by Peter Nealen
There was no digital readout to say how much time was left. There was smoke coming from the igniter; and that was definitely time fuse going down into the drum. Wade carefully pulled on the time fuse until it came loose, still smoking. He pulled out his knife, cut it, then dropped it on the deck and stamped it out.
For a second, both men waited, not quite daring to breathe. The terrorists hadn’t double-primed any of their charges so far, but they’d had more time to set the bombs in the wells, so that wasn’t necessarily going to last.
But nothing went boom. At least, not yet. If there was a backup initiation system, it wasn’t obvious, and they were still running out of time. There hadn’t been all that much length left on that time fuse.
There wasn’t a lot of room down in the guts of the well; there was a lot of piping, cables, and machinery to weave through. But Wade lifted his rifle and started moving toward the next bomb, while Flanagan covered him.
***
It had taken entirely too long to get to the second well; Hart had finally had to risk snipping the wires on another booby trap in a doorway. None of them had breathed much until the leads were in his hand, and the charge hadn’t gone off. All three had been all too familiar with too many IEDs with failsafes in the sandbox. Snip one wire, and the interruption of the current sets off another switch. Boom. Game over. That it didn’t happen in this case told Santelli that these guys had been in something of a hurry, and hadn’t really counted on sticking around. The traps were there to slow them down, more than anything else.
Hart had just straightened from the improvised claymore when boots clattered on the deck behind them, and Santelli spun to join Curtis, his rifle pointed down the passageway.
There were six Mexican Marines closing in on them, P90s leveled. “Lower your weapon, Kevin,” Santelli said quietly, as he did the same. It went against the grain, but they had to treat these guys as friendlies.
That they wouldn’t be able to respond fast enough if they turned out to be hostiles wasn’t something he fretted over. Melissa would mourn him, but he’d be dead, and Carlo Santelli had had enough practice at resigning himself to his eventual, probably violent, demise that he didn’t get too tensed up.
The lead Mexican Marine barked at them in Spanish. Santelli wasn’t very good with the language, and the guy was talking too fast for even his limited vocabulary to keep up, so he just held out his hands. “Calm down, son,” he said. “We’re the good guys.”
A Marine with hard black eyes, the only part of him visible under his balaclava, let his P90 hang and stepped forward. “You are the contractors?” he asked haltingly.
“Yeah, that’s us,” Santelli answered. “Now, we gotta get moving.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the derrick beyond the hatch. “There are bombs on the oil wells, and the fuses are burning.”
“Bombs?” the black-eyed man asked. Santelli nodded emphatically, widening his eyes as if to stress the urgency of the matter.
“Yeah, bombs,” he said. “As in, they go boom, we all get incinerated. Come on, we gotta move!”
“You stay here,” the Mexican said. “We have explosive experts.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Santelli saw Curtis twitch. He didn’t dare spare the moment to glare at him, but fortunately, their resident class clown held his peace. “They need to hurry up,” Santelli said. “Tell them to look for barrel bombs, fifty-five-gallon drums.”
The Mexican Marine nodded again, spat out orders at his men, and pointed down at the deck at their feet. “You stay here,” he repeated. “Do not move.”
When the Marines started pushing through the hatch, they left two behind, their P90s held at the low ready. Which told Santelli all he needed to know about where they stood with these guys. The Mexicans weren’t happy about gringo mercenaries being on the platform, much less having accomplished what they hadn’t been able to in two tries.
He leaned against the bulkhead, watching their minders, his hand on the buttstock of his LWRC. “May as well get comfortable, gents,” he said. “If they screw it up and kill us all, we won’t be able to do a damned thing about it.”
Curtis was shaking a little. “Explosive experts,” he whispered, chuckling. He looked up at Santelli.
“Yeah, I know, Kevin, you could have gotten so much mileage out of that,” Santelli sighed. “Just give it a rest for now, okay?”
***
Wade dropped the second bomb’s fuse on the deck and stamped it out, careful to get all the sparks that threatened to set the thin layer of crude oil on the metal ablaze. “That’s two,” he said. “You see a third one?”
