Black October

“Peak Oil” is currently one of the hottest topics among world political and economic pundits and analysts. The peaking of the world’s oil supplies and the desire of Muslim terrorist organizations to inflict a mortal wound on the West by attacking the softest targets and most prolific oil facilities in Saudi Arabia is the theme of Black October. The novel weaves together the convoluted strands of an American expatriate family working in the Arab country, a terrorist cadre on a mission to acquire nuclear weapons for the long-planned attack, and CIA operatives and special forces risking their lives to protect U.S. interests.Lionel Hunt, a con man and former manager on Saudi oil facilities, discovers he can acquire quick wealth by selling whisky to Saudi Royal family members. His wife Terri, has accompanied him to Arabia, a country where he twice fled to, to allow Statues of Limitations to expire on his US convictions. Just before the September Eleventh attacks, Lionel is arrested and sentenced a notorious Saudi prison on the edge of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, one of the world’s severest deserts.Meanwhile, Kurt Valdez, a CIA Non Official Cover or Combatant (NOC), hunts al Qaeda’s top leaders in Afghanistan. September Eleventh changes everything. Kurt and CIA paramilitary forces are assigned to take out top personnel of Pakistan’s intelligence service and members of the Saudi royal family when it is learned they were involved in planning and supporting the attacks. The quest leads Kurt to Saudi Arabia where he meets Lionel.Al Qaeda, bent on destruction of the Saudi oil facilities, obtains nuclear weapons from a former Russian general, Mikhail Antonov. The terrorists need only a means to deliver the bombs, a hijacked plane. Lionel thoroughly understands the oil facilities’ vulnerabilities, so he receives pardons from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. He and Kurt discover terrorist plans. Their race to avert destruction and financial disaster brings them together with U.S. Special Forces and Saudi Prince Mohammad al Rashid’s Intelligence Agency. Black October is a fast-paced thriller that exposes frightening susceptibilities to nuclear vulnerability and America’s oil dependency. It asks the question, what would happen if a large portion of the world’s oil supplies were interrupted for an extended length of time? It reveals how dependency on oil from the Middle East has caused the western world to compromise its historical culture, democracy, and tradition, in a pact with a dictatorial monarchy beholden to fanatically religious wahhabi fundamentalists.

Ralph Cates’s family came to San Diego from Arkansas in 1943. Cates was educated in the San Diego city schools and colleges. He later obtained a teaching credential from UCLA and took graduate courses in Literature at a UC Santa Barbara Extension.He spent his military time in the army during 1964-65, on the US mainland, as a radio-radar technician. Cates has two children, Chris and Tim.The author has always been an outdoor activist. He raced motorcycles, scuba dived worldwide, and climbed prominent mountains in the California Sierra. To stay healthy he swims four to seven miles a week year-round and hikes. The author has completed the one-mile La Jolla Rough Water Swim nine times.His working background is in engineering, construction and teaching. He taught in the San Diego community college districts for 21 years. The construction and engineering experience allowed him to work and live in Southeast Asia, Dubai, and India for a year each, and Saudi Arabia for twenty months. He also worked for a year in Iran during the downfall of the shah. On these overseas projects, he came into frequent contact with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. At one point, he befriended an Iranian Turkoman, who turned out to be a lower-level cadre leader for the forces marshaling to overthrow the shah. This led to a frightening altercation with SAVAK, Iran’s intelligence agency, the Iranian military, and the CIA.Later, Cates realized while working on the oil and gas loading platforms in Ju’Aymah and Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, that it was obvious the Middle Eastern oil supplies were vulnerable to terrorist acts. A concerted attack on the facilities would be a serious blow to the world’s economies, perhaps worse than the 1974 oil embargo. Those thoughts directed his thinking toward writing a novel as a warning.During the formulation of the manuscript for Black October, Cates drew heavily on his numerous four-year journal entries and more than a thousand 35-mm slides of the Middle East for first-hand accounts of Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. These sources enhanced the scenes in the book.For the final preparation of the manuscript for the novel, he consulted more than 45 books, mostly non-fiction, and scrutinized more than 2,000 current affairs articles from highly regarded periodicals.