Hell Rig (6 page)

“Impossible,” she said, shaking her head.

She walked across the deck, stepping over storm tossed debris and dodging twisted, broken pipes. The cellar deck had taken the brunt of the storm. The chemical room had remained sealed and dry, but the mudroom and workshops had not. Facing outside the rig, they were two-feet deep in seawater. As she walked up the outside stairs and crossed the main deck, she failed to see the shadows stir as parodies of faces stared and broken limbs reached for her.

The hearty aroma of coffee struck her as she walked into their makeshift meeting room. The room was empty except for Tolson.

“Here,” Tolson said, pouring her a cup of coffee.

“Thanks,” she said, wrapping both hands around the hot cup to warm them. “I thought you were welding?”

Tolson shrugged his shoulders. “I was, when Mac disappeared on me. I finished up by myself and came up here.”

“That’s strange. I just saw Mac down by the chemical room.”

Tolson cursed under his breath. “Damn slacker. You just can’t trust those brainy types,” he said with a grin.

“Meaning me?” she asked, her voice dripping acid.

Tolson chuckled. “Nah, you’re okay, for a skirt. It’s Mac. He signed on as a roustabout and welder’s helper but I know he’s well educated, maybe too smart for the job.”

“How?” Her curiosity was aroused.

“Back in port while we were waiting on the chopper, I saw him reading a book. When he saw I was watching, he dropped it in the garbage. I got curious and fished it out after he left.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket. “I wrote it down. It was titled
Analysis and Interpretation of Fire Scene Evidence
by Almirall and, uh, Furton.”

“Maybe he just wanted to learn a bit more about our job,” she suggested, intrigued that Tolson had written down the book’s title.

“Why hide it? I think he’s a cop, sent out to investigate the deaths here.”

As much as she hated to admit it, Tolson’s idea made sense. “Look, don’t tell anyone else about this. We can keep an eye on him. If we’re wrong, no harm done. I wouldn’t want to ruin his job on a weak assumption and you know what they say about assuming.”

Tolson smiled. “Something about your ass and me, right?” he said, leaning over and checking out her ass.

“Grrr. You’re hopeless!”

She took her coffee and left, headed for her room. She bumped into Jeff in the hall. He had a very serious look on his face.

“Come with me,” he said, grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her after him, almost spilling her coffee.

“What?” she asked.

Saying nothing, he led her outside and down the stairs to the cellar deck using his flashlight to light the way. Threading their way through a maze of pipes, pumps and storage tanks, they reached the big red emergency escape lifeboat. It rested level on the edge of a forty-five degree metal rail that led down to the water.

“This is the TEMPSC
,
” he said, playing his light on it, “The Totally Enclosed Motor Propulsion Survival Craft, capable of holding ten men. Notice anything about it?” He pointed his light to the control panel.

She looked it over and saw, besides the singe marks from the flames, the control box gaping open. Someone had cut the release wires. “It’s been tampered with. So what? Waters said the Digger Man disabled it.”

“He said the Digger Man ‘might’ have disabled it. He just saw that the TEMPSC was still here.”

“So?”

“Look closer. Someone has tampered with this electrical release box recently. There’s no sign of seawater or corrosion inside. It’s as dry as a bone. Besides,” he pointed down the sled. “The rail has been twisted out of position. The bend is still shiny and new. If the TEMPSC was released manually, it would just get stuck there.”

“What are you getting at?”

She didn’t like the way Jeff looked around conspiratorially before answering. “Someone in this crew did this,” he announced.

She shook her head, shocked at Jeff’s accusation. “Someone on the delivery chopper could have done it.”

“Maybe, but I’ll bet they unloaded and got out of here as fast as possible. It seems this rig has a dark reputation.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I talked to Ed earlier. He said the first crew that came out here after Hurricane Katrina to check out Waters’ story heard and saw strange things.”

“Yeah, like dead mutilated corpses.”

“No, strange things, things in the shadows, a quick glimpse of something and just as quickly it was gone and they heard voices inside their heads. One of the crew committed suicide a week after they returned. He hung himself from a closet shelf. A second started drinking and hasn’t stopped yet.”

