At least they wouldn’t face the danger of an overturning kayak. The rafts were state-of-the-art, designed to be totally enclosed and virtually impossible to tip over. Seasickness was another matter.
It was quieter this far down on the rig. The monolith above them seemed to muffle sound, and the whistling of the wind through the superstructure was farther away. Sarah and Garrett were the last to begin the climb down the final ladder to the launch platform. Sarah said to Garrett, “Are you sure about this?”
He shook his head. “Not a bit. We may be committing suicide by leaving the rig. We only have the word of these three men. Granted, they know oil rigs better than we do and obviously want to get off as fast as they can. Still, they’re part of DeMaio’s crazy network of sex traffickers and can’t be the brightest bulbs in the socket.”
“I’m scared, Garrett. I don’t want to go floating around in that blackness. The rig feels much safer to me, even if it’s only an illusion.”
They joined the others on the platform and everyone gathered around in what appeared to be a brief lull in the storm. They were all looking to Garrett to make a decision, though his uncertainty was obvious.
“This is how I see it,” he said. “It’s a gamble either way. You men who work here are experienced with this sort of operation. But I guess I agree with Sarah that the rig sure feels safer than being tossed about in those seas in what looks like a toy raft.”
“It may feel safer, but believe me, you don’t want to be here if she topples,” said the leader of the men. “We’ve made our decision. We’re getting off. What the rest of you do is up to you.”
Garrett was perplexed. All of their lives depended on making the right decision. “What about riding out the storm down here on the boat launch? If we see any signs of failure with the pylons, we might still be able to get off in time.”
The leader of the workers shrugged. “You might get some advance warning if huge chunks of concrete begin to fall away or if the whole thing starts to sway. Maybe. Or it could go in an instant, with a big gust from the storm. There wouldn’t be time to drop your drawers and kiss your ass goodbye.” He stared at the little group. “I’ve told you our decision, and we’re not willing to wait. Good luck to you.”
The three men turned away, clambered down to the lowest level, and began to deploy the raft, which was designed to inflate on its own.
Garrett looked at Lonnie. “You haven’t weighed in on this. What do you think?”
“Being the only one without a survival suit, I might be a little biased.” He looked at Kitty and Sarah, then out at the tumbling cold seas. “Guess I lean toward waiting a while. Maybe the storm will abate. Maybe the platform is stronger than those men think. Maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“Join the club,” said Garrett. “We could take a vote. Too bad we have an even number of voters.”
But Kitty and Sarah had already made up their minds. “We vote to wait,” said Kitty. “I can’t get away from this waterlogged Sodom and Gomorrah too fast. But being out in that”—she gestured at the blackness and froth all around them—“is every bit as terrifying as the thought of being here when the rig falls over.”
So they waited. The platform was periodically swept by the ocean swell, so the little party climbed higher and found a spot on one of the catwalks where they could watch and wait. Meanwhile, the three men from the rig had successfully inflated the flimsy raft. It almost blew away in the wind, but they finally managed to crawl inside, zipper themselves in, and wait to be lifted cleanly off the platform by a swell.
When it happened, the supposedly untippable raft immediately flipped over. They could see a tumble of bodies pushing against the sides, like a Cub Scout pack inside a pup tent. But then the craft righted itself again, which it was designed to do. Garrett directed his flashlight on the contraption, and they watched as it swirled away into the darkness. Just before it left the halo of light, someone inside turned on a rescue beacon. A bright red strobe flashed at the top of the raft.
“Someone should see that,” Sarah said.
“Won’t be anyone to see anything till this storm passes,” said Lonnie. “By then, they could be a hundred miles away.”
“Maybe they’ll blow up on shore or on an island,” Sarah suggested.
“Good to look on the bright side,” said Garrett. “But we should consider our own situation.”
He played the light along the sides of the concrete pylons. They could clearly see where chunks of concrete had worked loose and fallen into the sea. The damage didn’t look good, but it also didn’t look like the rig was on the verge of catastrophic failure. Only time would tell.
