“Those bastards,” Matt muttered.
“Who?”
“It could be the Syno-Pet GK people. They operate up in Nigeria and off the Ivory Coast. They came down here after we started and tried to cozy up to the Lubinda Ministry, but they didn’t get anywhere, Sam. I hate to think a rival company would do this.”
“When was Hobe last aboard?”
“Two days ago, I think. To my knowledge, anyway. He wasn’t here long. Stayed out here an hour, came back, didn‘t say anything was wrong.”
“Did he look worried?”
“Well, maybe, but then, he’s always worried. Between the sabotage on the job, the Apgaks, and his wife Betty—"’
“Was he carrying anything?”
“No. His hands were empty.”
“You talked to him then?”
“No. Betty was on the dock with the Mercedes, and I didn’t want to go near her. She—” Matt looked at Kitty. “I didn’t want another argument with her, is all.”
There was nothing more to be learned from the shambles of the office and the laboratory. “Did you have any labor troubles?” Durell asked.
“Absolutely not. Everybody here, from the roustabouts to the derrickmen, were on time and a half, with a bonus for overseas work. Nobody had a squawk, not the lab men or the roughnecks. Everybody was happy with their day work rates, even though there isn’t much in Lubinda to spend money on.”
Durell paused. He could hear the muffled clanging of a loose block that dangled from the starboard Clyde pintle crane. “Let’s look for Brady,” he said.
“But nobody is aboard," Kitty objected.
“I think Brady is.”
In Durell’s business, hunches were usually to be ignored as unfounded on proper data and therefore dangerous. Yet he could not abandon his feeling that the rig, apparently deserted, held someone, someone he had not yet seen or heard. He climbed to the top deck, amid the carefully ordered jumble of mud-mixing tanks, oxygen blowers, cables, and tools, and stared toward the high spiderweb of the drilling tower. On either hand were the cargo derricks, the Clyde and the Caterpillar diesels, and the Link LS-108-B crawler. The smell of the sea and oil and hot metal from the equipment pervaded the air. The west wind was fresher, but the odor of fire still persisted, clinging to the hot metal. He watched the gulls circling the small operating cab at the topmost tower of the starboard derrick. They screamed raucously, hovering in the wind, their features delicately adjusting -to each change of pressure in the air stream—
Durell moved carefully across the hot, sun-scorched deck toward the port side of the platform, stepping among the tubes and piping in his way.
“What is it?” Kitty asked. Her face was pale.
“Brady,” he said.
“Where?”
“Just stand back a bit.”
He climbed up on the Clyde, swung past the main cab control of the cargo derrick, looked up into the blazing sun at the three arms of the crane. The block that swung loosely at the end or the long, arced cable came from the middle arm of the hoisting derrick, where the topmost cab was located. He could see the man’s head and arms now, dangling loosely from the tiny window. Kitty followed him on the circular platform.
“It can’t be Brady."
“We’ll see. Stay with Matt.”
He quickly climbed up the narrow ladder on the derrick arm. The metal was hot under his touch. The sea seemed to rotate around the horizon as he climbed higher and higher. It was a dizzying perch above the level of the ocean, but the climb did not take more than twenty seconds. The man in the cab had been shot in the face, and the blood had coagulated some time ago, leaving a mask of blackness over the upper part of his features. Durell reached up for the tiny cab door and pulled it open, clinging to the iron rungs with one hand. Looking down, he saw Matt and Kitty, their figures foreshortened, staring up at him, shading their eyes against the sun. They looked small on the deserted platform.
The dead man was Brady Cotton.
.It was a tight squeeze to get into the cabin because of the way he had crumpled forward when death came. The body had already stiffened and then relaxed. Durell struggled to get the arms and head free of the tiny window; he couldn’t do it, and gave up. Nothing would help Brady Cotton now. His main purpose was to discover whatever it was Brady had learned that had caused his death. There had to be a reason for it. All the men who had been left to maintain the rig had been taken off, somehow, alive or dead. But Brady had been abandoned in his lonely perch between sea and sky. Whoever had killed him either had not thought it worthwhile to remove him, or had deliberately left him for later discovery.
