Текст книги "The Navigator"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Austin hung from the ladder with the wave crests splashing at his feet, then stepped off and landed square-footed in the boat. It was like jumping onto a wet trampoline. He would have been bounced out, but he grabbed the safety grips on the pontoons and hung on to the violently pitching boat.

When the inflatable had stabilized under his weight, Austin started the seventy-five-horsepower motor. With the outboard grumbling and snorting in the waves, Austin gripped the ship’s ladder and steadied the boat so Zavala could join him. Zavala stepped into the bouncy inflatable with his usual catlike grace, cast off the bow and stern lines, and shoved the boat away from the ship.

Austin turned the tiller over to Zavala, who goosed the throttle and pointed the blunt bow on a course to intercept the Ocean Adventure.

Chapter 10

FROM THE SIX-STORY-HIGHBRIDGE of the Ocean Adventure,Captain Irwin Lange had a gull’s-eye view of almost the entire length of the ship under his command. He had been at his lofty post when the helicopters had dropped out of the sky and landed on top of the container stacks. His initial reaction had been one of astonishment. That quickly changed to anger as he gazed through the big windows that overlooked the long deck.

The captain took pride in his Teutonic imperturbability. His stolid character was mirrored in firmly set facial features that almost never changed from their expression of genial self-competence. This was different. His lantern-jawed frown deepened. The helicopters had landed without hispermission. His logical mind quickly dismissed the possibility that the helicopters were in trouble. One helicopter, maybe. But not two.

This was not right. Not proper. Peering through his binoculars, the captain became even more incensed as a dozen or so figures jumped from the helicopters and fanned out under the whirling rotors. All were dressed in black. He only caught a glimpse of the interlopers before they disappeared over the edge of the stack. But in that brief instant he saw that they were carrying weapons. His anger turned to dismay.

Pirates!

Lange took a hard swallow. Impossible.Pirates operated in far-off places like Sumatra and the China Sea. There had been pirate attacks off the coast of Brazil and West Africa. But he found it inconceivable that sea marauders would operate in a frigid, fogbound area like the Grand Banks.

In his many years of sailing the Europe-to-America route, the captain’s only brush with pirates had been a video produced by an insurance-trade group. The shipping company that owned the ship under his command had distributed the video to its captains with instructions to watch it with their officers. The video showed fierce-eyed Asian pirates attacking a tanker in small, fast boats.

Lange desperately tried to recall the lessons the video tried to instill.

Vigilance is the best defense against piracy.No one warned about pirates dropping from the sky!

Turn the ship into a citadel. Too late to lock all the doors.

Don’t fight the pirates. Not a chance. There was nothing more lethal than flare guns on board. None of the German officers or largely Filipino crew was trained in weapons use.

Stay calm. Well, that was onething he was good at.

He turned to the bridge crew, which had been equally as startled at the sudden arrival of the helicopters.

“I believe the ship is being attacked by pirates,” he said with the same unemotional tone he might have used to announce that a squall was imminent.

The stricken face of his first officer suggested that the younger man had none of his captain’s composure. “ Pirates!What should we do?”

“Do not offer resistance under any circumstances. I’ll call for help.”

He picked up the radio microphone but the ship’s radio speaker crackled as he was about to make a distress call.

“Calling the captain of the Ocean Adventure,” a voice said. “Do you hear me?”

Lange said, “This is the captain speaking. Who is this?”

The speaker ignored Lange’s question. “We are rounding up your crew. We are monitoring your radio transmissions and advise you not to call a Mayday. Do you understand me, Captain Lange?”

How did they know his name?

The captain gulped out the words. “Yes, I understand you.”

“Good. Wait where you are.”

The captain’s immediate thought was for the welfare of his twenty-man crew. Maybe if he warned his men they could hide. He picked up the ship’s telephone and called the engine room. No answer. He tried the ship’s mess hall. Silence. He fought back a growing sense of panic and tried the officers’ lounge. Again no answer.

Heavy footsteps pounded on the bridge wing. A gang of armed men burst into the cabin. Four men wore identical black uniforms, caps, and masks hiding their faces except for their hard eyes. The fifth man was dressed in jeans and a foul weather jacket, and his face was uncovered. The captain recognized him as a Filipino named Juan who worked in the engine room.

