Gideon's War/Hard Target (16 page)

There was no one between her and the bridge leading to the other section of the rig. She glanced back, saw a man in the water, bullets splashing all around him. The remains of the shattered boat were pressed up against one of the massive concrete piers. Without flagging, she sprinted—as best she could with her arms cuffed—across the metal bridge toward the Bridge Linked Platform. Someone shouted. Bullets thudded into the metal behind her. She reached the other side, diving for cover behind a steel beam.

As she considered what to do next, her eyes fell toward the sea. She scanned the rolling waves for a sign that anyone on the boat had survived.

The boat was gone, every shred of it. And so was Gideon Davis.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

GIDEON LOVED TO SWIM. Always had. He loved water, loved the beach, loved lakes and pools and the ocean.

But this was like being in the foothills of some strange mountain range, where every hill was alive, moving.

When you were caught in surf this heavy, there was only one strategy that would keep you from getting crushed. You had to dive. Get underneath the wave, where its motion wasn’t quite so violent. So that’s what he needed to do here. He knew that he’d have one chance. The current wasn’t all that fast, but if he missed the rig, got carried past it, he’d drift on to the west . . . and that would be that. The South China Sea was fairly warm, so it would take a while to die.

Well, best not to think of it. He bobbed to the top of the wave, its ragged crest washing over his head, nearly choking him. And as the wave rolled away, he slid down the back side, where a bullet pierced the water a few inches from his face.

He took a bead on the big concrete leg of the rig and dove into the water, swimming down and down further still, until his ears popped.

The saltwater burned his eyes. But he had to force them open or he’d swim past the oil rig’s leg.

The sun had just set, but there was still some light left in the leaden sky. Once he was underwater, though, everything went dark. He stroked on and on in the direction he believed that he’d find the rig. But he couldn’t see it.

Now wasn’t the time to try to figure out what had happened.

His lungs were burning. A tiny worm of panic began to burrow up from the back of his brain.

Stay calm. Keep stroking. All around him, a murky darkness.

Where was it? Where was the rig?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

TWO JIHADIS WERE RACING across the bridge from the drilling platform toward Kate on the BLP when the fireball erupted.

One of the bullets they’d fired at her as she ran across the bridge had hit a gas line. The first jihadi onto the bridge was blown off the span and into the ocean. The other backed up screaming, his hair and shirt on fire.

There were twenty-six main pipes, eight-inch and four-inch schedule 40 steel, running across the bridge from the BLP to the Wellhead Service Unit. Half were for drilling mud, the carefully engineered goo that was used to lubricate and cool the drill bit as it ground its way down through the rock beneath the surface of the ocean. The other pipes conducted oil and gas to the various receptacles and processing facilities on the rig. If the bullets had hit oil or mud, nothing would have happened. But gas was combustible.

The big ball of fire had subsided, but a steady gout of flame eight or ten feet long was shooting across the walkway. The sun had set now, and so the fire threw a weird, shifting light across the rig that barely managed to pierce the driving rain. Nobody was going to be crossing there for a while. Eventually the terrorists would figure out how to shut off the valve, or—if enough time passed—the holding tank would run out. Either way the jihadis would cross over and come after her.

The good news was that until that time, she was free.

The jihadis had stopped firing. But right now she was stuck behind a steel I beam, her hands still cuffed together with plastic flex cuffs. If she stood there until the gas leak burned out, they’d eventually nail her. There was no knowing how much gas was in the holding tank. Total capacity was around twenty thousand cubic feet, but generally they just pumped it directly to the A reservoir on the BLP. So it might have no more than a few hundred cubic feet. The flame was probably burning a hundred cubic feet a minute. At best, she had thirty minutes before the jet of flame petered out.

Over on the other side she heard voices speaking English. She couldn’t make out everything they were saying. But she heard the words transfer valve. Apparently the jihadis had brought somebody who had experience on a rig. They were obviously going to track down the valve and shut it off.

She looked to her left. The doorway into the BLP’s main stairs was about four yards away. She knew the jihadis would be waiting for her to make a move so they could pick her off. For a moment she froze, her entire body gripped by a straitjacket of fear. She really didn’t want to die.

But she had to do something. Her people were over there, and right now she was the only person who had a chance of helping them. But she couldn’t do them any good if she was dead. She had to seek cover so she could rally and come up with a plan.

Could they see her in the deepening darkness? She wasn’t sure. As she dove for the door, her question was answered: gunshots erupted from th Fopenine drilling platform, spanging off the bulkhead. It sounded like somebody was throwing wrenches at her.

