Assignment Black Gold

by Edward S. Aarons

  Durell threw off the mooring lines and took in the foam fenders. Matt did not look at him as he sent the lifeboat out from under the concrete dock. The moment they were out in the open, the wind took the bow and shoved it to port, and Matt wrenched savagely at the small wheel. The boat lifted, fell, took water amidships. It surged forward uncertainly. Then the powerful engine and oversized prop bit into the seething current and they drove forward.

  From behind them came a long-drawn-out shout. Someone was running beyond the bulk of the rig tender and the WDT loco on the tracks close to the pier‘s edge.

  He thought he saw the man wave a -rifle at them. The gesture was an unmistakable command for them to turn back. Then the figure was blotted out by the blowing rain.

  The compass swung erratically for a few moments until Matt steadied the lifeboat on a course for the rig’s position, twenty miles out on the stormy sea. The lifeboat was fast, but even at its best, Durell estimated it would take them until noon to reach the Lady—if the storm, the wind, and the seas did not swamp them. The lifeboat could not sink—its built-in buoyancy tanks would keep them afloat through almost anything—but he was uncertain about the diesel engine or the fuel they might need.

  He watched Matt the Fork as he hunched over the wheel. The wind was at their backs, giving them a forward impetus, but there was always the danger of breaching when the seas astern lifted them and sent them forward with what seemed like the speed of an express train.

  But Matt showed no signs of incompetence.

  Kitty came out of the small cabin with international orange slickers for them. Matt started to shrug his off, his powerful back and shoulder muscles hunched in the effort to handle the wheel and keep them on course. Kitty shouted something to him that was snatched away by the wind, and he let her drape the slicker over his shoulder. He wore a khaki shirt and trousers, with sneakers on his feet. His injured leg seemed to be holding up well. But Durell was not sure how long that would be true.

  The land faded swiftly behind them.

  Betty Tallman did not come out of the little cabin. Kitty went below and soon returned with steaming mugs of hot tea. Matt shook his head, refusing it. The man seemed obsessed by only one idea—to get out to the drilling platform as fast as possible. To all of Durell’s questions, he simply shook his head, grinned harshly, and dashed the spray from his eyes and returned to the wheel.

  The boat smashed its way forward, moving steadily out to sea. Overhead, the cloud cover seemed to grow thicker and heavier. Everything was gray and pale white in the feeble sunlight. Now and then the rain lightened, but all they could see were the endless lines of sea swells, the caps flattened or torn away by the whistling wind.

  The time did not go slowly. Matt refused to talk, pointing to the seas and the scudding clouds, He touched his ear to indicate that the storm noise was too much. He would not give up the wheel when Durell volunteered to take over.

  Matt Forchette was built like a small bull, Durell thought, remembering a boyhood long ago in the Louisiana bayous. Matty’s strength even then had been a matter of awe. The leg wound did not hamper him. As long as he had an excuse for not talking through the storm noise, it was useless to question him.

  During a brief lull, Durell went below.

  The small cabin was fitted with leather-cushioned benches on each side, with big lockers fore and aft. Kitty sat on the starboard side, holding a fresh mug of tea in both hands. Betty Tallman sprawled on the opposite bench, feet braced against the pitch and crash of the lifeboat’s forward movement. The woman’s head lolled and her eyes were closed. Kitty looked up at Durell and shook her head.

  “She’s passed out.”

  “I don‘t think so,” Durell said.

  “Why did she insist on coming with us?”

  “Why did you?” Durell asked pointedly.

  Kitty did not answer. "

  The forward lockers were stuffed with life jackets and flares and neat coils of line, rockets, battery lanterns, first-aid kits. When he turned, he saw that Kitty had finished her tea and held the Magnum rifle on her lap. She was wiping it dry.

  The aft lockers contained packets of food, signal flags, small aerosol bombs of dye as distress signals to be tossed on the water if they became helpless.

  Durell turned back to Betty Tallman. He had to balance himself with his feet spread on the deck in response to the jolting lift and fall of the lifeboat as it smashed through the seas. The blond woman’s body rolled loosely and heavily on the padded bench.

  “Betty?”

