Assignment Black Gold (9 page)

“No chopper.”

“I sent the Sikorsky out two hours ago.”

“It’s not there,” Durell said. Matty stared through the
glasses at the growing image of the platform for long moments. His mouth
drooped grimly.

“Right. No chopper.”

Durell said, “No people, either.”

“I noticed that.”

“Yon said there was a maintenance crew?”

“The weevils might still be all asleep. Nothing much for
them to do out here.”

Durell said, “Do you believe that?”

“No.” Matt slowly lowered the glasses. “I‘m just kidding
myself. The rig looks a mess. It’s been deserted.”

“You heard no Mayday from the chopper?”

“Nothing.”

The sun was now a blazing scourge above the surging ocean.
The platform grew larger by the moment as Kitty held the whaleboat steadily on
course. The wind blew from the west, and spray drenched them as the boat beat
into the swells rolling toward them. Kitty’s face was pale under her tan. The
platform was like a monstrous island, overgrown with mechanical arms, derricks,
and loading cranes, covered with a spider’s web of cables and lines that had
been left every which way, as if the men detailed to stand watch had abandoned
the Lady in a panicked hurry, No sound came from the rig, which loomed higher
and wider as they approached.

“Come into the lee,” Durell suggested.

The girl nodded. “I still don’t see a soul.”

Matt, ignoring the girl’s presence, swore in a growling
Cajun accent.

Kitty said, “It’s eerie, even in broad daylight.”

The man-made island, with the drilling tower looming high against
the hot, pale sky, seemed enormous. As they approached, they heard the crash
and push of the sea against the six giant tubular legs that supported the rig
on the ocean bottom, more than a hundred feet below. Various
creakings
,
clangings
,
slappings
, and
crackings
came
from the great structure. The decks loomed overhead. Kitty brought the
whaleboat around the heliport deck that jutted out beyond the crew’s quarters.
Durell noted that some of the deck railing had been broken away. There were
scars along the wide steel plates that supported the chopper deck, and a long
bright streak where the paint had been gouged away, too recently for the ocean
rust to have set in. The smell of smoke lingered
 
the leeward air beyond the platform.

The whaleboat rose and fell dangerously near the giant
tubular legs that supported the platform.

“Is the Lady officially shut down?” Durell asked.

Matt shrugged. “Hobe was making frames to salvage the
casings and plug the borehole with cement, You’ve got to plug it to prevent the
migration of different fluids from the underground strata we’ve drilled
through. But he couldn’t get permission from the oil ministry in Lubinda to
abandon yet.”

“When were you here last?”

“Two days ago, with a shipment of barite—that’s barium
sulphate
, a mineral we use to increase the specific
gravity and weight of the drilling mud. We’ve been using
bentonite
,
a colloidal clay, which swells when wet, and We’d just gotten a new shipment.
I’ve been going on as it We weren’t going to shut down, no matter what Hobe
says about no oil under this water.”

Something clanged, steel on steel, on the deck high above
them. Kitty reversed the whaleboat’s engine and Durell went forward to catch a
long loop of cable that hung down from the side of the heliport.

“Blow the horn, Kitty,” Matt said hoarsely. “Someone’s got
to be up there. They ought to have shipped the ladder down by now.”

“Maybe somebody’s there,” the girl said, “but I don’t think
we’re going to be welcome.”

Durell tied up the whaleboat. “How many of your men are new,
Matt? The place looks like a crow’s nest.”

“Hell, they’re all good boys. Picked them myself.”

Kitty sounded the whaleboat’s horn, listened to the strange
echoes move away along the shadowed underside of the platform. The boat lifted
and fell, splashing. She touched the compressed-air horn again. The raucous

blast was feeble against the immense noise of the heaving
seas that rolled under the rig. The clanging and banging of loose equipment
sounded even louder now that they were close aboard. Durell spotted a series of
pipe ladders going up under the heliport deck, and pulled the whaleboat closer
to it so they could step onto the tiny steel platform that was regularly awash
at sea level. Kitty tied a quick bowline to secure the whaleboat. She looked
uncertain. Fifty feet above, the three-sided deck of the chopper platform
jutted over their heads, casting a shadow against the sun at their backs.

“Come on,“ Matt said grimly.

He jumped for the tiny step, slipped. caught at the pipe
railing, did not look back as he started to climb hand over hand. Durell
checked the girl.