And then she was through the bulkhead, falling, rolling painfully into a heap.

The shooting stopped.

She charged down the stairs to D Deck, then pushed open the green door with the giant D stenciled on it. All the walls on D Deck were painted green. Pipes snaked everywhere. Unlike the other decks, D had no solid floor. Instead the “floor” was a tight grid of welded steel through which you could see straight down into the water.

Kate had spent much of her adult life on oil rigs, so big seas didn’t generally bother her. But these waves were like nothing she’d ever seen. From her view, she couldn’t see the horizon, couldn’t see the water with normal perspective. Looking straight down, you couldn’t really make out the waves as such. Instead, it was like some vast, dark elevator made of water, rising and falling below her.

Normal distance between rig bottom and sea level was fifty-eight feet. So she knew that she was well out of range of the waves. And yet each time the water began rising toward her, she felt as though it would just keep coming, rising and rising until it came boiling through the floor.

As she looked up something in the corner of her view caught her attention. For a moment she wasn’t sure what it was. A dark flash in the white foam.

By the time she looked at it, it was gone. She scanned the water. Had it been her imagination? Then, there it was: as the water fell away, she spotted a man. In the gathering gloom she could only barely make him out. He was clinging to the barnacle-encrusted pier—the third giant leg of the rig.

It was the man from the boat, the one who’d jumped over the side— Gideon Davis.

The concrete pier was about fifteen feet in circumference. Way too big around to encircle with your arms. How he was holding on, she couldn’t imagine. He must have literally been holding on with his fingernails. The wave continued to sink farther and farther from the man’s feet. If he fell now, he’d surely be washed away on the next wave.

A flicker of light from the burning gas on the bridge illuminated him briefly. The muscles in his shoulders were corded with effort as he struggled to maintain his grip. He was a powerfully built man, obviously in good shape. Still, she could see he wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.

The waves must have been running over a hundred feet from peak to peak. Maybe ten seconds between troughs. Could he hold on for that long? Suddenly some frothy chop hit him, and he disappeared from view. She looked frantically for the man.

The water started rising again. Where was he?

Just as she was about to give up hope, his head broke water. If she had been in his situation, she would have been thrashing wildly. But Gideon Davis showed no sign of desperation or fear. He moved carefully, almost methodically—bracing himself, letting the current press him against the concrete, and push him slowly upward. It was then that she realized his dilemma.

In his current position, he was invisible to the jihadis on the other platform. But once he came around to the other side of the F strut, they could shoot him. Plus, w sh‘€†ith nothing to hold on to, he’d be in danger of being swept away by the current. He’d have to time things perfectly, make it all the way around while the wave was in the trough, if he was to have any hope of reaching the ladder. And even then, he’d be in serious danger of being shot.

“Hey!” she called—hoping that the jihadis on the other platform wouldn’t be able to hear her voice over the howl of the wind and the thunder of the waves.

The man looked up, when a small cross-wave hit him, bounced him off the barnacled concrete. She knew from her experience as a diver that those barnacles were like a pile of razor blades. He grimaced.

“Hold on!” she shouted.

She ran back to the bulkhead near the stairs, where an emergency kit hung from the wall. Fire extinguisher, axe, pry bar . . . and a life ring with a couple hundred feet of nylon rope. She quickly severed her flex cuffs on the axe, then grabbed the life ring and turned back to look for the man. Only his head was visible now. Kate flung open one of the hatches under her feet. Now there was nothing between her and the water. The wave was still rising. In moments his head would go under.

She hoped he would stay on the back side of the pier so that the jihadis on the other side of the rig couldn’t see him—or shoot at him.

Then his head disappeared beneath the cross-chop on the waves.

She dropped the life ring and waited to see if he would resurface.

The wind caught the life ring and carried it past where the man had been. It was getting darker by the minute, harder for her to see him. Suddenly his head resurfaced out of the foam.

The life ring, pushed by the wind, was just out of reach. He stretched for it, his fingertips nearly grazing the ring. Stretching for the ring had stolen his concentration on maintaining his position on the big concrete strut, though, and the current caught him. He grabbed wildly for the pier, but now the current had him. It was the first time he had demonstrated anything close to fear.

Kate’s heart pounded. The wind whipped at the life ring, throwing it up into the air. She lowered another loop of rope, then yanked it sharply, trying to pull the ring closer to the man. He was now scrabbling at the edge of the pier, the rising face of the wave trying to force him past the big slab of concrete. The life ring flopped wildly in the wind.

