Just enough to work up a little sweat, he thought, interrupting his steady, gentle strokes to tread water so that he could look up at the star-studded night sky. Neither the weather nor the distance concerned him. Unlike McKendry, he didn’t have a problem with whatever critters inhabited the depths of these Caribbean waters.
He recalled one time on Lake Tahoe. A couple of dancers had taken the two of them on one of those boat tours around the lake. About halfway around, one of the women took it into her head to move to the rail and yell, “Shark!”
To give him his due, McKendry hadn’t been the only one to go on automatic and suspend disbelief. However, while the others moved to the rail on a shark watch, McKendry paled and moved farther away from it.
Time to get over it, buddy, Keene thought, laughing out loud. As far as he was concerned, if he couldn’t outswim a shark for a mere quarter of a mile, then he wasn’t much of a swimmer.
Stroke after stroke after stroke.
Doing nicely, Keene thought, a little surprised despite himself. He was feeling the effort in his muscles, but that was to be expected. It had been some time since he or McKendry had done any serious exercise. His partner would feel the strain every bit as much.
Closing in on theValhalla platform, thinking about his partner, Keene became aware of the sleek death of sharks swimming below. The idea, he admitted to himself, was not exactly pleasant. He wanted to believe that the noise and chemical leakage and higher temperatures from the offshore structure would drive away such predators, but he knew differently. Part of his education as a short-term investor had taught him that the environment around oil platforms was a boon for fish, and with the increased schools living among the concrete support pillars, he supposed that sharks might also hang out in the better feeding grounds.
He increased his speed, and was happy to reach the shadow of the platform and pull himself up to the metal rungs alongside the fat elephant leg of the pier. Better not rest here, he told himself. You look like somebody’s midnight snack. He grasped the rungs and scrambled up, not stopping until he was ten feet out of the water.
Access ladders led up the concrete support legs to the main platform. He looked at the long line of rungs waiting for him. It was quite a way to climb, especially if he wanted to make it to the top of the central derrick in good time.
He climbed higher, to the underpart of the main platform. It hung like a broad airplane hangar above him. Lifeboats dangled under the deck; in an emergency, they could drop a hundred feet down to the sea. Keene recalled having read somewhere that more people were killed during oil rig safety drills testing out the hazardous systems than had ever been hurt in other kinds of accidents on oil rigs.
He listened to the waves echoing in the superstructure, looked at the immense core of theValhalla, and found himself awed that something this huge could be built in a harbor and towed out to sea to be anchored elsewhere.
“Moving on up,” he said into the wind.
He began to climb again. Once he reached the undercarriage of the main platform, he followed catwalks, ascended metal steps, ducked through hatches until he stood on the main deck.
A helipad covered a large, flat circle atop the main platform. Next to that was an oil-processing area filled with huge tanks and a nightmare maze of piping. Radio masts and cranes protruded like spines from the rig.
At any moment, Keene expected to be stopped by a security patrol, but the platform supervisors were ridiculously complacent in their security. The pumps and generators hummed and clanked, making loud sounds in the night, but he met no one. Most of the blazing lights he had seen from a distance seemed to be for decorative purposes only, except for the natural blowtorch off to the side; the flare tip hissed and blasted its perpetual flame, removing excess natural gas from the operations.
Keene sprinted across the platform deck toward the central derrick, which stood like a skyscraper in the middle of theValhalla . He could have taken an elevator, of course, but that would have been too easy. And too noisy. Even sleeping security guards could be awakened if the noise was loud enough. Instead, he took the winding ribbon of metal stairs around and around the iron latticework of the structure, heading toward the narrow tip that supported the rig’s central production shaft and pipe.
Panting heavily, dripping with sweat, he reached the top platform. The sultry breeze brushed his sweaty chest. Between breaths, he could hear the whispers and clatter of the rig’s superstructure, the thrumming guide wires and anchor cables holding the various portions in place. A searchlight beacon flashed around and around in a slow strobe, signaling low-flying aircraft of the danger.
He stood in silence, grinning at the night and gripping the rails. Under stormy seas, he thought, this place must dance like a hiccuping marionette. He looked around the top level. Like a crow’s nest on an old sailing ship, it was adorned with the spikes of lightning rods and radio towers.
He raised his fist in the air and gave a short yelp of triumph. “I’m King of the Hill.”
Good as that felt, it was not enough to gratify Keene. Still needing completion, he went to the edge, pulled down his shorts, and urinated. Then, grinning and satisfied, he sat down, leaned against the rails, and fell asleep.
The sound of an insomniac seagull woke him from his nap. Not until the third successive squawk did it occur to him that the gull was McKendry, at the bottom of the derrick.
Keene’s watch read one-thirty. Unable to believe that his lighthearted infiltration had gone so smoothly, he descended slowly and carefully into the shadows.
“You dumb son of a bitch!”
McKendry’s words and fist hit Keene simultaneously. Keene reeled and swiped at his nosebleed. “Are you crazy, McKendry? You’ve probably broken my nose.”
“You have about as much sense as a centipede,” McKendry said, clinging fast to the iron rung Keene had used to descend the derrick.