“Sam!”
He ignored Kitty’s call while he searched awkwardly through the dead man’s pockets. He found nothing except a crumpled pack of American cigarettes. The khaki slacks provided a wallet with some Lubindan currency, the names of several art agents, a folded cable from an importer in New York detailing his needs. He found no weapons on the dead man.
“Sam!”
He looked down at the girl’s small figure.
“Sam, is it Brady?”
"Yes."
“Is he—?”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“I want to see him!”
He shook his head. Brady had been dead two days. He had not been killed up here, but somewhere else aboard the rig, and then, perhaps only hours ago, the body had been taken from its hiding place and hauled up to the cab, perhaps as a symbolic gesture or warning to him, Durell. He saw the brief slumping of the girl’s shoulders. Whatever their marital differences, Durell thought, she had been a loyal wife. He gave up trying to free Brady’s body from the tiny cab and started down the narrow iron rungs on the derrick arm.
The rifle bullet missed him by a hair.
Then he understood why Brady’s body had been propped up here.
Chapter 9.
The slug ricocheted off the steel boom of the derrick with a sharp scream. The rifle made a sudden sharp report. Durell was not sure where the shot had come from; nor did he take the time to find out. He dropped down the ladder fast, heard Matt shouting and ta brief yelp from Kitty. Another shot cracked toward his silhouette against the hot, pale sky. Then came the stutter of automatic rifle fire. Durell let go of the rungs and dropped the last ten feet to the greasy rotary table, slipped, dropped again to the deck. His gun came into his hand.
Matt the Fork held his big Colt up.
“Did you see them?” Matt asked hoarsely.
“They’re at the drilling tower.”
“How many?”
“Two, maybe three. So we’re not alone here.” Durell looked at the girl. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I think so.” Her face was pale. “I guess I knew something had happened to Brady, somehow. Was it bad?”
“He never knew what hit him.”
“When did it happen?"
“A day or two ago. He was put up there so that anyone who climbed up for him would make a target."
Matt said slowly, “He wasn’t supposed to be aboard. There’s no record that he came out here. So he was hiding out, doing God knows what on the Lady, and somebody killed him?”
“What's more to the point right now,” Durell said grimly, “is who those men are and what they’re doing here.”
There were no more shots. The sun blazed down on them without mercy. The seagulls had gone away, sloping downwind. The sea sloshed and thudded against the platform piers below. Durell moved off to the right, taking Kitty with him behind the protection of the bulky cargo rig. The intricate pattern of guy wires, lock and tackle, and the main cabin of the Clyde offered them some protection. When he looked out beyond the bulky mechanism, he could see around the base of the drilling mast and the cluttered deck that formed the well pattern; but he spotted no movement except the faint swaying of a long cable from the head of the tower. A ladder led down the side of the Clyde to the main deck. On the other side of the rig platform was the other cargo derrick, the Link
crawler. it was oil to starboard over 130 feet away. The shots had come from the drilling mast, he was sure. There was a pattern of linear shadows there, cast by the girders of the tower that rose 150 feet into the hot sky. The smells of the sea mingled with the odor of sun-scorched steel and oil.
“Stay with Matt, Kitty.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll try to flush them out.”
“Sam, don’t be foolish—”
He spoke quietly. “We’re alone on the Lady with them. Whoever they are, they mean to get rid of us so they can finish the work they were left here to do.”
“What could that be?”
“Possibly sabotage to the Lady,” he suggested.
“But it’s so big—”
“There’s no way oil the Lady,” he said. “We’re stuck here with them. unless we can get hack to your boat. I doubt that they’ll just let us walk aft and climb down and go away.” He turned. “Matt?”
“Yo.”
“Come around the other side of the Clyde. Don’t expose yourself. When you’re ready, whistle. Then wait a few seconds. Check your watch. Make it ten seconds, and then we’ll both show ourselves and try to flush them out.”
Matt’s jaw muscles knotted. “Right. Ten seconds.”
