The Rig 3: Eye of the Hurricane

by Steve Rollins

  Dave smiled. “Clever chap he was.” He looked at both Wes and Sheila. “So is that what we’re going to do now?”

  Sheila shook her head. “We can't. Those guys would know we’d try that. No way they’ll let us pass.”

  “Then how else do we get out of here?” Dave said.

  “Could check whether one of the choppers is still there?” Sheila answered.

  “There won't be,” Wes brought in. “If there were any, they will be fucked because of the fire.”

  “So what do we do?” Dave sighed.

  “I don't know.” Wes sighed as well. He slumped on the sofa.

  Sheila stepped forward, her hands on her hips. “Come on guys. There must be something we can do.” She looked from one to the other. “Maybe there are parachutes or something; we jump off the top and land in the water further away.”

  Dave shook his head immediately.

  “Joy couldn’t do that in the state she's in.” He bit his lip and stared straight ahead for a moment. “Only thing I can think of is taking those guys out.”

  Wes nodded. “If we can take them out, we can get to the sub.”

  “So we're going to fight them?” Sheila asked, somewhat incredulously.

  “I suppose so. We do have weapons, and we know this place a lot better than they do.” Wes smiled. “Reckon we can take them on if we're clever.”

  Chapter Eight

  Senator Jacobs had rented an office in the center of San Diego, close to where he had held his meeting. It was not much, not like his own office anyway, but it would do. It was that office which Elly entered. She looked around at the expensive furnishings that had been quickly brought in. It was apparent it had been a rush job, possibly done that very morning. She wanted to reach out a hand and touch the wall to check whether the paint was still wet, but just as that urge came over her, Senator Jacobs entered the room.

  “Good day, Miss Boukhari.” He greeted her in a smooth voice.

  Elly suppressed a shudder. The man was insufferable.

  “Good day, Senator. I loved your speech just now.” She managed to greet him just as unctuously as he had greeted her.

  “I've never seen you at any press conference or event before. You're new?”

  “I only just got a chance from my editor to take up an assignment.” She smiled at him. “I was asked to report on everything concerning ‘The City’. And, as you are the person who's going to solve it, I just had to be here.” She sounded completely sincere and she almost hated herself for being able to lie and cheat on the same level as that douche bag.

  “Well, you are doing a great job.” Jacobs gestured to a sofa by the window of the office. “Would you care to sit down?”

  Elly strutted over to the sofa and sat down, crossing her legs, showing off her long, smooth, tanned appendages. Jacobs walked over to a small fridge behind the desk. “Would you like some champagne?”

  Elly wanted to rant at him, but she controlled herself. “Don't you think that's slightly inappropriate, given all that's happening?”

  Jacobs looked like he had been slapped in the face as he held the bottle in one hand, his other frozen above some champagne flutes. It seemed to Elly that he was struggling with the thought of whether he had just been pied or whether he had just made a mistake. It seemed he decided she must have thought he made a mistake. “Actually, not at all. There are some glorious things happening here, too.”

  “Oh?” Elly was surprised to hear the man say that to a member of the press. “How so?”

  Jacobs grabbed the flutes and brought the champagne over to her. Elly noticed it was a bottle of Krug and not Californian sparkling wine. The man had very expensive taste.

  “There are a few things going exactly according to plan. And ‘The City’ was a failure anyway. Completely failed to be ‘The City’ of the future it was meant to be. They needed to strike oil to keep themselves afloat. That's not the thing they had been campaigning for.”

  He popped the cork and poured two glasses of the bubbly liquid.

  “I thought it was a Muslim terrorist?” Elly pretended to be shocked by what seemed to be a revelation of epic proportions.

  Jacobs grinned as he sat down next to her, his arm over the back of the sofa. He pressed a glass into her hand.

  “Don't be so naive. Of course, there's more to it than that. No crazy extremist could have made it through the security screening without help.”

  “Help from whom?”

  Jacobs shrugged.

  “Authorities, like FBI. The people responsible for the thing itself. Everyone; from the CEO, Stryker, all the way to the man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the rig.”

  Elly's jaw dropped.

  “You mean the President is in on this?”

  She had never known she could sound like such a ditz.

  Jacobs laughed.

  “No, I don't mean that. Although I would be surprised if he didn’t know what was actually going on.”

  Elly jumped to her feet. “I've got to report on this!”

  Jacobs smiled. “Nobody would believe it, honey. And I doubt your editor would let you put that out. He'd be too worried about losing the support of the investors and all those people paying for commercials.”

  Elly shook her head.

  “I have to try...” She made to walk away, but then stepped back. She came to stand right in front of the senator and bent down to run a slender finger along the senator's temple. “But maybe you could buy me dinner tonight?”

  The senator involuntarily licked his lips.

  “Of course. I'll let you know when and where?”

  “Of course.”

  Elly walked away and looked back at him from the door. She winked and blew a kiss. Then she walked out.

  Back at the car she shuddered and made as though she were brushing herself off.