“At least now we’ll have a story to tell next New Year’s Eve.”
“You’ll have a story to tell. I probably won’t make it.” McKendry let go of the rung and sank to the deck. He held one hand over his left ribs. With the other, he pointed at his foot. “Shark,” he said, his voice reduced now to the slightest whisper.
“Oh my God!” Keene fell to his knees. In the dim light, he could see huge, red blotches, leaking around the protection of his partner’s hand and running across his ankle. “McKendry, I’m so sorry. Oh my God!”
“Could you…could you kiss it better,” McKendry whispered.
Keene looked up and into his partner’s eyes.
“And while you’re at it, Joshua, could you…”
McKendry’s voice was so close to being inaudible that Keene had to lean into it. “Anything, buddy.”
“Good,” McKendry said, whimpering. “Then you can kiss my ass.” He wiped one of the red blotches vigorously. It paled as it left a stain on his fingers.
“The red pen,” Keene said.
“The red pen,buddy .”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Keene said.
“I meant to.”
“I’m sorry I…um…pulled your leg.”
“We’re supposed to be looking for Selene Trujold, not running around at two in the morning playing King of the Hill. As long as we find her, we’ll call it even.” He paused. “Since we’re here, I’d like to take another look around. But first, would you mind telling me what possessed you to pull off this dumb stunt and jeopardize the whole mission?”
“I pissed on the world from up there,” Keene said halfheartedly.
“Was it worth it?”
For a moment Keene was quiet. “Yes, it was.” He decided to give an honest answer, though he didn’t expect McKendry to fully understand. “Listen, we’re out here and we’re ready for whatever happens. Right now, everything’s quiet. We’ve already spent weeks sitting around in Caracas, taking canoe trips through the Orinoco Delta, drinking beer in dockside cantinas. I had to dosomething, Terris.”
&
nbsp; He raised his eyebrows and spread out his hands innocently, indicating the ghost town of the oil platform.
“Had to find myself a story to tell. Just in case.”
18
Two black Zodiac rafts filled with commandos sped across the channel of the Serpent’s Mouth. They had eased out of one of the many mouths of the Orinoco Delta at midnight; after two hours Selene Trujold could just now make out the shape of theYucatán near the gleaming beacon that was theValhalla platform. There was half an hour’s worth of water still to cross, the last of it with engines off, moving in silence.
Around her in the rafts, the commandos wore dark suits and carried a stash of black-market weapons, rifles, hand grenades, and explosives. They had night-vision goggles to enable them to direct night operations, but she knew that the Caribbean stars would give them all the illumination they needed.
Her Green Impact fighters were well trained and high-strung, keyed up for this assault, which had been a full month in the planning. Their information had proved correct: the tankerYucatán was lashed to theValhalla ’s separate pumping platform during the darkest hours of the night. Though the normal complement of crew members aboard the tanker outnumbered them, Green Impact had both weapons and determination.
And they had a plan, not the least component of which was the element of surprise.
Selene narrowed her eyes and looked around. “We have to time this properly,” she said. “We know their routine. During the day, theValhalla needs all of its two hundred crew members aboard. That’s why the company gives them time for R and R at night. When the tanker pulls up and begins filling, most of the crew will go over to theValhalla to party with the other workers. During the dead of night, there’s only a skeleton crew aboard the tanker. That’s when we strike.”
Quiet and intent, the members of her force nodded and listened, though they had heard this briefing several times already.
“We are going to hijack theYucatán, get rid of the remaining few aboard. We’ll take them prisoner if possible, but don’t waste any precious time. Then we disengage the pump and head out. The load should be mostly full by the time we’re ready to go. Enough to cause the kind of disaster thatnobody will be able to ignore. If you have any questions, ask them now.”
Selene fingered the relic that hung from her neck, wondering yet one more time what it was. Nothing in her knowledge of physics or the related sciences provided any inkling as to its origins. She’d had it embedded in bark and suspended from a strip of leather soon after Manny Sheppard had delivered it and told her of her father’s death. The pendant’s smooth, irregular edges bit into the joints of her fingers. She rubbed the fragment’s slick, strangely greasy surface. It seemed to have a unique combination of heat and ice deep inside it.
Manny’s delivery had also contained a note from her father, telling her of the importance of the contents of the package—and of how Frikkie Van Alman meant to abuse his connections and the resources of Oilstar to exploit the secrets it held. Her father’s words had left her under no illusion as to who had been responsible for his death: he had dared to defy Van Alman, and had paid for that defiance with his life.
While this assault fit well within the parameters of Green Impact’s agenda, she was doing this for him. She was about to cause a financial disaster, a public relations disaster, and an ecological disaster. And it would all be blamed on Frikkie Van Alman. The media would need a scapegoat, and the pompous CEO would be led to the slaughterhouse.
In comparison, theExxon Valdez spill would become a mere footnote in history. And her father would rest more easily.
