NIKITA'S WAR
Whispered conversations stopped as President Lassiter Ashanti strode purposefully into the Cabinet Room. His face beamed as he reached Miguel Kabayao, his closest friend since childhood and most trusted advisor, and took his hand. “Good morning, Miguel,” he said though his broad smile. Looking up at the rest of the group, he emphasized, “Good morning to all of you…it’s a great day!” He scowled briefly as he noticed Ellis Wharton arranging drinking glasses and pitchers of water on the table. “Ellis,” he said sharply, “I think we can do without your services today. Please leave us.”
The President looked sharp in his dark grey pinstriped Windsor power suit. He was extremely happy with the manner in which the suit fit his lean frame, and was especially proud of the fact that Willam Windsor had personally traveled from New York to the White House perform his final fitting. It was decidedly European in cut, but Ashanti was happy with that as well. After all, four of the seven men in this very room were European and one was Iranian. Two of them didn’t speak a word of English, and would be listening and contributing to the conversation by means of head phones and small microphones monitored by translators down the hall.
The unofficial advisory group seated around the table was not the President’s Cabinet. Like President Andrew Jackson, Ashanti did not like or trust his ‘official’ Cabinet, many members of which had been appointed by his predecessor. President Jackson had solved that problem in 1831 by firing most of the Cabinet and taking his advice from unofficial group of advisors he referred to as his ‘Kitchen Cabinet.’ President Ashanti, on the other hand, did not had the luxury of firing his Cabinet… he did not have the necessary power to do so, at least not yet. He had solved the problem by meeting regularly with his official Cabinet and delegating to the members only softball problems and questions. The major business of the nation, and, more important, of his Presidency, was discussed and debated by the members of this unofficial group, which had no name at all and, as far as official Washington, D.C. was concerned, did not exist.
The President took his seat and arranged a small sheaf of papers in front of him. Still smiling broadly, he addressed the small group, “As you all know, Project Hot Water was begun just over one week ago. It is progressing at a rate that is far beyond our initial expectations, both physically and psychologically.” He turned to face Daryoush Harandi, the Iranian member of his group. “We owe a great debt of gratitude to our friend Daryoush, whose meticulous planning and, shall we say, nefarious association with some of the more unsavory members of the Taliban, has resulted in a masterful act of terrorism which suits our purposes perfectly, just as it was intended.” Ashanti stood and began to clap his hands slowly as he said, “Bravo, Prince Harandi!” As he continued to applaud, the other six men at the table stood and followed his lead.
Harandi sat smiling at the attention, but did not respond until his translator repeated the President’s message in Farsi. As soon as he understood what had been said, his smile broadened, revealing slight spacing between his white teeth. He nodded his head and held up his left hand, then spoke a few words, the tone of which was understood by the others to be grateful acknowledgement.
The Prince’s plan had been simple but masterful. Oil companies, many of which had longstanding ties with the government of Iran, had been actively lobbying the United States government to allow the drilling of more wells in several locations throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Some of these proposed wells would be only a few miles offshore from the pristine beaches of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Environmentalists had mounted a vocal opposition to the proposal, and the argument had been going on for more than a decade. President Ashanti’s plan to convert the United States into a socialist state was following the ‘boiling frog’ principal which had been first suggested to Kruschev long ago. Ashanti’s interpretation of the principal was to very slowly restrict the rights and freedoms of citizens while at the same time duping them into believing he was doing everything possible to improve their lives. This approach had worked well with about half of the citizenry, and that was enough to allow him to proceed as long as he was not overly aggressive in his attack. So far in only a brief time in office he had been able to gain at least partial control of America’s major industries, banks, and insurance companies. He was very close to taking over the entire health care industry, which would open the door to previously unimaginable control over individual citizen’s lifestyles. Using the Bill of Rights as his plan of attack, he was laying the groundwork to eliminate or restrict American’s rights to own guns, to assemble for the purpose of protest, to freely speak their beliefs in public, and even to worship God in any venue where government could claim even a slight association. The President occasionally laughed when he was alone and thought about the fact that he was doing all of this in full view of the American public, and that approximately half of them had bought into his scam and were very supportive of his actions.
