ear. Ibrahim turned and signaled to the Volkswagen. Hadi climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the car into the clearing. Ibrahim and Ahmed already had the guards’ bodies out of the truck.
“Key ring,” Ahmed said, and tossed it to Ibrahim.
They started dragging the bodies toward the tree line. Hadi pulled out a pair of white towels he’d taken from his hotel, tossed one to Fa’ad, and together they wiped down the cab. The Glock’s soft-nosed hollow-points had disintegrated inside the guards’ skulls, leaving no exit wounds, so there was more blood than brain matter. Once done, Hadi tossed his towel to Fa’ad, who jogged into the trees and tossed them away.
Ibrahim returned to the clearing, unlocked the cattle gate, then tossed the key ring to Hadi. He and Fa’ad got in and backed the truck through the gate, followed by Ibrahim and Ahmed in the Volkswagen. Hadi shut and locked the gate as Ibrahim pulled the Volkswagen into the trees and out of sight.
The service road ran alongside the pipeline, which sat atop five-foot support pylons, spaced every fifty feet or so. Bracketed on both sides by trees and heavily rutted, the road had been built to accommodate construction equipment during the pipeline’s construction and now served as an access road for the refinery’s maintenance and security staff.
After a mile, the road veered, going right as the pipeline went left. In the median stood a grove of trees, over the top of which the lights of the refinery were visible. Ibrahim stopped the truck, and they got out. “Change clothes,” he ordered.
The navy blue coveralls had been chosen not so much for stealth but for anonymity. Most of the refinery workers wore similar coveralls. If spotted, from a distance Ibrahim and his team would, they hoped, be mistaken for maintenance personnel. They were now less than a half-mile from the refinery’s perimeter road and fence.
Once in their coveralls, they walked through the grove to a clearing. Here the pipeline zigzagged before straightening again, crossing over the road, and then, after another five hundred yards, passing through the security fence and into the refinery itself.
The ethanol pipeline running above their heads was less than a year old and ran from Goiás, five hundred miles to the north, through Paulinia before continuing on to the Japeri Terminal in Rio de Janeiro two hundred miles to the northeast. Three-point-two billion gallons of ethanol per year through a pipeline spanning a quarter of Brazil’s breadth.
While the URC had been unable to discover the pipeline’s precise flow rate, the averages had been enough to convince the Emir that the plan was feasible. With a reported “up time” of eighty-five percent, the pipeline was pumping its 3.2 billion gallons over a span of 310 days, which in turn meant that for every operational day, 10.3 million gallons were flowing from Goiás to Rio. At any given hour of the day, in any given ten-mile stretch of pipeline, there was enough ethanol to fill twenty tanker trucks.
“Four ESD valves between here and the perimeter,” Ibrahim whispered. “One charge to disable each valve, one for the midpoint between the last pylons, and one for detonation. Those two I’ll handle myself. Ahmed, you have the first valve; Fa’ad, the second; Shasif, you have the third and fourth. When I’ve planted my charge, I’ll step out and scratch my head. Start your timers. Four minutes exactly. Remember: Walk back to the truck. Do not run. Anyone not back by the time the first charge goes off, they get left behind. Any questions?” There were none. “Allah be with us,” Ibrahim said.
They took off together, walking casually and chatting, as would any maintenance crew trying to make the best of a night shift. Two hundred yards from the grove, they reached the first ESD. Ahmed peeled off and knelt down behind the barrel-sized valve, then Fa’ad, then finally Shasif.
“See you back at the truck,” Ibrahim said, and kept walking.
The perimeter road was fifty yards ahead. To the right, a white pickup truck appeared, moving slowly as the passenger-side guard shined a spotlight on the fence. Ibrahim checked his watch. Early. Fifteen minutes early! Their agent, Cassiano, had been sure of the facility’s security routes and schedules. He’d either been wrong or the security schedule had changed. If the latter, why? Routine, or something else? This security truck, Ibrahim knew, would make its way along this perimeter road, then exit through the facility’s west gate before swinging north again and eventually