it was a dark but still hot ninish when I entered the back room of Uncle Vito's. Vinnie was there waiting for me. As I entered his eyes bulged and
he started shaking and sweating in terror. Which he always did. He panicked when the Burger King girl asked him if he wante fries with it.
"Okay, Vinnie. Hope this is better than the WMDs to Syria tip."
"Hey, Carl, I stand by that. Not my fault you didn't fly out there and check it out."
"Syria is what we professional journalists cal a 'closed society'. One of the ones that would probably shoot me at the airport."
"Yeah, well, we're gonna be a closed society here before long." Instinctively he looked around, still sweaty, and gulped some of his cheap
bourbon.
"Okay, Vinnie. Spill." Ha ha.
"Obama's people are behind it."
"Right. Nancy Pelosi dove down with a claymore and broke the pipe."
Vinnie shook his head. "You know how it is, Kolchak. It's not the shooter, it's who gave the order. Obama's guys ordered this."
"Okay. I'll bite. Who pulled the trigger?"
"I tell you, it doesn't matter. Maybe a sub on a secret mission. Who knows."
I rolled my eyes. another dry hole, to use a petroleum metaphor. "So...WHY?"
He gave me that lets-get-serious body language. "Stone two birds with one kill, right? You heard they sent a swat team to investigate the
original explosion."
"Heard something about that. Nothing came of it."
"No. They had to give up the terrorist angle."
"So they wanted to blame al-Quaeda?"
Vinnie rolled his eyes. "No, of course not! They was gonna pin it on some right wing militia nuts."
I shook my head. "That's stupid. Why would those guys blow up an oil rig? They need gas for their pickups."
"Yeah, exactly. They was gonna use the terrorist angle but they don't want to get people any more pissed off at the camel jockeys, and they
don't want the greens to look bad. My guess? They'll never explain it. Industrial accident."
"Okay," I said reluctantly. "So we don't know who actually pressed the button or whatever. Any special reason they picked this particular
rig?"
Vinnie nodded. "The guys at the top said they wanted something deep and big that would run for a while.
"Apparently the Mine and Mineral chick was the cutout. She went with this one. Nobody thought it would be this bad."
"Let me guess, they figured it would run a few weeks, they'd get some pub, and it would be over."
"Yeah. They didn't realize it couldn't be plugged. So the chick had to go."
"You said two birds. Or something. What else besides making the militias look bad?"
"Oil companies, of course. You know they're all green up there.
"Offshore accident, they get all the momentum to stop drilling and go with the clean green crap."
"Which doesn't exist yet."
"Pretty much.
"Maybe Al Gore is behind some of it."
"That's why Tipper left him."
"No it isn't."
This got me interested. "You know why they split?"
"Yeah, kinda. She got sick of his crap."
I nodded. "Ol' Tip was always a smart girl."
Twenty minutes later Kolchak pulled in the all-night Burger Joint and wearily went in, ordered food, and opened his laptop. He tried to log in
his email.
Blocked.
Tried his beta site.
Blocked.
Now he was starting to sweat.
Site blocked. Site blocked. site Blocked.
Uh-oh.
He went through his favorites and started trying them one by one. The seventh was the charm.
ABOVETOPSECRET.COM
He hurriedly looked for an appropriate forum. How much time did he have?
There was a story thread about the spill
Kolchak started typing...
title edit by request
[edit on 20/6/10 by masqua]