DeCamp climbed down into the dinghy, and Wyner released the painter and peeled off to the right in a straight line for the tug out ahead of Vanessa. For all practical purposes they were invisible from anyone aboard the platform or the fleet because the decks were all lit up — on the platform because work had been going on around the clock, and just now they were having a party, and aboard the boats because Schlagel wanted it that way. “He wants to make a statement, loud and clear, that we’re out here,” Ransom had explained.
The thirty-five horsepower four-stroke outboard was quiet enough to allow nearly normal conversation. DeCamp called Gurov on the sat phone. “Status?”
“They’re having a bloody party just like you expected they would.”
“Is Nikolai with you?”
“Here with me in my quarters.”
“Start with the off-duty crew in their cabins, then the delivery crew on the bridge and the communications equipment. Then the sat phones.”
“What about McGarvey and the broad?” Gurov asked, and he sounded excited; the past weeks without action had gone on too long.
“Take them if you can, but only after you disable the communications equipment,” DeCamp told him. “We’re on the way to the tug now. ETA back to the Pascagoula Trader three zero minutes. Call as soon as you’re ready for us.”
“Will do,” Gurov said. “Good luck.”
DeCamp broke the connection and smiled grimly. He’d never believed in luck.
* * *
Gurov and Kabatov used the 9mm Ingram MAC 10 because even with its suppressor tube the submachine gun was light and compact, which would make it much easier to conceal as they worked their way through the maze of corridors and spaces aboard Vanessa. And at a cyclic rate of more than one thousand rounds per minute it was devastating in small spaces.
Gurov’s eyes were bright as he stuffed a half-dozen thirty-round magazines into his pockets and seated the seventh in the handle of the weapon. “Finally we have the green light,” he said.
Kabatov was doing the same, and he was excited though his movements were steady and precise and the expression on his face was bland, even indifferent. “How much time do we have?”
“He wants our go or no-go in thirty minutes,” Gurov said. He pulled on his dark blue Windbreaker, put the sat phone in a zippered pocket, and donned a hard hat.
“That’s cutting it close,” Kabatov said. “If they run into trouble aboard the tug our arses could be out in the wind without some additional muscle.”
“If you’re talking about McGarvey and his bitch, we’ve been given the green light to take them out if we get the chance.”
Kabatov grinned, and to Gurov at that moment his friend reminded him of a wolf, a hungry wolf.
They’d spent the past week between work shifts wandering around the platform, sightseeing, getting some exercise and fresh air, away from the welding and pipe fitting — sometimes in tight, nearly airless quarters. They came across as men who’d rather spend their off time alone, which didn’t make them much different from many of the other roustabouts and construction workers, so they’d not stuck out, nor had anyone made any real effort to engage either of them in conversation, ask them to play pool or poker or go fishing off one of the lower decks. Which is exactly the way they’d played it. But in their wanderings they’d pinpointed all the crew’s quarters, including the wing where the scientists slept and hung out, had made handwritten copies of the deck crew’s schedule, and had taken quick looks at the platform delivery captain’s station with its communications gear, and mapped out plausible routes to the pair of satellite dishes on the roof of the control room.
The plan they’d worked out from the blueprints in Tripoli was straightforward. First they were to kill anyone asleep in their quarters — the roustabouts and construction workers first because they were the muscle. Next they were to tap Captain Lapides and whoever was on duty in the delivery station and destroy the radios. Finally Kabatov was to use the ladder on the backside of the control room, out of sight from anyone down on deck, and cut the coaxial cable leads to both dishes, while Gurov maintained watch. All that would be left after that were a couple of sat phones.
Their primary orders were stealth; eliminate as many of the crew as possible and destroy the comms gear, but do it without detection. If someone pushed the panic button and sent a Mayday the mission would be scratched.
“Ready?” Gurov asked.
Kabatov nodded. “I’ll go left.”
Gurov checked to make sure that the corridor was empty, then slipped out of his room and went to the next cabin on the right, eased open the door, and went inside.
A man — one of the welders, Gurov thought — was in bed reading, and he looked up, startled at first but then angry. “What the fuck—?”
Gurov hit him with a short burst, destroying most of his chest, blood spraying against the bulkhead behind him, the noise from the weapon acceptable.
* * *
Close up the Tony Ryan was much older and more decrepit-looking than DeCamp had expected. But on second thought the Vanessa Explorer had been ready for the breaker yard, and InterOil would not have diverted a new oceangoing tug for a job like this. Which in a way was a bit of good news; crews aboard junk heaps were usually second-string, not as sharp as those aboard newer vessels.
The pilothouse, crew’s quarters, and galley were all forward, leaving three-fourths of the ship open deck. A massive hawser was connected to a bridle arrangement taut behind the tug, beyond which a thick steel cable snaked back nearly one hundred meters to another bridle arrangement connected to the platform at three points for maximum stability.
The tug was making less than two knots, so there was virtually no wake, though directly aft the wash from the twin props was dangerous, so Wyner maneuvered the dinghy to the port quarter and forward to a position just below the pilothouse. The entire hull from the gunwales to the waterline was festooned with large truck tires and frayed four inch rope hawsers used as fenders.