  “Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!” she exclaimed to the cameraman who was waiting for her. “What a slimy, disgusting piece of shit. How I managed to ask him to take me to dinner, I will never know!”

  The cameraman grinned.

  “Went well then?”

  She sat down in the passenger’s seat and shuddered again.

  “Yeah. Seems Portis himself is involved in this, so are Stryker and the FBI. At least, that's what Jacobs flubbed just now.”

  “That's interesting... very, very interesting...”

  Chapter Nine

  Of course, the FEMA man filed a complaint with the commander of the United States Coast Guard station on San Clemente. Commander Lovell himself was the subject of one complaint, but it was Lieutenant James who bore the brunt of the man's anger. There was good reason for it; Lieutenant James had hit him hard in the face and broken his nose. Even so, apart from the punch, Lieutenant James had not done much to aggravate the man and it was really Commander Lovell that he was angry at. But Commander Dan Lovell had not technically done anything worthy of complaint. So the complaint lodged against him was for him being uncooperative.

  Commander Lovell was not surprised to hear Lieutenant James was suspended forthwith, pending an official investigation. Lovell was in a different boat. He was one of the few commanders there, so it was virtually impossible to relieve him of his duties. But losing Lieutenant James would be a pain if he had to head to sea again. And that was what he wanted to do. He wanted to head out to sea, to figure out whether there was any way to help those people who might still be alive aboard that rig.

  But that did not seem to be in the cards right now. It did not seem to be in the cards at all. There was a direct order at the station from the Secretary for Homeland Security, Charles Palermo. No cutters to head out, especially not to inspect or patrol ‘The City’. FBI helicopters would be sent out to keep any nosey buggers away. The Coast Guard was being completely cut out of the equation now.

  It was obvious that did not only sit badly with Commander Lovell; the station commander was clearly displeased with it, too. It was their work to patrol the water there, to help people
there, and to make sure the laws were upheld. But FEMA and DHS had just taken away their purpose and their authority.

  The note, then, did not come as a surprise. The note in which Commander Lovell was ordered to sea again, this time without the FEMA man marshalling him. The station commander would take all the blame and Commander Dan Lovell would be free of prosecution when DHS found out about the deliberate circumvention of their orders.

  They could not sail until the storm had passed, but Commander Lovell was determined to be out again as soon as they could. He kept a close eye on the stormy clouds as he let his men take charge of the refueling of his cutter. She got a new load of diesel and her stores were replenished, allowing her to stay at sea for a longer period of time. Maybe he needed to stay out at sea for a month more, until the commotion had died down.

  He used the VHS phone to call his niece again. He told Elly about FEMA taking over and about the orders from the Secretary of Homeland Security. He somehow fell into a rant about the name, Homeland Security. The United States of America had never been called ‘the Homeland’ before 9/11, he said. He had disliked the name from the get-go. It sounded too pompous, too imperial.

  He caught himself then and apologized to Elly for the rant. He asked her whether she had found out anything and was surprised to hear about Senator Jacobs and his involvement. He was not surprised to hear about William Portis being directly involved, though. It only made sense. He cautioned her about the dinner with Jacobs. He knew the man was a terribly lecherous dickhead. He mentioned one of the few female Coast Guard Commanders who had appeared before a Congressional committee the previous year and Jacobs had been all over her. Now, the Commander himself had also been all over her, but that was beside the point. What was important was his niece, and Elly Boukhari needed to make sure the dirty bastard could not get his hands on her.

  Then, right as he hung up the phone, the wind rose. It picked up suddenly and steadily rose to storm force. Moments later the heavens opened, pouring down water by the boatload. Within a minute, the deck of the USCGC Hurricane looked as though it was a swimming pool. The painted metal could not even be seen underneath the sheer sheet of rainwater. It fell faster than it was drained from the surface. The roads in San Clemente also looked as though they were made of water. The Commander could not see more than twenty yards ahead of them. And ‘The City’, which had been a burning beacon in the distance, was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Ten

  As the rain suddenly began to lash against the window of the bedroom of ‘The City’ suite, Joy slept on. She dreamed. Anyone looking at her would think her dreams were haunted, judging by the soft screams and small jerks. There would have been good reason for violent and disturbed dreams too, but she did not have them. Her dreams were of something else entirely.

  She was back in Samoa; Pago Pago, where she had first met Wes. They had ended up there working on the same research project to get their PhD. But this time she was not there with Wes. Another man was diving with her among the coral reefs of the Samoan archipelago. The man had long hair and tattoos. When she rose from the water next to him and they both took their masks off to join their lips in a kiss, she knew who it was. It was Dave.

  It was Dave's arms she felt around her and which made her squirm as she lay there in the bed.

  Then suddenly she woke up. There was a metallic groan that wrenched through the noise of the wind and rain. Moments later, something crashed into the window, shaking her awake altogether. One of the lifts from the helicopter deck had just come crashing down. Its cables seemed to have remained attached to something as the body was pulled from its bolts. It slammed into the window with all its weight. Only the reinforced glass of the windows had prevented it from breaking through and falling right into the bed that Joy lay in.