The captain assumed Juan was a captive until he noticed the pistol in the crewman’s hand. The Filipino saw the consternation in the captain’s face, and his mouth widened in a gap-toothed grin. The captain realized that Juan was working with the pirates. That’s how they managed to take control so quickly. That’s how they knew his name. Juan must have guided the attackers directly to the engine room and other parts of the ship.

One man went over to the control panel and pushed the helmsman aside.

“What are you doing?” Captain Lange said.

The man punched coordinates into the ship’s computer, using numbers printed on a piece of paper. The captain saw that he had put the ship on autopilot. The man finished his task and barked a command.

“You and others. Down to the deck.”

Lange stuck his prominent jaw out in defiance, but he did what he was told and ordered the rest of crew to do the same. The cold breeze sweeping the open deck easily penetrated the captain’s light jacket. He would have been chilled in any case by the sight that greeted him. The rest of his crew was being herded along by armed men. A second Filipino crewman, like Juan, seemed to be working with the pirates.

Prodding the crew with their weapons, the pirates marched the frightened group to the aft deck. More pirates were gathered there around an object about as tall as a man. It was wrapped in canvas and was being trussed with several lengths of heavy rope.

Lange’s eyes went to the pirate who was examining the knots in the rope. He was tall, several inches over six feet, dwarfing the other hijackers, and he had arms that seemed too long even for his powerful body. The man turned around and Lange saw that his face was uncovered. He gazed at the captain with angelic eyes.

“You did well to follow my orders, Captain,” the man said. Lange recognized the voice that had warned him against calling a Mayday. The tone was surreal in its jovial warmth.

“Who are you?” the captain said. “Why are you on my ship?”

“Questions, questions,” the man said with a shake of his head. “It would take much longer to explain than we have.”

The captain tried another tack. “I will cooperate with you, only, please, do not harm my crew.”

The mouth that was almost feminine in its softness widened in a smile. “Don’t worry. We intend to leave you and this ship much as we found it.”

Lange was no dummy. The fact that the man had chosen to bare his face meant he wasn’t worried about witnesses identifying him later. At a nod from the gang’s leader, a hijacker jabbed the captain with his gun and told him to lie facedown on the deck with his crewmen. His hands and feet were tightly bound with tape.

“What about the woman?” Juan asked the baby-faced man. “What should we do with her?”

“Whatever you’d like,” the lead hijacker said. “She has caused us a great deal of trouble. Just make it fast.” He seemed to lose interest in the subject and turned his attention back to the canvas-wrapped object.

Juan stroked the handle of a knife hanging from his belt and strode off along the deck on his dark errand. He walked quickly in anticipation of his task. For days, he had watched Carina with lustful eyes, trying to imagine what she looked like under her layers of clothing. He licked his lips as he recalled the soft warmth of the supple female body that he had lifted into the container. He would only have a few minutes, but it would be long enough for her to experience a real man before he killed her.

As he broke into a trot, he glanced out to sea and was startled to see that a vessel had emerged from the fog and was pacing the containership. An inflatable boat with two men in it was bouncing over the waves toward the Ocean Adventure.

The Filipino thought about calling for help, but that would not leave him enough time with the woman. Lust won out over good sense. He would handle this himself.

He crouched low and made his way along the deck. The boat seemed to be headed to a point amidships. The Filipino got there ahead of it. He drew his knife, flattened himself belly down on the deck like a crocodile waiting for its prey, and watched the boat as it drew nearer.

This was going to be a special day.

Chapter 11

THE FLAT-BOTTOMED RUBBER BOAT bounced across the corrugated surface of the sea in a series of teeth-clacking belly flops. Zavala could have cut short the spastic flying fish leaps by reducing speed, but he had to keep the boat moving to stay with the containership.

“This thing feels like it’s got four flat tires,” Austin yelled over the high-pitched whine of the outboard motor.

Zavala’s reply was drowned out by a detached wave top that hit him full in the face. He blinked the water from his eyes and spit out a mouthful. “Damn potholes!”

He expertly steered the boat closer, jogging the tiller to counter the artificial surf stirred up by the huge hull. His steering arm felt as if it was being wrenched from its socket. The boat lost way with each turn. Within minutes, it had dropped back, until it was almost halfway down the length of the ship. But Zavala’s quick hand and steady eye had drastically cut the distance to the vessel.

