Athabasca

Athabasca
Alistair MacLean

The nail-biting tale of sabotage set in the desolate frozen wastes of two ice-bound oil fields, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.SABOTAGE!THE VICTIMSTwo of the most important oil-fields in the world - one in Canada, the other in Alaska.THE SABOTEURSAn unknown quantity - deadly and efficient. The oil flow could be interrupted in any one of thousands of places down the trans-Alaskan pipeline.THE RESULTCatastrophe.One man, Jim Brady, is called in to save the life-blood of the world as unerringly, the chosen targets fall at the hands of a hidden enemy…

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Athabasca

Copyright (#u8166f809-f4cf-5130-8b11-e5a9ca712c09)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

This edition 2009

First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1980

Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1980

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual anc technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006162667

Ebook Edition © MAY 2009 ISBN: 9780007289202

Version: 2018-10-18

Contents

Cover (#u77c1b371-3761-5af2-92aa-c32ecd3f6c84)

Title Page (#u73b8c699-7278-5f74-b608-cc0b9be0ad78)

Copyright

Map

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Map (#u8166f809-f4cf-5130-8b11-e5a9ca712c09)

PROLOGUE (#u8166f809-f4cf-5130-8b11-e5a9ca712c09)

This book is not primarily about oil, but is based on oil and the means whereby oil is recovered from the earth, so it may be of some interest and help to look briefly at these phenomena.

What oil is, and how it is formed in the first place, no one quite seems to know. The technical books and treatises on this subject are legion – I am aware that, personally, I haven’t seen a fraction of them – and they are largely, so I am assured, in close agreement – except when they come to what one would have thought was a point of considerable interest: how, precisely, does oil become oil? There appear to be as many divergent theories about this as there are about the origins of life. Confronted with complexities, the well-advised layman takes refuge in over-simplification – which is what I now do, as I can do no other.