“I agree,” said Garrett. “Roland must have taken off as soon as things began to really deteriorate. I hope he makes it home. I wouldn’t want to be out in this weather in a small fishing boat.”
“He may be better off than we are,” said Lonnie. “He’s a good seaman, and who knows if this rig can withstand a full hurricane. Looks like we’ll be testing Global’s engineering, and given the rest of their operations, that’s not a reassuring thought. More than one oil platform has gone down in something like this.”
Kitty and Sarah looked at him with new horror in their eyes.
“What are we going to do?” Sarah asked.
Garrett put an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger from the rest of the men on this platform. They’ve got to be as worried as we are about being out here in this blow.” He looked at Lonnie over Sarah’s head. “Anyone know enough about oil platforms to have any idea where the safest place to be is in a storm?”
“Back in Halifax?” Lonnie suggested.
Garrett stared at him. “That’s not entirely helpful.”
The big man shrugged. “If this thing topples, there
is
no safe place.”
Kitty said, “When I was hiding in a storage room, I saw survival suits and what looked like some sort of emergency rafts or flotation devices. If you really think this thing might blow over, they may be our only hope. They were located inside one of the concrete piers, which should be about the safest place to be, short of a catastrophic failure of the rig.”
“All right,” said Garrett. “Can you take us there?”
She nodded and they all looked simultaneously at the door to the outside. Going out into that maelstrom was not an attractive idea, but they had no options.
“I’ll lead the way,” said Lonnie. “Hold onto one another. I don’t want anyone blowing away out there.”
Then they were outside. Kitty was almost at once disoriented and unsure of where to go. The collapse of the crane had turned the entire floor area into a mass of tangled steel, cables, and collapsed smaller structures. There were still lights, fortunately, though it was unclear how long they would last. Every so often, they flickered ominously.
Holding on to one another, they were blown along by the gale-force winds.
“Will it get worse than this?” yelled Kitty, not quite believing the violence of the wind.
Sarah had been in hurricanes before. “This is nothing,” she yelled back. “Barely hurricane force. Maybe seventy-mile-an-hour winds at most. If we get hit directly, it could get twice as bad.”
Kitty led the way, skirting around the jumble of metal parts, looking for a way through to the storage room. Lonnie held onto her, clearly worried that the wind might pick her tiny body up and simply blow her away.
The night was black, the wind cold, and icy spray from a hundred feet beneath them whipped high into the sky, only to fall back on their soaking clothes. In addition to the howling wind, there were periodic crashes all around them of unseen objects that had come loose from far above and plummeted to the platform. Every so often, the electrical grid simply went away for a few seconds and they were plunged into blackness. Then they stood, unmoving, fearful of taking a step that might throw them over the side into the swirling maelstrom until the lights flickered back on again.
Finally, to their universal relief, Kitty found the entrance to the storage room. Once inside, it took all of Lonnie’s strength to push the door shut against the wind. Garrett turned on a powerful flashlight he’d picked up from the debris on the platform. They stood like a pack of drenched rats and surveyed their surroundings. “At least we’ll be able to see,” he said, “if the lights go out permanently.”
Sarah found a rack of hard hats and handed one to each of them, except Lonnie, who looked at the thing like it was a child’s toy. No way would it fit his enormous head. Then they set about the business of inventorying the survival suits and rafts that Kitty had mentioned. There were lots of immersion suits, at least twenty hung up in rows.
“Should we put them on?” Sarah asked.
“Can’t hurt,” Garrett replied. “No telling if we’ll need them but if we do, there probably won’t be a lot of time to get prepared.”
Kitty eyed the big red suits skeptically. “These are man-sized garments,” she said. “I don’t think they cared about providing outfits for
guests
like me. I’ll be swimming in one of these. Sarah too.”
“They didn’t have me in mind either,” said Lonnie. “No way I fit into one of those things.”
Garrett found a roll of duct tape. “We can modify to a certain extent. For the women, we can tape the arms and legs for a tighter fit. Not sure how we can modify for Lon, though. Maybe if we had a sewing machine, we could stitch two suits together.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Lonnie said. “The rest of you should get into the suits now. Sounds to me like the wind is picking up even more. We may not have a lot of time.”