A hard knot grew in her stomach as Jeff spoke. She remembered the sounds she heard earlier but fought back with logic. “Who wouldn’t after what they saw?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said, but she knew her argument was weak in the face of her own gut feelings.

“Why tell me?”

“Who else? If I tell the others, they’ll think I’m crazy or laugh at me. You’re educated. I thought I might have a chance of convincing you. I guess I was wrong.” He turned to leave.

“Wait. You could be wrong, you know. You’re no expert on metal corrosion, are you?”

“Damn it, I don’t have to be an expert to know this is recent.” He snorted out a chuckle. “Believe me, I know rust. I’ve chipped enough of it away with chipping hammers and sand blasted tons of it.”

Lisa looked at him, trying to judge his sincerity. He believed he was right and she had to honor that.

“Okay. I’ll trust your judgment on this.” He smiled and turned to leave. Through his open shirt, she noticed the glimmer of a shiny medallion against his chest. She reached out and grabbed it.

“A voodoo charm?” she asked with awe as she recognized the marking.

He jerked away, embarrassed. “Yes. What of it?” he challenged.

She laughed and opened the neck of her shirt, revealing a stone beaded necklace. Jeff’s eyes automatically strayed a bit lower, to her breasts, before jerking back to the necklace. “It’s an Erzulie Danto charm,” she explained. “She’s a powerful voodoo Loa, or spirit, a warrior. I wear it for protection.” She fingered a second similar necklace. “This one is for Papa Legba. He’s the most powerful Loa. He controls the doorway to the spirit world.”

“You believe in that mumbo jumbo?” Jeff asked.

She heard the unspoken accusation in his voice. It was a question she asked herself many times and had not completely answered.

“Not really, but I did grow up with it. My grandmother was a
mambo
, a voodoo priestess. I learned the names of the Loa alongside the names of the Catholic Saints. Some people call the Loas saints. I guess I’m an agnostic, but like you, I like the feel of them around my neck.”

He laughed. “Okay. I guess I came on too strong. Look, don’t tell the others about this. If I’m wrong, it could cause problems. If I’m right, I’ll need more proof.”

She smiled. “Which one? The TEMPSC or your voodoo charm?”

He smiled back. “Both.”

Lisa nodded but suddenly felt overwhelmed by secrets. She had been on the rig for less than ten hours and already had been sworn to secrecy by two different people. She trusted Jeff. He was a bit klutzy when it came to women, but she liked that rather than the smooth, self-sure operators like Tolson, who seemed to think he was God’s gift to women. There was some quality about Jeff that defied description – innocence or trust—that she had seen in few men, especially her last boyfriend whom she had found in bed with her roommate.

The others were harder to read. Ed was like an uncle to her, but he was hiding something. A man not used to secrets changed when he had one. This one was big. She wished she knew what it was. It seemed to weigh heavily on Ed’s mind.

Gleason was a big old bear, a simple country boy who seemed to focus on one thing at a time. If not for the others carrying on, he probably wouldn’t even concern himself with the reputation of the platform. Easton was a loud-mouthed punk with bad breath, an instigator. He was strange. Almost any man looked at her sometime, stealing glances when they thought she wasn’t watching. She knew she was no beauty, but had been called attractive. Easton, however, avoided looking at her, not even quick, furtive glances. Was he gay? She didn’t think so.

Bale was unusually quiet but she had seen him fingering a crucifix beneath his shirt several times. There was a story there, she suspected, but he, too, seemed to avoid her. Mac, according to Tolson, was hiding something. He was observant but not in a threatening manner, unlike Sims who was cold and calculating with his incessant furtive glances. His eyes missed nothing. She had seen him smile at times over nothing. She wondered what strange thoughts ran through his head.

She could not forget Waters. What could she say about him? Waters was downright spooky. He frightened her. He stalked the platform like a zombie, speaking to himself and jumping at shadows. He could become dangerous. Global Oil should not have sent him back out.