The containership seemed like the legendary unstoppable force as it plowed through the seas that crashed against the high, flared bow. The flow of water against the hull created a barrier of white water that stood between Austin and his goal: the pilot ladder hanging down from the deck almost to the waterline. The Adventure’s deck was high above the water. The rope ladder was meant to provide access from a harbor pilot’s boat to a fixed gangway that slanted down the ship’s side.

From the deck of the Leif Eriksson, the task Austin had set for himself had looked difficult but not impossible. But the Ocean Adventurewas as long as a skyscraper placed on its side. Even worse, this skyscraper was moving. As Austin looked up at the fortress-steep ramparts he hoped to scale, he wondered whether he had bitten off a bigger mouthful than he could chew.

He pushed the dangerously distracting thought from his mind, crawled up to the boat’s prow, and dug his fingers into the slippery-wet surface of the rubber pontoons. When he was ready, Austin lifted one arm and signaled Zavala to make his move. Zavala angled the inflatable in toward the ladder. The rolling white water knocked the boat back like a cow brushing away a fly. Zavala had to play catch-up again.

Austin clung to the bow as Zavala tried to keep pace without going broadside to a sea that could easily flip the boat over. Cold spray stung his eyes and blurred his vision. The noise created by the rush of water, the outboard motor, and the ship’s engines made communication, and even thought, nearly impossible. Just as well. If Austin thought about what he was about to do, he would not do it.

He was starting to tire from the constant beating. If he didn’t make a move soon, his biggest obstacle would be sheer exhaustion. Pluck and determination would come off second best against the simple laws of physics.

A voice crackled over his walkie-talkie.

“ Kurt.Come in.” Captain Dawe was calling him.

“No can do,” Austin shouted into the mouthpiece. “Busy.”

“I know. I’m watching you. Just heard from the rig. The last anchor line is tangled. A collision looks like a sure thing. You’d better move away from the impact area or you could get caught up in a hell of a mess.”

Austin made a snap decision. He pointed at the containership and shouted over his shoulder.

“Oil rig’s stuck, Joe. We’re going in.”

Zavala gave him a thumbs-up and smoothly cranked the tiller to move the boat within yards of the ship. Once more, the small craft was buffeted by artificial surf. Zavala kept the boat riding the roiling hull wash like a Hawaiian surfer until it was slightly ahead of the boarding ladder.

The rope ladder had become entangled in the “man lines,” the safety ropes that hung down from either side. Zavala brought the motor up to full throttle and went in at a shallow angle. The boat tipped on its side like a heeling sailboat. Zavala and Austin threw their body weight on the higher side. The boat rode the rushing water until it was within reach of the ladder slapping against the side of the ship.

Austin felt like a salmon swimming upstream as the boat danced on the churning water. With the ladder finally in reach, he wedged his feet under the pontoon sides of the inflatable, slipped out of his flotation vest, and rose in a semicrouch. He needed full freedom of movement, and the vest would be of little use if he screwed up. He would have only one chance and if he missed he would land in the water, get swept back alongside the ship, and likely be ground to pieces in the ship’s propeller.

He felt the boat falling away and he reached up, his fingers still inches from the bottom of the rope. He was extended out over the bow, clawing for air. The chasm that yawned between his fingers and the ladder was widening beyond the point of no return. Then the rope snapped closer, and he grabbed the bottom rung like an acrobat in flight.

As Austin’s fingers closed on the rung, Zavala swung the boat back away from the ship to avoid flipping over. Austin dangled at the end of the ladder, reached up blindly, and grabbed the next rung. The hard rubber step was slippery with seawater. He almost lost his grip when a wave washed up around his waist and dragged him down, but he held on and pulled himself higher.

The ladder had stabilized slightly with Austin’s body weight on it, but the double rope was still twisting on itself. He almost let go when his hand scraped against the steel hull. His knuckles felt as if they had been dipped in acid. He had no choice but to ignore the pain and keep climbing.

He tilted his head back to see how far he was from the gangway that angled against the hull. He was encouraged by what he saw. He was halfway up the ladder. Only a few more rungs and he’d be able to reach the small platform at the bottom of the metal steps.

