The Ark tl-1

by Boyd Morrison

  “Where are you going?” Dietz yelled after him.

  “To the control room!” Locke yelled back.

  Hurtling down the stairs, Locke had just the slightest moment when he thought maybe he shouldn’t get involved. It was his instinct to swoop in and insert himself into the situation, but no one was depending on him for help. It wasn’t his responsibility. The oil rig crew and the Coast Guard would handle it. They would save the passengers.

  But Locke thought about what would happen if he was wrong. There were seven people struggling to stay alive out there, including Dilara Kenner, who he had personally invited to the rig. If those passengers died and he hadn’t done everything he could, their deaths would be on his head even if nobody else knew it. Then he would be plunged back into more months without sleep for days at a time, his mind needling him with all of the things he should have done. The thought of those sleepless nights was what kept his feet moving.

  FOUR

  Captain Mike “Hammer” Hamilton leveled his F-16 at 35,000 feet, and his wingman Lt. Fred “Fuzzy” Newman matched his course. After scrambling from March Air Force Base just east of LA, they had both lit their afterburners to get out over the ocean before the airplane they were intercepting crossed the coast. Now the private 737 designated N-348Z was clearly visible on Hammer’s radar. They were closing at a relative speed of 2000 miles per hour.

  “Two minutes to intercept,” Fuzzy said.

  “Copy that,” Hammer said. “LA Control, this is CALIF 32. Any more comm traffic from the target?”

  “Negative, CALIF 32. Still nothing.” During the briefing on route, Hammer was told that all communication had been lost with an airplane that had turned back on a course to Honolulu. When it had turned around, it was to get medical attention for some passengers who had gotten sick. Then the pilot’s communications had become increasingly distressed. Apparently, everyone on board, including the flight crew, had come down with the mysterious illness.

  The communications became increasingly erratic and strange, as if the pilot was succumbing to some kind of madness. His last communication had been so odd that LA control had played it back for Hammer. It was the eeriest radio call he had ever heard.

  “Flight N-348 Zulu, this is LA Control. Your last message was garbled. Say again.”

  “I can’t see!” the panicking pilot said. “I’m blind! I can’t see! Oh, Jesus!” Hammer had never heard a pilot lose it like that.

  “Are you on autopilot?”

  “Yes, on autopilot. Oh God! I can feel it!”

  “Feel what? N-348 Zulu? Feel what? What is happening?”

  “I’m melting! We’re all melting! Make it stop!” The pilot screamed in obvious pain, and then the communication abruptly terminated. That was an hour and 20 minutes ago.

  “Have they made any move to descend?” Hammer asked. Since 9/11, the primary mission of his Air National Guard wing was homeland defense. Standard operating procedure was to intercept all aircraft that had lost communication. If there was any indication that the aircraft was in the control of terrorists and suspected of being used as a weapon, there would be no choice but to take it out. But from what he’d heard, Hammer didn’t think that’s what they were dealing with. No way a terrorist could make a pilot act like that.

  “Negative,” the controller said. “They haven’t deviated course or altitude.”

  “Copy that. Intercept in one minute. You heard him, Fuzz. When we get there, we’ll circle around and pull alongside, see what we can see.”

  Hammer spotted the bright blue 737 in the distance, and it quickly filled his windscreen. He and Fuzzy shot by and banked around, reducing their throttles to half what they were. They nudged forward until they were flying even with the 737, Hammer on the port wingtip and Fuzzy on the starboard wing.

  “LA control,” Hammer said, “We have intercepted the target. It is flying straight and level at flight level 350. Air speed 550 knots on course 075.” If it stayed on that course, it would fly directly over Los Angeles.

  “Copy that, CALIF 32. Describe what you’re seeing.”

  “The plane seems to be in good shape. No damage on my side.”

  “None on mine, either,” said Fuzzy.

  “I can’t see any movement inside. I’ll move a little a closer to get a better look.”

