Artifact

by F. Paul Wilson

Chapter 38

 

  Oilstar's security squads grudgingly did what their boss had ordered, but McKendry noticed without surprise that they walked their routes together, sticking to the brightly lit decks, chatting with late-shift crewmen - in other words, going out of their way to avoid anywhere that trouble might occur.

  The big man patrolled the darker ways himself, slipping through the claustrophobic and tangled pipe forests and chemical-storage areas, letting a sixth sense prickle his skin.

  He felt uneasy.

  Looking up into the dark and moonless sky, he was positive this uneasiness wasn't his imagination.

  Of course, he had been just as positive month after month, ever since the night Joshua Keene had died.

  His doubts ended when he reached the fourth deck and stopped, feeling electricity go up his spine. Someone - perhaps a survivor from Green Impact - was here on theValhalla platform.

  His flashlight beam revealed no movement in the dark corners; not that he expected any. No professional would have waited around. Then he discovered that one of the access hatches leading up from the support legs and the distant water was open. It was near the central wellhead and the shut- down mechanical shops. When he examined it more closely, he saw that one of the naked yellow lightbulbs had been smashed. Crumpled in the shadows, he found a lightweight black cloak - the kind he himself would have chosen for camouflage.

  Whoever had been here, or was still here, apparently thought that security on board was as lax as it had been in the past.

  He directed the beam of the flashlight all the way down to the water. Though the beam diffused, he saw something dark tied up to the ladder attached to the wide concrete leg. Running to the nearest lift platform, he descended to water level, where he studied the unobtrusive black boat tied to a ladder rung. The single rubber raft could have carried only a few of the terrorists, but even a small group could cause extreme damage to the rig if they knew what they were doing.

  McKendry took out a knife and, with a quick motion, slashed the rope holding the Zodiac in place. He shoved with his foot so that the raft drifted into the water.

  Whoever had come to his rig wouldn't get away now. He'd have them cornered on theValhalla platform, where he could deal with them in his own way.

  Creeping across the decks and ducking the rig's still laughable security, Keene found a set of lockers that contained Oilstar work clothes. Diligent practices on the rig had been increased, and he thought he saw more guards on patrol, but they didn't appear to be doing a better job than before. They talked loudly and walked in packs, making it easy for him to elude them.

  From one of the lockers, he pulled on a greasy, thick jumpsuit that had the hand-lettered name Virata written on the left breast in bold strokes with a black Magic Marker. The jumpsuit smelled like grease and piss, but he'd endured worse. He found a hard hat adorned with crudely placed racing decals and snugged it against his hair.

  Walking away from the lockers he was less stealthy, and instead walked as if he belonged on the rig. The explosive packs strapped to his chest and legs, as well as the packages he carried in one hand, made him look bulky and cumbersome, but if all went well, he wouldn't have them for long.

  Outside the mechanical rooms and shop offices, he found the central pipes and controls for the fire- suppression systems and alarms. He was relieved to see that the safety valves were split into two systems, one of which went toward the habitation quarters to protect the crew complement. An independent set dealt with the production facility, the pipes and chambers and machinery of the production rig itself.

  He shut down, then permanently disabled the alarms, sprinklers, and safety systems in the production portions ofValhalla . Once the explosives went off, the alarms and sprinklers would activate inside the habitation module, getting the snoozing off-duty teams out of bed. That would give the crew members a chance to get away, but nothing would stop the flames in the production area. These sleepy South American crewmen certainly wouldn't try to save the rig. They'd rush to the lifeboats, which would drop like padded sledgehammers into the water far below.

  Keene supposed that kept him from being a cold-blooded murderer; now he qualified as just a warm- blooded one.

  He worked for ten minutes setting up his explosives against a thirty-foot-high distillation tank connected to three systems that led to the heavy-gases storage chambers and out to the flame boom. His examination of design blueprints of theValhalla had showed that even his token amount of explosives would ignite this one tank. Once it blew, it would set off the second, which would set off the third, and so on like red-hot dominoes until nothing was left of the oil rig's production facilities.