Flanagan had already been looking. He shook his head. “Maybe they finally ran out of explosives,” he said. “I hope they did.”
“You and me both,” Wade replied. “I hate this IED bullshit.”
Flanagan already had his radio held to his mouth. “Goodfella, Woodsrunner,” he called. “The eastern derrick appears to be clear. What’s your status?”
“We’re holding just inside the superstructure,” Santelli answered. “The Mexican Marines are disarming the charges on the western well. They didn’t want to bring us along.”
“Roger,” Flanagan replied. “I guess we’ll hold here until…”
He was cut off by a thunderous boom, as an explosion rocked the entire platform. Both Wade and Flanagan were nearly thrown flat, as a roiling fireball consumed the western derrick. In seconds, the well was wreathed in orange flame and thick, choking, black smoke.
Chapter 19
If the Mexican Marines had seemed like they were wound a little tight, the explosion only made matters worse. Hancock tensed as P90 muzzles started to rise. He turned to Huerta, but the Contralmirante was already ahead of him. He was on his own radio, speaking rapidly in Spanish.
He looked at Hancock. “It seems that some of my men were too late getting to one of the charges,” he said flatly. His eyes were empty and dead; Hancock couldn’t read him at all, and it made him nervous. He wanted to sweep the rest of the Mexican Marines with his eyes, double-checking positions and dispositions, just in case this turned pear-shaped in the next few seconds. He knew that the rest of the Blackhearts in the room were doing just that, including Brannigan, where he was still sitting propped up against the bulkhead.
Another explosion rumbled through the platform. “Admiral,” Hancock said carefully, “I think we’d better see about getting off this platform. There’s a lot of explosives around here, as well as all the crude oil. That fire’s gonna spread fast.”
Huerta just looked at him for a second, before finally nodding. “You are certain that the hostages are all dead?” he asked.
“I saw ‘em myself,” Childress replied shortly. “They’re bug food. Why the hell would we lie about that?”
Not now, Sam. Faced with twitchy Mexican Marines, not known for their restraint in the first place, and a completely unknown quantity of an employer who had those same Mexican Marines’ leash in his fist, was not the time nor the place for Childress’ infamous lack of mind-to-mouth filter. Hancock just held Huerta’s gaze.
“We need to go now, Admiral,” he repeated.
Huerta nodded again. “Call your people,” he said. “Tell them that if they are not on the helideck in the next five minutes, they are going to go down with the platform.”
***
A wave of heat slapped Flanagan in the face. The west derrick was completely involved, and the fire was spreading fast. It was going to reach the east derrick and the two bombs that Wade had successfully defused soon. They had to move.
He heard Hancock’s broken recall transmission over the radio, just barely managing to decipher enough of the static-laced transmission over the growing roar of the flames to get the gist of it. He grabbed Wade by the vest.
“Back the way we came!” he said. “And watch for that booby trap in the hatch!” He was sure Wade hadn’t forgotten about it, but it wasn’t going to be a good idea to ignore random explosive
s with that fire spreading. Better safe than sorry.
Wade didn’t respond except to turn to follow. Coughing as the caustic black smoke got thicker, they drove toward the exit from the derrick and the catwalk that would lead them back toward the superstructure.
“Goodfella, Angry Ragnar!” Wade was yelling into the radio.
“This is Goodfella,” Santelli’s voice came back. “We’re alive and moving up. The Mexicans were on the derrick, not us. We’ve got two shell-shocked Mexican Marines with us.”
Flanagan was almost to the hatch. Something else blew up behind them with a loud bang, and flaming crude started to spew out of the well to splash against the superstructure just to their right. Flanagan felt the hair on his face and arm starting to crisp and curl as the flames crackled.
It was Wade’s turn to grab him, dragging him down toward the deck. “Hold up!” the big man snapped. “That fire’s too close!”
