Free The Icarus Prediction: Betting it all has its price by RD Gupta Page B

nose—something he did in times of high stress—and said, “Gwen?”
    She turned. “Yes?”
    “If somebody named Jonathan from Excelsior Yachts calls, tell him I’m on assignment in China and will be overseas for at least six months.”

CHAPTER SIX
    Russian Province of Stavropol Krai
    North of the Chechen Border
     

     
    Shamil Basayev peered through the night vision binoculars at the pumping station below. On this isolated stretch of Russian real estate between the Caspian and Black Seas, the oil pipeline snaked across the Russian steppe north of the Caucasus Mountain Range like a never-ending eel.
    Elevated on vertical scaffolding, the 940-mile pipeline was built from the Tengez field on the northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan, to the Black Sea oil terminus at Novorossiysk, where massive oil tankers took on their loads of crude to fuel the economies of the world.
    The only pipeline on Russian soil not wholly owned by the state company called Transneft, the CPC pipeline’s stakeholders were, as its name implied, a consortium of oil companies and the Russian and Kazakh governments. It carried 32 million metric tons of oil per year from the rich Kazakh field, feeding the coffers of governments and their oligarchs.
    Basayev lowered the binoculars, leaving only the moonlight to illuminate his face. For the first time in years, his beard was growing back, but the once-dark hair was now flecked with gray, the result of aging, stress, and a life on the run for many years. But now, all the torment he and his people had endured at the hands of his country’s oppressors would soon be avenged beyond anyone’s imagination.
    “How long?” he asked Lemontov, who was his right hand man.
    “The truck left Tbilisi this morning. It will use the pass and enter North Ossetia tomorrow. Then three days by back roads to us.”
    Lemontov had answered the same question at least once an hour for the last two days. But he did not protest, for the hooded eyes that stared back at him possessed the severity of an executioner. The little humanity that might have once been there had long since been extinguished by an ocean of blood.
    Basayev struck a match and fired up a forbidden cigarette that illuminated the brown fedora resting on his bald scalp. He was always given to distinctive headgear, whether it was a fatigue cap, a military beret, or a peaked hat.
    “We will hurt them this time, Lemontov. More painful than anything they could imagine.”
    Lemontov nodded, having heard this before, too.
    Basayev picked up the binoculars again. He could make out a flashlight bobbing in the far distance along the pipeline, causing Basayev to sneer. Just like the Russians to entrust such a crown jewel of an asset to pitifully tiny protection. So much the better. He would have Lemontov extract the heart from the lone soldier, a personal trademark he’d developed during the prolonged wars in Chechnya.
    He’d spent the last six years looking for the right weapon to take the head off the Russian bear, and though he’d tried, nuclear weapons remained beyond his grasp. But now he had found a way to cripple their economy in a way they never saw coming. So much grander than hostage taking. And when he was done here, he would crush the infidels of Israel the same way. The West had turned a blind eye as the sacred land of Chechnya was defiled by the Russians, instead, always providing protection to their handmaiden, Israel.
    But now he had found the jugular of the infidels, and he intended to slice it to ribbons.
     
    *
     
    New York City
     
    Jarrod leaned against the pillar beside his office window, watching the boats plying up and down the Hudson. The sun was heading toward the horizon in its late afternoon descent. Ordinarily the scene imbued him with the feeling that he’d finally arrived. But now it offered little comfort. He was procrastinating, he knew. Putting off the confrontation he feared would leave his career in tatters. He took