news. It seems our local rebels didn’t want to tangle with our helos and the Argonauts. They beat a hasty retreat for the Caspian coast. We have a fast boat out now with a twelve man security team watching over that rig. The men are going to secure the airfield at Buzachi, refuel the choppers and then see about getting out to one of their pump stations so they can move what they have in the line into Baku to top off their bunker credit. Princess Angelina should be loading here in an hour or so. Princess Marie will be right behind her, and our little girl, Princess Irene will be up at Kulevi with the Iron Duke.”

“Dangerous up there,” she said. “Too close to the Russians north of Poti like that. Mack tells me there’s a Russian military base just 10 kilometers north at Nachkadu. Too bad Supsa didn’t have enough storage for all three ships here.”

“At least we’ll be loading two ships at one time this way,” said MacRae. “And I’ve posted a squad of Argonauts with Princess Irene .”

Elena nodded half-heartedly, and he stepped over to the coffee bar. “You look like you could use a spot of tea,” he said, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible.

She mustered a wan smile. “I’m exhausted,” she confessed.

He poured her a cup from the ivory pot she kept at the ready. Two lumps, with a twist of lemon, just as she liked it. “She’s tough old gal,” he said, coming round to Princess Royal again, his voice softening. “She’ll hold up long enough to get a good bit off into Volker’s tankers. They’ll manage.”

“There’s more…” She took the cup, here dark eyes finding his, appreciating his closeness at the moment, the masculine presence, the quiet competence of the man.

“What more?”

“Cable on my desk,” she said, too beset at the moment to explain.

He stepped away and saw the telex, reading it quietly, his brow raising a bit as he did so.

“I see,” he said. “Marines on Abu Musa. Leave it to the Americans to jump right in like that.”

“What are they up to? The Iranian’s will be up in arms and a big chunk of my company is right in the thick of it over there!”

“Intel thinks this was a missile,” said MacRae. “Maybe the Americans know something more.”

“Oh, they’ve been angling for a reason to go after Iran since they knocked off Saddam,” she said, exasperated.

“Yes, well I can’t imagine they’re still spoiling for a fight right now with what’s been going on in the Pacific. Bloody hell out there on Taiwan, from the latest news. Mack has the full report if you want it.”

“I’ve’ enough bad news for the moment,” she said. “Fact is, Marines are on Iranian soil.”

“That island is disputed territory,” he said quickly.

“Yes, but the Iranians have an airfield there, and they won’t take this lying down.”

She shrugged with disgust. “Perhaps someone should gently suggest to the Iranians that taking pot shots at oil tankers in the Gulf is hardly conducive to the promotion of peaceful commerce. Insurance rates are going to skyrocket again, not to mention oil prices, which the only thing that might save us in this situation,” Fairchild conceded a crack of hope in the otherwise bleak news. “Oil’s moving. It’s gained $16. on the exchange in the last hour, and futures are already at $175.”

“It’ll go higher,” said MacRae. “Traders are fleeing to commodities again to escape the mess in the US financial system. With Thunder Horse down in the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Hormuz closed—pipeline into Ceyhan blown too, well, it’ll go higher, you can count on that.”

“So we’ve got to salvage that oil on Princess Royal. If we can at least get those three compartments ashore it might just be enough. Then we take everything we can get here and get the hell out of this place as quick as we can.”

MacRae pursed his lips, his jaw set with the realization that she was probably right. Things were wound up tight enough in the Gulf, he thought, and someone has lit the match. Now it was more than the oil in Princess Royal at stake. The whole region could erupt at any moment, and the price of oil would erupt with it. It was certain to do so. It was just a matter of time, and very little of that remained.

Even as he was contemplating this, the telex began chattering yet again, as if reading his very thoughts and telling him the worst had already happened. Elena Fairchild turned, half afraid to look. She leaned to read the text, her head shaking with an air of disillusionment as she did so.

“It gets worse every minute,” she said quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose between her eyes where the headache had been bothering her the last hour.

“More trouble?” MacRae stated the obvious.

“It appears so,” she said. “The Israelis are at Iran’s throat again and the Mullahs started firing ballistic missiles! The hit installations all along the Gulf coast—my god, look at this list! They hit Ras Tunura, Al Jubayl, Al Fujairah. This is insane!”

She rushed to the telescreen and had up a news feed. Initial reports looked very bad. The life blood of Western civilization was burning in the Persian Gulf.

In these same crucial minutes, the fires aboard the beleaguered Princess Royal had spread to yet another compartment, and now threatened the massive central reservoir on the ship. There had been another explosion aboard the tanker, and she was listing. Even as word came of the Israeli strike on Iran, secure phone lines sent emergency signals to the Argos Fire notifying the Fairchild CEO that her flagship tanker was now doomed to near total loss. The chaos at the port would prohibit any further rescue operation.

MacRae took the decrypt, reading it with sad, dark eyes, his lips pursed, jaw set, brows heavy. “I’m not one to cry wolf, Madame,” he began, “but I don’t know whether our big lady will make it out of there now. You may have to be prepared to lose her.”

“Along with half a billion dollars in oil.”

The oil recovery operations had to be terminated due to the raging fires, and the ship continued to list while frantic tugs attempted to push her out of the main sea lanes and rig heavy towing lines to move the stricken vessel to shallower waters near the coast. But Princess Royal would not reach the safety of the jetties and docking quays of the port at Al Fujairah, and her captain would not rest easy that evening at the International Marine Club there. Al Fujairah was also on fire.

“Then this is it, Gordon,” she said quietly. “This is all we’ve got now—those three tankers out there waiting for oil from Baku. When news of this hits home they’ll start to renege on every contract pending. Oil is going to be worth $200 a barrel in a few hours, if not sooner. Three days from now it will be up another hundred. We’ve bloody well got to get these tankers loaded, and that fast. How many men did we sent out to Kashagan?”