Just when Kate thought it was hopeless, the wind slackened for the briefest of moments, dropping pressure on the life ring. It plummeted, falling with an audible plastic thump on the man’s head.

He grabbed it, clamping hold.

She was tempted to yell encouragement, but she didn’t want to alert the jihadis as to what she was doing. Besides, Gideon Davis didn’t seem to need encouragement. As soon as he reached the ring, he pulled it over his head and under his arms. The water spun him around.

Her momentary rush of pleasure at saving the man from being swept away was replaced by concern. She was a fit woman. But lifting a couple hundred pounds of dead weight through fifty feet of air? There was no way.

She pulled with all her strength. Then her feet slipped on the wet decking and she fell, hanging halfway off ton ‘€†he hatch. The rope, with all the man’s weight on it, began to slip, pulling her inexorably toward open air.

No good deed goes unpunished, she thought. Here she was, trying to save this guy’s life, and now she was going to get dragged into the ocean right along with him. At the last moment, though, her feet regained purchase, and she was able to stop.

If only she had something mechanical to haul him up with. Then it struck her. There was a hydraulic winch over on the other side of the platform. All she had to do was attach the rope and winch the man right up out of the water.

She snaked the rope over a piece of pipe, then ran over to the winch and made three quick loops around the drive shaft. It was going to be painfully slow, but it should work.

She thumbed the large green button next to the winch, then hit the lever again. The shaft began to turn, slowly taking up the rope.

Through the steel mesh under her feet, she could see Gideon starting to rise into the air. He swung in a slow arc through the air, his body the weight on the end of a pendulum.

His progress upward was painfully slow. Each revolution of the shaft only pulled the rope a few inches.

Luckily the wind was pushing Gideon Davis toward the pier, so that he was not visible to the jihadis on the other platform. The darkness and driving rain, too, were working in their favor, obscuring the vision of everyone on the rig.

As he got closer to the hatch, it became impossible for her to see him anymore. She grew worried as he started getting closer to the hatch. If she pulled him too far, the inexorable power of the hydraulic winch could wedge him against the hatch frame. In which case the rope would cut him in half.

“Yell when you get to the top,” she called, hoping the sound of the wind and waves would drown her voice and keep her from being heard by the jihadis.

There was a brief silence. Then she heard his voice. “Five more feet,” he shouted. “Three . . . two . . . okay, stop!”

She couldn’t tell if he was in the line of fire from the other part of the rig, so she grabbed him and propelled him to shelter behind the bulkhead at the center of the deck.

Gideon Davis wiped the blood and seawater from his face. “Thank you,” he gasped. “You must be Kate Murphy.”

“And you must be the cavalry,” she said.

Gideon squinted at her, unsure whether she was being facetious. “I’m afraid so,” he said wearily.

“Well, I sure hope you brought a gun.” She regarded him soberly. “Because that’s the only way any of us are getting off this rig alive.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

GIDEON RECOGNIZED THE WOMAN who rescued him as the hostage he had seen on CNN. Even under these circumstances, Kate Murphy looked more beautiful in person than she had on television. But he had to focus. She was asking him what efforts were being made to rescue her crew. Gideon explained the president’s plan to insert a Delta team through the eye of the hurricane eleven hours from now.

She looked at her watch. “That’s cutting it close to Abu Nasir’s deadline,” she said, adding, “and it assumes that the eye of the hurricane passes directly overhead. Meanwhile, there’s a bomb on my rig.”

“I know.” Gideon stood slowly on his rubbery legs. “Which is why I need to get to Abu Nasir.”

“For what possible reason?”

“So I can talk some sense into him. He’s my brother,” Gideon said in a voice that contained equal parts shame and defiance.

“I know.” She described everything that had happened until now, how she had been on the chopper deck with Abu Nasir when he targeted Gideon’s approaching boat, and how the incident had distracted the jihadis long enough for her to escape.

“I’m still having a hard time believing my brother is doing this. I know him.”

“Maybe not as well as you think you do. I heard him give the order to blow you out of the water!” Her voice rose to a shout. “I’m sorry, your brother told his men to kill you. I can’t say it any plainer than that.” The rig manager was one of those women whose beauty was only accentuated by anger. Her high cheekbones were flushed, and her green eyes flashed.

Gideon still couldn’t reconcile the man who had just ordered him killed with the big brother who had always been his protector. Even when they’d fought, Tillman had always stood between Gideon and anyone who would harm him. But as much as he wanted to deny or rationalize what he’d been told, the evidence against Tillman was overwhelming. The pain of that acknowledgment was almost physical. He felt something seizing up in his chest, like a fist tightening around his heart.

