The Rig 3: Eye of the Hurricane

by Steve Rollins

  Chapter One

  When Commander Lovell came back from the head onto the bridge of the USCGC Hurricane, he saw the FEMA officer give an order to his first mate. He growled at that. The FEMA man had no authority on board his cutter. Officially, the United States Coast Guard had to listen to FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, but the orders had been clear. Let this man on board as an advisor.

  The man had refused to identify himself, only flashing a FEMA badge, but Charles Palermo, the Secretary of Homeland Security had ordered him over the HAM radio to let him come aboard. Lovell had refused, and rightly so, due to standing orders, but he had been told to let this man advise him. Now, here the man was, ordering his officers around.

  “Lieutenant James! Why have we altered course?”

  Lieutenant James jumped to attention and pointed at the FEMA guy.

  “He ordered me to, sir,” he stammered.

  James was a young lad, only just out of the Navy Academy and then he opted to join the United States Coast Guard. He was stunned by the violent reaction of his commander. It was completely out of sorts. But then, Lieutenant James had not heard the FEMA officer's statement that he did not intend for anyone to survive the situation at ‘The City’.

  “You will steer us back where we were and you will keep us posted there. Understood?”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The young man looked shocked, but still, he followed the orders.

  “Sir?” another man asked. “Sir, we just got a notice from the weather station on San Clemente. There's a storm coming.”

  “Is there?”

  “Yes, sir. Seems it is a tropical storm that will make Super Storm Sandy pale in comparison.”

  “You mean Hurricane Sandy?”

  “Sir, I think it was classified as a Super Storm.”

  “Sure....” Commander Lovell shook his head, but he made his way to the starboard side of his cutter. He looked outside and far in the distance; the skies did look ominous. He swore. It did look like a massive storm was on its way.

  ***

  William Portis went to bed a happy man. He had heard the Mexican weather report announcing the storm caused by a new El Niño complex. The American media were still focusing on the terrorist attack, but the Mexicans were not in the least bothered with that. The news they brought to his screen was a lot more to his liking than anything else he had heard all day. That storm was exactly what he needed.

  ‘The City’ was his creation, but it had been a big failure. When the FBI approached him about an event there, he had been only too happy to agree. The insurance would cover his losses and his face would be saved. The man who had made billions developing software and used his billions to improve the world could not be seen to fail.

  But the bomb that had gone off had not taken the place out completely. It had caused an oil spill and a fire, which would eventually make things right, but there was a chance people would escape from ‘The City’. This storm made any rescue mission impossible. Nobody would survive to tell anyone what had really happened.

  His wife was already in bed, wearing her big flannel pajamas and a night mask. He growled. He was in a good mood and wanted her now, but he did not dare upset her. She was the guiding light behind most of his projects and he loved her.

  Instead of waking her up, he turned the television back on. He looked up the CBS San Diego channel again and watched the cute multicultural reporter make a fuss. He undid the button of his trousers and let himself go, watching the woman. She really was a good find, he thought.

  ***

  Elly Boukhari had given up her reporting on the situation of the pregnant girlfriend since her Uncle Dan had called. He had told her there might be more to the whole situation than met the eye and that FEMA did not intend to mount any rescues.

  Information began flooding in about the man who had set off the bomb in ‘The City’. CNN reported on the manifesto he had published, but she was not interested anymore. Neither was she interested in the picture she had just received. The picture that showed Akhmed Hussain Abbasi with a woman in a burka. There was more going on, and she was going to find out what.

  The first person she wanted to talk to was Helen, the girlfriend. And Helen would not come out to talk to the cameras after she had previously accosted her outside her door. She needed to find a way to persuade the woman to talk to her. How, she did not know. Yet.

  ***

  Helen looked over the last posts on Akhmed's Facebook page. She shook her head. She did not believe her boyfriend could have ever posted those things. The note that contained his “manifesto” made no sense. And the privacy setting on it was public, too. He never did that.

  The manifesto spoke of how the Americans raped the Middle East and North Africa, and how the Faithful should strike back against the Infidels. It made no sense. Akhmed was an agnostic. He had not even been raised as a Muslim. His father was a Muslim, his mother a Coptic Christian. With the tensions between those two faiths in their native Egypt, they had decided not to raise their child with religion. He could figure it out for himself when he was older.

  Instinctively, she felt her stomach. When she had told him she was pregnant over the phone, he had been so happy. But even then, his happiness was marred by the possibility of him being framed for the bombing on ‘The City’. He had been so scared.

  He said they had been after him, trying to kill him and then make it look like he had committed suicide. And she believed him when he had said it.

  She looked out the window and frowned. It was very distant, but it seemed there was a storm drifting in. Her father had been a fisherman, so she had been raised with a sort of sixth sense ability to predict a storm. There was definitely a storm coming. A big one. And fear struck her heart. If that storm hit the already damaged and burning rig, Akhmed would never come back to her. He would never be able to see their baby, nor would the baby ever know his or her father.

  Chapter Two

  Dave heard a noise behind him. Someone was coming down. He remembered there was another agent at work there and he felt panic grip him.

