Corruption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  I nodded. “We need to get the hell off this thing.”

  She removed her hands from her side, revealing a gash in her vest. Blood had soaked through but wasn’t flowing out steadily.

  “The vest will contain it good enough for the time being,” she said, shaking it off. She gripped her Glock, turned back toward the door. “The deck is clear for now. Let’s go.”

  The woman never ceased to amaze me. It boggled my mind how someone could be so beautiful, yet so deadly and tough all at the same time. I wanted to grab my small med kit from my backpack and bandage up the wound right there. But she was right. The vest was doing a decent job since she’d adjusted it to be snug around the wound. And if we didn’t get off the rig, we’d have to deal with much worse injuries than a bullet to the side.

  I snatched my backpack, then reached for the metal door’s handle. Just as I was about to pull it down and shove my way through the door, the entire rig went silent and dark. The fluorescent lights overhead, the LEDs on the various control panels, the monitors, and all lights out on the drill floor suddenly lost power. The alarm, which had been blaring for the past few minutes across the rig, was replaced by silence. Even the guy whose kneecap I’d blown off had quieted to struggled groans thanks to the care of one of the workers. The shack and everything around us went black and for a split second, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

  Strips of lighting along the deck and a few on the ceiling suddenly illuminated, though the room was much dimmer than it had been.

  “We’ve lost power from the main generator,” one of the workers said. “Emergency lighting has been initiated.”

  I turned back toward the door. We didn’t have time for this. We’d stopped the spill and I wasn’t concerned about a power outage. I reasoned that, if anything, it would help us in our escape. It would be a lot easier to get away in the dark.

  A loud ringing sound punctured the quiet and one of the workers reached for a red corded phone attached to the wall. My guess was that it was a dedicated emergency line that was immune to frequency disruption. He grabbed it, answered, then looked at the tool pusher, confused.

  “It’s for him,” the guy said quietly.

  “Who is it?” the guy in charge asked.

  We didn’t have time for this crap. I reached for the metal handle again.

  “It’s Miss Richmond,” he said. “She says that if Logan Dodge leaves the drill shack, she’ll blow the well.”

  I froze in place. My eyes darted to Ange, who was staring back at me, just as confused as I was. I knew it had to be a bluff. The rams had been shut, the EDS activated, and the Pericles was no longer connected to the well. It was sealed.

  “She says to tell you that the well is rigged with explosives,” the guy said.

  My muscles tensed. Part of me couldn’t process what I’d heard. Rigged with explosives? I wondered how Carson could possibly think that was a good idea. There would be no way to convince anyone that it was an accident if they used explosives, no way to cover the entire thing up.

  I stepped across the room and snatched the phone from his hand.

  “Carson?” I said, my voice low and stern.

  “Logan,” she said, her voice calm and seemingly innocent. “How nice of you to pick up.”

  “You blow that well and you’re dead,” I said, resolution burning from my voice.

  She laughed. “You know, some of my men thought it was overkill having this many Darkwater soldiers on the rig. But, like back on my island last month, you didn’t disappoint. And you’ve forced me to rely on plan B, a less subtle but more effective method.”

  “You’re insane if you think you can get away with blowing it up. There will be no alibi. It’ll be clear that somebody terrorized the operation.”

  She paused a moment. It was clear from her tone and her breathing that she was enjoying the conversation in her own sick way.

  “Not somebody,” she said with an evil laugh. “A former soldier suffering from severe post-traumatic stress.”

  My eyes widened and I gritted my teeth. Rage boiled up deep within me.

  “You’re out of your mind. No one’s going to believe that.”

  She chuckled.

  “Deranged former Navy SEAL responsible for oil rig attack. I can see the headline now.”

  I shook my head.

  “You’ll have no evidence,” I said. “You’ll collapse under your own scheme if you even try to pull that off.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she said. “I mean, let’s look at the facts. You have the equipment and experience to pull it off. Your ROV will be found near the site of the explosion. And we have footage of you snooping near the rig, attacking and killing members of our team just days before the spill.” She laughed and added, “You have no idea what kind of power I have. I already have the entire plan in place. Certified psychiatrists to vouch for your serious conditions, fabricated emails planning your attack, and verified meetings with offshore drilling engineers to obtain as much information as you could.”

  She paused a moment, then continued, “That’s right, I know about your little meeting with your professor friends. Logan, did you really think I’d be stupid enough to let you barge in here and stop me? You’ve helped me, Logan. You’ve made this much easier for me. You’ve given me someone to pin this on.”

  My mind raced, thinking over everything she’d just said.

  “I have friends too,” I said. “I have people who will vouch for me.”

  “Who?” she laughed. “A dead cop? A beach bum? An old has-been professor? Or how about your fiancée accomplice? The former mercenary who’s known for having little regard for the law. The only credible connection you have is with Senator Cooper, but I’ll be dealing with that wannabe politician soon enough.”

  I was at a loss for words, unable to believe what I was hearing. Ange had stepped beside me, and the speaker was just loud enough to hear what Carson was saying.

  “You struck a firm blow last month,” Carson continued. “But in the end, you failed, Logan. You’ll have plenty of time to regret your decisions in prison.”