DeCamp gently tossed a grappling hook and line up to the deck railing ten feet above and made it fast to the dinghy’s painter, and Wyner throttled back and put the outboard in neutral.
They took out their weapons, charged them, slung them over their shoulders, and DeCamp started up first, no words between them, none needed at this point. On deck they crouched in the shadows for just a moment or two to make sure they’d not been detected. But the deck lights didn’t come on, and DeCamp headed up the portside ladder to the bridge while Wyner went through the hatch and headed below to the galley and crew’s quarters.
The Tony Ryan ’s bridge, dimly lit only by the red night-lights on the two radar sets as well as the navigation and communications equipment in the control panels and the overheads, stretched the entire width of the superstructure. Two men, both in civilian clothes, were on duty at the moment, one of them at the wheel, the other looking through a pair of binoculars at their tow. The helmsman, seated in a tall chair, his hands not actually touching the wheel, was dark, slightly built and wiry, while the other was heavyset and bald.
The helmsman looked up when DeCamp opened the door and came in, and when he spotted the weapon he reared back and said something in a language that sounded like Greek.
DeCamp fired one short burst, hitting the man in the left side of his chest, his neck, and face, driving him off the chair to the deck, blood flying everywhere.
The man with the binoculars had reacted slowly and he was just turning around when DeCamp switched aim and shot him high in the back, at least one round hitting him at the base of his skull. He flew forward, his face smashing into the rear window and his legs folding as he slumped to the deck.
DeCamp studied the nav gear, making sure that the boat was operating on autopilot, then switched off the two single sideband transceivers and two VHF radios and put a couple of rounds into the front panels of each, rendering them totally inoperative.
At the door he looked back. It had been almost too
easy. So far. And although he expected no trouble from the six people back aboard the Pascagoula Trader he was pretty sure that the mission would unfold a bit differently aboard the oil platform.
Wyner met him on deck and had a wild look in his eyes. “Two of them in the galley and one in the shitter,” he said. He was enjoying himself.
“Problems?”
“No. You?”
DeCamp shook his head. “They weren’t expecting us. Let’s get back.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Gurov was crouched in the lee of the deserted control room, the music still loud below on the main deck as Kabatov scrambled up the ladder to the roof to cut the cables to the satellite dishes — the only remaining links to the outside world except for his and McGarvey’s sat phones.
But it was only a matter of time now before someone discovered the bodies of the six crewmen in their bunks, Lapides plus two of his people on duty in the delivery station, or that of the young woman scientist who they’d caught in the transverse corridor on the way to the control room. She’d just come out of the bathroom and Kabatov had broken her neck before she could cry out, and then they had stuffed her body in an empty tool locker. Her name tag said, LISA.
Kabatov came down the ladder. “Done.”
“Let’s see if we can find McGarvey and the broad,” Gurov said. So far everything had gone exactly according to plan, which in his mind was a little worrisome. McGarvey had a dangerous rep. He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes.”
* * *
Forget It was cruising easily just a few feet from the Pascagoula Trader ’s port side, the nearly dead idle speed they were making ensuring that the water between the hulls was just about calm without bow wakes.
Helms was outside on deck talking to someone on the larger vessel when DeCamp and Wyner pulled up unseen alongside, made the painter secure, switched off the outboard, and scrambled aboard.
Crouching low behind the coaming DeCamp rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead and Helms glanced over his shoulder. DeCamp nodded.
Helms turned back, took out his silenced 9mm Steyr GB pistol and shot the man twice in the chest.
Edwin Burt and Paul Mitchell, the other two recent hires, had been hiding in the darkness behind the bridge. An instant after Helms fired they rushed out on deck as Lehr maneuvered Forget It close enough for the three of them to jump across and head directly for the bridge.
“Get the dinghy under cover,” DeCamp told Wyner and he went up to the bridge where he got a pair of binoculars and scoped the platform first, and then the flotilla boats nearest to them.
“How does it look?” Lehr asked. He’d been a top-flight cop with the German Federal police, and he knew how to take orders even though he’d admitted he hated the bureaucracy.
A good man to have in a mission like this one in which so many things could go wrong, DeCamp thought. All of them were comrades tonight. And once again he could feel a little of the satisfaction of leading good men into harm’s way. “We’re clear so far.”
Wyner came up to the bridge at the same time Helms appeared on the Pascagoula Trader ’s deck and gave the thumbs-up.
“Prep the chopper,” DeCamp said, and Wyner went out and crossed over to the bigger vessel.
“How did it go aboard the tug?” Lehr asked. Like most mercenaries he did not like loose ends.
“As planned,” DeCamp said tersely. “Are you clear on your orders?”
“Stand by out here for pickup once the op is completed, and then get the hell out to our mother ship,” Lehr said. “May I have the coordinates?”
DeCamp gave him a latitude and longitude about eighty nautical miles to the southwest where a Liberian-registered freighter was supposed to be standing by for them, and he programmed the numbers into the ship’s GPS system.