A moment later, Wade was proved right, as either the charge got too hot, or the circuits in the IR sensor melted. The charge in the hatchway detonated, the shockwave tearing at them as ball bearings whizzed overhead. Flanagan felt a fiery thump in his leg. The shock traveled up the limb, and for a second he thought that he’d taken a catastrophic hit.
Wade saw him flinch, and immediately started checking his leg. He slapped him on the calf and got to his feet, holding out a hand. “You’re good, brother,” he said. “It just trimmed you.”
Flanagan took the proffered hand, and let Wade help him haul himself to his feet. Then they were moving toward the hatch, Flanagan limping a little as he went. It might have been a relatively minor wound, but it still hurt like hell.
The hatch coaming was blackened and twisted from the blast. The shockwave had actually driven the pool of burning oil back a little bit, though both men still got cooked a little as they plunged through the opening and into the darkened interior of the superstructure.
The fire was getting worse, and another massive explosion behind them made the entire platform shudder again. Another one of the wellhead bombs had gone off, which probably meant the last one was next. They could feel the heat through the walls.
The two of them hit the ladderwell running, pounding up the steps right behind the Mexican Marines who were one flight ahead of them. Nobody who wanted to live was going to stick around.
Both men were coughing and choking, tears streaming from their eyes and their lungs burning, by the time they reached the top of the steps. The smoke was suffocating, and only getting thicker. If they didn’t get off the platform quickly, they were all going to choke to death in the next few minutes.
The roar of the fire made it almost impossible to hear, and the smoke was so thick that they almost didn’t see the knot of men crouched at the edge of the helipad until they were right on top of them. Mexican Marines and American mercenaries alike were crouched on the deck, their faces blackened, streaming sweat, trying to breathe through cammies pulled over their mouths and noses, waiting for the helicopters.
The first Mi-17 thumped down out of the sky, its rotors kicking up wild, surrealistic whorls of black smoke as it descended. It wobbled alarmingly, drifting first to one side, then another, and Flanagan suddenly realized that the pilot was having a hard time seeing through the smoke.
Flanagan started to worry as the helicopter dipped lower. The pilot was clearly at the ragged edge of flying blind, and he was wavering at the edge of the helipad. If he tried to set down, he was going to put one set of landing gear over the edge, and quite possibly send the bird over into the water.
But the pilot must have figured that out, because he added power and pulled up, away from the platform, swinging the helicopter’s tail around to try to get a better view. Smoke swirled, and the rotor wash thumped at the pad, blasting the crouched mercenaries and Mexican Marines with soot and heat.
Flanagan looked around. One of the Mexican Marines was bent over Brannigan, alongside Tanaka, who seemed to be checking the bandages and tourniquet after having moved him. Brannigan was trying to say something, but it was just too loud, between the helicopter and the roar of the growing conflagration below, for Flanagan to tell what he was saying. At least the Colonel was still alive.
The rest of the Blackhearts were there; Santelli, Hart, and Curtis had made it up intact. Flanagan felt a flash of relief at seeing Curtis there. He hadn’t been sure how close the others had been when that west derrick had gone up. But his friend seemed to be none the worse for wear, though his eyes were clearly bloodshot, and he was hacking up a lung from the smoke.
There was no sign of Aziz’ body. They had simply had to move too fast to retrieve it. The man’s final resting place would be on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
The helo pilot crept toward the pad again, keeping his nose high, peering through the cockpit windows and trying to get a feel for where he was. The rotor wash beat at the swirling whorls of smoke, but couldn’t quite disperse any of it.
Finally, the wheels touched down. The pilot didn’t alter the pitch of the rotors; he was clearly ready to lift as soon as possible. It meant that the rotor wash never died down, but kept hammering at the men crouched next to the pad, threatening to beat them back and possibly knock one of them over the side. But Huerta struggled to his feet, waving at the Blackhearts to come with him. Childress and Tanaka got Brannigan up, each man getting under one of the Colonel’s armpits, and started hauling him toward the bird. The rest followed, keeping their weapons up and watching the Mexican Marines carefully. It was enough of a nightmare sitting on a burning oil platform; Flanagan could only imagine what was going through those men’s heads, watching their commander and a bunch of gringos getting off ahead of them.