  Hammer nudged the F-16 forward and starboard until his wingtip was in front of the 737’s. Anybody on board would surely see him. Those still conscious would be pressing their faces against the windows, but none did.

  “Any signs of life, CALIF 32?”

  “Negative.” The bright sunlight streaming through the starboard windows was visible through the port windows, allowing Hammer a clear view of the seatbacks. According to the briefing, the plane had the movie star Rex Hayden and his entourage on board. He expected to see heads lolling backward in some of the seats, but he couldn’t see a single person. Strange.

  “Fuzzy, you see anything from your side?”

  “Negative, Hammer. It’s as quiet as a…” The next intended word must have been “cemetery” because Fuzzy stopped himself abruptly. “Nobody on the starboard side as far as I can see.”

  “LA Control,” Hammer said, “You got your info wrong. This is an empty flight. Must be a ferry.”

  After a pause, the controller came back. “Uh, that’s a negative, CALIF 32. Manifest shows 21 passengers and six crew.”

  “Then where the hell are they?”

  “What about the pilots?”

  Hammer pulled farther ahead until he had a view straight into the cockpit. The windows were clear. Large-jet pilots wear a four-point belt. Even if the pilots were unconscious, the seat belts would keep them upright.

  Instead, Hammer saw a disturbing sight. The belts were connected, but slack. The cockpit was empty. If what they were telling him was correct, 27 people had simply vanished over the Pacific.

  “LA Control,” he said, hardly believing his own words, “there is no one on board the target.”

  “CALIF 32, can you repeat that?”

  “I repeat, N-348 Zulu is completely deserted. We’ve intercepted a ghost plane.”

  FIVE

  Locke’s heart was pounding by the time he reached the Scotia One control room, a state-of-the-art facility that allowed control of every aspect of the rig’s operations, including all the pumps and valves on the platform. It also served as the rig’s communications station.

  Three men sat at terminals, busily going through their emergency checklists while Finn barked into the phone. He was a squat man with hair the color and consistency of steel wool, and his voice boomed with the authority of a drill sergeant. Locke listened while he caught his breath.

  “We’ve got seven in the water…Yes, an explosion…No, our standby ship left yesterday to help with a spill at Scotia Two. They have survival suits on…When?…Okay, we’ll sit tight until then.” He hung up the phone.

  Locke made a beeline for Finn. He heard the urgency in his own voice. “We can’t sit tight.”

  Finn nodded at the clock on the wall. “Coast Guard is going to get a rescue chopper into the air in five minutes. At top speed, they’ll be here in another ninety. So we wait until then.”

  “The fog is rolling in,” Locke said, shaking his head. “By the time the Coast Guard chopper gets here, visibility will be zero. In those kinds of conditions, the helicopter could fly right over them and never see them.”

  “If you have any suggestions,” Finn said with undisguised annoyance, “I’ll be glad to hear them, but I don’t know what else we can do.”

  Locke rested his chin on his fist as he thought. He knew that few survivors were found more than an hour after a crash at sea.

  “How about the standby ship?” he said.

  Finn snorted. “Don’t you think I thought of that? It’ll take over six hours for it to get back from Scotia Two. It’s our only ship.”

  Locke thought back to when he was leaning on the landing pad railing. He snappe
d his fingers. “When I was up on deck, I saw a yacht about five miles away. They should be able to mount a rescue.”

  Finn shot an angry look at one of the men. “Why didn’t I know that?”

  The man shrugged meekly, and Finn spat into a wastebasket in response. “Send out the distress call,” he said.

  The SOS went out on the radio. Seconds passed. Locke listened intently for a voice to respond on the control room speakers, but all he heard was dead air. No reply from the yacht.

  “Try again,” Finn said after few more ticks of the wall clock. Still nothing.

  “They must have seen the helicopter go down,” Locke said, frustrated by the silence. The yacht was the survivors’ best chance. “Why aren’t they answering?”

  Finn threw his hands up in disgust and sat. “Their radio might be out. Doesn’t matter. They aren’t answering. We’ll have to wait for the Coast Guard chopper and hope it can find them in the fog.”