As much as Gideon wanted to confront Tillman face-to-face, to at least try to figure out what was going through his mind, what tortured thinking had brought him to this terrible place, Kate Murphy was right— now was not the time for talking. As long as Tillman had the bomb, he was in control. Gideon’s immediate goal was clear. Whatever it took, he had to stop his brother before any more innocent people died.

“All right then,” Gideon said. “We’ve got to disarm that bomb.” Gideon asked her, point-blank, “Do you know where they planted it?”

Kate frowned. “Even if we manage to find this bomb, would you know how to defuse it?”

“I’ve cleared a few land mines and IEDs over the years,” Gideon said, not wanting to waste another moment talking about his experience. Kate nodded uncertainly as Gideon asked again, “So do you have any idea where this bomb might be?”

?omb.&;When your brother took over the rig, he ordered his men to wheel this big metal case off the chopper.”

“You think the bomb was in that case?”

“At the time I couldn’t figure out what it was. But when they forced me to read their demands, I made the connection. I saw them using the crane to winch it down the drill shaft.”

“Then you didn’t actually see where they took it.”

“Somewhere on D Deck . . .” Kate trailed off and shook her head ruefully.

“You know this rig better than anyone, where it’s most vulnerable structurally.” Something about Gideon’s voice calmed her mind, made her feel safe. “If you wanted to take down this rig with a bomb, where would you plant it?”

Kate thought for a moment, then said, “Let me show you something.” He followed her to a peculiar object cantilevered off the side of the deck. It looked like an elongated egg made of Day-Glo orange plastic, about twenty feet long and eight feet in diameter.

“What is this?” he asked.

“An escape pod. It’s got a weighted keel, so it’ll float in the roughest waters. The egg shape makes it ungodly tough. There’s a transponder, a signal beacon, a radio, and five days’ worth of food and water for fifteen people. There’s also a schematic of the rig.”

Attached to the wall was a schematic of the Obelisk marked with red and green arrows to show fire drill and escape plans. Kate traced one section with a slender finger. “This is the D Deck, the lowest above-water section on the rig. The struts that support the rig are made of reinforced concrete. They terminate here at D Deck, and the superstructure of the rig is held on top with a set of very large bolts. If a bomb took out those bolts, you wouldn’t have to blow up the whole rig. The superstructure would shear off the struts under the pressure of the waves.”

“And the rig slides into the ocean,” Gideon said. She nodded grimly.

“Show me exactly where those bolts are.”

Gideon scrutinized the point on the schematic that Kate indicated, a room labeled D-4. “That’s on the other part of the rig, right?”

“The drilling platform, yeah.”

Gideon looked at the narrow steel bridge that connected the section they stood on with the drilling platform. A steady gout of fire was still burning from the damaged gas pipe. “And that bridge is the only way for us to get to the drilling platform?”

Kate nodded. “It’s also the only thing keeping the bad guys from getting over here.” Beyond the fire, Gideon saw the jihadis, some of them patrolling, a clutch of them still trying to close down the gas line that was feeding the fire.

“How soon before that fire burns out?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe sooner.”

“And there’s really no other way to get onto the platform except over that bridge?”

“Not unles21;¡€†s you want to climb under it.” The rig manager didn’t realize the significance of what she’d said until she actually said it. She squinted into the blinding rain and frowned. “Which may not be as crazy as it sounds . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

“See how the bridge is made? It’s a series of trusses with a steel deck on top. If you’re willing to risk slipping in the rain, getting blown off by the wind, and falling sixty feet into those waves, we might be able to sneak across there without them seeing us.”

Gideon looked out at the narrow bridge. Its struts extended from the side of the rig. He’d have to clamber up onto the railing, then stretch to reach the struts. The wind was blowing unmercifully now, gusting at well over fifty miles an hour. Maybe more. Far from optimal conditions to be swinging from one wet piece of steel to another. Gideon tried comforting himself with the thought that the rain would at least limit the jihadis’ visibility, even as he realized that crossing beneath the bridge was his only option.

Gideon turned back to Kate, who was shrugging out of her fluorescent yellow jumpsuit. Within seconds, she was down to a pair of nylon shorts and a bra. Her body was lean and athletic.

Gideon raised an eyebrow as he looked from the yellow jumpsuit crumpled on the deck to the woman who had been wearing it only a few moments ago.

“If I wear that, I may as well be wearing a neon sign,” she said. “I’m not about to give those sons of bitches a target to shoot at.”

“Maybe you should just hide in the escape pod,” he said. “No point putting both of us in danger.”