"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

The success of Forte Oceanic Resources, Forte argued, depended on developing radical technologies, and the most revolutionary were being discovered and perfected in university laboratories. He packed his bag and went on the road. He returned to Houston with a dozen crack scientists and a single idea: the concentration of mineral salts dissolved in seawater by means of microorganisms. The idea wasn't exactly new. For years bacteria had been cultivated commercially to break down plastic wastes or to concentrate such toxic substances as dioxin for easier disposal, but the extraction of mineral salts from seawater by means of bacteria had proved a dead end.

Fungi had not. One of Forte's researchers discovered a soil fungus that gobbled up cadmium in its normal metabolic processes. A genetically engineered mutant did the same for selenium. Starting on this hopeful base, in less than two years his genetic engineers had created fungi that concentrated titanium and monazite--source of thorium and cerium--from seawater. All three elements were extremely valuable. This development ended the United States's almost total dependence on Russia for titanium, indispensable for the hulls of deep-diving submarines. Even so, these metals constituted a mere fraction of the 40 million tons of dissolved salts worth $35 billion contained in each cubic mile of seawater. Reclamation of these mineral riches, together with mechanized recovery of the abundant phosphorite and manganese nodules from the seabed, put Forte Oceanic Resources in the forefront of American producers of rare metals.

By 1998, Ripley's energy and organizational skills, the fruits of his researchers' imagination, and Ned Raynes' financial acumen had turned the failing company around. Meanwhile, Russia's bloodless conquest of Europe, Asia, and South America between 1989 and 1993 had slowly choked off the flow of strategic minerals to the United States. As national stockpiles of metals dwindled in the mid-1990s, the price of minerals extracted from the sea by Forte Oceanic Resources skyrocketed. FOR was on its way.

But Ripley Forte wouldn't be along for the ride. On July 7, 1998, Captain Gwillam Forte went down with the U.S.S. Texas in the Houston Ship Channel, taking along to the bottom an entire Soviet fleet in what would be recorded as one of the most bizarre, lopsided, and ultimately satisfying fleet actions in history. In the aftermath, the State of Texas went its own way as the Republic of Texas, Gwillam Forte was enshrined in the Texas pantheon along with Stephen Austin and Sam Houston, and his vast estate was divided among his numerous ex-wives and their progeny. Ripley's portion was $37 million in securities and real estate and very near half of FOR's 5,000,001 shares. Near--and yet so far.

Driven by the pathological ambition of Jennifer Red Cloud, Ned Raynes quickly bought out the fractional shareholdings of his half-siblings, giving him a 6/7-share majority of voting stock, which he exercised by immediately reorganizing the privately held company. Before Ripley knew what was afoot, Ned had sold FOR's assets to a new company, Raynes Oceanic Resources, Ned Raynes, president, for $10 million. Ripley's 2,500,000.14286 shares came to $5,000001.35. Since the real assets of the company in four years had increased in value sixfold to more than $200 million, not to mention the tremendous profits that were just beginning to roll in, Ripley Forte computed that he had been diddled out of a round $100 million.

Up there somewhere, his father must have been laughing his head off. Here was Ripley Forte, thirty-seven years old, an accomplished hands-on engineer, yet so devoid of business sense that he'd been taken in by a crude stratagem that he should have anticipated years before.

Since then, to destroy the man, his wife, and his company had become the consuming ambition of Ripley Forte's life.

The Canadian offshore concession, an area of 7,223 square kilometers on the Grand Banks, would be Forte's bastion, from which he would engage Raynes Oceanic Resources and batter it into a smoking ruin. Exploratory drillings had indicated the field held reserves of 3.5 billion barrels of sweet crude with gravities averaging 27 API, on a par with the best of Indonesia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, the latter two now in Russian hands. Because the Russians were holding back exports to cripple their capitalist enemy, U.S. production could barely keep pace with domestic demand and prices were steadily rising. If only Forte could solve the problem of the deadly icebergs, he would ride the wave of booming oil prices to riches beyond the dreams of even a Jennifer Red Cloud. And with those riches, he would crush his foes, and ROR would roar no more.

Between Forte and his goal were the icebergs that calved from Greenland's glaciers at the rate of ten thousand to

twelve thousand a year--about the same number, oddly enough, produced by the vastly larger Antarctic glaciers, although Greenland's icebergs were mere ice cubes by comparison. Small though they might be, most were big enough to smash and sink the biggest ship afloat or uproot the sturdiest pedestal oil rig like a weed.

The solution to the iceberg dilemma came to him one day as he chugged northward at eighteen knots aboard a tug in pursuit of a 20,000-tonner, an hour's sailing away. What a waste of time, he mused. A scaled-up bayou buggy--that flat-bottomed skiff powered by a light-aircraft engine and used by hunters in the Everglades-- would have made the trip in fifteen minutes. Heavier, bigger, with a mighty power plant... More speed and more power meant faster response, fewer vessels, fewer crew, less overhead, fewer debts.

Within ten days simulation studies at the University of Texas Computer Center were completed. Within weeks a prototype full-scale seasled with eight forward-mounted propfan engines, delivering half again as much power as pure jets at 35 percent less cost, was undergoing trials. Fitted with hydrofoils, the newly christened Nola Ann could thunder along at 85 knots at 40 percent power. Ripley Forte himself was in command on its maiden voyage to the Grand Banks, where he immediately went in search of the enemy.

Peering through binoculars, he could now discern the first of two imperiled rigs through the mist at a distance of six kilometers to the south. Free and adrift, the berg he had roped would certainly have smashed into the other within the next three hours. But under tow by the powerful Nola Ann, it was steadily being dragged off its collision course. In an hour he could cast it adrift, a menace no more. Floating south, the berg would meet the warm waters of the northward-flowing Gulf Stream and melt away. After a day or two the ice giant would become a "bergy bit," and with the passage of another hour or two a "growler," a pussycat of an iceberg no longer able to devour a 5,000-ton drilling rig in one bite, a mere scratcher of paintwork.

The thunder of the engines faded from his consciousness as Ripley Forte, alone on the starboard wing of the flying bridge, contemplated the rosy future. On the credit side, he had an experienced, smoothly functioning crew, nine rigs with four more on order, and nearly four billion tons of sweet crude ready to gush up from the wellheads. On the debit side was more than a billion dollars in loans, not to mention another two hundred million that would still be needed to put the field into full production. But the bankers, lately fractious and inaccessible, fearing that icebergs would defeat Forte, would now come running, briefcases bulging with greenbacks, impatient to cash in at last. What with the rising price of oil, he figured to be free and clear within eighteen months.

More than five years in Arctic waters filled with peril and back-breaking labor lay behind him. Ahead lay the financial resources to build a corporate empire that would challenge, defeat, and devour Raynes Oceanic Resources. His day had finally come.

Forte's ideas of the hereafter were vague but absolute. Somewhere up there, he was certain, Gwillam Forte was looking down upon him, a proud smile on his lips. At last he knew what Ripley Forte was made of.

Too bad Ned Raynes had died of a heart attack three years before, depriving Ripley Forte of the pleasure of bankrupting him. On the other hand, Ned's widow, Jennifer Red Cloud, was still in business.

Forte smiled. Not for long, sweetheart.





3. CEMETERY
3 NOVEMBER 2004



"WAIT AT THE GATE OF THE NEW HOPE CEMETERY. TEN P.M., November 3."

Castle complied with the instructions. This time he was better prepared. He wore a raincoat and rain hat and