As it turned out, not very much time. Almost immediately, the storm surged to yet another level. The wind increased in intensity until the tops of the waves were lifted and blown straight into the sky. They were dry and reasonably warm in their suits, with the exception of Lonnie, who looked like the largest wet rat any of them had ever seen.
“Bet you wish you were back in Kandahar now,” said Garrett.
He just grunted, but the others huddled around him, sharing what warmth they could.
“Maybe we should go back inside, get out of this,” Kitty said.
“It’s an idea,” said Garrett. “But I don’t much cotton to being inside when this thing decides to give up the ghost. I say we wait it out right here.”
They were quiet for a while, listening to the howling storm, faces turned away from the stinging rain as much as possible.
“It can’t last forever,” said Sarah. “Can it?”
“Longest hurricane on record was Puerto Rico in 1899,” said Lonnie. “It lasted twenty-eight days.”
“Jesus,” said Kitty. “Not in one spot, I hope.”
“Nope. They tend to move along, but we could have a lot more to go through before it leaves.”
Above them, they saw lights flashing.
“Now what?” said Sarah. “Are the lights failing?”
“Those are flashlights,” said Garrett. “Maybe more of DeMaio’s men have decided to get off.”
“Or decided to come after us,” said Lonnie. He shook himself and pulled out his gun, cradling it in icy fingers.
“How crazy can they be?” Garrett said. “Worried about us in the middle of a hurricane.”
“Maybe they see it as an opportunity,” said Kitty. “They can say we were lost in the storm—blown right off the rig. No one could ever prove otherwise.”
They watched as the lights moved lower. Then they picked out Craig leading the men. It was also clear that no one was wearing a survival suit or carrying a raft. Which meant they were there for another reason.
“What do we do?” said Kitty, a hint of panic in her voice.
Lonnie said, “My bet is they intend to get rid of us. But like you said, the best way would be to throw us into the drink so we drown. Any bodies found later won’t have bullet holes to explain away.”
“I suppose that’s meant to be comforting,” said Garrett, “but I can’t quite see how.”
“Just this. If that’s their plan, they’ll say anything to get us to believe they won’t hurt us. They don’t want a firefight. I think we can safely assume that guns are not going to play a role in the outcome here.”
Garrett smiled.
“I don’t see what’s so bloody funny,” said Sarah.
“What’s funny is someone trying to get the best of Lonnie in hand-to-hand combat,” Garrett said. “I’d almost pay to see that. Anyway, one thing’s for certain. They may not want to shoot, but I don’t have any compunctions along those lines myself.”
“Neither do I,” said Kitty.
They watched the lights bobbing along the catwalk, moving lower. When they got within twenty feet, Lonnie lifted his pistol and fired a shot that ricocheted off the steel catwalk above their heads. The men all ducked and then froze. There was no place to hide, no cover at all.
Lonnie said, “That’s far enough. Next man who moves gets a bullet that’s a whole lot closer than the last one.”
Craig stood up, showing his empty hands. “We don’t want any more trouble,” he shouted. “Let’s talk this over, see if we can come to some sort of agreement.”
“We’ll give you an agreement,” Kitty yelled. “We agree you’re a sick bunch of assholes!”
Lonnie put one hand on Kitty’s arm. “Couldn’t put it better myself. I suggest you men go back topside and wait out the storm same as we are.”
“Looks to me like you intend to leave the rig,” said Craig. “Unless you’re wearing those suits and carrying that raft for exercise. We can’t allow that for obvious reasons. Mr. DeMaio wouldn’t be happy. Put your guns down and we’ll let you back inside out of the cold. You’ve got no place to go down there. We have you pinned down just as much as you have us, but we’ve got more firepower. You don’t stand a chance.”
“He has a point,” Lonnie said in a low voice. “They’ve got the high ground. It all depends on whether you buy the theory that they don’t want to shoot us.”
Suddenly, an intense blast of wind shrieked out of the night, the strongest gust so far. A loud cracking sound split the wind and darkness. Everyone stared at the pylon closest to them. Flashlights from both groups played over the huge concrete pier, searching for the source of the sound.
“There! Look!” Sarah cried.