His words were sobering. They could feel the rig literally vibrating in the high winds.
Suddenly, the door to the storage room opened and three men burst in. They struggled to close the door, not realizing there was anyone else inside. They were there for the flotation devices and survival suits and turned immediately to the equipment, only to find Lonnie facing them, holding a pistol.
Unarmed themselves, the men stared at this almost supernaturally imposing figure and halted in their tracks. Slowly, they registered the others as well.
“Whoa! Hold on,” said one of the men. “We’re not after you, just some of the safety equipment.”
“Might not be enough to go around,” said Lonnie casually. The men suddenly looked frightened.
“Look,” said the one who had spoken. “We’re all in this together now. If this storm picks up to full force, the rig won’t take it. This is DeMaio’s special rig. He wanted it built quickly for purposes of entertaining his international customers. I was here during the construction and they cut corners everywhere.” He pointed to the concrete shell of the piling that made up the walls of the storage room. “See that concrete? It’s way substandard. I’m amazed it’s held up this long. We’ll topple in winds anywhere close to a hundred miles an hour, maybe a lot less.”
They stared at the man who had just, for all intents and purposes, pronounced their death sentences.
“Is it your intention to get off the rig now?” asked Garrett.
The man and his two companions exchanged looks.
“The others haven’t figured it out,” said the leader. “They’re still inside talking about how to capture you, for God’s sake. It’s madness. They found Craig and the others. But Craig is just security. He doesn’t have any experience with oil rigs. Only thing he’s afraid of is doing anything that might displease DeMaio. But I worked rigs in the Gulf for twenty years. I know what a storm like this can do. We need to get off this thing as fast as possible, before it’s too late.”
“What exactly is your plan?” said Garrett.
The man shrugged. “Get in the suits, haul two rafts down to the docking platform, and climb aboard. And I mean now. I’ll take my chances in the sea before I would on this rig, held together with chewing gum and substandard reinforcing rods.”
It was enough for Garrett. The tense, frightened demeanor of the men was all the proof he needed that they were in serious trouble as long as they stayed where they were. A glance told him the others felt the same.
“All right,” said Lonnie. “Those that can fit, grab a suit. We’ll work with you for now,” he said to the men. “But I see one wrong move from any of you and I’ll personally break your necks. Understood?”
55
R
OLAND HAD HUNG HIS NET
line to the overhead winch on his boat. It was all for show. There were no fish in this particular area anyway. Fished out years ago. He eyed the rig a quarter mile off his bow. Garrett had been gone for a while now and the winds had picked up considerably.
He was a lifelong fisherman and had experienced high winds and tortured seas many times. But this blow showed every sign of getting a lot worse. And soon.
He didn’t really want to leave Garrett and his girlfriend. He’d always had a thing about obeying authority that grew out of his lifelong feelings of inadequacy on so many levels. Garrett knew this and played on it, and Roland knew he played on it. But it didn’t anger him anymore. He understood it was simply his nature.
Still, what could he do? How long should he wait? If he was going to get back safely to the wharf, he needed to leave now, before the wind picked up any more.
Maybe he was too far off and had missed Garrett’s signal. He throttled the engine up and began to move closer to the rig. Though it was well into daylight now, the gloom from the approaching storm kept things much darker than normal and he doubted anyone on the rig would see him unless they were really looking for him. If they did, they’d simply see a working fishing boat … granted, one run by a madman to be out in these seas.
A hundred yards from the rig, he hove to and stared at the enormous monolith. The waves were six to eight feet and the boat wobbled like a top in its final throes. The huge concrete posts embedded in the sea floor towered over him, the waves breaking against them with great sprays of foam.
There was something strange about one of the towers. He maneuvered closer and saw that as each wave hit the pylon, pieces of concrete broke loose. Not pieces. Chunks. He looked around and saw the same phenomenon on each of the other piers. Roland sat back in his pilot’s chair and pondered this.
Abstract thinking wasn’t his strong suit. He’d always been a poor student, though he had an innate ability to pick up those things that he needed to know. Thus, he was well versed in carpentry, engine mechanics, and GPS, and had taken especially to computers over the years.