He grabbed on to a couple of rungs, pulled himself higher, and glanced up again. Someone was peering at him from between two thin metal posts that extended vertically from the deck where those climbing the ladder could use them as handholds. A crown of unruly hair framed the dark-skinned face of a man. His gap-toothed mouth was set in a wide grin.

The face disappeared, and an arm reached over the side. The hand at the end of the arm clutched a knife whose long blade was sawing through the rope ladder.

“Hey!” Austin called out, for want of anything more appropriate.

The knife hesitated, but went back to work and quickly severed the rope. The rope ladder dropped a short distance. Austin was slammed against the hull. The impact almost jolted his hands loose from the ladder. He held on and looked up again. Aw, hell, he muttered. The knife was sawing the second ladder rope.

He reached for a man line that had blown free and was twisting in the wind and got both hands on it as the knife went through the second rope. The severed ladder dropped into the crushing sea and instantly disappeared.

Austin’s head slammed against the side of the ship like a clapper in a bell. Galaxies whirled before his eyes. He clung tenaciously to consciousness aware that a single swipe of the knife blade against the line would send him to his death. He reached over and grabbed the bottom step of the gangplank, then swung under the platform, where he hoped he would be invisible to the happy knifeman.

He stayed there for a few moments. When he could hold on no longer, he pulled his body onto the platform and crawled on his hands and knees up the steps until he was at the opening in the deck rail. He leaped onto the deck in a clumsy defensive stance and was glad to see that no one was waiting in ambush.

Austin waved at Zavala, who was running a parallel course to the containership. Zavala waved back.

The captain’s frantic voice crackled in the walkie-talkie. “You okay, Kurt?”

Austin felt like newly ground hamburger, but he said, “Finest kind, Cap. I’m on the ship. How long do I have?”

“You’re about five miles from the rig. You’ll have to allow time for the ship’s momentum to stop or turn.”

Austin sprinted for the sterncastle, but a terrible sound stopped him in his tracks. Coming from a space between container stacks was a woman’s scream, and there was no mistaking the terror in her voice.

Chapter 12

CARINA HAD REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS only minutes before Austin had climbed aboard the ship. Her return to the land of the living had some drawbacks. Her head throbbed with pain. Her vision was squirrelly. Waves of nausea sloshed around in her stomach.

The ache and discomfort kept her from sliding back into oblivion, and she became aware that she was still in the container, her body lodged between packing crates. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back. In their haste, the hijackers had left her legs untied.

Combining sheer force of will with a lean physique strengthened from hours of working out at the UNESCO gym, Carina rolled onto her belly. Using her tight abdominal muscles to the max, she leveraged her body into a kneeling position. She stood on wobbly legs and waited until the dizziness passed. Then she backed up to a packing crate and rubbed the duct tape binding her wrists against the corner.

Splinters stabbed at her skin, but she ignored the pain. After a few minutes of self-inflicted torture, she slipped one hand free. She was prying the tape off her wrists when a figure appeared in the opening the hijackers had cut into the container.

Carina recognized the man’s face. She didn’t know his name, only that he was one of the Filipino crewmen she had seen working around the ship.

“Am I glad to see you,” she said with a sigh of relief.

“I am veryglad to see you, senorita,” the man said with a wolfish gleam in his eye.

Carina’s feminine antennae picked up the suggestion of danger in his voice. She glanced past the crewman’s shoulder. “Are the hijackers gone?”

“No,” he said with a grin. “We are still aboard.”

We.

Carina tried to step past him. The Filipino shifted position to block her way.

“What do you want?” she said, regretting the words the instant they left her mouth.

The Filipino’s lips curled like slices of liverwurst in a frying pan. “I come to kill you. But, first, we have a little fun.”

He grabbed Carina’s shoulders. He was several inches shorter than she was but much stronger. He stuck his foot out behind her ankle and pushed against her chest. She fell backward. The crewman crashed down and pinned her to the floor. As Carina struggled to push him off, he produced a knife and slashed away the thin leather belt around her waist.

She beat at his face with her fists, scoring a few light punches on his unshaven chin that were more an annoyance than a defense. He stuck the knife into the side of a crate to free both hands—and Carina screamed at the top of her lungs. There was no one on the ship who could come to her aid, but maybe the piercing shriek would distract her attacker.