A crack appeared along the entire length of the pylon and grew before their eyes. In a few seconds it extended from the ocean all the way to the platform. Then enormous chunks of concrete began to peel off. Pieces of pylon thirty feet in length and probably weighing several tons separated and plunged straight down into the ocean like missiles firing in reverse. The sea erupted in a boiling froth as more and more chunks broke away.
Craig and his men stared at the awesome sight in complete disbelief. They clearly hadn’t held the same concern as their fellows who’d left, floating off into the dark night. Then the entire platform shuddered and seemed to lurch slightly.
Lonnie and the others watched as the realization came over the men above that the rig was failing. They were a hundred feet below the main deck and hadn’t bothered to bring survival suits or rafts.
The next thing that happened was sheer panic. The men broke upwards, heading for the storage rooms as fast as they could go. No one was worrying about making a target for Lonnie any more. They wanted a way off this contraption and suits to protect them against that freezing, black water.
“Time for us to go too,” said Garrett.
“No argument from me,” Lonnie replied. They worked back down to the launch platform, where Lonnie picked up the nylon cord he’d brought and tied one end to the steel ladder. Then he broke open the raft and inflated it on the deck surface.
“Everyone in,” he said. “We’ll tie the raft off to the deck and let the wind take us out as far as the rope allows. Should be over a hundred feet. That way, if the rig doesn’t fail completely, we stay close. This is where any search will focus. Better if we don’t disappear into the storm.”
“What about Craig?” said Garrett. “If they come back down with their own rafts, they’ll untie us and hope we don’t survive.”
Lonnie shrugged. “One catastrophe at a time. My sense is they’re going to be so panicked by that time they won’t even notice our line. They’ll just assume we launched as soon as we saw the pylon failing.”
“Are you sure a hundred feet is far enough away?” said Kitty. “The rig is much higher than that. If it topples it could roll right over on top of us.”
“It’s a gamble, all right,” Lonnie said. “I’m still betting this thing will stand longer than we think. There’s an awful lot of concrete and engineering here, even if DeMaio’s contractors did cut corners. If we get any warning at all that the entire thing is going to topple, I think we’ll still have time to cut the line and let the wind carry us out of reach.” His eyes swept the bedraggled group. “I’m open to other suggestions.”
There were none.
Everyone climbed into the contraption. Lonnie attached the line to a steel ring on the side of the raft and barely had time to throw himself inside before a huge swell lifted them off the platform and sent them swirling out into the darkness.
57
R
OLAND FOUGHT THE STORM AS
though it were a living thing. The wind spiked just minutes after he turned for home. Waves crested at fifteen to twenty feet, and the little fishing boat bobbed like a rubber duck making its way down the Niagara rapids.
Again and again he came close to losing control of his craft, as huge waves rolled across the bow, the water slowly draining away through the scuppers, only to be immediately replaced. One fierce gust collapsed the pole holding the antenna and radar controls. Most of his fishing gear, which he hadn’t had time to properly tie down before the sudden surge in the weather, washed overboard, a huge financial loss.
Fortunately, though he’d lost his communications and radar, he still knew how to pilot using dead reckoning. He was as familiar with these waters as anyone alive. After what seemed an eternity, he finally made out the outline of the Gull Islands looming ahead in the gloom. Once he was in their lee, the wind subsided, at least a little.
As he entered the more protected bay of the larger island, he saw something blinking off his port bow. A tiny red light flashed right at water level. Whatever it was attached to was invisible in the big waves, and he almost didn’t bother to check it out, but something made him pause and consider the light again.
It was likely just a buoy, blown loose by the storm. Still … it could also be some small craft, a skiff or motorboat with its normal running light. But there was nothing normal about a boat out in this weather. Whoever it was had to be in trouble, assuming there was anyone aboard and it wasn’t just an empty boat blown out to sea. As a lifelong fisherman, steeped in the rituals of the sea, Roland would never pass by someone in need. He began to carefully tack into the wind and against the huge waves until he came close to the light.
At last he could see it was just a small kayak that appeared to be empty. Its owner no doubt would like to have it back, but Roland wasn’t about to risk his neck for a tiny plastic boat.
He began to turn away when he saw a hand rise up limply from the bottom of the craft and then disappear.