You sign up at one of these sites, upload the files, and they sit there on the servers.”
“How many of these sites are there?”
“Hundreds. Some you have to pay to use, but the majority of them are free if you’re dealing with small file sizes—anything under a gigabyte of data.”
“Which is how much?”
Jack thought this over for a moment. “Take a standard Microsoft Word file.... A gigabyte could hold maybe half a million pages.”
“Damn.”
“But that’s the beauty of this. Some URC mutt in Tangiers logs in to one of these sites, uploads a text document with a string of a couple hundred numbers, then another mutt in Japan logs in, downloads the file, erases it from the site, then plugs the numbers into a stego-embedded onetime pad he got from a URC site, and he’s got his message.”
“What’s it take to sign up on one of these sites?” This from Hendley.
“The free ones ... an e-mail address, and those are a dime a dozen. Hell, there are places on the Internet that’ll give you an address that self-destructs after fifteen minutes.”
“Talk about anonymity,” Rick Bell said. “Listen, I can buy all this. It makes sense, but what do we do with it?”
The conference door opened, and Chavez walked in. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.” He grabbed the television remote, powered up the LCD flat screen, and switched to CNN. The anchor was in mid-sentence.
“... Once again, this is a live television feed from Record News helicopter in Brazil. The conflagration started just after eight p.m. local time. ...”
Jack leaned forward in his chair. “Christ almighty.”
The helicopter appeared to be filming from a distance of five miles or more, but still two-thirds of the screen was filled with roiling flames and thick, black smoke. Through the smoke there were glimpses of some kind of vertical structures and crisscrossing pipes, and round storage tanks.
“That’s a refinery,” said John Clark.
The anchor was talking again: “According to Record News, the location of the fire is a refinery run by Petrobras, known as the Paulinia REPLAN. Paulinia is a town of sixty thousand people and is located some eighty miles north of São Paulo.”
Hendley turned to Jack. “Can you—”
Jack already had his laptop open. “Working on it.”
“... The Paulinia REPLAN is the largest refinery in Brazil, covering almost eighteen hundred acres and with an output of almost four hundred thousand barrels a day. ...”
“Accident?” Rick Bell suggested.
“Don’t think so,” Clark replied. “Eighteen hundred acres is almost three and a half square miles. The complex is almost totally engulfed. Look, back when I was still getting wet for a living, we war-gamed this stuff all the time. Refineries are juicy targets, but just about anything short of half a dozen Paveways wouldn’t be enough to light up a whole complex. Hell, our refineries here are almost thirty-five years old and you can count on one hand how many accidents there’ve been. Too many backup emergency systems.”
Typing at his laptop, Jack said, “Paulinia’s pretty new. Less than ten years old.”
“How many employees?”
“Could be as many as a thousand. Maybe twelve hundred. It’s the night shift, so less staff on duty, but we’re probably talking about at least four hundred people in there.”
“There,” Clark said. “Right there ...” He stepped up to the television and tapped an area inside the refinery complex. “Those flames are moving; that’s liquid, and a lot of it.”
As they watched, the Record News helicopter moved closer to the blaze, swinging around the refinery until the north side came into view.
Jack said, “Okay, got it: Paulinia’s also a terminal for an ethanol pipeline. Comes in from the north.”
“Yeah, I see it,” said Rick Bell. He walked to the television and pointed to a spot along the complex’s northern perimeter. Just short of the fence, the pipeline was ripped open, emitting a geyser of flaming ethanol.
“Yeah,” Clark said. “They would have had to knock out some shutdown valves. ...” He traced his finger north along the pipeline until he reached an isolated pocket of flame. “That’s one.”
“And three more back down the line,” Granger added. “How much pipeline is that?”
“Half-mile, give or take,” Clark replied.
“About ten thousand gallons,” Jack said, looking up from his laptop.
“What?” said Chavez.
“That pipeline puts through over three billion gallons a year. Break down the math and that section probably contained about ten thousand gallons—call it enough to fill a tanker truck. Some of it’ll get soaked up by the soil, but you gotta figure seven, maybe eight