  My hand squeezed the phone tighter and tighter. My mind ran through scenarios, trying to come up with the best course of action.

  “Again, if either of you takes one step out of that shack, I’ll detonate the explosives. One step, Logan.”

  “Carson, you blow that well and you die,” I said, my voice filled with rage. The words spat out of my mouth uncontrollably. “You hear me? You blow that well and you’re dead!”

  The line went silent. She’d hung up, but I couldn’t get her words out of my head. Her men had been the ones who’d stolen my ROV from the marina office. She’d orchestrated an entire plan to pin the entire thing on me, and I’d played right into her hands. I hoped that such an accusation wouldn’t hold up in court, but I also knew that she was powerful and that she worked closely with people who were even more powerful than her.

  I glanced around the room at the workers who were staring at me under the dim light of the emergency lighting. Most of them had heard the conversation and didn’t know how to react. Ange and I had managed to seal the well, yet it felt like we were right back where we started.

  “She’s full of crap, Logan,” Ange said, snapping me from my thoughts. “She’s going to blow the well anyway, whether we stay here or not. You know that. At least if we go after her, there’s a chance we could put her down before she does.”

  She was right. Staying in that shack would solve nothing. We had no choice but to go for it.

  In a fluid motion, I replaced the nearly spent magazine in my Sig with a full one. Ange did the same with her Glock and we gave each other a brief, confident nod before focusing our gaze across the room and moving swiftly back toward the metal door. With our weapons ready, I pulled on the handle and we burst through the door. We scanned the drill floor and, seeing that nobody was around, headed up a flight of metal stairs to get a better view of the ri
g. If we were going to take down Carson, we’d have to locate her first.

  The rig was eerily quiet. The sounds of machinery had died and all we could hear was the whistling wind and the occasional sound of distant footsteps. Every time we heard someone and focused through the darkness, we’d realize that it was a rig worker moving about and probably trying to fix whatever was wrong with the generator.

  As we reached the top of the stairs, we were able to look out over the entire platform.

  “There,” Ange said, pointing toward the parked Eurocopter over on the helipad.

  I looked where she was pointing and saw a group of shadowy figures moving quickly toward the helipad. My eyes grew wide as the helicopter’s engines started up and the main rotor began to spin. The group hit the stairs, heading up to the helipad as the side door of the chopper opened.

  There was only one thing to do. The chopper was over a football field away from us, which was right at the end of the effective range of our 9mm handguns. From that distance, hitting anyone in the group, let alone Carson, would be incredibly difficult. And the chopper was big, with reinforced steel, and not even Ange’s sniper rifle had been able to take it down. So trying to disable it with such low-caliber rounds would be nearly impossible.

  Just as the group reached the edge of the helipad, Ange and I took aim. We both knew that our only chance was to fire off as many rounds as we could as quickly and accurately as possible. As my finger hovered over the trigger, I spotted movement in the corner of my eye. To my amazement, the crane to our left was moving, its massive boom creaking as the center rotated on its axis. There was an emergency light on in the operator’s cab, and though it was far off, I could barely make out the guy seated at the controls. Unlike every other worker I’d seen, this guy was wearing solid black.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “Ange, hold your fire!”

  Her head snapped to look at me. Just as she was about to ask what was wrong with me, her eyes focused on the crane’s cab as well.

  Her mouth dropped open, then she said, “Holy shit is right.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The tension in the nylon rope suddenly gave way, dropping Scott into a freefall toward the dark water below. Having been just a few seconds away from reaching the main platform of the rig sixty feet up, his body picked up tremendous speed and he splashed hard feetfirst into the water. The dark, thrashing ocean engulfed his body. He sank over fifteen feet down before his body slowed.

  Scott tilted his head around and peeked through blurred eyes to orient himself before kicking for the surface. The incident had lasted just a few seconds and had caught him off guard. He didn’t have time to think about why the rope had snapped, throwing a wrench in their plans. He needed to reach the surface and get his bearings.

  After a few powerful scissor kicks, Scott broke the surface and took in a much-needed lungful of air. His heart raced from the sudden, unexpected fall, which had caused him to quickly use up the oxygen in his lungs while beneath the waves.

  He breathed in and out, controlling the process as best he could given the situation. Treading water, he wiped his eyes, then looked up toward the rig for any clue as to what had just caused the rope to break. He blinked a few times and saw nothing but the railing and the faint light beyond.

  He directed his gaze back down to the water around him and thought the situation over. The ascender had jerked from his fingers and was at that moment plummeting to the seafloor nearly two thousand feet beneath his feet, dragging most of the rope with it. So even if Logan or Ange managed to throw down some other rope, there was no way he’d be able to reach the top. He wasn’t a bad climber, but climbing sixty feet of rope while wearing a dry suit and a bulletproof vest was out of the question, even if they did manage to find one that was thick enough to climb.

  He saw motion in the top corners of his eyes, looked up, and saw two dark figures leaning over the edge. Reaching a hand out of the water, he waved until one of the figures waved back, then went back to treading water with all four limbs.

