SILKWORM, Book 3 in the Twelver Series: The First Chapter
In the third part of the “First Chapter” blog-post, I ask the same question: Does the First Chapter grab you? Does it make you ask: What’s going on, where might this go, what are the stakes, and do I want more? Is there enough interest to turn to the next chapter? Silkworm was my third novel and the final book in the Twelver Series. Here is the first chapter in text below. Let me know what you think.
Chapter 1
October, 1987. Persian Gulf, off the coast of Kuwait
It wasn’t what they taught him. He stood on the bridge of the USS Kidd, scanning an empty horizon. The heat haze of the Gulf cast a shimmering silver curtain hiding the frustrating play unfolding. They were too far away. They were spectators to the belligerents lashing out at innocents.
“Solid fuel burner bearing two-seven-zero degrees, Angel’s one-point-two, speed three-ninety-five. It’s on course for Kuwait’s al-Ahmadi terminal sir,” The airman first class reported, his voice cracking slightly for all to hear on the surface ships below. From the sterile gray interior of the E-4 Sentry early warning aircraft, young watchful eyes scanned the sky for any aircraft or missile signature. It had been like fishing, boredom punctuated by moments of adrenaline. The last two weeks had changed that. Hostilities had increased and their eyes strained to see what they all knew would be the inevitable fighter sortie or missile launch by the Iranians.
Built on a Boeing 707 frame, the E-4 maintained a two-hundred-fifty-mile radius overlook command and control position above the world’s oil reserves. Its sixteen specialists sat in rows of three, faces lit by green cathode-tube illuminated screens. The plane’s lack of windows was purposeful - the low artificial light reduced glare. As the plane buffeted at twenty thousand feet, the seasoned technical sergeant peered over the radar technician’s shoulder at his screen. It was his fourth duty in the gulf and he was once again missing his son’s high school football season, as he had for the last two. He followed the target’s trajectory back to Iran’s al-Faw Peninsula. “Here we go again, send out an alarm to the Kuwaitis - looks like they’re targeting the oil terminals.” The Kuwaiti oil terminal was only fifty miles across the Gulf from Iran’s al-Faw Peninsula. There would not be time for any meaningful warning for those in its path.
Twenty thousand feet below and a hundred miles to the north, a twenty-year-old Filipino crewman sang alone, the song his girlfriend had sung to him when he last saw her. It played only to him in his head, over and over, as he stood on a shaky platform winched down the side of the hull. His skin glistened in the Persian Gulf heat as cold spray cut the sticky salt from the starboard portholes on level three of the tanker. The dark salt-encrusted hull of the old tanker resonated heat. He coveted the job of spraying salt off the ship. It afforded a measure of relief from the oppressive Gulf heat.
A loud klaxon sounded, jarring the sailors and workers on the oil terminal some three hundred feet to the west of the tanker. Two crewmembers rushed around the stern of the Sungari, a US tanker flying a Liberian flag, straining to see the cause. Curiously, they found themselves floating above the deck, the shock wave hurling them a fraction of a second before a flash of light and searing pain enveloped them. Sound ceased, replaced by a buzzing from their inner ears where their eardrums had been, as the five-hundred-kilogram warhead tore into the tanker roiling the ship in a wave of molten metal.
The Iranians had been trying to hit Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery and terminal for two years in an effort to disrupt the flow of money to Iraq and compel the international community to press for a negotiated solution to a war that was now in its seventh year and had cost over three-quarters of a million casualties. Iran’s missile launchers were in easy range of the Iraqis who also chose to ignore attacks against their neutral neighbor in hopes of a similar result from the international community. Both sides were tired of war. The terminal was at the outer range of the Chinese made missile. That it struck the tanker while it was sitting off the terminal dock was by chance; that it struck at the hour it did was not.
Ninety nautical miles away, Ensign David Weams, a gangly, blond-haired, blue-eyed junior officer of twenty-nine fresh from El Paso via Annapolis, stood on the bridge of the USS Kidd, a guided missile destroyer assigned to escort reflagged tankers down the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz. His first deployment; he fidgeted with an unravelling button on his sleeve. A nervous distraction from the tasks at hand. The Kidd’s job was to get the tankers past the naval exclusionary zones illegally declared by Iran from the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil terminals. Less than thirty miles wide at its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz was so narrow that sea-traffic lanes two miles wide had been established for outbound and inbound passage to prevent collisions. It was a narrow target pattern for Iranian missiles and mines as the tankers carried the world’s energy in slow, exposed procession through a killing zone.
Ensign Weams stood steady on the USS Kidd’s rolling bridge as they listened to the calm voice on board the E-4 early warning plane describe the attack. Everyone on the bridge strained to hear. It had been only five months since the USS Stark was hit by two French-made Exocet missiles fired from an Iraqi plane that left thirty-seven US sailors dead and a complement of officers’ careers in shambles. Now they had new rules of engagement. No longer would they fire only when fired upon. There would never again be a first strike. Any plane within fifty miles was a target. The ship’s new, untested, close-in Phalanx defense system was activated waiting for any sign of an airborne threat. The new French and Chinese made anti-ship missiles flew just below the speed of sound, ten meters above the sea, their radar signatures lost in the waves. The Phalanx’s task was to throw seventy projectiles a second in front of an incoming missile in the hope of destroying the low skimming threat before it destroyed them. Ensign Weams brushed a wisp of blond hair off his forehead surprised to feel the moisture on his fingertips in the air-conditioned cocoon of the bridge. He felt a pang of empathy for the unarmed seamen aboard the tanker who were unaware that an Iranian missile was bearing down on them at nearly the speed of sound.
