Primary Threat

Even if he’d just had the strength of will to turn the damn thing down… Just because the Line of Succession dictated that the Speaker assume the job, didn’t mean he had to accept the job. But too many people had fought for too long to see a man like Clement Dixon, the fiery standard bearer of classical liberal ideals, become President. As a practical matter, he could not walk away.

So here he was—tired, old, limping through the hallways of the West Wing (yes, limping—the new President of the United States had arthritis in his knees and a pronounced limp), overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the thing entrusted to him, and compromising his ideals at every turn.

“Mr. President? Sir?”

President Dixon was sitting in the egg-shaped Situation Room. Somehow, the room reminded him of a TV show from the 1960s—the show was called Space: 1999. It was a silly Hollywood producer’s idea of what the future must look like. Stark, empty, inhuman, and designed for maximum use of space. Everything was sleek and sterile, and exuded zero charm.

Large video screens were embedded in the walls, with a giant screen at the far end of the oblong table. The chairs were tall leather recliners like the captain on the control deck of a starship might have.

This meeting had been called at short notice—as usual, there was a crisis on. Outside of every seat at the table being taken, and a few along the walls, the room was mostly empty. The usual suspects were here, including a few overweight men in suits, along with thin and ramrod-straight military men in uniform.

Thomas Hayes, Dixon’s new Vice President, was also here, and thank heavens for that. Having come aboard straight from being governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas was accustomed to making executive decisions. He was also on the same page with Dixon about many things. Thomas helped Dixon form a unified front.

Everyone knew that Thomas Hayes had designs on the presidency himself, and that was fine. He could have it, as far as Clement Dixon was concerned. Thomas was tall, and handsome, and smart, and he projected an air of authority. Yet the most prominent thing about him was his very large nose. The national press had already started to tweak him about it.

Just wait, Thomas, Dixon thought. Wait until you’re President. The political cartoonists were drawing Clement Dixon as the absent-minded professor, a cross between Mark Twain and Albert Einstein with their shoes untied, and minus the homespun humor or penetrating intelligence.

Boy, they would sure have fun with that Hayes nose.

A tall man in a green dress uniform stood at the far head of the table, a four-star general named Richard Stark. He was thin and very fit, like the marathoner he surely was, and his face appeared to be chiseled from stone. He had the eyes of a hunter, like a lion, or a hawk. He spoke with utter confidence—in his impressions, in the information given him by his underlings, in the ability of the United States military to hammer any problem into submission, no matter how thorny or complicated. Stark was practically a caricature of himself. He seemed as if he’d never experienced a moment of uncertainty in his lifetime. What was the old saying?

Often incorrect, but never in doubt.

“Explain it again,” President Dixon said.

He could almost hear the silent groans from around the room. Dixon hated to have to hear it again. He hated the information as he understood it, and he hated that one more try ought to make him understand it completely. He didn’t want to understand it.

Stark nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He pointed with a long wooden pointer at the map on the large screen. The map showed the North Slope borough of Alaska, a vast territory at the northern edge of the state, inside the Arctic Circle, and bordering on the Arctic Ocean.

There was a red dot in the ocean just north of land’s end. The land there was marked ANWR, which Dixon well knew stood for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—he was one of the people who had fought for decades to have that sensitive region protected from oil exploration and drilling.

Stark spoke:

“The Martin Frobisher drilling platform, owned by Innovate Natural Resources, is located here, in the ocean six miles north of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. We don’t have an exact census at the time of the attack, but an estimated ninety men live and work on that platform, and a small surrounding artificial island, at any given time. The platform operates twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, in all but the most severe weather.”

Stark paused and stared at Dixon.

Dixon made a hand motion like a wheel spinning.

“I got it. Please continue.”

Stark nodded. “A little over thirty minutes ago, a group of heavily armed, unidentified men attacked the platform and the encampment. They arrived by boat, on a vessel made to appear as a personnel tender bringing workers to the island. An unknown number of workers have been killed or taken hostage. Preliminary reports, gleaned from video and audio feeds, suggest that the invaders are of foreign, but still unknown, origin.”

“What suggests this?” Dixon said.

Stark shrugged. “They don’t seem to be speaking English. Although we have no clear audio yet, our language experts believe they are speaking an eastern European, likely a Slavic, language.”

Dixon sighed. “Russian?”

The day he took over this thankless job, indeed moments after he took the Oath of Office, he had unilaterally stood American forces down from a confrontation with the Russians. The Russians had done him a favor and responded in kind. And Dixon had then been subjected to merciless and scathing criticism from the warmongering quarters of American society. If the Russians turned around and attacked now…

Stark shook his head the slightest amount. “Not sure yet, but we think not.”

“That narrows it down,” Thomas Hayes said.

“Do we have any idea what they want?” Dixon said.

Now Stark shook his head completely. “They haven’t contacted us, and refuse to answer our attempts at contact. We have flown over the complex with helicopter gunships, but except for a few fires, the place currently seems deserted. The terrorists, and the prisoners, are either inside the rig itself, or inside complex buildings, away from our prying eyes.”

He paused.

“I imagine you want to go in with force and take the rig back,” Dixon said.

Stark shook his head again. “Unfortunately, no. As much as we are one hundred percent certain we can take back the facility through sheer force, doing so will put the lives of any men being held prisoner at risk. Also, the facility is of a sensitive nature, and if we make a large-scale counterattack, we risk calling attention to it.”

A few people in the room began murmuring together.

“Order,” Stark said, without raising his voice. “Order, please.”

“Okay,” Dixon said. “I’ll bite. What’s sensitive about it?”

Stark looked at a bespectacled man sitting halfway down the table from the President. The man was probably in his late thirties, but he carried some extra weight that made him look almost like an angelic child. The man’s face was serious. Heck, he was in a meeting with the President of the United States.

“Mr. President, I’m Dr. Fagen of the Department of the Interior.”

“Okay, Dr. Fagen,” Dixon said. “Just give it to me.”

“Mr. President, the Frobisher platform, although owned by Innovate Natural Resources, is a joint venture between Innovate, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and the United States Bureau of Land Management. We have extended them a license to do what is known as horizontal drilling.”

On the screen, the image changed. It showed an animated drawing of an oil platform. As Dixon watched, a drill extended downward from the platform, below the surface of the ocean, and into the sea floor. Once underground, the drill changed direction, making a ninety-degree turn and now moving horizontally beneath the bedrock. After a time, it encountered a black puddle beneath the ground, and oil from the puddle began to flow sideways from the drillhead into the pipe following behind it.

“Instead of drilling vertically, which is how the vast majority of drilling was done in the twentieth century, we are now mastering the science of horizontal drilling. What this means is that an oil platform can be many miles from an oil deposit, perhaps a deposit in an environmentally sensitive location…”

Dixon held up a hand. The hand meant STOP.

Dr. Fagen knew what the hand meant without having to ask. Instantly, he stopped speaking.

“Dr. Fagen, are you telling me that the Martin Frobisher, out at sea six miles north of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is in fact drilling inside the Wildlife Refuge?”

Fagen was staring down at the conference table. His body language alone told Clement Dixon all he needed to know.

“Sir, with the newest technologies, oil platforms can exploit important underground deposits without endangering sensitive flora or fauna, which I know you have previously expressed your concern…”

Dixon rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air.

“Aw, hell.”