“Maybe you should stay here.”

“Not a chance.” She looked almost as grim as Matt.

“I’ve got to see what’s going on.”

“Brady was curious, too," Durell said. “He had all
those charts and progress reports and specifications in his office. And
he’s disappeared. So has the standby crew here. And the Sikorsky.”

“I saw the same scars.” She pointed upward. “The chopper
missed the landing platform and went into the water, didn’t it? Just about
where we are now.”

“Missed, or was shoved over the side,” Durell said.

“Oh, hell. I knew the pilot. John was nice.”

“Stay here," Durell said again.

“No. I’m going with you.”

She refused his hand offered in help, jumped nimbly to the
foot of the ladder, and climbed up after the chunky figure of Matt, who was
already halfway to the lower deck. Durell went up after her.

The smell of smoke was stronger here, clinging to the steel
girders supporting the heliport deck. At the top of the ladder, Matt hammered
on the steel hatch over his head. After a moment, it gave way and he scrambled
up, out of sight. The girl followed. Durell came last.

What had happened was only too evident. The scorching sun on
the painted steel deck before them revealed the scars of a bomb blast or
explosion, marked by the rubberized streaks made by the choppers wheels as it
was pushed and hauled to the edge of the deck. There were more scars at the
rail, broken Plexiglas, a yellow wing tip. The heat made waves of air dance
over the fiat expanse of steel plate. Matty the Fork pushed stubby fingers
through his cropped hair and cursed. His jaw stuck out stubbornly.

“The chopper was pushed overboard,” Durell said.

“Yeah. A lot of money and men," Matt muttered.

“They may not be dead.”

Below them, the sea hissed and rumbled. Loose cables moved
in the wind, and metal banged loosely somewhere, as if a bulkhead door was
open, although the platform itself was as steady as if built on dry land. All
around them, the sea sparkled in emptiness. The two fishing boats with their
triangular red sails had vanished toward the invisible shore to the east.

Matt cupped his hands and yelled.

“Connie? John? Ed?”

His voice went forward toward the crew’s quarters, the
jackhouse
, the drilling mast. No one was in sight. Nobody
answered his angry shout.

“Come on,” Matt said. “There‘s something screwy here."

Dangerous
was the
proper word, Durell thought. He could feel it, smell it in the air of
abandonment. The Lubinda Lady seemed empty. Seemed, he repeated to himself. He
took nothing for granted. Outward appearances were as deceptive as a spider’s
web to an unwary fly. He took his gun from his belt and held it loosely
in his hand. A block banged hollowly against a girder. There were small square
windows in the back of the crew’s quarters

that faced them. Nothing moved except a small white curtain
that flapped through an open sash.

“Matt, go slow,” he said quietly.

There was a neatly stacked pyramid of casing pipe this side of
the drilling tower. Crates, boxes, drums of fuel were also neatly ordered
beyond the crew’s housing, on the opposite side or the platform from the
jackhouse
. The wind blew stronger across the deck, smelling
of the limitless ocean.

Kitty said, “What’s wrong, Sam?”

“It looks as if the Lady has been pirated.”

They moved carefully to the crew’s quarters. The door was
open, swinging slightly in the wind. There was nothing but silence, except for
the occasional clatter of loose equipment in the wind and the endless surge and
hiss of the sea far below-the platform.

“Stay out here, Kitty,” Durell said.

The girl shook her head. “No, I want to stay with you.
Frankly, I’ve got the creeps.”

The bunk rooms were all neatly made up. In one of them,
Durell noted the long ash of a cigarette in a tray. He touched it tentatively,
but could not tell how long the ash had been there. The galley was another
matter. He could smell the burned bacon before they got there. The
stainless-steel range, with its assortment of pots and skillets, was still
turned on. The burners were hot. A huge pan contained only dozens of small,
shriveled black crisps of bacon. Scrambled eggs in another skillet were almost
unrecognizable. Durell watched Kitty automatically turn off the power in the
stoves with a look of unconscious concern on her fine face. There was
still some coffee in the big pot.

“Where is the radio shack?” Durell asked.

“This way,” Matt said.