  She shot up and bolted into the sitting room, only noticing her dizziness again when she stood in front of the three others. They, too, had been shaken by the crash and Dave had jumped to his feet to check the bedroom.

  “You alright?” Dave asked her worriedly.

  Joy nodded and sat down. Her head was throbbing again, but it was bearable now. She looked at the three faces. “I assume you guys came up with a plan?”

  Wes nodded. “We need to take care of those FBI guys and then we'll take the sub out of here. It should be good for a trip to the mainland.”

  Sheila laid a hand on Wes' wrist and squeezed. She knew the plan, but it still scared her. Joy just nodded slowly. She could not nod more vigorously because of her head, but she could see no other way out of the predicament they found themselves in.

  “Anyone else still alive in ‘The City’?” she asked.

  Dave and Wes both shrugged. “There are people in the hospital and the staff are still finding people.” Dave answered her. “But I tried getting through to some people on their phones or intercoms and nobody answered. I doubt there's anyone who will be any use in taking care of those bastards.”

  Joy nodded again and closed her eyes. “I'm not sure how much use I will be, but I'm helping.”

  ***

  Garcia was the first to wake up. His head was throbbing. He felt the back of his head gingerly. No blood, but there was a nasty bruise where Joy had hit him with the pipe. He blinked and carefully found his feet. He balanced himself by holding on to the wall and blinked again. His vision was troubled, but cleared up with every second he stood on his feet. Moments later, he managed to take a step and he took his hand off the wall. He checked the holster at his waist and then the one at his ankle. He looked around, but his guns were gone.

  He walked into the dock and squatted down by his colleague. He placed his fingers on his neck and checked his pulse. It was normal. Garcia sat himself down on one of the crates and rested his head in his hands. Smith would be alright, but this mission was turning into a nightmare. The only thing they had had to do was make sure their patsy, Akhmed Hussain Abbasi, was cleared away so he could not betray them. All that they had been intended for was to be a safety net, but now the safety net had to be used. Even worse, the safety net had itself made things worse. He knew Smith had blabbed, and he knew they would now have to deal with those three people and the person who had knocked him down.

  Smith groaned, but did not wake up. Garcia was glad for it. He did not want to deal with his colleague right now. His withdrawal symptoms had been bad, but since they had stopped – for reasons Garcia could guess only too well – he had gotten worse. He was out of control, and maybe he should end Smith here. It would not be like anyone would ask any questions of him, given the monumental failure of the mission. But he shook his head and dismissed it. He would not shy away from the actions required if it came to it, but for now he would put up with Smith. He could use his help hunting down the small group of souls they needed to eliminate. And if there was any killing to be done, he would prefer to leave that to Smith.

  He figured the four who had been here would have fled from the area and taken refuge somewhere in ‘The City’. He tried to recall the maps of the rig, trying to find a place they would hide out. There was no place that sprang to mind. He figured for a moment on them going back to their own apartments. He would have to find out who they were and where they resided. Then he threw out the idea. They would not be that stupid. Smith groaned again, waking Garcia from his thoughts.

  Chapter Eleven

  Elly was again dressed to the nines. She felt dirty doing it, but she needed to wheedle as much information from Senator Jacobs as she could. She had no idea how else she could find out the information she needed. Akhmed's life was obviously in danger, and his good name even more so. She had promised Helen she would find out what was happening, and she was determined to keep that promise.

  The senator had sent a limousine to pick her up from her place and she got into it with some sense of trepidation. She had researched Senator Adam Jacobs earlier and found some news files that did not particularly put her at ease. For one, the man seemed to have been charged with ra
pe and sexual assault several times. How the hell had he kept his office for so long? He always got off, of course, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. And Elly knew she was pretty much inviting his attentions. There was no one to help her out if things went tits-up.

  Some of the stories had been pretty awful and she could barely believe them to be true. She figured some of it might have been his political enemies trying to destroy him by urging the victims to make it into something worse than it was, but really, there was no need if the stories even had a core of truth.

  One of the victims had testified in court that Jacobs had abducted her and locked her in his apartment before letting his butler tie her up and rape her repeatedly. Another victim had been a former secretary whom he had assaulted and raped as she worked overtime in the office. There were another five charges laid against him from secretaries, members of the press and several girls in nightclubs.

  Elly tugged at the hem of her very short dress, trying to hide the top of her stockings. The dress barely covered them when she stood, but they were very much on show as she sat down. She had worn her best lingerie and her breasts were popping out of her dress. She did not usually wear clothes like this unless to seduce a boyfriend in the bedroom, and never outside of the house, but current priorities must prevail. She needed to get through to Jacobs.

  ***

  Senator Jacobs was waiting at one of San Diego’s top restaurants. He felt good being back in this city. And the prospect of spending time with the lovely press chick he had seen was exciting him more than anything had in a long time. He had not even touched a drop of drink since the afternoon in anticipation. He knew it would be very hard for him to put the moves on her if he got drunk. And if he could not seduce her, he would have to resort to other means to slake his lusts. Means he preferred not to use, given the problems it had gotten him into in the past.