  Given a huge supply of Oilstar funding, Van Alman might be able to repair and eventually restart production on theValhalla . But the cost to him in damage to public relations would be insurmountable.

  Keene twisted the last wire onto the timer. He still had a few small grenades clipped to his belt, just in case he needed a little help getting away. If he got out of here and climbed down to his inflatable boat in time, he could roar off in the Zodiac with the outboard cranked full. With the rig blazing behind him, he could make his way back to the Venezuelan mainland and eventually return to North America.

  This year he'd have one hell of a story to tell the remaining members of the Daredevils Club on New Year's Eve. He would take great pleasure in rubbing Frik's nose in it. First he had to finish his job and get off the rig alive, though.

  He stood up. Before he could turn, there was a click as the hammer of a pistol was drawn back.

  "Don't move. "

  Keene froze. Thoughts raced through his mind. He hadn't even heard footsteps.

  The background white noise of the drilling rig showered like snow around him. He rested a hand on one of the small grenades at his waist, cradling it. He could easily yank the pin out, toss it next to the other explosives. The grenade would blow up before the security guard behind him could stop it. The only problem was that he would be gunned down in an instant, or the explosion would take him with it.

  He considered trying to bluff his way out, holding on to the grenade as long as possible. If he could redirect the guard's attention, maybe he could toss the grenade far enough so that he could get away as the explosions rippled through the rig. In the meantime, he would have to dodge bullets, too. It was a near-zero chance of survival.

  But near-zero isn't zero.

  "Turn around very slowly and show me your hands," the security guard said.

  Something in the voice tickled the back of Keene's memory, but he tried to ignore it and stay focused on the mission. He turned, keeping his eyes fixed on the explosives and his hand covering the grenade. Maybe he could fool the guard, act like a regular Joe.

  He started to set a smile on his face and looked up to make eye contact with the stranger. When he did, he saw the impossible: Terris McKendry, very much alive, aiming a pistol at his chest.

  Keene blinked. McKendry's face looked like an astonished child's as his jaw fell open. "What the hell?"

  Stupefied, Keene almost dropped the grenade. The motion startled McKendry, who jerked the pistol.

  Involuntarily, Keene ducked. "You're dead," he muttered.

  McKendry looked at his friend as if that were the stupidest thing he had ever heard, but he clamped his lips shut. Keene knew that the same words had been about to come from the other man's mouth.

  "I watched you die," the bigger man said. "Blown overboard. They never found your body. The sharks got it. "

  "I saw the bullets hit. I saw you thrown off the bicycle. "

  For a moment the two men held their weapons, facing each other. Keene kept his hand on the grenade; McKendry's pistol was still targeted at his partner. Finally Joshua laughed out loud, the braying chuckle that had always annoyed his friend.

  "What are you doing here?" McKendry lowered his weapon a fraction of an inch.


  Keene tucked the grenade in his jumpsuit pocket. "What areyou doing here, Terris? Helping out those bastards at Oilstar?" He raised his hands to indicate the totality of theValhalla platform. "Don't you know what Frik did?"

  "Why are you doing the dirty work of those Green Impact scum, Josh? Selene Trujold has the blood of dozens on her hands. Probably more. You saw yourself what she did to the crew on the tanker. "

  "Yes," Keene said, uneasy. "But I also saw what an Oilstar assassination squad did to her and all the other members of her team; slaughtered most of them and sent the rest off to rot in some Venezuelan jail. "

  McKendry turned gray. "You were there?"

  "I was off in Pedernales getting supplies. When I came back, I found the camp destroyed. Selene died in my arms. " He gritted his teeth. "Damn it, Terris! I loved her. "

  "She would have killed you eventually. Maybe I saved your ass. "

  "Maybe you don't know what you're talking about. "

  "She was a killer, Joshua. A mad dog, willing to murder innocent people to make her point. I had to shoot her. " McKendry sounded as if he were working as hard to convince himself as he was to convince Keene.

  "You're full of shit, Terris," Keene said. "She wasn't shot, she was stabbed. "

  "What do you mean she was stabbed?"

  "I mean she was stabbed. With this. " He pulled the knife from his waist and held it pommel-out to his partner. The etched initials J. R. caught the light.

