Assignment Black Gold

by Edward S. Aarons

  Matty groaned. “He’s doin’ one hell of a lot of damage. I can count one hundred grand in the wreckage already."

  Suddenly Durell saw what the driver of the crawler was trying to do. The cargo boom, which could lift over seven tons and turn in a thirty-five-foot radius, swung once more, rising as it moved. It struck one of the legs of the Clyde, and the crash of steel on steel was as it two ancient behemoths had locked horns. The Clyde shuddered and the leg collapsed, and then the derrick arm came down in a crashing tangle of blocks and steel cables. The rugged support girders bent and separated as if they were built of wet cardboard. Half of the big boom went through the railing and over the side, splashing into the sea.

  The man in the crawler cab tried to back away from the wreckage. His machine shuddered, gave out a pull of black exhaust that was quickly whipped away by the wind. The crawler did not move. Durell could see that one of the tracks had come oil the sprockets. The machine spun helplessly in a slow circle, like a crippled bug.

  A dim shout of triumph came from the attackers spotted here and there on the crowded platform deck.

  Durell ran down the ladder from the crew housing. Matty limped after him. Above, Kitty watched with her rifle. All of the attention of the Apgaks was centered on the crippled crawler. The firing was heavy now. Every window in the crawler’s cab was smashed.

  “This way!” Matty shouted.

  The wind came in erratic gusts. Durell could taste the salt spray from the wind and sea on his lips.

  They ran through a bulkhead door, down another short flight of steel stairs, and came out on the main deck. An Apgak, hunched behind a corner of the machinery house, heard them somehow above the wail of the wind and the thunder of the sea. The man turned, lifted an AK-47, his mouth open in surprise. Durell fired, saw the man throw up both hands as a splotch of red bloomed on his left shoulder. The force of the Magnum’s slug was enough to stop a charging rhino. The man was literally blown off his feet, and went sliding away along the wet deck plates.

  “Is there a way to the tower mast?” Durell asked.

  “Underneath. Catwalks. Come on.”

  The shooting sounded like popguns against a renewed blast of the wind. Durell saw a man climb out of the Link belt crawler and run for the edge of the platform. He caught a cable that dangled over the edge of the deck and swung downward on it, hanging perilously over the seething sea.

  It was Hobe Tallman.

  There was a short lighted corridor, then another flight of steps down, then an open-railed catwalk going forward from the heliport deck where they had first come aboard. The heaving seas under the platform licked up hungrily for them. The deck treads of the catwalk were treacherously wet. Durell ran forward, looking for a sign of where Hobe Tallman might have landed. There was a small balcony-like structure just below the bottom level of the platform’s rusty sides. Rain smashed into Durell’s eyes. He thought he saw something or someone move onto the little platform. He wasn’t sure.

  He was halfway there, wondering if Hobe had fallen into the sea in his desperate effort to escape the Apgaks, when he felt the explosion.

  The charge had been placed somewhere in the housing that held the tops of the great cylindrical legs supporting the semi-submersible rig on the ocean bottom. A twisted plate of steel went floating lazily in the air and spiraled outward into the sea from the side of the platform opposite Durell. Smoke made a dark burst of cloud that was immediately shredded by the wind. The catwalk trembled under his feet. The whole platform lurched, began to cant to one side, dipping and shuddering down on the side of the rig away from them. Matty yelled and tried for a grip on the catwalk rail and missed. Durell caught the chunky man as his legs shot out over the side. He held Matt from the sea for a long. straining moment until the rig foreman caught the underrail and pulled himself back. Everything slanted steeply away from them.

  Then there was another explosion from one of the corner columns. This one was heavier. The whole rig, the huge artificial man-made island the size of at least two football fields, shuddered and cracked and groaned.

  Matt‘s voice held tears of rage in it.

  “Hobe!” he called. “Hobe, don‘t!"

  Chapter 25.

  The drilling mast came down above them with a great screaming of torn and twisted girders. The crash was thunderous, even above the noise of the storm. Durell felt as if everything were falling away from him. The catwalk twisted, heaved, and bent under them. The rig sank slowly on its side, going down by the opposite corner as the two cylindrical legs that had been cracked by the explosion slowly buckled. Plates popped loose as if they had been made of paper. Rivets shot through the air like bullets. Durell and Matty hugged the floor of the catwalk, feeling the whole structure shudder and tilt and slip more and more sideways toward the sea.

  The rumbling movement seemed without end.

  When it was over, the deck canted toward the far corner of the platform by at least twenty degrees.

  “Jesus,” Matty gasped. “Is he crazy?”

  Durell said. “Can you get up?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “It’s not over yet. Hobe’s still up there, somewhere.”

  Durell flipped a hand. He was surprised to see blood on his knuckles. “He’s got more explosives, I’m sure. That’s why he came over in the crawler to this side.”

  “But he’s gone.” Matty peered down into the sea. “He must have been shook loose by the explosions.” He looked tormented. “Why, Sam? Why did he do this to the Lady?”

  “I think he‘ll do anything now to keep the rig out of Madragata’s hands. In case Madragata takes over the government.”

