CHAPTER 7
The Day of the Crash 10 a.m.
RAF Regiment, 2 Squadron mess hall, RAF Honington, Suffolk
Flight Lieutenant Adam Brooks sat in the corner of the mess hall, his eyes glued to the small television set, as were those of several dozen of the lads from 2 Squadron. The rest of the gunners were out on rotation manning the front gates and beating the airfield perimeter with the dogs. Security readiness at Honington had already been upped this morning, as a matter of precaution, from amber to red. Adam suspected it was almost a certainty that all leave and weekend passes were being revoked right now as they sat here watching the telly.
On the small screen BBC24 was covering the story - already somebody had managed to throw together some computer graphics to sex up the visuals. As if shaky mobile phone footage of columns of flames was not enough.
‘. . . and then there’s the Paraguana refinery in Venezuela which is the main processing facility in the country - in fact for all of South America - for their light crude. We have no details on how much damage has been done there and whether that’s going to have an effect on oil output from the region but . . .’
‘They’re all oil targets,’ grunted one of the men sitting next to Adam. It was Lance Corporal Sean ‘Bushey’ Davies. ‘Someone’s just hitting the oil!’
‘Jesus. Well spotted, Bushey, you stupid twat,’ someone a row back quipped.
‘F*ck off,’ he grunted over his shoulder.
Adam watched as the talking heads in the studio were replaced by a Google Earth map that panned silky-smooth across the screen. Slick explosion graphics were peppered across the Arab states, several more around the Caspian Sea. He counted two dozen. More were being added to the map as they spoke.
‘. . . Nigeria, the Kaduna refinery. That’s just come in. Again no idea of the size or damage or how many fatalities. So, the question being asked is just what is going on out there? Who’s doing this?’
‘It’s . . . uh . . . really too early to be putting the blame on any group in particular,’ replied a freshly scrubbed and suited industry expert. To Adam, the poor young man appeared to be an unprepared and none-too-willing participant, pulled without notice from some back office and thrown before the glare of studio lights. He cleared his shaking voice with a self-conscious cough and took a quick sip of water. ‘But this does appear to be an attempt to disrupt as much global oil production as possible.’
‘What about the earlier bombs in Saudi Arabia at Medina and near the Kaaba in Mecca? Neither one, apparently, to do with oil.’
The expert looked awkwardly at the camera - a complete no-no. His skin turned a blotchy corned-beef red, uncomfortable, nervous, before turning back to the well-groomed news anchor.
‘Well . . . uh . . . that’s obviously an attempt to incite widespread Sunni-Shi’a retaliatory violence . . . religious civil war. With just two bombs in those very sacred places, you’ve got a peninsula-wide tinder-box going up. It’ll completely destabilise Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq . . . and other producers in the region, the core OPEC producers.’
The young man’s helpless face was replaced with shaking camera footage of an enormous oil slick, entirely aflame, spreading across a slim shipping channel. The towering pyramid of fire tapered into a thick black column of smoke that, in terms of scale, reminded Adam of photos of the pyroclastic cloud above Mount St Helens. The morning sun was lost beneath it. The sea that should have been a bright blue was a dull twilight grey. Beneath the shaking pixellated footage, red tickertape indicated further explosions in the Strait of Malacca.
‘And that, of course, is a very dangerous scenario. Just by taking Saudi Arabia and two or three of these other key producers out of the loop we’re looking at a shortfall of fifty-five to sixty-five per cent of the world’s oil production capacity right there.’
‘Now that sounds quite serious,’ said the anchor with a thoughtful frown spreading across his tanned face. ‘Presumably we can expect some sort of impact on us here in the UK. Are we going to be looking at queues at the pumps?’
The expert stared back at him, not studio-savvy enough to dial-back the look of utter dismay on his face. ‘Uh . . . no, you . . . you’re missing the point. It’s a lot more serious than that. In the oil markets, we call this type of . . . of scenario, well there are a number of what are called Perfect Storm Scenarios—’
A cocked eyebrow from the anchor. ‘Perfect Storm?’
The expert nodded silently.
Dead-air time. The anchor prodded him gently. ‘Which means what exactly?’
‘Enough wild-card events occurring synchronously to completely shut down oil processing and distribution—’
‘Affecting, of course, the price per barrel; presumably a major blip on the price of other commodities. So, this kind of an interruption of oil availability . . . how long before we can expect to feel the impact of this on our wallets? How long before we—’
‘You really don’t get it, do you?’
The anchor stared at his studio guest, his mouth hanging open.
‘It’s a Perfect Storm . . . there’s no contingency for it. We’re screwed.’
Adam glanced at the men in his unit, silent now, boots shuffling uncomfortably beneath the tables.
‘We . . . we’re a net importer,’ the expert continued, ‘a net importer of oil and gas. More importantly, we’re a big importer of everything else . . .’
The anchor nodded, an expression of practised gravitas easing onto his face, as if he’d known exactly how serious things were all along.
‘. . . Food, for example,’ continued the expert. ‘Food,’ he said with added emphasis. ‘There’s very little storage and warehousing in the UK because it’s a drain on profit. What we have instead are “just-in-time” distribution systems; warehouses that need only store and refrigerate twenty-four hours’ worth of food instead of two weeks’ worth. As long as haulage trucks and freight ships keep moving, it works just fine. But, no oil,’ the expert shook his head, ‘no food.’
The anchor’s eyes widened. ‘No food?’
‘We could well be looking at a severe rationing programme, perhaps even some form of martial law to enforce that.’
‘Martial law? Oh, surely that’s—’
‘A Perfect Storm . . . we’re into uncharted territory this morning.’ The expert’s voice was beginning to waver nervously. ‘There’s no way of knowing how serious this could get . . . or . . . or how quickly. Believe me, there are industry doom-sayers who’ve long been pointing to this kind of event as a . . . as a global paradigm shift.’
‘A global . . . a what?’
‘Paradigm shift. A . . . well, a complete global shutdown.’
Adam turned to look at his men. Silent and still. The last time he’d seen the lads like this was when an unexpected third six-month extension on their rotation to Afghanistan was announced to them last year.
A moment later the first mobile phone began to trill.