  “Goodbye....” Dave heard Smith say. He was behind the man. He saw the shoulder rise as he pointed the gun at Wes' heart. Acting on impulse, he threw himself forward. He slammed his shoulder into Smith's thighs, wrapped his arms around his legs and brought him down. The gun went off, but the bullet flew well wide. Dave was on his feet and hit Smith in the head. He took the gun and looked over at a stunned Wes and Sheila. “We need to go. The other one is coming.”

  Sheila kneeled down next to Akhmed and looked at the wound in his chest. She knew it was fatal. The blood flowed freely from the wound and with each second she watched him, his breathing grew more shallow. She took his hand in hers and held it. His fingers tensed around her hand. Finally, his breath stopped and his grip grew limp. He was gone.

  Wes grabbed her shoulder.

  “We have to go.”

  Dave checked Smith's motionless body for ammunition and other weapons. He found two more magazines, a small Remington in an ankle holster and a penknife. He put it all in his pocket and went over to his colleagues and the dead man.

  “Poor bastard.”

  “Yeah,” Wes said. “He did not deserve this.”

  Dave looked around as he heard a noise in the staircase. Another suited man showed up there, gun drawn. When he saw Smith on the deck and Dave with gun in hand, he fired. The bang reverberated around the docks. Dave dropped to a knee and fired at the man. The man took cover behind the opened door. Dave rolled behind a crate. His military training was serving him well for a change.

  He motioned to Wes and Sheila that they should hurry up and take cover, so they hid behind one of the research submarines. A bullet struck the metal of the hull. Dave fired back at the man and rolled again. He fired from a crouched position and moved further on to find cover behind another crate. He now had a clearer shot at the other shooter and aimed carefully. But the man was not an idiot and he fired once above his hea
d, shooting out the lamp and covering himself in shade. He retreated a bit and moved over to the other side of the corridor. It took away any chance of a clean shot for Dave, who could only fire blindly back at the man in the suit. So he saved his fire, shooting only at the muzzle flashes of the gun.

  ***

  When Joy woke up, she was alone. It surprised her. She did not think Dave would have left her. At least not without a good reason. Slowly she sat up and felt at the back of her head. The wound there had been stitched, but there was a large swelling. She picked up the ice bag and laid it on the back of her head. She tried standing up and immediately fell back onto the bed. Her balance was completely gone. She saw stars dancing in front of her eyes. She closed them tightly and breathed deeply. Her head hurt like hell.

  After a few minutes, she tried to stand again. She did not know why, this place was as good a place to be as any, but something had woken her and she wanted to find out what. Her curious nature persisted even now in her unstable condition. She just had to find out what had woken her. Then she heard it. It was a vague noise which echoed through a room below her. It seemed to reverberate through the structure of ‘The City’ and drone on, only to stop for a while and then be repeated. There never used to be sounds like that on this rig, but everything was quiet now. There was only the distant roar of the oil fire and this noise.

  She managed to stand up and walked a few steps. Then she had to steady herself, leaning against the wall. The dancing stars came back and twinkled incessantly before her eyes. She squeezed them shut and held on to the door frame. After a few moments, she opened her eyes again. The stars disappeared. Joy walked another few steps and then she was on the stairs. She stepped down one step at the time, resting on each one. It was torture, and she felt herself getting dizzier and dizzier each time. But she managed to get down.

  Joy steadied herself against the bar. A look around left her feeling shocked. She knew what had happened, but she did not realize the carnage that had been caused by the blast. She tried to block it out as she made her way out of the bar. But in the Plaza she stopped and felt the tears well up. Friends and acquaintances lay here. Dead and gone because of some idiot’s outrageous and radical ideas.

  That sound was fainter here, but it was there. She blinked slowly, trying to snap out of it. It came from the staircase. Skirting the walls, holding on to them as she slowly made her way to the doors, she stepped over debris and sidestepped the bits she was not confident she could step over. Eventually, she passed through the doors and went down the corridor to the staircase. She sat down at the top of the stairs, squeezing her eyes shut again. She felt sick. The stars had come back, as had the dizziness. Then the noise came back, now with a pang and a shattering of glass. Suddenly she knew what she had been hearing.

  Joy willed herself to get up again and she slowly descended the stairs. At the bottom she looked ahead, trying to keep her vision as straight as possible. She knew she was swaying like a tree in the breeze, but she managed to get a clear view of what was ahead of her. She noticed the last lamp before the docks was out. And there was someone in the shadows there. She heard another bang. The noise drilled straight into her brain, the flash burned in her eyes. There was a voice in the docks. She could not understand what the voice said, but she knew the voice. It was Dave.

  A bullet struck the wall not far from her. She felt she had to do something suddenly. If Dave was down there, there was a chance Wes and Sheila might be there, too. And if this guy was shooting at them and someone was returning fire, they were in danger. She looked around and found a piece of piping that had come away and dropped to the floor. She reached over and picked it up. Slowly and as quietly as possible she went down the corridor. The man took another shot and then she heard a click. A bullet whizzed past from the docks and she suddenly realized what the click was as something dropped to the floor by the man's side. He was changing magazines. She took her chance and lifted the pipe. The man turned as he heard her, but the pipe already came hurtling down to his head.