Clearly, this Huerta cat didn’t follow the Brannigan school of combat leadership. Brannigan would have been the last one to step on the bird.
Of course, since they weren’t in the Mexican Marines’ chain of command, Flanagan didn’t have any problem letting the Marines catch the next bird.
He hauled himself up into the big helicopter’s troop compartment, turning to grab Wade’s extended hand and drag him up inside as well. The rotor blast was brutal, and he felt like he’d been sandblasted, just by the sheer force of the wind alone. On top of the salt, the bruising, and the first degree burns he’d already endured, he just hurt.
The pilot was already pulling pitch as he got Wade all the way aboard. Flanagan looked around in a moment of near-panic; he hadn’t seen if everyone else was on the bird yet. It wasn’t his responsibility, technically, and he saw Hancock already counting heads, but as the helicopter rose away from the helideck, he couldn’t see any more on the pad.
Hancock saw him looking, made eye contact, and nodded. Flanagan just nodded back; they wouldn’t be able to say anything intelligible over the scream of the Mi-17’s engines. But they were all on.
As the helicopter pulled away from the stricken oil platform, clearing the billowing cloud of black smoke, Flanagan looked back through streaming eyes. Another explosion rocked the platform, somewhere back by the derricks. The derricks were probably tearing themselves apart, and it was entirely possible that the wells themselves were on fire by then.
The enemy had not only slaughtered their hostages, they’d triggered another disaster along the same lines as the Deepwater Horizon. That fire was going to burn for a long, long time, and the oil spill was going to be huge.
Flanagan didn’t care all that much about the destruction itself. Disasters happened, they were eventually cleaned up, and life went on. He had no illusions that it was the end of the world. The dead hostages, however, were something he cared about. They hadn’t killed enough of the bad guys to make up for that.
He held his peace, though, holding onto a strap next to the troop door, as the helicopter banked away from the roaring conflagration and toward the low, gray shape of a frigate presently cruising toward the Tourmaline-Delta platform’s funeral pyre. Another Mi-17 was dropping down into the pall of smoke, heading
for the helideck to get more of the Mexican Marines off.
He looked down at the water. Somewhere down there, their enemies were still lurking, making their getaway.
I sure hope this hunt ain’t over.
***
The ARM Hermenegildo Galeana wasn’t an assault ship, or even a destroyer. There wasn’t even enough room on the aft deck for the Mi-17 to touch down. Instead, the pilot, in a rather impressive display of finesse at the controls, brought the bird to a hover a couple of feet above the deck, the nose and tail both hanging off on either side of the ship.
Huerta led the way off the bird, dropping down to the deck with the help of a couple of the Mexican Navy ratings who were waiting for them, along with several of the Hermengildo Galeana’s small complement of Naval Infantry. He waved at Hancock to follow him, and he did, first giving instructions to Tanaka and Childress to help the wounded Brannigan get down. Brannigan was doing some moving under his own power; the pressure dressing was keeping the bleeding under control, while giving him some use of the leg.
It took a minute to get down, while the helicopter hovered and swayed, the deck rising and falling beneath it with the waves. Getting Brannigan down was a production; he stepped off just as a trough dropped the ship beneath the helicopter, and a gust of cross-wind made the helicopter side-slip a couple of feet. As a result, he dropped like a rock, and Childress was barely able to catch him, collapsing under the bigger man’s weight with a crash.
Huerta was shouting orders over the noise, and a pair of Mexican sailors with medical insignia on their uniforms and aid bags over their shoulders were hurrying to Brannigan’s side, even as Brannigan rolled himself off of Childress.
Hancock was about to object, but Huerta grabbed him by the upper arm and yelled into his ear, “He will have better care in the Hermengildo Galeana’s sickbay than out here on the deck. One of your men can stay with him. Now, we need to talk.” He jerked his head toward the frigate’s superstructure and led the way.