The housing atop the well deck was two stories above the main deck. The heavy blocklike structures at each corner of the platform and on each side amidships, that held the tops of the cylinder platform legs. cut off Durell’s view from down here. The railing ended outboard with the flush steel sides of the platform corners. He would have to go inboard and around the housing and try to make it under the overhang of the well-pattern structure astern. The enemy was on top of that deck, at the base of the tower. There was a maze of winches and guy wires from the Clyde, a pattern of V-shaped girders supporting the well house. Above was a railed deck, then the well deck itself. Two square windows were positioned on this corner of the well housing, above the railed deck. If he could cross the area between the stiff-legged derrick and get under the central overhang, he would reach shelter. Durell calculated his chances and saw Matt move away from around the Clyde; he whistled softly, looked at his watch.
Ten seconds crawled by.
Then he started his run.
Immediately, the rattle of two automatic rifles came at him. The bullets whined and whistled overhead, screamed off the decking, hit the big power winch aft of the Clyde. Durell ducked, changed direction, flung himself forward into hot shadows. The shots had come from the windows above. The enemy had gone down from the tower platform into the housing. He still could not see them. He still did not know how many they were.
“Matt?”
“Yo.”
“Come on.”
“I can’t. I’m hit.”
“Where?”
“My leg: Son of a bitch.”
“Bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stay where you are. Cover me. I’m going in.”
Durell did not wait for an answer. He moved sideways toward an open bulkhead door, saw Matt now, lying in the sun, his body cramped, one arm holding one thigh drawn up against his stomach. His eyes looked blind. There was no time to help him. Durell ducked into the oval doorway, came up against a steel ladder in the shadowed gloom, grabbed the rungs, and pulled himself up fast, taking the steel treads two and three at a time.
The black figure of a man suddenly appeared above him.
Durell held his gun in both hands, fired three times, carefully, saw the man lurch backward; he dropped the rifle toward him, then followed, tumbling loosely in the familiar, disjointed pattern of death. He squeezed aside and lot the black man tumble to the foot of the narrow stairs, and caught up the rifle. It was a Russian-made AK-47. The clip was almost full. He was familiar enough with it.
There was shouting now, echoes in the well housing, a gabble of dialect he did not understand. Two more of them. Maybe three. He went on up the steel stairway, slowly now, making no sound, although they knew he was in here. The interior gloom, after the blinding sunlight on the platform deck, made his vision hazy for a moment. He paused two treads below the top of the stairs and thrust his S&W revolver into his belt, deciding to rely on the automatic rifle. Feet scuffed on a steel deck plate, out of sight and down the narrow corridor to his right. There was whispering again in the unknown dialect.
Then silence.
Below, in the open bulkhead door, the dead man sprawled in a slant of sunlight. He wore only a dark loincloth and a dirty red rag around his long head. Durell‘s slugs had hit him three times in the chest. Blood welled up thickly across the ebony skin and dripped to the rusting steel deck.
Naked feet slapped and slid on the plates around the corner. Durell moved his finger on the trigger of the AK-47 and went up fast, turned right, immediately fired at his target. There was only one man here, facing him, a tall thin figure, again in only a loincloth and a red headband. The clamor and blast of Durell’s gun chopped through the hot silence of the housing. The other’s gun cluttered in reply. But Durell’s surprise appearance gave him a split-second advantage. The tall, skinny figure jumped, jerked, was flung backward around the far corner of the corridor. For just an instant, Durell glimpsed the strange, drug-crazed eyes of the Apgak fighter. The man must have been hit three or four times by Durell’s burst; yet he had the strength and destructive drive to pull away out of sight.
He was careful approaching the corner. As on the rest of the rig, there was no sign here of the maintenance crew. He did not relish going around the corner to face a Lubindan hopped up to the eyebrows. He took a deep breath, then went around in a low flat dive to the floor, the automatic thrust before him in both hands, his finger tightening on the trigger. The clamor of his shoes spraying down the corridor echoed in emptiness. The man was gone. There was only a trail of wet blood on the deckplates to show which way his quarry had vanished.
Then he heard Kitty scream.