That pieces were coming off the rig seemed unusual. The waves hitting the piers were not particularly massive. He could hardly believe there was any problem with the engineering. After all, Global was a huge, immensely wealthy international company. The sort of authority he put faith in. They would have done things right. So the chunks of concrete falling into the water seemed interesting but hardly anything he would have thought held larger meaning.
His instruments showed wind speeds steady at fifty miles per hour with gusts occasionally up to seventy. This was not good. He watched the rig closely for another ten minutes without seeing any signal from Garrett. It was all he could afford. The boat was especially difficult to control in heavy seas while drifting or trolling slowly. He needed speed to counter the combined forces of swell, wind, and waves. Only his skill as a skipper had allowed him to stay this long.
He took down his nets and secured the winch, then throttled up the engine and headed for home. He’d done what Garrett asked of him for as long as possible. No one could fault him. Besides, at this point, kidnappers or not, Garrett was undoubtedly safer on the rig than Roland was out in a hurricane on the high seas.
The boat trimmed more evenly once he was under power. He thought about Grace on the trip home. What her drug habit might mean. He was more than a little disillusioned with the former focus of his desires. Garrett obviously didn’t believe his story. Well, that was all right. Besides, maybe she didn’t actually have a habit. Maybe she sold the stuff to help pay for the high lifestyle they all maintained. They obviously had lots of friends in the city, which gave them the contacts necessary to sell to an upper-class clientele. He wondered if Grace’s housemates knew what she was doing.
He smiled. Somehow, his new information was going to change the dynamic in the cove feud. Then he remembered his promise to Garrett that he’d leave them alone. He sighed. A promise was a promise. Too bad.
He could never in a million years have imagined the manner in which his new-found information would transform life in the cove.
56
G
ARRETT TORE OFF A FINAL
piece of duct tape and wrapped it around Sarah’s leg. The ladies were indeed swimming in the survival suits. Between strips of tape, the suits still billowed out in pouches.
“I feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy,” said Sarah.
“You look like him too,” said Garrett. “But I bet he could float. That’s a tradeoff I’d take about now.”
The men were also in suits, all except Lonnie. There was no way he could fit unless he cut holes in the thing, which effectively negated both the flotation and insulation functions.
The three rig workers were ready. Lonnie motioned for them to lead the way to the lower boat launch. They knew the rig better than any of them.
Outside, the platform was a confusion of flying objects, stinging rain, and frigid mist from an icy sea whipped to a froth. Collapsed crane parts had torn loose catwalks, ripped off safety railings, and generally made moving through the debris like negotiating some fantastical Mad Max landscape. The lights were still working but continued to flicker ominously, giving the entire scene a kind of stop-action strobe effect.
“Christ, it’s like being in a cartoon action flick,” Kitty said to no one in particular.
Several times, the men leading the way got lost and had to backtrack, looking for a way through the debris. Briefly, they were inside, then they quickly passed through another of the pylons and out onto the first of the catwalks that led lower.
Garrett held onto Sarah, while Kitty had a death grip on Lonnie. He had a long length of nylon cord over his shoulder and held one of the still-folded collapsible rafts in his free hand. The rig men carried another. Each raft was rated to hold four people, though Lonnie would stress that limit.
“This looks right,” said Kitty. “I came this way when I escaped. There’s a platform a dozen feet above the water. We can launch the rafts there.”
Garrett shouted to be heard over a sudden gust. “That’s where I landed my kayak, but it’ll be rough launching in these seas.”
Now that they were outside experiencing the full fury of the storm, he wasn’t at all certain they were taking the right course of action. Maybe the rig would fail and collapse. But maybe it wouldn’t. If they stayed and it did, then they were dead. If they launched themselves into that cold sea in tiny rubber rafts and the rig didn’t collapse, they’d have left the only safety there was. The odds that someone might find them bobbing in the black ocean in the middle of a hurricane had to be vanishingly small. Garrett hadn’t forgotten the anxiety he’d felt in his plastic boat as he contemplated floating to Ireland.