Corruption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  “Charles, I’m—”

  “Stop,” he said softly.

  He was having a hard time breathing. He coughed a few times, so I grabbed a plastic cup from a nearby counter, filled it with water, and tilted a few sips into his mouth. He nodded and I set the cup beside me.

  Taking in a labored breath, he said, “This is off the record.” He cleared his throat again, tilted his head slightly, and stared straight into my eyes. “But you go get those bastards.”

  TWENTY

  I headed into the hospital bathroom, twisted on a faucet, and splashed cold water over my face. It felt good and helped to clear my mind. After a few splashes, I turned off the water. I braced my hands against the white porcelain and looked up into the spotless mirror. My face and the top of my hair were drenched. Water dripped down my cheeks and gathered at the base of my chin.

  I stared into my brown eyes, focused on the solid black pupils. I calmed my breathing, clenched my jaw, and narrowed my gaze. My fingers spread, gripping the round edges of the sink and squeezing tighter with every passing second. I was angry, but I needed to channel that anger. To use the aggression to instill a burning resolve within me that could be useful to our aim rather than a hindrance. Anger without control is recklessness. And recklessness can quickly turn a good fighter into a bad one.

  I took in a deep breath and let it out. Raising my right hand, I wiped the water from my chin and brushed my hair back. I glanced at my dive watch and saw that it was almost noon. I used the sleeves of my tee shirt to dry off what remained of the water, then took one more long look in the mirror before straightening my body and heading for the door.

  When I met Ange in the lobby, she didn’t say anything. We simply gave each other a slight nod and headed for the main entrance. We both had our own ways of dealing with things, and we knew when the other needed some space. Jack was sitting by the door reading a fishing magazine. He rose to his feet when we approached, and the three of us walked out. Atticus barked and sprang from his relaxing spot in the shade, running over to us.

  We walked across the parking lot, across College Road, and onto the Florida Keys Community College campus. Frank set up the meeting to take place in the Tennessee Williams Theatre, so we headed straight for it. I stopped at a vending machine along the way, bought a bottled water, and poured half of it into Atticus’s mouth.

  “I’ll stay out here with him, bro,” Jack said, grabbing the bottle. “There’s a little dog park down the street near the botanical garden. Give me a call when you’re done. I’m sure you guys can fill me in. Never been a big fan of colleges anyway.”

  I thanked him and Ange and I headed inside. It was the middle of a school day, so the campus had a handful of students walking about, but the inside of the theater was empty. It was big, with over five hundred seats, a three-section mezzanine, and a large stage. There were only a few dim lights on, so most of the theater was dark.

  We hadn’t even been there for a minute when a door on the opposite end swung open and Frank walked in, followed right on his heels by his friend. They walked right up to us and Frank made the introductions.

  “Allen, this is Logan Dodge and Angelina Fox,” Frank said.

  As we shook his hand, he told us that his name was Allen Tran and that he was a professor of Marine Engineering at Texas A&M. By outward appearance, Allen was the polar opposite of Frank. He was short, probably just a few inches over five feet, and was so thin a strong breeze could sweep him away. He wore thick glasses, a shirt with a pocket protector, and his pants rode higher than most people. He also had a nice leather bag slung over his right shoulder and a steaming mug of coffee in his left hand. He was Vietnamese and looked to be in his early fifties, with just a few small patches of gray in his dark hair. He looked like the kind of guy who would wear one of those calculator watches on a daily basis or could solve a Rubik’s cube faster than you could lace up your shoes.

  “It’s good to meet you both,” he said in a friendly and articulate voice. He glanced around the room and added, “Frank, I was under the impression that there would be a few more people here for this presentation.”

  Frank smiled. “There will be later this afternoon. But for now, my friends here have a few questions for you.”

  Allen turned his attention to us. “How may I be of service?”

  I paused for a moment, wondering where to start.

  “What can you tell us about Zhao Petroleum’s oil rig just off the coast?” I asked.

  Allen paused a moment.

  He shot Frank a glance, then replied, “It’s called the Pericles. She’s a drilling rig. Built in South Korea and arrived in the Gulf less than a month ago. As far as I know, they’ve only been approved for exploratory drills this close to Florida. In other words, they’ve been granted permission to drill down and see what’s there but are barred from bringing anything up. This is a common practice around the world, used to estimate global pockets of oil reserves.”

  “What can you tell us about its construction?” I said. “Things like level designs and key components.”

  He set his shoulder bag on one of the front row padded seats and pulled out a seventeen-inch laptop. Within just a few seconds, he booted it up and displayed a virtual 3-D image of an oil rig.

  “This is the Pericles,” he said. “It’s an ultra-deepwater semi-submersible offshore drilling rig. This marvel can operate in over eight thousand feet of water and drill down to thirty thousand. It’s thirty-two thousand tons of some of the most advanced machinery and technology on the planet.”

  I could feel the passion in his voice as he brought us on a virtual tour of the rig, starting from the top and working his way down. It consisted of an enormous main deck and four large support columns that connected to massive ballast tanks and electric thrusters down in the water. A steel derrick rose 260 feet above the middle of the deck. There were two built-in cranes on either side of the tower, used to transfer steel pipes and heavy equipment from supply boats to the rig floor. Also on the main deck were the engine rooms, mudloggers shack, and the driller shack, the latter being the main control location for drilling operations.