He backed off, and she lunged for the knife. He saw the move and smashed her in the jaw with his open hand. The blow nearly knocked her out. She stopped struggling. She could feel him jerking her jeans down to her knees, smell his foul breath, and hear his heavy breathing. She could only make feeble efforts to push him back. Then she heard a low, male voice.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said.

The Filipino snatched the knife from the crate. He scrambled to his feet and whirled to face the intruder.

A broad-shouldered man stood in the jagged-edged rectangle of light, legs wide apart. His pale, almost-white hair looked like a halo in the backlight.

The Filipino sprang forward with his knife extended. Carina expected to hear a cry of pain as the blade plunged into flesh, but the only sound was a clink and a scrape, as if someone were sharpening a kitchen knife.

Austin had picked up a cuneiform clay tablet he’d seen lying on the deck. He was holding the flat stone down by his knees when he stepped into the container and saw the drama unfolding. When the man turned, Austin recognized the face that had peered out over the deck as he was climbing the rope ladder. With a speed that surprised his attacker, he had hitched the tablet up to his chest to shield against the knife thrust.

As the blade slid harmlessly off to one side, Austin lifted the tablet high above his head and brought it down as if he were beating a rug. The clay broke over the crewman’s head and shattered into dozens of pieces. The Filipino miraculously stayed up for a few second, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he folded like a concertina.

Austin stepped over the twitching body and offered his hand to the woman. She reached out and pulled herself to a standing position. With trembling fingers, she hoisted her jeans back up to her waist.

“Are you all right?” he said. There was concern in the coral blue eyes.

Carina nodded. She glared at the crewman’s body. “Thank you for saving me from that animal. I hope you killed him.”

“I probably did. Are you part of the ship’s crew?”

“I’m a passenger. The ship was hijacked. They came in helicopters. They took the Navigator.”

Austin thought she was talking about one of the ship’s crew. “Who?”

Carina saw Austin’s confusion. “The Navigator.It’s…it’s a statue.”

Austin nodded. The woman’s reply made about as much sense as anything. He picked up the knife that had fallen from the crewman’s hand. “Sorry to hit and run. I’ve got to tend to a few errands. See if you can find another hiding place. We’ll talk later over dinner.”

He slipped through the hole in the container and was gone. Carina stood there in a daze. She wondered whether she had dreamed up this avenging angel who could save her life, coolly dispatch her attacker, and suggest having dinner, all in one breath. She didn’t know who he was, but she decided to take his advice. She glanced without sympathy at the Filipino, then beat a hasty exit from the container and lost herself in the labyrinth of cargo stacks.

AS AUSTIN’S FEET pounded on the enormous deck, he knew that he was facing long odds. His detour to save a damsel in distress was going to be fatal to both of them. There was just too much horizontal and vertical distance to cover on foot. The deck stretched out ahead of him. He still had to get to the top of a bridge house as tall as an apartment building.

He pumped his legs in a touchdown sprint. He was moving so fast that the metal gleam glimpsed between stacks didn’t register in his brain until he was several yards past it. He turned back and poked his head into the opening. The gleam had come from the chrome handlebars of a bicycle leaning against a container. Austin would have preferred a Harley-Davidson, but the battered old Raleigh three-speed used by crewmen to get around the giant ship would do.

He pulled the bike out, threw a leg over the seat, and started pedaling, using all the power in his muscular legs. As he sped along the deck, he noticed several bodies on the deck at the base of the bridge tower.

As he got closer, he could see that the men were still alive but tied hand and foot and lying facedown. He tossed the bike aside and went over to a heavyset man who was struggling against his bindings. Austin told him to hold still and sliced the wrist tape with one swipe of the knife.

The man used his freed hands to push himself over onto his side. Austin saw that he was middle-aged, and his weathered face was framed with heavy jowls. The man’s eyes went to the knife blade, but he seemed to relax when Austin cut his leg bindings and asked if he were a ship’s officer.

“I am Captain Lange, master of the Ocean Adventure.”

Austin helped the captain to unsteady feet. “What happened to the hijackers?” he said.

“I don’t know. They came on helicopters.” Lange pointed sky-ward. “They landed on top of the containers. Who are you?”

“A friend. Introductions later.” Austin braced the captain by his shoulders to make sure he had his attention. “Your ship is on a collision course with an oil platform. You’ve only got a few minutes to stop or change course or you won’t havea ship.”

