"The Christmas Strike" Adds A Thriller To ERHC Energy Lore

Stephan Zimmerman, the author of the mystery thriller "The Christmas Strike," doesn't know much about armies or Congress, but he has written a novel that ERHC Energy investors will find so uncomfortable they might want to ask Congress to send in the U.S. Army to stop its publication.

His 2004 novel is the story of a terrorist plot to unleash an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device against the United States, but its subplots include the efforts of a United States Senator from California to call a nationwide general strike on Christmas Eve, 2004, to further both his political and private ambitions.


The Christmas Strike by Stephan Zimmerman paints a sordid picture of an ERHC Energy-lookalike company and an American senator who betrays his country to make millions from his oil investment in the Gulf of Guinea. It is available as either a printed novel or a download from www.lulu.com.


Sen. Jack Cortland is a California liberal who is poised to enter the 2008 presidential race as the man who saved America from another Iraq-like folly, this one an invasion of the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe. He is also a massive shareholder in a Nigerian-owned oil company that has managed to obtain some valuable rights to oil-bearing acreage in the Gulf of Guinea development zone jointly operated by Nigeria and Sao Tome.

It seems that "terrorists" - and their unmasked identities will surprise no one who held ERHC Energy stock through the stormy sessions of Sao Tome's parliament during the 2004 licensing round - have assassinated the U.S. Ambassador to Gabon (whose portfolio includes Sao Tome) and his family, and are also "holding" a few dozens oil industry executives and workers, some of them Americans, hostage for millions of dollars.

To take back the hostages, President Sheridan Washburn orders a super-secret strike against the Sao Tome "rebels" - shades of President Carter's Iranian hostage mission - that is betrayed by Cortland, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been given a copy of a Top Secret cable ordering the strike. The mission is ambushed by Sao Tome soldiers who lay in wait, most of our soldiers are killed, and President Washburn is suddenly in deep, deep political trouble.

Sen. Cortland has been working behind the scenes for months to prepare the ground for an unprecedented general strike of all the unions in the United States - ostensibly to caution the president against another Iraq-style adventure - and as the strike gets underway chaos is spread through the nation's communications, transportation and service sectors.
Two aides, Pete Carpenter and his girlfriend Stella, are central to Cortland's plans but disapprove of this one. They fail to stop Cortland after their key labor ally suddenly dies, and like good San Francisco liberals, they retreat to a friend's cozy cabin in Big Sur to screw until the trouble - or most of it - is over. When they summon the courage to return to the fray, they find the road to Monterey blocked and the country in the grip of martial law.

There is a curious turn in the novel that I could not understand. It seems the real reason that Sen. Cortland wants to call the general strike - apart from helping to launch his presidential campaign - is to protect his investment in the ERHC Energy lookalike, which is unnamed in the novel. To do that, Cortland feels he must stop the invasion of Sao Tome or risk the creation of a U.S. naval base there. It's unclear to me how a U.S. naval base protecting American inrterests in that region would hurt, not help, the senator's investment.

Be that as it may, we follow the government's response to the labor crisis, which has spawned dozens of riots in large cities across the nation, through the purely domestic issues into a move by China to take advantage of it.

Just when it seems the domestic unrest is resolved, the real terrorist plot that opens the novel unfolds in simple, terrifying steps. No American who remembers Sept. 11 will find it the least but implausible, I warn you. China is a secret player in the background of the story that only emerges when the climax offers its generals a frightening opportunity.

Stephan Zimmerman's rather desultory view of the Nigerian oil company mimics much of the bad press that Environmental Remediation Holding Company (the original ERHC) received in leading newspaper like the Los Angeles Times. One would think Zimmerman was a former publicist for ExxonMobil, so bent is he on painting a tawdry picture of the oil giant's tiny but extremely successful competitor.

Investors should go to http://ShopEZ.com/shop.cfm?itemid=1411611632&cat=Books to buy the book for $18.80, or to http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php, where you can enter the search phrase "The Christmas Strike" in the Search box to order a printed copy ($22) or pay $10 to download the 388-page book. The ISBN number is ISBN 1-4116-1163-2. Its driving momentum and constant suprises will carry even the most illiterate Raging Bull poster swiftly along to the terrifying climax.

Whatever the portrait of ERHC Energy Stephan Zimmerman may have painted, his book - typos, errors and all - is yet another milestone in the life of the "minnow" that has generated not only this blog, but the Raging Bull insanity, an Investors Hub site and the erhc.greatsprings.net Website, in addition to countless newspaper and Internet stories, an ocean of intrigue - and probably a movie.