  “But he—we worked like bastards to get this outfit going. Even if it turned out to be a dry hole—”

  “It isn‘t,” Durell said.

  Matt turned his tormented face toward him. “What are you talking about? I saw the records myself, the logs, the geological analysis—”

  "Not the real ones. Hobe kept the true log. Maybe he began it to keep information from the Lubindan Interior Ministry. Brady Cotton swiped the real records from him as evidence. We might never find them, however. Come on. We can’t stay here forever.”

  Matty’s strong, angry hand clamped on his shoulder. He had to bellow above the sounds of wind and wave. “What? What are you talking about? I knew Hobe was a little crackers, he’s been goin’ off his rocker since it was decided the Lady was a wildcat failure. I came out here this morning to stop him from doing something crazy, that’s all—I mean, when I heard he’d come here, too, and all. I just had this hunch about him." Matty paused. He was trembling. “I didn’t know he was going to wreck the whole platform. We’ll all go into the sea if he sets off a few more charges like these first two. We’re crippled as it is. Another one, and we all—”

  Matty checked himself, gripped the rail, and stared belligerently down at the heaving green ocean.

  "Come on,” Durell said again.

  Matty said, “I can’t swim."

  “Nobody could, in these seas.”

  Durell knocked the man’s hand off his shoulder and led him forward along the slanted, twisted catwalk to where he had last seen Hobe swinging down over the side.

  Hobe had disappeared.

  There was danger here from the loose steel cables that dangled over the edge of the tilted platform. The wind lashed at the cables until they acted like long, flailing whips. Part of the catwalk had been twisted upside down, midway toward the corner pier where Hobe had gone over the side. For a time, Durell had to crawl along the underside of the steel plates, searching for any handheld available. The wind tried to pluck him oil his perilous perch. He could see part of the tower mast on the other side, hanging over the far edge halfway into the sea. Spray reached up and dashed in his face. He was momentarily blinded. Matty urged him forward, consumed by his desire to save the platform from Hobe’s explosives.

  None of them would get back ashore alive, Durell suddenly thought.
They were twenty miles out to sea, caught in a raging storm, with a madman aboard, bent on destroying them all. Not to mention the Apgaks, he thought wryly.

  He kept going forward.

  There was no sign of Hobe at this far corner of the platform. The catwalk angled on, under the deck. Durell looked for explosives, found none. Apparently Hobe had taken off for another spot to set his charges. If he hadn’t fallen into the sea, Durell reminded himself.

  “Sam!”

  Matty’s warning shout was torn away by the wind. Durell spun about, saw two Apgaks swarming down the cables from the upper deck. The flat sound of a gunshot reached him. He heard Matty’s big Colt smash out a reply, and one of the Apgaks let go of his cable and fell into the sea below. The second man fired again. And Durell heard the bullet scream off the deck plates behind him. The Apgak turned and swarmed up the cable to the deck like a long-jointed, giant spider.

  “This way.” Durell said.

  He pointed to the crosswalk that led amidships under the platform. A bulkhead door at the other end of the walk seemed to offer temporary safety. Hobe Tallman must have gone in through there.

  They slid and clung and worked their way down the slanting catwalk to the door. It was not locked. A heavy sea smashed under the platform, sent spray bursting up at them, soaking their legs. The wind was growing stronger again. There was a crashing and banging of loose, broken equipment above them. Another crash made Durell turn his head in time to sec the fishing boat tear loose and break against the more distant pier at the far corner.

  “We’ve lost another couple of degrees,” Matty yelled.

  “The Lady’s settled some more.”

  “Inside,” Durell said.

  He pulled the bulkhead door open all the way.

  They practically fell through, impelled by the slant of the deck. Matt turned and shoved the heavy door shut and dogged it tight. His thigh wound was bleeding again, and his khaki slacks, soaked with rain, looked darker where the open wound bled through the cloth.

  It was quieter inside, with the noise of the storm muffled by the heavy door.

  They were in a small, Spartan anteroom. A corridor sloped ahead of them, still ablaze with lights. A flight of steps led upward toward the laboratory offices, marked by a painted arrow on the bright yellow walls.

  Madragata stood at the foot of the steps, waiting.

  He had an automatic rifle pointed at them.

  As Durell started forward, the Apgak leader grinned.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  And all the lights went out.

  The bullets clamored past him and away.

  Durell heard Matty fall to the deck. He slid to one side, listening to the muted rumble of the seas. He smelled cordite in the air.

  The image of Madragata, tall and muscular, his handsome face ravaged by hatred, seemed to float in the darkness before him. He pressed back against the wall beside the bulkhead door.

  Very faintly, he heard the shouting of panicked voices like the mewing of seagulls.

  “Matty?” he whispered.

  “Yo.”

  “Are you hit?”

  “Uh, no. The son of a bitch is still here.”

  “Hold it.”

  Durell moved farther to his right. He came to the corner of the small ante-room, feeling unbalanced by the pitch of the deck that dropped down ahead of him. Apparently the two Caterpillar diesels that provided electric power had been knocked out. But there was a little light, seeping in from somewhere ahead, down the stairwell from the upper deck. He could barely make out the shape of the corridor and the steps. He could not see Madragata.