  At least they know that I’m alright, he thought. I just hope Dodge doesn’t do something irrational like jump down to try and help me.

  He was confident that his old friend wouldn’t. A sixty-foot fall wasn’t a big deal for guys like them, even if it had taken him by surprise.

  After the brief interaction with Logan, Scott swam toward the rig’s massive starboard pontoon. He moved right past where he’d tied off their floating jammer contraption along with the two sets of rebreather gear and sea scooters. While swimming, he suddenly heard a loud blaring alarm coming from up on the main deck. It only fueled him more as he scanned his eyes along every corner of the pontoon, searching for a way up in the dark underbelly of the rig.

  Open ocean swells slapped against the outer shell of the pontoon, but the rig didn’t move up or down in the slightest. The whole platform was stabilized by an advanced and intricate combination of ballast tanks and thrusters that synchronized via computers to maintain stability even in the roughest seas. This allowed the rig to conduct drilling operations on a level surface over open ocean.

  Halfway down the starboard pontoon, Scott stumbled upon a metal ladder that was built into the arched outer casing. He grabbed hold of the rungs and forced his body up out of the water, extending his hands overhead and pressing his legs. Within seconds, the pontoon leveled off and he stepped onto the flat underbelly of the rig. Just as he rose to his feet, he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire coming from above him on the rig.

  Resolution burned deep within him. He didn’t like leaving his friends out to dry while he wasted time on the industrial jungle gym. He needed to up his pace if he was going to play a role in the fight. He was up out of the water, but he still had a long ways to go if he was going to reach the main deck. Fortunately, he spotted a second section of ladder near the far end of the pontoon after quickly traversing a few hundred feet along the edge.

  The flat surface was only about five feet wide, and when Scott reached the base of the ladder, he pulled his knife from its sheath. Lifting his right foot onto the bottom rung, he cut his bootie free of the drysuit with a few quick slashes of the sharp blade. Having stowed his boots in Ange’s drybag, his only option was to remove the booties if he was going to keep from being barefoot.

  Once both booties were cut free, he unzipped the top of the drysuit, loosened the wrist straps, and slid his arms out one at a time. With his arms free, he shimmied the suit off his body and stepped out. Grabbing the damaged dry suit, he tossed it into the water and directed his attention back to the ladder. Climbing it would be a hell of a lot easier without the extra layer.

  Gunshots continued to echo down from up near the center of the rig as he flew up the ladder, climbing as fast as he could. The stretch of ladder was forty feet long, extending right above the metal pontoon below. But Scott didn’t look down once, nor did he care to.

  He reached the top rung with newfound energy and vigor and jumped to his feet on the platform. A few minutes of walkways and staircases later, he reached the main deck. Just as he did, the blaring alarms that had been sounding for the past five minutes were suddenly silenced. The red spinning lights went out too, along with the rest of the lights on the rig. For a few seconds, the entire platform was shrouded in darkness, lit only by the dim silver glow of the cloud-blocked moon hanging overhead.

  A moment later, the emergency lighting activated, illuminating a few patches of lights, just enough to make it possible to navigate your way on the rig. Reaching into his pocket, Scott pulled out a small metal container and pried it open. Dipping his finger into black face paint, he covered his face with it in seconds, then closed it and returned it back into his pocket. He didn’t want to risk someone recognizing him.

  Looking around, Scott slid his Glock from his leg holster and gripped it with two hands as he moved through the shadows. He knew where he needed to go. The gunfire had come from the center of the rig, near the drill floor, exactly where Logan an
d Ange would have gone to stop the operation.

  As he strode toward the center, he spotted movement in the corner of his eye. It came from the other side of the rig, near the base of the helipad. Focusing his gaze, he saw the silhouettes of four guys walking in step toward the center of the rig. They were shouting a few words, and a moment later, Scott spotted a second group walking toward them. This one had three people, but as he looked closer, he could clearly see that one of them was a woman.

  She’s trying to make an escape, he thought as he watched her move toward the helipad and the parked Eurocopter. She was holding a phone up to her ear as she walked in the middle of the small group of guys.

  As much as Scott wanted to find Logan and Ange, he knew that the whole mission could be for nothing if she got away. Being too far to shoot her from across the rig, he needed another plan and he needed it fast.

  Searching around him, he stared in awe at the massive industrial crane towering up from the deck just to his left. Looking it over and seeing a worker standing high up near the operator’s cab, he got an idea.

  As fast as he could, Scott sprinted to the base of the crane and bolted up the ladder. He took intermittent glances as he hit rung after rung, checking to see how close Carson was to reaching the chopper. When he reached the top, his hands were raw and his muscles were burning. High above the main deck, he stormed over the narrow metal walkway that wrapped around the cab and ran into the worker just as he was leaving.

  “Back inside,” Scott said, snatching his Glock and aiming it at the unsuspecting worker.

  He was a big guy, well over two hundred pounds. His face was red, his eyes big, and he had scrubby facial hair. He was also hard as nails, having spent years working on rigs all over the world.

  The guy paused a moment, taken aback by the situation. Scott hated threatening him, but he needed to get the big machine up and running.