He straightened, then went up more steel ladders to the base of the drilling tower. The sunlight scorched his eyes. Blood spattered the deck, leading through and around a clutter of tools and equipment to a point above the windows from which the first shots had come. Something moved down there, close to the derrick, in the sharp shadows cast by the sun. A ladder forward led him down again. He could not see Matt or the girl. All at once he felt as if he had been drawn off balance, that he himself was not the true target. if Brady Cotton had been deliberately murdered, then perhaps the next victim was to be his young wife. He did not know why he felt this presentiment so strongly, but he acted on it at once.
He came around the corner toward the rotary table of the derrick and saw Matt, leaning against the housing. He still hugged his wounded leg, but a long, emaciated shadow stood over him, holding a knife splintering light from its broad. sharp blade. It was the man Durell had wounded. Durell yelled, jumped across the intervening distance, and fired twice. Matt had already turned to see his attacker. The Apgak jerked and tumbled forward as Durell's bullets found their final mark. The man fell across Marts wounded leg and Matt yelled with the pain.
Again, Kitty screamed.
Durell paused only to be sure that Matt was all right and that the Apgak was truly dead this time. He was not sure what drug the man had taken, but it had given him an enormous, unnatural impetus to finish his mission even though he had been bleeding to death. Durell came to the top of the cab and crossed it, crouching, to the other side where he could see the deck where he had left Kitty.
The third man had cornered her against the railing between the platform leg housing and the derrick’s rotary table. Her hair had come loose and fell in a long pale screen across her face. She had her knife in her hand, but it looked useless against the tall, muscular figure of the third Apgak who moved toward her.
Durell did not wait. He jumped for the man from the top of the derrick cab, reversing his rifle and using the butt to smash into the man’s black. The Apgak stumbled and doubled
over the rail, twisted, came up with teeth glearn.i.ng in an unnatural smile like a death rictus. Durell hit him again, drove him backward, baffled by the man’s unnatural, drugged strength. Kitty slid sideways, out of the way. The man smashed alt him with his gun, missed, then hurled it at the girl. It missed Kitty‘s head by an inch.
The Apgak scarcely looked at Durell. His sole aim was to get at Kitty. Durell yelled at her to get back, but she only flattened against the cab’s side, her arms spread wide. Her face was very pale. The Apgak swung an arm like a flail at him. He felt the impact like a logging pole and staggered against the forward rail. The sea looked far below. His side felt numb from the blow. He straightened, hit the man in the throat, hit him again, heard the Apgak’s breath hiss like steam. The eyes were wild and unnatural. Reluctantly, the man turned his attention to Durell, his tall figure moving forward, the mouth gleaming, the teeth very white in the sunlight against the bony, skeletal face.
Durell drew in a deep breath, aware of a sluggish response in him from the blow in his side.
“Sam, he has luitha in him,” Kitty called. “It’s a drug—”
"Stay back," he said, not looking at her.
“What about Matt?”
“Hurt. He’ll be all right, if we—”
The Apgak jumped suddenly sideways, not at him, but at the girl. Her voice had pulled his attention back to her. Kitty yelped and Durell landed on the man’s sweat-slick back. They went down, rolling toward the rail. The man’s body was slippery with oil, the muscles ropy and strong, sliding smoothly under the slick skin. For an instant, when they looked into each other’s eyes, Durell saw nothing but madness in the others red-black depths. He felt a sharp stab in the back of his neck; the man’s fingernails ripped down his side like claws. He thought he heard the distant beating of wings in the air, as if the pressure waves of heat had suddenly been translated into repetitive sound. He slammed a forearm across the Apgak’s throat and threw his weight forward on it. The man and his arm slipped in the sweat gathered in the man’s squirmed and heaved under him. His breath hissed. He drew a leg up to knee Durell, and a thin, incoherent babble came from his open mouth. Durell applied more pressure. A shadow flickered over him, and he heard an intense roaring. The body under him heaved convulsively and his arm slipped in the sweat gathered in the man’s throat. All in an instant, the Apgak got away, scrambling to his feet, lunging for the girl, who still had not moved to safety. The tall black man got his hands on her and hurled her like a broken doll against the side of the derrick cab. Her head hit the steel and she slid, spread-legged, to the deck. The Apgak gave a triumphant yell and jumped for her.
Assignment Black Gold Page 8