They went up a spiral stairway to the upper deck of the
crewhouse
. The door stood ajar. Durell held the others back
and pushed at the door with his fingertips. Nothing happened. The radio
shack also operated as a miniature control tower for the heliport; its wide
windows faced fore and aft. The operator’s swivel chair had been turned to face
the door, as if the radiomen had swung around suddenly to greet an intruder.
Matt gave a low whistle.

“Look at that."

A crowbar lay on the carpeted deck. Someone had used it to
smash the bank of communication instruments into a tangled mass of wires,
dials, and twisted plates. Durell started across the green carpet, then checked
himself and the others. There were stains on the carpet, a series of bloody
drops soaked into the fibers, and a long scuff mark leading to the door
where they stood. Durell knelt and tentatively touched the nearest drop. It had
just started to coagulate.

“Your radioman was slugged and dragged out of here. It
couldn’t have happened more than half an hour ago.”

Matt looked toward the eastward windows facing the invisible
coast. “Those two fishing boats we saw—”

“Could be. I want to see the office—the one you and Hobe
used.”

“That’s kind of restricted, Sam.”

Durell looked flatly at the foreman. “Do you want to
stand on ceremony now? it‘s plain the rig has been hijacked—at least, the crew
has been forced oil and the radio smashed and the chopper given the deep six.”

“But—why?” Matt demanded. “We were shut down, We were going
to abandon the drilling hole—”

“Why was your switcher loco and yard sabotaged last night?”

“I can’t figure it," Matt grumbled.

“Somebody doesn’t want the Lubinda Lady to strike oil,
that’s what it amounts to. Maybe Brady Cotton was working on this and that‘s
why he disappeared, too.”

“But—who?”

“Apgaks, maybe,” Durell suggested.

“Just to disrupt things?”

“Maybe.”

Durell went out on the catwalk and took the ladder down to
the main deck. The morning sun was hotter now. The
crewhouse
and radio shack were air-conditioned, and the pumps were still running; but now
the force of the sun hit them with unexpected strength. The reflections from
the sea were all but blinding.

“I’ll take you to the lab,” Matt agreed. “Hobe kept
duplicates of all the records there.”

Durell still had a sense of oppressive danger amid the glare
and heat of the deck as they walked toward the drilling tower. The tanks of
mud, water, diesel fuel, the neat loops of chain and cable, the casing racks, a
shack containing small power takeoffs, drilling bits, all presented a maze of
equipment that could trap the unwary. Seagulls mewed and soared overhead in the
blinding sky. Durell had gone out on ocean rigs before, during his youth on the
Gulf, but never on one of these enormous dimensions.

A ladder took them to a lower deck beneath the main. It was
a relief to escape the blast of sunlight. But here the swish and rumble of the
sea were exaggerated by echoes, and for the first time, Kitty slipped her
hand into Durell’s. Her fingers were cold. He headed for the door at the
end of the wide catwalk. Fluorescent lights still blazed in the windows visible
here. Again, no one was in sight. The maintenance crew had disappeared as it
snatched up into the sky or dropped into the deep green sea.

“I tell you,” Matt said loudly, “we were ready to hit pay
sand. I could smell it. I had the safety valve ready, the oil string standing by—that’s
the final set of casing we put down into a well once we’re sure of
production. We’d already hit a gas zone, twice. And then Hobe told us to shut
down and get ready to tie into the rig tender and pump up the legs so we could
either move to another zone or give it up and get towed away.” Matt the Fork
waved a calloused hand. “This whole thing will float, you
 
know.”

The door to the geologist’s office and lab was closed
and locked. Matt fumbled in his pocket for a key. The lock seemed stubborn for
a moment, then it clicked open.

The interior looked as if a wild animal had gone rabid among
the desks, files, cases of core samples, charts, and cabinets. A chair
lay on the floor, its swivel legs upward. There were wash basins in which the
technicians had studied the lithographic formations obtained by the drill. The
samples were taken either from the bore or from the bailer in cable tool
cuttings, and were then washed free of foreign matter, dried, and labeled to
show the depths at which they were found. There were thick files or
records analyzing the samples for porosity, permeability, angle of dip, fluid
content, and geological age. Most of the analysis sheets were strewn like a
snowstorm over the floor of the laboratory. Slung against one wall of the
long room was a twenty-foot core barrel which was run at the bottom of the
drill pipe in place of the bit. Matt the Fork looked around at the mess with
utter incomprehension.