Daryoush Harandi was a senior member of the international cartel that had descended from the original group charged with carrying out the Kruschev Offensive. Because of deep concerns within the cartel regarding the inexperience of their young charge, he had become their representative on President Ashanti’s unofficial cabinet only days after the previous President had resigned in shame and the poorly prepared young Vice President of the United States had become the most powerful man on earth. When Harandi had presented his plan to Ashanti, the President had been almost giddy with excitement as he read through the details. Oil had always been a tightrope. It was easy to demonize the giant oil companies, and the media was always a willing accomplice. The problem was that the nation needed that oil. It was the lifeblood of all transportation and most industry and, as such, it must be allowed to flow freely regardless of political ideologies. Ashanti’s American political support drew heavily from leftist environmental groups that constantly petitioned him to ban all drilling close to the coastline. The groups had been particularly vocal about recent proposals to increase the number of wells in the Gulf. On the other side of the argument, major industry, transportation companies, and roughly half of the American public recognized the absolute necessity of a readily available oil supply that was independent of international conflict or political alliances. That meant American oil. That meant drill!
Harandi’s brilliant plan allowed Ashanti to ‘play both sides of the fence.’ The President briefly angered his leftist base by approving new oil wells to be drilled within five miles of the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Before the environmentalists had time to mount their usual vitriolic opposition, the Iranian had arranged for divers, posing as fishermen returning to their Galveston, Texas base, to anchor near one of the existing Gulf platforms, plant underwater explosives, and blow the well open in a fireball that could be seen from the Galveston docks. The explosive was designed to destroy the wellhead in such a way that it would release a constant stream of oil into the waters of the Gulf. The bomb’s designer had hoped that the well would release a few hundred barrels of oil per day, and that much of that oil would burn uncontrollably for several days or weeks, creating fear and uncertainty in the minds of all who saw it from the shoreline or on the evening news. Fear and uncertainty were the ultimate goals of all terrorism, and Harandi had been a masterful director of terroristic activities for three decades.
The explosion brought far more than they had dared to expect. The deep water well literally gushed oil into the Gulf, several thousand barrels a day. As the oil reached the surface, the intense fire quickly created an inferno almost two miles in diameter that, in turn, gave birth to a dense, black cloud of oily smoke which was quickly blown by southerly winds to darken the coastal skies. The black sky, the heavy smell of oil, and the spectacle of a massive fire in the distance gave anyone looking from a south Texas beach the illusion of standing at the very gates of Hell. To make matters even worse, the fire seemed to limit itself by some unknown mechanism to its two mile radius, but oil flowed beyond the fire in all directions. A rapidly enlarging oil slick on the north and east side of the inferno was being carried by wind and currents toward the beaches of all the Gulf states, destroying fishing grounds and wildlife habitats, and threatening to wipe out the states’ multibillion dollar tourist industries as it devastated the white sand beaches that brought millions of tourists to the area every summer. It was turning into a disaster of epic proportions, and had the potential of generating more terror than did the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Ashanti’s uncontained joy was not for the disaster itself…even the President had a heart…but was for the response he was seeing and hearing from American citizens. Everyone was looking to government for a solution to the problem! Over the last two years he had come to expect unquestioning support from the half of American voters who had succumbed to his scam and were anxiously waiting for whatever handout he might toss their way. This sublime disaster, however, was causing many from what he viewed as the ‘enemy’ camp to look to him for solutions. If the trend continued, he would soon have a mandate to take over national energy production, perhaps as a matter of national security. It was one more giant step toward the long sought after socialization of America, and it had been so easy! President Ashanti simply could not stop smiling. He had rejuvenated his leftist base by immediately banning all offshore drilling for the near future. This action created an immediate and dramatic rise in fuel prices across the nation, creating even greater fear in the public and solidifying his position as one who wanted to ‘help’ the public by taking over the oil industry and stabilizing prices.
As the men around the table discussed the implications of the disaster and made plans to take maximum political advantage of the fear it had generated among the populace, Ellis listened from an adjacent room through the partially opened dumbwaiter. His weight of what he heard was almost unbearable. Burdened with knowledge of acts both unbelievable and unsubstantiated, his mind turned to a name he hadn't thought of in years. Only one man knew what to do with this kind of information. “Dan Knowles,” he thought to himself and silently slipped away, unable to bear any more.