The Zodiacs roared forward, plowing through the open waters of the Serpent’s Mouth. The charcoal black sides of the rafts were large inflated tubes, big enough that even her largest man would have trouble getting his arms all the way around. The tubes angled up and together in the front, forming a point. Between the tubes, a hard fiberglass hull gave the riders a place to sit, and at the rear, the outboard motor was mounted to the squared-off aft of the hull.
Relinquishing her hold on the pendant, Selene balanced against the rubber eyelets of the black raft. Through the hum of the powerful outboard motor and the whisper of the waves, she could hear her father’s ghost laughing.
She herself wouldn’t laugh until the bloodshed and the horror of the next few hours were done.
Soon enough, the bulwark of the OilstarYucatán loomed up out of the water, surrounded by starlight. Selene and her assault team switched off the motors of their dark Zodiac rafts. From that point on, they approached cautiously and in silence.
The garish display of the monstrous production platform sparkled like the contents of a treasure chest. Selene wished they could do something against that target—thereal target—but her small group had no chance against something as big as theValhalla . There were two hundred people on board. Her group could cause some damage, but they’d all be killed.
On the other hand, if her information was correct and the timing worked out properly, Green Impact could get aboard the tanker and deal with the skeleton crew. Her group would have a chance of survival—and the oil-ladenYucatán would certainly make a sufficient statement for their cause.
With whispered commands and information communicated through gestures, the two Zodiacs approached the tanker from the rear. TheYucatán sat far from the towering offshore platform, drinking deeply of the crude petroleum that poured down into its holds from the pumping station.
They coasted closer to the stained hull of the ship. Next to her, one of the men stifled an outcry and lunged away from the side of the Zodiac. The large inflatable raft jerked and bumped as something struck it from beneath and swam away, a shadow disappearing into darkness.
“Great white,” the man said.
“Fortunately, we’re not going swimming,” Selene said. “Our business is aboard the tanker.”
A couple of men chuckled quietly.
The commandos lashed their two rafts to the lower rungs of the metal ladder on the tanker’s hull. Moving like shadows, they climbed to the deck, all but one man, whose task it was to tie the rafts together and move them around to the bow in readiness for the planned escape.
If nothing untoward happened, they could all make it back to the encampment.
In deciding which Green Impact members to take with her from their primary jungle compound, Selene had selected the most dedicated ones, those most ready to follow orders and do what had to be done. These people would be called upon to kill. In an operation like this, she couldn’t risk someone flinching or hesitating at the wrong moment.
The Green Impact commandos had studied detailed blueprints of the OilstarYucatán, memorizing every cranny, every deck plate. They had a fairly good idea of where the tanker’s remaining crew members would be. Most would be snoozing in their cabins, perhaps grumbling that they couldn’t go to theValhalla platform like the others. Captain Calisto would almost certainly be in his private stateroom taking care of small details and reveling in the peace and quiet. He loved his ship and would not be the least bit interested in leaving her for R and R.
The assault team carried their packs of weapons, ammunition, and explosives. Upon reaching the deck, they stashed the more fragile items they wouldn’t need until after they’d dealt with the crew. Then they split up, moving in small groups with separate, well-rehearsed objectives.
Selene and three companions marched up to the officers’ quarters while the others entered the lower levels of crew cabins, rec rooms, and mess hall. The first muffled gunshots rang out as she reached the captain’s private stateroom. The door was partially ajar, so she could see his expression as he whirled around, astonished to hear the weapons fire from below.
Her three companions held out their assault rifles and Selene took a step forward. “I’m sorry about the disturbance, Captain Calisto.” Her voice was quiet; commanding. “We need to have a word with you.”
19
“At least you didn’t suggest climbi
ng out there to roast marshmallows.” McKendry pointed at the jet of flame coming from a pipe extended away from the rig, burning off the waste gases before they could build up and become a danger.
Keene managed a soft chortle. It blended into the murmur of music and laughter that came from the complex of living quarters. “They seem to be having a party down there,” he said.
“Another egregious security lapse. Oilstar could certainly use our services as security consultants,” McKendry said.
“I’ll consider making the offer to Frik.” Keene touched his nose, which had begun to ache from McKendry’s punch.
From what he could tell, so many people worked on the rig that it was like a condominium complex. He imagined what it must be like to live in a small cabin, to share common rooms. “Not the life for me,” he said. “Hard work, long hours, boredom—”
“None of which excuses the lack of security.Nobody tried to stop you?”
Keene shook his head. “I didn’t see a single human being. This place is wide open to an attack.” They strolled around the platform, looking in all directions. “I can’t believe Frik Van Alman is so blind. If Selene Trujold means to strike this rig, she won’t have much trouble.”
“Especially if she shows up tonight.” McKendry glanced at his watch. “It’s almost two-thirty. We should get back to the tanker before the replacement crew decides to do its job and head over there. We can talk to Calisto in the morning and maybe get him to call Frikkie and set up some better security here.”
“I’m all for that, buddy. Let’s go.”
They climbed back down the leg of the platform as quickly as possible, not pausing to admire the view of the tanker a quarter mile away. As they swam across the placid water toward theYucatán, Keene thought he sensed movement below him. Despite his professed lack of fear, he got set to defy the laws of motion if he encountered any contact with an undersea creature.
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