  He slapped her face lightly.

  Kitty said, “What are you doing?”

  “I want some more answers.”

  “You won’t get them from her the way she is.”

  He slapped Betty Tallman’s face again. The woman moaned and mumbled something. He struck her again, still lightly, and once more, harder. She opened her eyes.

  “Huh?”

  “Betty, are you sure Hobe went out to the rig?”

  “Sure. Sure I’m sure.”

  “Did he mention his private drilling log?"

  “Don’t know what—you’re talkin’ about."

  “You know very well what I’m saying. You’re not as drunk as you pretend to be. Tell me exactly what Hobe said and did, after you told him about Madragata and yourself.”

  The blond woman grinned foolishly. Kitty had helped wash the streaked makeup from her face, and now she looked older, worn and exhausted. She said, “A cigarette?”

  There were cartons of them in the forward locker. Durell shook out a pack. When he turned, Betty was sitting up on the bench and leaning forward, holding herself as if she had a stomach ache.

  “Oh, Lord, it’s coming back to me now.”

  “The things Hobe said?”

  “The things I told him. About me and Madragata. I was really crazy. I gave him all the details. Poor Hobe.”

  Durell lit a cigarette and handed it to her. The woman dragged in the smoke hungrily and pushed her straggly hair back from her forehead with an oddly delicate gesture.

  “I want to know about Hobe’s private logs.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But Hobe said he was going to kill Madragata if he—if Madragata touched the Lady.”

  “What did that mean?”

  “Madragata is on the rig.”

  Durell’s face was without expression. “He’s with the .guerrillas, attacking the town.”

  “Uh-uh. He wants the rig.”

  “What can he do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Hobe means to stop him, whatever it is. Hobe said the rig was the whole thing, you know? It all depends on the rig. But he was going to fix Madragata for doing—because of me and Madragata. He said he didn’t care if he was poor for all the rest of his life, or in jail, or whatever. It was crazy. He talked like he was out of his head.”

  The cigarette fell from the woman’s loose fingers. Durell picked it up from the desk and crushed it out. Kitty had finished wiping down the Magnum and new was checking out the Remington. She seemed to be quite familiar with both rifles.

  Betty fell backward on her bench and closed her eyes again. A wet streak of spittle oozed from a corner of her slack mouth.

  The respite from the storm did not last long. A darkness grew, swelling from astern, and quickly overtook them with a howl of roaring wind and a blast of salt spray and rain that drenched the lifeboat and blotted out everything within twenty feet of the vessel. The stern lifted high and the lifeboat slewed down a long, seething slope of water and buried its decked bow under the next sea. The boat trembled with the shock, seemed to shake itself, and then the bow lifted with the pressure from the flotation cells in her hull. They lifted slowly, streaming water. Then it was as if something hit them amidships and spun them halfway around. A giant comber hung over them like a white, churning cliff. When the water came down, it was with the force of tons of pressure, a crash and a roar that made the boat shudder. Matt lost his grip on the wheel and wen
t sliding aft. Durell grabbed for him, caught a flailing arm, hauled back to catch the spinning wheel with his other hand. It was difficult to hang on to both.

  Matty’s forehead looked bloody where he had banged his face against something. His eyes were glazed. But his grip on Durell’s hand did not slacken.

  The lifeboat slewed and climbed up another sea. The wind wanted to take her and broach her broadside. Durell spun the wheel and kept them moving forward. He thought he heard the diesel engine falter, but then its thudding rhythm became normal again.

  Matty pulled himself upright, clung to the gunwale, and then worked his way back to the tiny binnacle.

  “Thanks, Sam."

  “You pulled me out of the bayous once or twice,” Durell reminded him.

  “That was long ago.”

  “How is your head?”

  Matt touched the long bloody welt above his bushy brows. He seemed surprised to see the blood on his fingers. He watched it wash quickly away in the drenching rain.

  “I'm all right. Just was took all at once, is all. Give me the wheel again.”

  “I can handle it,” Durell said.

  “We ought to see the Lady’s lights soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t think it will be better there than right here.”

  Durell said, “It’s a big platform. Safe enough.”