She glanced at the shadows around them and shivered. “Let’s get back to the others,” she suggested to Jeff. “I don’t like it out here.” Her coffee had grown cold. She tossed the cup’s contents over the side and dropped the empty Styrofoam cup in a barrel.

Jeff led the way with his light. She tried not to stare too deeply into the shadows.

After dinner, Lisa longed for a shower but settled for a quick wash with seawater and a rinse with a couple of cups of fresh drinking water. The bed, still slightly smelling of mold in spite of a liberal spraying of disinfectant, felt especially comfortable as she wrapped herself in her blanket. She was asleep within minutes.

* * * *

She awoke brusquely sometime in the middle of the night troubled by a bad dream. Visions of dead men hanging like fruit from bloody cranes and rows of dead white trees resembling skeletons lingered in her head. She could remember nothing else except a vague feeling of trepidation about snakes, swarms of snakes. She got up to get a drink of water. She saw Waters sitting in the hallway with his back against the wall and his eyes wide open, but he didn’t appear to see her, lost in some trance. She tiptoed by him to the meeting room and took a bottle of water from the cooler. Waters did not move or acknowledge her presence as she returned. Refreshed, she managed to sleep the remainder of the night with no further dreams.

Chapter Six

The second day began much as the first. At breakfast, they all sat down to a meal of pancakes, eggs, skillet toast, bacon and coffee cooked by Jeff on a portable grill outside the main building, discussing the day’s agenda between bites. Ed divided them into four teams for better efficiency. He assigned Tolson and McAndrews to weld broken guardrails and walkways, remove bent pipes and cut up large metal debris into more easily manageable pieces, while Bale, Easton and Jeff cleaned the buildings of broken and ruined furniture, emptied waterlogged file cabinets, stripped peeling wallpaper from the walls and hosed out the muck and grime with high-pressure salt water lines.

Gleason and Sims, much to Jeff’s delight, got the stinking job of cleaning out the freezer. Ed and Lisa would tackle the radio problem. Waters as usual had vanished before breakfast and no one bothered to search for him. After an hour or so behind the high-pressure water hose, Jeff wondered if things could get worse. His uniform had quickly crusted with filthy salt water and the sudden splashes left him with a mouthful of foul tasting muck. His safety goggles did little to keep salt water from his eyes. The thought of Sims and Gleason up to their knees in rotten meat and vegetables made him smile.

Taking a quick break, he checked on them as they were taking out packages of steaks from the freezer. He almost gagged on the smell. They tossed some of the spoiled food over the side for the fish. The rest went into sealed plastic drums. Gleason had a handkerchief wrapped around his nose and mouth, but Sims did not. Jeff wondered how Sims could stand it and decided to ask.

Sims stared at him strangely before answering. “If you don’t hide from the smell, you get used to it.” He inhaled deeply. “I like the smell. It smells like death. It reminds me I’m alive.”

“Whatever floats your boat, Sims,” Jeff said, feeling like he had been let in on one of Sims’ little secrets. After a few minutes around the freezer, watching Sims and Gleason work, hosing muck didn’t seem quite so bad.

The piles of debris were growing taller by the hour. Because of EPA rules, each piece of garbage, every pound of scrap had to be sealed in heavy plastic bags or hampers and loaded onto a barge for disposal on shore. Larger items would go into metal bins on the barge.

When the freezer was empty, Ed placed Sims in charge of labeling the drums of refuse and moving them all to one area of the platform. He worked quietly and efficiently without complaint. Jeff was beginning to change his mind about the new hire when he saw Sims reach into his back pocket, take out a silver flask and take a swig. Jeff shook his head.

“Closet drunk,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s no wonder the smell of rotten meat didn’t bother him.”

Lunch was an every man for himself affair, fixings for sandwiches and chips laid out on the table and eaten hastily between jobs. Jeff downed two roast beef sandwiches while greasing the fittings on the crane. He had noticed the controls were somewhat sluggish when lifting the radio antennae into place the previous day. They would need it in perfect order to move the heavier loads.