  Locke remembered wearing the same survival suit on his flight to the platform. They were Mark VII suits. Capable safety gear, but not the newest. Not good enough.

  Locke shook his head again. “The beacons on those suits are only accurate to within a mile,” he said. “That’s not precise enough in pea soup fog. What’s the water temp today?”

  “About 43 degrees Fahrenheit,” Finn said. “The suits are rated for up to six hours in the water at that temperature.”

  “The suit ratings are for ideal conditions in calm weather,” Locke said, losing his patience. “Those people are probably injured, and they’re being battered by waves out there. If we wait, that chopper won’t find anything but dead bodies.”

  Finn raised his eyebrows and gave Locke a look that said, And what do you want me to do about it?

  Locke paused while his mind went into overdrive. He mentally checked off Scotia One’s facilities and capabilities one by one, his head nodding imperceptibly as he thought. He churned through the multiple possibilities but returned over and over to the only choice. He fixed his eyes on Finn.

  “You have an idea,” Finn said.

  Locke nodded. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to go get them ourselves.”

  “How? We don’t have any boats.”

  “Yes, we do. The freefall lifeboats.”

  For a moment, Finn was speechless at the suggestion. Then he shook his head. “No. It’s too risky. They’re only a last resort if we have to abandon the rig. I can’t authorize them to be used that way.”

  Scotia One was equipped with six 50-person lifeboats suspended 75 feet above the water. Locke had consulted on their installation on another oil rig and had even seen one launched.

  The unique feature of the lifeboats was that they were aimed at a thirty-degree angle facing toward the water. There were no rope davits to lower the lifeboats slowly to the surface of the water. When the lifeboat was full and watertight, the operators pulled two levers, and the lifeboat slid down a ramp and into space, falling all the way to the water below. It was the only way to evacuate a burning oil platform quickly.

  Locke bent down and gripped the arms of Finn’s chair, looming over the rig manager. Locke’s build was the product of good genes and a regular regimen of pushups, sit ups, and running, which he could do anywhere in the world he was working. He knew he couldn’t intimidate a hardened guy like Finn, no matter how small the man was compared to him, but he could use his size for emphasis.

  With a low growl, Locke said, “Come on, Finn. You know it’s their only shot. If we wait, those people are going to die.”

  Finn stood and got in Locke’s face as much as a man six inches shorter could. “I know what’s at stake, damn it!” Finn yelled. “But no one on board has ever launched one of those lifeboats before.”

  This argument is taking way too long, Locke thought. It was time the crash survivors didn’t have. Finn wasn’t going to approve this without someone pushing him. Locke couldn’t stand here and wait for seven people to drown, so he lied.

  “I’ve made a drop in one,” Locke said steadily. “That’s what made me think of it.”

  Finn looked dubious. “You have? Where?”

  “Gordian tested one two years ago. They needed volunteers to try it out.” It was true Gordian had done an open-water evaluation, which Locke had supervised, but he hadn’t actually ridden in the lifeboat. It had been deemed too dangerous at the time.

  Finn raised an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering?”

  Locke didn’t blink, but his heart was racing. “If that’s what it takes. I signed the waiver just like everyone else, and I saw where they went down.”

  Finn looked around the control room at the three operators who stared back at him, then out the window toward the rapidly approaching fog. Finally, he turned back to Locke.

  “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” Finn said, putting his hands up in defeat. “We’ll use a lifeboat. How many men do you need?”

  Locke fought to keep his heart rate down as he thought about the mission and remembered the saying about the duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like hell underneath.

  “Three men total,” Locke said. “One to pilot the boat and two to pull people out of the water. Grant should be one of them. He’d never forgive me if I left him behind.”

  Grant Westfield was not only the best electrical engineer Locke had ever worked with, he was also an adrenaline junkie — rock climbing, sky diving, wreck diving, spelunking, anything that got the blood pumping. Locke enjoyed joining him sometimes, but Grant was fanatical. He’d jump at the chance to launch a freefall lifeboat, something few others have ever done. And if Locke was going to do this, he wanted the person on this rig he trusted most going along with him.