  “It ain’t safe,” Matty said. “Not with Hobe aboard. He’s going to blow it up.”

  “Blow it up?”

  Matty dabbed at the bloody cut on his forehead. His square face was grim. “That’s what he came out here for. When I figured it out, l knew I had to stop him. So I skipped out of the hospital and came here. Too rough to fly. No chopper available, anyway.”

  “How did you hear about Hobe while you were in the hospital?”

  “Colonel Lepaka told me. He visited me, after he saw you. Talked about Betty. Still wanted to know about me and Betty. Nothing to it, I told him.”

  “But what about Betty and Madragata?”

  Matty looked at him with surprised eyes, but his mouth tightened and he shook his head. He did not answer.

  Durell said, “I‘ll take the wheel. You’d better get yourself a drink down below.”

  Chapter 19.

  It was not luck or navigation. It was instinct, an oilman’s keen sense of smell for oil. It was not yet noon before the lights and loom of the giant ocean platform appeared out of the rain and breaking seas ahead of the boat.

  A long string of red, yellow, and green lights flickered and flashed from the drilling tower, showing through the gray scud of rain and spray. The lights had not been on before, when they had come out here in Kitty’s launch. But that had been in broad daylight, before the storm. Perhaps the switchers aboard were automated. But it looked as if someone had gone around the platform and snapped on every light available. The windows in the crew’s quarters, the machinery shack, and around the housing of the well pattern were all ablaze. Without them, they might have missed the Lady by miles and kept on going out into the storm-swept Atlantic.

  “Somebody expecting us?” Matt muttered. “How come?"

  “Maybe the signal went out by radio.”

  “No radioman left aboard, remember?”

  “Somebody could have come here last night.”

  “Somebody did," Matty said. “Look.”

  Lashed fore and aft to the girders that supported the heliport was a boat. Its mast swung and swayed in the lee of the wind. It was one of the fishing boats Durell had seen on the beach when he and Kitty walked south to find the Saka. Or a boat just like it. It was big enough to hold over twenty men. Durell was just as pleased he had brought the Magnum rifle.

  “We can get aboard over there,” Matty pointed to an iron ladder that had been lowered down the rusty sides of the Lady.

  “Find another place,” Durell said. “They might be waiting. Maybe they know we’re coming. Tie up alongside the fishing boat.”

  Matty turned the wheel again. “They took a hell of a Chance, coming out here in that native hulk.”

  “Desperate men take desperate chances,” Durell said.

  “You really think we’re expected?”

  “I think so.”

  “Lepaka, maybe?"

  “No,” Durell said. “I have to trust Lepaka.”

  “He’d like to be a military dictator,” Matt said.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  The girls came up out of the small cabin. Betty Tallman looked better. Her eyes were clearer, although her face was still pale, and she had made an effort to brush and tie up her blond hair.

  Kitty carried both rifles.

  The bulk of the platform, With its six huge cylindrical columns that supported the rig above the surface of the ocean, tended to break the force of the wind and waves, although the lifeboat pitched and tossed wildly as they circled to the west. Durell watched the railings on the platform deck. Nobody appeared there, high above them, to challenge their approach. The roar of the seas was deafening as a wave broke against the cylinders. The gray wind whistled in varying crescendos under the platform.

  Matty and Durell tied up next to the fishing boat. The seas lifted and fell under them. The fishing boat stank, even in the harsh, cold wind that rushed by.

  “The girls should stay here,” Matty said.

  “No,” said Kitty.

  “Not a chance,” Betty Tallman said.

  Matty said, “I thought you and Hobe were split. We could get killed up there.”

  “I feel different about Hobe now.”

  Durell said, “Kitty is a good shot. We could use her, Matt.”

  Matty shrugged and they crossed the rough plank deck of the fishing boat and started up the steel stairs that zig-zagged back and forth up to the underside of the deck. There were spotlights fixed here and there among the struts and girders, and all of them were ablaze. Above the noise of the sea and the wind, Durell could hear the thumping of the two‘ Caterpillar D 398-TB diesels that ran the 520-KW AC generators aboard the rig.