“Danke.”
Everyone else was aboard the other ship and both vessels were on autopilot. DeCamp pulled out his pistol and fired one shot into Lehr’s forehead, driving the man off the helmsman’s chair.
He got on the sat phone and hit Send. The thirty minutes were up. “Status.”
* * *
Gurov answered on the first ring. “We’re holed up in a forward crew quarters passageway. Defloria and his construction foreman are having a powwow.”
“Take them out.”
“Not advisable. We haven’t gotten to McGarvey’s sat phone.”
“Find a way now,” DeCamp said. “Priority one. Our ETA is five minutes.”
“Will do,” Gurov replied and he broke the connection. “They’ll be here in five,” he told Kabatov. “Make sure the landing pad is secure. I’m going after McGarvey’s phone.”
“Watch yourself.”
Gurov replaced the magazine in his weapon with a fresh one. “Even Superman couldn’t stand up to this shit,” he said.
SIXTY
McGarvey sent Gail back to the party that promised to run very late. Everyone down there was having a great time, blowing off a lot of pent-up energy and tension that had been transmitted to them through Eve’s reaction to the possible threat they were facing. Some of them were likely to jump overboard if someone showed up and shouted “Boo!”
“You’ve got a hunch?” she’d asked. They were in his room away from the noise of the party and the constant din from the boat horns circling them, and she’d picked up his antsiness.
“This is the right place and the right time,” he told her.
“Has Otto come up with something?”
“Not as of this afternoon, but I asked him to do a global satellite search for anything moving anywhere in the Gulf, especially anything heading this way.”
“Foreign registry on the way to the Canal? Untouchables without clear evidence?”
“Something like that,” McGarvey’d said, and before she’d left he told her to get her pistol. “Neither of us walks around unarmed from this point.”
“One of those kids catches on that we’re packing and they could start screaming bloody murder.”
“That might be the least of our worries,” McGarvey said.
She gave him an odd look and then left.
He called Otto on the sat phone. “Have you come up with anything new?”
“Nada,” Otto said and he sounded dejected. “Rats in the attic?”
“Just a feeling.”
“Me too, but honest injun, kemo sabe, there’s nothing anywhere near you other than Schlagel’s flotilla, and I’d be just about willing to bet the farm that if and when trouble comes your way it won’t be from that direction. They’re major jerks and Jesus freaks and full of themselves but they’re not like the antiabortion crowd willing to kill for their beliefs. They’re not even as bad as Greenpeace. None of them will try to stop you. They’ll just hassle you all the way to Florida.”
“No ships coming our way to or from Tampa or Port Manatee?”
“Nothing within a hundred miles — and even that close it would take ’em more than four hours to get to you. We could have the Coast Guard to you in one-fourth that time. My guess is if they’re coming it’ll either be by chopper from Tampa or someplace like that, flying low and slow under radar, either that or a go-fast boat, something like a Cigarette or hydrofoil. The timing might be a little tight for them to make the hit, and in any event they’d have to get away clean, because I don’t think DeCamp is such a dedicated jihadist that he’s willing to give his life for the mission.”
“No,” McGarvey said. The hairs on the back of his neck were bristling. “But we’re missing something, goddamnit.”
“Has anyone from the flotilla tried to make contact either with the delivery crew or with Eve Larsen?”
“I don’t know about Eve or any of her people, but Defloria said they’ve been getting a steady stream of radio traffic on the VHF.”
“If they’re interfering with ship-to-ship channels, or tying up sixteen I can get the Coast Guard out there on a violation complaint.”
“Except for the noise they haven’
t tried to interfere with operations so far,” McGarvey said.
“I could ask Coast Guard Tampa to come out and make an inspection, sewage dumps overboard or something.”
“No.”
“You’re not thinking straight. If something goes down out there and someone gets hurt you’ll take the heat even though the Bureau and everyone else says no one is going to try anything. So let’s make an end run.”
McGarvey had thought about that very thing from the start. If an attack did come someone would get hurt — possibly a lot of people. Since the Bureau or the Coast Guard were officially hands-off, the only alternatives would have been to postpone moving the platform to Florida or to cancel Eve’s project altogether. The first might have given them time to find DeCamp, now that they knew his name, though there was no telling how long that might take. The man was a professional and he’d not made many mistakes in his career. It was possible they’d never find him. And it was equally possible that whoever was behind the threat might hire someone else and they would have to start their search all over again. And canceling the project was totally out of the question. Even if NOAA tried to pull the plug Eve wouldn’t stand for it; and now as a Nobel laureate she carried a lot of weight.
Which left what?
At one point Otto had suggested smuggling a SEAL team aboard, or having a submarine trail them, but the Pentagon had declined, nor would pressuring the White House have worked either. The official stance was hands-off because the Saudis and other OPEC countries were becoming increasingly nervous with each step Eve’s program came nearer to completion and the administration couldn’t afford to antagonize its oil suppliers. If OPEC made sharp cutbacks the nation would be in serious trouble, much worse than the gas lines of the seventies because the U.S. had become ever more dependent on foreign oil.
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