  Beneath the main deck was the accommodation block: two levels of crew cabins, conference rooms, offices, the galley, dining hall, movie theater, gym, infirmary, lounge, and every other portion of the rig. I made mental notes and tried to visualize how I would make my approach to various positions once on board. I assumed that the most important thing would be to get to the drill shack and shut down drilling operations.

  “The entire thing is powered by a generator here,” he said, finishing his quick tour of the structure.

  “How high is the main deck from the water?” I asked.

  “That depends. It’s over a hundred feet when she’s moving and around sixty when over a drill site. The ballast tanks allow the entire rig to be raised and lowered as necessary.”

  “And how many workers are usually aboard?” Ange asked.

  “Around a hundred and forty,” Allen replied. “Give or take.”

  The four of us fell silent for a moment. Allen looked over the 3-D model, bringing the view back to display the entire rig.

  “You know,” Allen said, grabbing his glasses and wiping the lenses. “I could be of more help to you guys if you told me what this was all about.” He put the glasses back over his eyes and added, “Either you’re writing a book, or you’re planning to sneak aboard this thing. And neither of you seem like the writer type.”

  “I’m sorry, Allen,” Frank said. “I should have been more transparent about this with you. It’s just that they’re trying to keep this secret, for obvious reasons.”

  “I understand, but I just have one question: why?”

  “To prevent a major environmental catastrophe,” Ange said.

  That got his attention quick.

  “We have it on good authority that people aboard the rig are planning to cause an intentional oil spill,” I said. “A certain rich businessman is looki
ng to cash in, then destroy Zhao’s reputation and strike a blow to the environment in the process.”

  “And we’re going to stop it,” Ange declared.

  Frank turned to Allen who was taken aback. I could tell he was trying to process the whole thing.

  “Which is why I called you, Allen,” Frank said. “You’re the best man to help with this.”

  Allen thought for a few seconds. He took in a few breaths, glanced at the monitor, then back at Frank.

  “Frank, I’ve known you since we were teenagers,” he said. He turned his gaze toward Ange and me. “If you trust these two and believe what they say, then I shall trust them as well.”

  “Thank you, my old friend,” Frank said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  Allen nodded, adjusted his glasses, then turned back to his laptop. Within seconds, he had another image up on the screen. It looked like an oil pipe, a large drill bit, and various other components.

  “Alright,” Allen said, clearing his throat. “This is a digital replication of the drilling equipment beneath the water’s surface. This is the riser pipe, which runs through the water, connecting the rig down to the drilling below. This, of course, is the drill bit which is used to drill the wellbore through rock and sediment. After the well is drilled, it’s lined with steel tubes and the bottom of the wellbore is filled with concrete to effectively seal the well. Negative pressure tests are then conducted to ensure that the wellbore is sealed before unlatching the riser pipe from the blowout preventer on the seafloor. The well is dug and sealed, and the rig moves on.”

  Ange and I both nodded, hanging on his every word. It was fascinating stuff that I knew absolutely nothing about.

  “So if you were trying to sabotage a rig,” I said, after a few seconds’ pause, “and make it look like an accident, how would you do it?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “These are advanced systems. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of machinery designed by some of the greatest engineers in the world. A long list of protocols and automatic safety features are put in place to prevent a spill. No single mistake could cause it. It would take a handful of mistakes and defects in the equipment for a spill to occur.” He took a sip of coffee, then said, “But it all starts with the concrete seal.” He pointed at the bottom of the wellbore where it extended down into a massive pocket of oil. “If the seal is good, no oil will be released. Period. If it’s bad, it will leak into the wellbore. This isn’t uncommon. The key is making sure that the concrete fills the annulus uniformly. Based on the data I’ve learned on the Pericles, it’s currently operating in just under two thousand feet of water. The oil reserves are probably another twelve thousand feet below the seafloor, so trying to control a pipe that’s almost three miles long can be tricky. Stabilizers are put in place, but it’s still by no means a simple task. If it were me, though, I’d tamper with the concrete.”

  “Tamper with the concrete?” Ange asked.

  He nodded. “A special blend is required, and if it’s not adequate for the job, it can fail and allow a leak. However, a leak into the wellbore isn’t a serious issue in and of itself as long as proper procedures are followed after the fact.”

  “So they create a bad seal, then what?” I said.

  “This is called the blowout preventer,” he said, pointing at a big box-shaped metal contraption on the seafloor that connected the riser pipe to the wellbore. “It has pipe rams and annular preventers that are designed to keep the oil sealed in the event the lower seal fails. You see this here?” he said, pointing at the center of the blowout preventer. “This is the EDS, or emergency disconnect system. It causes these blind shear rams to engage, cutting the pipe, sealing it, and splitting the blowout preventer in two. This seals the leak and disconnects the rig from the wellbore in one quick sweep.