  He went up first. Matty followed, and then the girls. Matty had a Colt .45 that he had pulled from under his belt. Durell wondered where he had gotten it since he left the hospital. He kept the Magnum for himself. Kitty carried the Remington. Betty did not have any weapons, but Kitty thrust a flare pistol into her unwilling hand.

  Nobody was on guard at the upper hatch. It was a relief to feel the stability of the platform deck under their feet, after the pitching of the lifeboat for so long.

  Matt cupped his mouth to Durell’s ear. “How many Apgaks came aboard from the fishing boat, do you think?”

  “Maybe a dozen. Maybe twenty.”

  “They must’ve got Hobe already.”

  “Perhaps. Where would Hobe hide out?”

  “Forward, near the drilling tower.”

  “Why not his office in the laboratory quarters?”

  “Not if he saw them coming,” Matt said.

  The crew’s quarters were deserted, although bright with lights. Durell saw pools of water on the deck, leading toward the doorway that led to the area where the drilling pipe was stacked. The Apgaks from the fishing boat hadn’t arrived here much sooner than themselves, obviously.

  He pushed carefully on the door that led out to the platform’s main deck. His gun was up and ready. The door opened outward, and there was weight against it, holding the panel shut. He shoved harder. Something rolled aside, and he saw the body of a dead man, red headband around the head, a rifle spilled to the wet steel deck nearby. An Apgak. The man had been shot in the chest.

  The rainswept deck, with its clutter of machinery, mud-mixing tanks, piping, and crates, seemed to be empty. The wind-force lessened for a few moments. He stepped outside, into the rain. As the screaming of the wind dropped to a lower pitch for a moment, he heard the shooting.

  The Link LS-108-B crawler crane, its boom swinging down, was moving across the cluttered deck amidships.

  Durell could
not see who was in the control cab. The boom came down farther, swung viciously across the deck, and knocked over a pile of wooden crates. Machinery parts spilled from the crates, which shattered and burst with the impact.

  “What the hell?” Matty muttered behind him.

  “Would that be Hobe in there?”

  ‘“Can’t tell. They’re shootin’ at him, though.” Matt hefted his heavy Colt. “Maybe we ought to help him.”

  “He doesn‘t need help right now.”

  The firing seemed to ring the massive, clattering cargo derrick that moved slowly over the steel plates of the platform. There was another swipe of the lowered boom, and a pile of stacked well piping went askew, the tubes rolling with loud bangings and clatterings toward the rail. Two men in red headbands scattered from behind their masked concealment and ran for new cover.

  Betty said, “It’s got to be Hobe, running that thing.”

  A sputter of automatic rifle fire sent a hail of bullets toward the crawler derrick. The slugs bounced off the heavy steel plates with effect. One of the small windows in the Link’s cab suddenly shattered.

  “Come on," Durell decided. “Kitty. keep Betty here. You can cover us with your rifle. Matt, come with me.”

  The force of the wind made his shirt flap and flutter at his back. The rain came down in long, wavering patterns. Spray from a comber burst as high as the lowest railing of the platform. From up here, they could see the turmoil of the tortured ocean, the steady march of twenty-foot waves, the blasts of spray where the wind took the tops off the combers. The deck trembled. It should have been solid, even in this weather, but Durell felt the trembling through the soles of his boots.

  Matt said, “If that‘s Hobe, what the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  Betty spoke behind them. “I see Madragata. He’s over there.” She pointed forward.

  “Madragata," Matty said, “has to be back in the city, leading his goddamn Red coup."

  “I tell you, it’s him! I see him!” She paused when Durell looked back at her. “He’s gone now.”

  Durell could see the Apgaks moving from cover to cover as the Link crawler crane moved about the main deck like some agonized, prehistoric monster. The Apgaks kept firing at it. The sounds of their guns were small poppings and cracklings against the noise of the wind and sea. Durell spotted six, then ten, then over a dozen of the men with the red headbands. There was no doubt that they meant to get the operator of the crawler derrick. There was not too much room for the Link to maneuver, and then it came up against the heavy base of the Clyde stiff-legged boom, where Durell had found Brady Cotton’s body on his first visit to the Lady.