  "Where did you get that?"

  Keene couldn't figure out his partner's reaction. "I picked it up from the pool of Selene's blood that she dropped it in. Terris, what is your problem?"

  The big man's pallor had improved. He shook his head and stood up straight, as if a large weight had been removed from his shoulders.

  Keene knew better than to push the subject. He sheathed the knife and said, "Did you ever stop to wonder about the real reason Frik wanted this artifact?" He grabbed Selene's fragment out of his pocket and held it up. At times, he had wanted to wipe the surfaces clean, to remove the discolorations, but instead he had let the bloodstains dry on it. Selene's blood.

  McKendry stared at the object. Keene dangled it like a carrot in front of his friend's eyes. "Yes, I got it, Terris. I also found out why Frik really wants it. "

  He rapidly summarized what he had learned: Paul Trujold's discovery of the artifact's true power, and the real purpose behind Frikkie's Daredevil scheme - knowledge that had cost Selene's father his life.

  Keene watched McKendry absorb the information, run it through his logic filters. He knew McKendry's process, knew his partner would come to the same conclusions he himself had reached.

  Finally, in a lowered voice, McKendry said, "If it were anybody else telling me this, I wouldn't even listen. "

  "But it is me, Terris. Damn it, it's the truth. "

  McKendry gestured with the pistol, not in a threatening manner, just as the most obvious means to point. "I think you'd better disassemble those explosives. You won't be needing them now. "

  Keene hesitated, feeling his heart turn to lead in his chest. "I promised Selene," he said. "With her dying breath she asked me to shut down Oilstar, to get even with them. I can't ignore that. "

  "And I gave my word to protect this platform. It may not be worth what I thought it was, but I won't let you destroy theValhalla . " He paused. "There's got to be some other way. "

  The two men held their ground, each waiting for the other to speak or offer a suggestion. After a minute, Keene said, "Crap. Maybe I don't have to blow up theValhalla to be true to my promise. "

  A short time later, the two men stood side by side at the edge of the heliport deck, high above the water. McKendry's on-duty security men had encountered them and waved at their chief. They had not bothered to question the identity of the man wearing Virata's work overalls. McKendry growled under his breath; Keene snickered at their incompetence.

  The smaller man held the odd artifact that had been excavated from deep beneath the sea. He stared at it for the last time.

  "I sure wish I understood what this is," he said. "But I know it's not worth all the grief it's caused. " He held it high, dangling it more than a hundred feet over the waters of the Gulf of Paria, and thought of his promise to Selene. Frik Van Alman would be more upset about not regaining the artifact than he would ever have been about losing the oil rig.

  He smiled at the thought of his revenge, muttered something under his breath, and let go.

  As the artifact droped from his fingers, it reflected the lights of the rig oddly, as if the perspective were wrong. The optical illusion made it appear to hang in the air.

  McKendry's big hand reached out in a flash and grabbed the object before it could fall to the water.

  "No. That wouldn't finish it, Joshua. " Keene glared at his friend, feeling betrayed, but McKendry continued. "Frik would find it. Somehow. "

  "That's ridiculous. He couldn't know - "

  "Anything is possible. He could have a camera on us right at this moment. "

  Keene didn't answer. McKendry grinned. "I've reduced you to silence. That's a change. Listen to me, would you? Getting rid of this would not make Frik stop what he's doing. You said yourself this thing could make internal combustion engines a distant memory. That would destroy Oilstar, destroy Frikkie. "

  "What if he comes after it before then?"

  "He won't," McKendry said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because he trusts us to be good soldiers and do as we were told. On New Year's Eve, you and I will go to Las Vegas and make Frik answer for himself. We'll see to it that this discovery gets put to good use for the whole world, not just for one greedy son of a bitch. "

  Keene sighed and stared out at the water and the nearby coast of Trinidad. The sky was lightening, shifting from indigo to blues and grays and pinks as the first rays of the sun refracted through the gathering clouds. Red sky at morning, he thought. A storm was on the way.

  "You always did hate loose ends," he said, turning to face his friend.

  McKendry didn't so much as crack a smile. "And you always did talk too much. "