  “You asked me what I would do? The short version is I’d make a bad seal, using a bad batch of cement, then I’d have tampered with the blowout preventer prior to sending it down. I would have made it so that when the EDS activates, the sheers miss the pipe and the rams fail to contain the leak. This would cause oil to burst out into the sea and would keep the guys up on the rig out of harm’s way.”

  The four of us stayed silent for a few seconds as we thought over Allen’s words. Frank was right. It was obvious that this was the perfect guy to be talking to about this.

  “Intentional mistakes like this would be difficult to keep secret, right?” Frank said. “I mean, this is Zhao’s rig, and therefore it’s Zhao’s employees running the drill. How many would need to be secretly paid off?”

  Allen ran his fingers over his bare chin.

  “It’s tough to say. Possibly the tool pusher—that’s the guy directing the drilling. Also, the guys who make and test the concrete. It’s possible that they’re oblivious if there are other people on the rig, but I’d say at least a few of the high-up workers would need to be involved. The roughnecks and most of the workers on board would need to be kept in the dark.”

  “So how do we stop it?” I said.

  Allen sat on the edge of the stage and steepled his fingers.

  “Well, if you can stop the operation prior to them reaching the oil, that would be ideal,” he said. “So it depends what stage they’re at when you get aboard. If they’ve already filled the annulus, then you need to try and manually activate the pipe rams. They’re essentially just massive valves that are below the EDS system. Once those valves are shut, you should then activate the EDS, completely sealing off the well, even if part of the blowout preventer was tampered with.”

  He paused a moment, then added, “This will all happen very quickly. If the annulus is filled poorly or with bad concrete, the wellbore will pressurize fairly quickly. You won’t have long to shut the valves. So my advice would be to shut it down before they start. Get aboard, take control of the rig, and stop operations. Easier said than done.”

  Allen was an ocean of valuable information, and we continued discussing key features of the rig and how we could stop it for an hour. We eventually migrated over to Frank’s office on the other side of the campus. We discussed key details and learned that cutting the power at the generator was out of the question, since that could cause the EDS to initiate automatically. If the EDS was tampered with and the other rams weren’t shut manually, we could trip the leak ourselves.

  It was clear that time was going to be a key factor. We believed that the incident would occur within hours after 0300 the following morning. That was when the new prototype would be unveiled in South Korea and when Zhao stocks were expected to surge. Wake could sell the stocks and the spill could be caused anytime around then.

  After finishing up, Allen transferred digital blueprints of the rig onto a thumb drive and gave it to us.

  “This will aid you with your planning,” he said. “I wish that I could be of more help. For the sake of offshore drilling and the Gulf of Mexico, I hope that you are wrong about all of this. But if you are right, Godspeed.”

  Ange and I thanked both of them for everything, then headed out of the office building and back into the sun.

  TWENTY-ONE

  We called Jack and he met us out in the circle right in front of the main reception building in the parking lot. He handed us a white paper bag after we climbed into the backseat. Its contents were so greasy we could see through portions of it.

  “I got you guys a couple of burgers and fries from Hurricane Hole,” he said in between chomps of his mouthful of food. “Figured you’d both be hungry. I took some of your fries ’cause Atty took some of mine. Got him his own, but he still wanted more. How was the meeting?”

  I shot a quick smile at Atticus, who sat happily in the passenger seat, then thanked Jack for the food and opened the bag. I pulled out a greasy burger for Ange and one for myself, then dumped both containers of fries into the bag to form a single pile. Jack pulled out of the lot as I took a big satisfying bite of the juicy, cheesy, cooked-to-perfection burger. I took altern
ating bites of burger and salty, crunchy fries while Jack drove us down College Road. He cut a right onto a dirt road beside the elementary school, then followed it around a wide left turn that ran along the ocean. He pulled us right up to the water and put the Wrangler in park behind a thick row of mangroves. From there, we were far away and pretty well concealed from the main road. There was no one and nothing nearby.

  Ange and I finished eating and washed everything down with a couple of coconut waters Jack had bought.

  “You’re a lifesaver, man,” I said. “That burger hit the spot.”

  Ange thanked him as well, then we both gave him a quick rundown of what we’d talked about with the professors. I also sent Scott a quick message, hoping to get an update on when we could expect our delivery. He replied in less than a minute and said that we could expect it at sol’s exit, meaning sunset, which was around 1930. That worked perfectly because it would take a long time for whatever boat he found to travel the over two hundred miles to the oil rig. I just hoped that it was fast enough. We hadn’t finalized the plan yet, but I wanted to make sure that we had at least a couple of hours buffer between when we infiltrated and 0300. One thing was certain—we were in for one long and eventful night.

  Jack drove us back over to the Slice of Paradise Motel and dropped us off. He agreed to meet up with us later at the house, then took off down the road. The three of us climbed into the Cessna, and Ange flew us across the island, a trip that took less than a couple of minutes from takeoff to splashdown. She eased us back into her spot at the Tarpon Cove Marina, then had the attendant fill up the gas tank before we headed down the dock.

  My banged-up Tacoma was still where I’d left it the previous day. Before unlocking it and climbing inside, I did a quick inspection of the undercarriage and the engine, paying particular attention to the place where Carl had found the tracker. It looked clean, so I unlocked it and we piled inside.