  He slumped to the floor and Joy slumped beside him. “Dave?” she called, shutting her eyes again.

  “Joy?” Dave's surprised voice called back. “Joy, what are you doing here?”

  But Joy did not answer.

  Chapter Three

  Elly Boukhari looked up at the window. She had just sent a text message to Helen to say she believed Akhmed had not set off any bomb, that she did not believe he was an extremist terrorist and that she wanted to help her clear his name. There was nothing she could do now but wait. So she stood on the corner between Helen's apartment block and the coffee shop where she worked and did just that.

  Helen had turned her tablet and laptop off. She could not bear to hear more about the whole situation. She was constantly bombarded with tweets about how she was the whore of an extremist, how Akhmed was evil, how she was deranged. It was surreal, frightening and depressing. And that was how she felt. She felt frightened and depressed, but somehow the whole situation seemed quite surreal.

  Her phone beeped. A text message. Nobody sent her text messages anymore. It all went through social media and Whatsapp. She picked up her phone and opened the message.

  “I believe Akhmed's innocent. Got some information from a source about it. Want to talk to me without cameras? Elly Boukhari, CBS.”

  Helen thought about it. She really did not want to talk to this woman. It was Elly Boukhari who had first come to find her and who had accosted her as she walked out the door. She was the one who had instigated this. But if she indeed had information, it might be worth going to find out some more from her about it, especially if what she’d found out had made her believe in Akhmed's innocence.

  After about half an hour of turning the matter over in her head, she sent a text back with just three words. “Okay. Where? When?”

  Elly texted her back within moments. “ASAP. Lunchroom two blocks away. Use the basement door of your building and meet me there.” She left her crew behind and made her way to the indicated lunchroom as soon as she could. She ordered a sandwich and some sparkling water and sat down at a small corner table.

  Helen went out the basement. As she walked through the street behind the building, she saw the media vultures had effectively blocked the front and the back door of the building. She put on a pair of aviator sunglasses and made her way to the lunchroom. She went in and looked around. It did not take her long to spot Elly in the corner. She showed her she had seen her by nodding, but went to order a salad first. With lunch in hand, she walked over to Elly's table. “You do have some nerve,” she said.

  Elly rose to her feet and smiled at her apologetically. “I'm sorry about that. But I was acting on the information I had. Now, it seems something else entirely is at work here.”

  Helen frowned at her and sat down. She took a few mouthfuls of salad and then asked, “Why did you change your mind?”

  Elly looked at her sandwich. “I got a call from my uncle. He is the commander of the United States Coast Guard Cutter Hurricane. Right now, he's about five miles away from ‘The City’. He was nearby when the explosion took place.”

  “What's that got to do with Akhmed?” There was a hint of annoyance in Helen's voice.

  “Well, he phoned me when he was forced to accept an advisor from FEMA on board his vessel. The man said he wanted two FBI agents to get off the rig, but did not intend there to be any other survivors.”

  Helen just gazed at Elly. She had no idea what she was trying to say.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean the FBI has agents on board there and Homeland Security does not want anyone to get off that rig apart from those FBI agents. Why would they do that? Unless they have something to do with it.”

  Helen frowned and looked down into her salad.

  “Akhmed did not write that manifesto. He wasn't a religious guy at all. Agnostic, really.”

  Elly nodded.

  “Someone planted it. Someone wants to set him
up as the terrorist. Someone with the power to do that and to make sure there are no survivors.”

  Helen's jaw dropped. “You mean...”

  “I mean Akhmed is the fall guy in some sort of conspiracy by someone rather powerful. Either in government, or involved with ‘The City’ in some other way, or maybe both.”

  Chapter Four

  Dave rushed into the corridor and saw the two bodies slumped next to each other. He kicked the gun away from the unconscious shooter and kneeled down next to Joy. He stroked her hair and hugged her tightly to him.

  “Thank you. Thank you Joy...” he muttered to her. He kissed her forehead and she groaned.

  Sheila and Wes joined them. Sheila held Akhmed's gun and Wes had taken one of the harpoon guns from the submarine.

  “We need to take her back up. She needs to lie down.” Dave said. He motioned to Wes. “Help me out here.”

  He pulled Joy to her feet and supported her unconscious body, laying her arm over his shoulder. Wes immediately stepped up and did the same on her other side, so they could half drag, half carry her away. They took her up the stairs, with Sheila constantly looking behind, pointing the gun at the lifeless body of the shooter in the corridor.

  Sheila was a bundle of nerves now. She was jittery and each time Wes looked at her, he worried about her handling that gun. But for Sheila, it was the one thing that was giving her confidence at that moment. She was a Texas girl, born and raised a few miles outside Harlingen. The handling of guns was part of her DNA and it was the one thing she felt she could hold onto now. Her belief in the authorities had been shattered by the things that had happened that day. Wes had shown her how so much of what she had been led to believe had been a load of horse manure and she felt she could not even believe in herself right now. So she trusted in the presence and the ability of the Smith and Wesson that was in her hands.