The tanker strike was the lead story on the five-o’clock news in New York that Thursday evening. Barry Hirsch and Ed Rosen stood in a two-deep crowd at Harry’s Bar on Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan. It was the place they escaped to after the market closed. Both had achieved a measure of success in the bull market that was now in its fifth year. That success afforded them lower Midtown addresses, but they always had time for a drink at Harry’s. In their mid-thirties they were old for the floor. They preferred the term seasoned. They had seen the market rise and fall. Today had not been for the weak of heart. The market was already nervous; the day had ended down another two and a half percent following Wednesday’s sell-off of nearly four percent. Now they stared at the TV over the bar and read the captioning on the bottom of the screen: “US Oil Tanker Attacked in Gulf…Tanker War Escalates.”
Barry pushed into the bar, his gruff imposing presence separating three young women who were lounging against coveted real estate. Barry signaled the bartender, who seemed to know everyone by their first name. “Billy, two more.” It was going to be a three-martini night. “So, what are you telling your folks?” Barry asked Ed loudly, trying to be heard over the noise of the bar.
“I’m telling them to stay in. The market’s at twenty-five hundred. That’s forty percent over this time last year. Inflation is under control and consumer spending is strong. All the indicators are that we should have a solid market going into 1988. Next year’s an election cycle year; I’ll jump ship in the early spring,” Ed said in a strong Jersey accent, taking the last sip of his second martini. Ed couldn’t have been any more different, his paisley tie firmly centered between the button-down collar of his Brooks Brothers starched shirt. Nearly a foot shorter than Barry, he frequently quipped that he was taller than Barry when he sat on his wallet.
For seven years Barry had been at Phibro-Salomon, which recently shortened its name to Salomon; the King of Wall Street, it had been affectionately labeled by the press. Barry told himself he was done working for the large houses after this year. He had left Drexel after the new US Attorney for the southern district of New York, Rudy Giuliani, threatened to file a RICO indictment against the firm in his effort to prosecute Milken and Boesky. He did not want any part of that stigma. He now worked part-time trading his own money and that of a few select clients under the umbrella of Merrill Lynch. Even Merrill had suffered its problems with a staggering $250 million-dollar bond loss in April. The volatility of interest rates didn’t seem to scare the young traders who believed them to be the norm. He wasn’t as optimistic.
Barry countered, “I’m not so certain. The SEC seems to be cracking down on all the arbitragers. It started with Wigton at Kidder. I heard Boesky and his player, Marty Siegel, brought him down. They took him out of his office in damn handcuffs! I also heard from legal that Kidder is settling for twenty-five mil. One of my biggest clients on Monday sold everything and this morning told me to short the market. He moved it all into stock index options. That isn’t bullish and this guy is a player. Now we have Iran and Iraq shooting up the Gulf and it looks like the Saudis are getting nervous.”
Ed loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar and cocked his head slightly without saying anything, tossing a twenty on the bar when Billy brought round three. “You say your investor’s shorting. What sector?” Ed asked.
“That’s the thing, the whole damn market, across the board. He’s betting against the S&P 500.” Barry replied as he stripped the glass toothpick clean of the blue-cheese-stuffed olives Billy made fresh every day. Ed stared back, not sure he had heard correctly.
“He’s betting against every sector?” Ed asked incredulously. He glanced down twice fixated on the text on the new alphanumeric pager on his belt that provided an account of the overseas currency markets.
“Yes, the son of a bitch pulled out of the market Monday before the fall…and I’m talking tens of millions here…and now he’s shorting everything!” Barry said. Two other men standing next to them paused, overhearing the discussion.
Ed leaned toward Barry and asked so no one else could hear, “How much did he place?”
“Almost sixty million on the market dropping below seventeen hundred. He’s betting the market tanks by twenty percent.” Barry whispered.
“Damn. This guy better not be right. That’s 1929. Doesn’t make sense. We might be due for an adjustment but just that, not a damn crash. Who is this guy?” Ed asked in a whisper.
“He’s out of West Germany. I’ve only talked with him and his guy in the States by phone. His guy in the States isn’t even a broker…some young guy in California.” Barry replied.
“I don’t know. With Greenspan in as the new Fed chair, I have to think he’ll start listening to Phelan. Phelan’s been warning about program trading for a year. It’s unnatural to get these wild swings in the market. Phelan’s convinced that these new trading programs will crash the system…and I think he’s right. The damn programs are all the same, when any parameter is exceeded it triggers a trade, which then triggers a different program, and the triggering of the next trade…and then the cycle starts. The trading is too quick, there isn’t any thought. It’s mathematical. It could get out of hand.” Ed said taking a long drink of his martini.
Barry shook his head. “Optimistic thinking. The big houses are hooked on program trading. Low commissions, high volume. They aren’t giving that up. I might be getting too old for this crap. I’m thinking of cashing out and moving to Aspen.”