  “All right, Grant goes,” Finn said. “I’ll send Jimmy Markson with you. We can’t pull the boat back up again, you know. Not in this weather. Our crane might snap.”

  This is getting better by the minute, Locke thought. “We’ll use the personnel basket,” he said. The basket was a six-person rig used to lift people from ships to the platform.

  “I’ll tell the other two to meet you down at the lifeboats. Get a survival suit along the way, just in case. I don’t want to lose anyone if one of you guys goes in the water.”

  That sounded like a fine idea to Locke. “I know where the locker is.”

  Finn snatched up a phone, but Locke didn’t stay to hear the call. After grabbing a survival suit from an emergency station, he followed the lifeboat evacuation signs, bounding down the stairs two at a time.

  On the lowest deck, where the lifeboats were perched, Locke dropped his bomber jacket onto the grating and donned his suit while he waited for Grant and Markson. Each of the five boats was painted a bright orange so they could be spotted easily at sea. They were streamlined like bullets, and the only windows were rectangular portholes in a cupola at the rear where the helmsman sat. The portholes were made of super-strong polycarbonate — the same material used to make bulletproof windows — instead of glass so that they would withstand the impact of the fall. The sole opening was an aluminum hatch at the aft end.

  The boats pointed down at the ocean and rested on rails that would guide them when released. At the end of the rails, it was a 75-foot plunge to the water where the boat would dive under and then surface 300 feet away, propelled to 10 knots by the momentum from the fall. A powerful diesel could drive the boat at up to 20 knots once it resurfaced.

  With his suit secured, Locke flung open the hatch of the first lifeboat and peered inside. Instead of a flat aisle down the center of the boat, stairs led down past seats that faced backward. The only seat facing forward was for the helmsman, and that wouldn’t be occupied until after the drop was complete. Two levers on either side of the boat’s interior had to be pulled simultaneously to initiate the drop, so that a panicked crewman couldn’t single-handedly launch the boat before it was filled with evacuees. Safety devices ensured that the rear hatch was close
d before it could drop. If the hatch were left open, when the lifeboat went under after the initial drop, water would flood in, and the boat might never resurface.

  Locke heard a clatter behind him. Two men hurried down the stairs. Both were black, but that’s where the similarities ended. The one in the lead had an ebony complexion and was a couple of inches taller than Locke, but he was lanky and the survival suit hung from him like a coat hanger. That must have been Markson. He was in his forties, and his face was smudged with oil that did nothing to cover his apprehension.

  The second man, who had a shaved head and mocha skin, struggled with the zipper on his survival suit. Grant Westfield was four inches shorter and 15 years younger than Markson, but he still had the muscular 240-pound frame of the wrestler he used to be. He must have picked a size too small. Locke smiled in spite of himself.

  “Need some help there, tiger?” Locke said, not bothering to hide his amusement. “Maybe you need to lose a few.”

  Grant zipped the suit to the top and scoffed. “These things weren’t built for someone with my impressive physique.”

  “Just don’t flex too hard and rip it. Wouldn’t make a great fashion statement.”

  Grant pursed his lips. “I’ll have you know that torn survival suits are the latest rage in Milan.”

  Locke heard Markson chuckle uneasily. The joking probably sounded out of place to him, but Locke liked it. It had been the way he and Grant lightened the mood in hairy situations ever since their Army days.

  “Glad you could join the party,” Locke said.

  “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss one of your crazy stunts. They tell me you’re raring to launch one of these babies.” Grant seemed a lot more enthusiastic about this than Locke was.

  “‘Raring’ may be too strong a word, but somebody’s got to do it. Might as well be us.”

  “You got that right,” Grant said, eagerly eyeing the massive lifeboats. “I haven’t ridden a rollercoaster in months.”

  Locke turned to the other man and held out his hand. “And you’re Markson?”