  “Durell!”

  Madragata’s deep voice trembled with hatred and frustration. It came from somewhere beyond the open treads of the steel staircase.

  “Durell, do you have Hobe?“ There was anxiety in the

  words. “Have you stopped him?”

  Durell called hack, “No.”

  He moved immediately, forward and to the right, against the corridor wall. He had to feel his way onward.

  “He’s going to blow us up, Senhor Durell!"

  Now there seemed to be panic in the Apgak’s voice.

  But Durell was not sure.

  “He must be stopped!” Madragata yelled.

  Durell called forward into the downward-sloping darkness. “Is that why you came here, Madragata?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And left your men to fight it out alone in Lubinda?”

  “The fight is lost. The Saka is coming. He turned against me, his own son. My own rightful father. Against me! The Chinese was killed. Half my people have deserted. I want to cooperate now. We’ll make a deal, eh?”

  The voice echoed and banged through the steely darkness. There was a plea in it, and desperation, but still a sense of hatred, a need for revenge.

  Durell slid a little farther down the inclined corridor floor. He estimated he was now about twenty steps from the stairway where Madragata was hiding. Something clicked behind him, from where he had left Matty. He thought he heard Matty breathing, the sound whispering of the man’s pain. He took another step down the slope. Above, on the platform deck, something else came loose and slid with a great crashing noise and went overboard.

  Suddenly Madragata yelled, “Killing is too good for you, Durell! You must die for all the ill fortune you brought to me!”

  Another step.

  He could not keep his balance on the tilted floor. He grabbed for the wall. His palms made a thudding sound.

  Madragata fired again. The muzzle flame made long red flashes nearby. Something tugged at Durell’s shoulder.

  He dived forward for the stairs.

  Matty shouted something. He felt the cold grip of the staircase rail, let his momentum carry him down and around to the back of it. He crashed into human flesh, hard muscle; he smelled panic breath, sweat, food exhaled between the faint gleam of white teeth.

  Another explosion shook the drilling platform.

  Madragata made a squealing sound of fear. Something hit Durell in the stomach, then smashed at his throat. He grabbed at the man’s arm. tore it loose as the platform lurched. They went rolling over and over down the blackness of the corridor. Crashings and hangings echoed from everywhere as more equipment broke loose. Durell thought he heard Matty yell something. It did not matter. Madragata’s gun was now the sum of the universe, the end of everything.

  They brought up hard against the wall beyond the staircase. Madragata grunted, wriggled, heaved aside to break free. Durell hit him in the throat, at the side of the neck, and missed a third blow that ended on the deck plates, jolting pain through his hand and up his arm. He still had his rifle. He swung it up, caught the muzzle in the other hand, brought it forward, crushingly, into Madragata’s throat. The Apgak kicked him low in the belly. Everything seemed to break loose inside him. But he did not let go of his grip, He had the man’s head pinned to the deck plates.

  Under them, the platform lurched and shuddered again. Madragata’s gun went off beside his ear, deafening him. He slammed it aside, his head ringing. He had to loosen his grip on the rifle. Madragata got halfway up, stabbed fingers at his face. Durell caught the man’s free hand, slammed it back against the steel wall. Bones broke. The man squealed again. He wriggled free, scrabbling up the canted deck for the stairway. Matty yelled and came sliding down toward them, his leg bumping loosely as if it were broken.

  Light suddenly shone down the stairwell.

  Madragata was already crouched halfway up the treads, his hair a wild screen across his face, through which his eyes gleamed like a hunted animals

  The light came from an emergency battery lantern.

  It framed Betty Tallman’s figure at the head of the steps. She was carrying the Remington that Durell had left with Kitty. He shouted to her, started to climb up the sloping corridor. his stomach heaving from the blow Madragata had gotten at his belly. He could have shot Madragata then and there with the heavy rifle, H
is finger tightened on the trigger. Then he didn't have to do anything about the Apgak.

  Betty Tallman‘s face was in the shadow, the lantern behind her. She leveled the gun downward at Madragata. Her mouth drooped strangely. She looked as if she were crying. Madragata put a hand upward, fingers splayed, as if to ward off something. Then the woman began to fire, very carefully, very methodically, at the man reaching up to her.

  With each echoing, racketing shot that overrode the groaning of the platform, Madragata jerked and stepped backward. When Madragata fell, hands high in the air, Betty still kept firing. The body jumped and jerked in the light of the emergency lantern.

  “Betty!” Durell called.

  She looked dazed.

  “Betty, he’s dead. Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead.”

  "Oh."

  Chapter 21.

  “Where is Hobe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Kitty?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Why did you kill Madragata like that?”

  “Because he made me—because he and I—we made Hobe go crazy.”

  “Why did Kitty give you the gun?”

  “I took it from her.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t think so.”

  Matty crawled up the incline from the foot of the slanted stairway. He trailed a small snake of blood from his injured leg. His teeth clamped together in a grimace that was not a grin. He looked at Madragata’s body in the dim light.

  “Sam, listen. We’ve got to stop Hobe. He'll kill us all. He’ll sink the Lady.”