The blood drained from the captain’s face. “I saw them set the autopilot.”

“You’ll have to disable it as soon as possible. I’ll free your men.”

“I’m on my way,” the captain said, wobbling toward the bridge on stiff-kneed legs.

Austin quickly cut the tape binding the other crewmen and told them to follow the captain to the bridge. He wasn’t worried about running into the hijackers. They would be unlikely to stick around after putting the ship on its disastrous course. He knew his instincts were on target when he heard the threshing sound of helicopter rotors above his head.

WITH THEIR MISSION accomplished, the hijackers had been preparing to abandon ship. Their baby-faced leader had finished inspecting the lines securing the canvas-wrapped object when the second Filipino who’d been embedded in the ship’s crew ran over.

“Juan isn’t back,” said the man, whose name was Carlos. “I don’t know what he’s doing.”

The leader smiled. “I know exactlywhat your friend is doing. He’s disobeying orders.” He climbed through the door into the nearest helicopter.

“What should we do?” Carlos said.

“Keep him company, if you’d like.” He smiled and closed the door.

A panicked look came to the Filipino’s face. He dashed for the other helicopter and clambered into the cabin as the rotors reached takeoff speed. The helicopter rose slowly from the containers. Dangling from the fuselage was a line with a hook attached to the end of it. The helicopter moved around to stern.

The helicopter hovered over the object wrapped in canvas. The chopper dropped down and engaged the hook of a rope loop at the top of the object. Austin watched the maneuver from around the corner of the bridge house.

In the brief time Austin had known the hijackers, he had come to dislike them intensely. Bending low, he ran toward the object and undid the hook attached to the end of the helicopter’s Kevlar line. He wrapped the line around a bollard and hooked it to itself.

He was running back to the shelter of the bridge house when he felt as if a hot iron had been plunged into his ribs. Someone was shooting at him and he’d been hit. Ignoring the pain, Austin hit the deck and rolled over several times.

A second before he made a prairie dog dive into an open hatchway, he looked up and saw the second helicopter. A gun barrel protruded from the open door.

With all the confusion, the pilot of the other helicopter was unaware that his aircraft was attached to the deck. He tried to gain altitude and gave the helicopter extra power to compensate for the weight. The chopper reached the end of the line, came to a jarring halt, and began to gyrate like a kite on a string.

The line caught in the rotor blades, which severed the connection. Spinning crazily, the helicopter arced out over the waves and crashed into the sea with an impact that sent up a monumental splash.

Austin peered from the hatchway. The other helicopter circled over the expanding circle of foamy bubbles. A man stood in the helicopter door, looked down at Austin, and they locked eyes for a second. A smile spread across the man’s cherubic face. A second later, the helicopter banked off and flew away from the ship.

Austin climbed back onto the deck and saw why the helicopter hadn’t bothered to make another pass. The Great Western oil rig loomed directly ahead.

With the wind whipping at his clothes, he gazed up to the bridge, silently cheering the captain on. He could imagine the desperate struggle in the pilothouse as the captain tried to avoid a calamity. The ship was still moving at full power. Austin put himself in the captain’s place. Even if Lange killed the engines, the ship would continue moving on its momentum. The captain would want to maintain even the tiniest shred of control that the engines would allow.

As the ship closed in on the platform, Austin detected a shift of a few degrees to the right. The ship was finally going into its turn. It would need sea room to miss the rig. Austin knew that a ship the size of the Ocean Adventuredidn’t turn on a dime.

He leaned over the rail and saw crewmen scrambling on the oil platform like ants on a floating leaf. A couple of service boats strained against the lines attached to the platform. Icy fingers grabbed at his heart as he pictured the inevitable collision.

Someone was calling Austin as if from afar. He realized that the voice was coming from the walkie-talkie earpiece dangling at his side. He stuck the plug in his ear.

“Kurt, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Austin cut into Dawe’s frantic soliloquy.

“Just dandy. What’s happening with the rig?”

“They’ve untangled the last anchor.”

The sentence was barely out of the captain’s mouth when Austin saw a burst of foam where the rig’s anchor had pulled free of the water. White water boiled around the rig’s legs. The wakes forming behind the legs indicated that the platform was on the move.

The rig’s evasive action would still fall short. The ship would strike the front right leg within seconds. Austin braced himself for the impact.