Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

Gideon clapped the phone shut, handed it back to Simpson....

“This boat?” The captain tossed his cigarette into the ocean. “Wherever she goes, I go.” He was already pulling up to the dock on the far side of the canal. Several SMDF soldiers jumped aboard. One of them was a medic, and he began compressing Simpson’s leg.

As the soldiers carried him out of the boat onto the SMDF vehicle, Simpson nodded weakly to Gideon, bidding him Godspeed. Before Gideon could reciprocate, the captain firewalled the throttle and the boat tore away from the pier.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE NOISE OF THE engines was deafening as the big boat barreled out of the bay and into the mountainous waves of the South China Sea.

The captain drove with one hand and dialed a knob on the radio with the other, a freshly lit cigarette perched on his lower lip. “Put the headphones on, sir,” he said.

Gideon pulled on a pair of green headphones.

“Transmitting now.”

Gideon thumbed the button on the edge of the microphone. “This is Gideon Davis hailing the Obelisk. Do you copy?”

Gideon re="1 T‡leased the button. He could barely make out the sound of static over the roar of the engines and the rush of the wind over the cockpit.

“Obelisk, do you copy?”

This time a voice came over the speaker, barely penetrating the static. “This is the Obelisk.”

“This is Gideon Davis. My brother is Tillman Davis. Who am I speaking with?”

The unidentified speaker answered with his own question. “Gideon Davis?”

Gideon heard the surprise in his voice. Whoever he was talking to probably assumed he was dead. “That’s right.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve been authorized by the president of the United States to negotiate directly with my brother. I’m requesting permission to board the Obelisk.”

The long subsequent pause was filled with static.

“Do you copy?” Gideon repeated.

“Permission granted,” the voice said.

“Who am I speaking with?”

“You’ll have safe passage to board the rig. Over.” Again, the voice had avoided answering Gideon’s question. But before Gideon could ask anything more, the transmission was cut off.

Gideon took off the headphones. The boat captain was regarding him expectantly. “Okay,” Gideon said. “My brother says I can board the Obelisk.”

Timken smiled as he set the radio microphone back in its cradle. He turned to Chun and said, “Bring up Mr. Parker. I need to talk to him.”

Two minutes later, Parker entered the room.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Timken said.

“Stop smiling like a Cheshire cat and tell me the bad news first.”

“My men never got to Gideon Davis. I don’t know how, but he’s still alive.”

Earl Parker’s gaze was stony. “What’s the good news?”

“Guess who the president is sending to the oil rig to negotiate with Abu Nasir?”

Earl Parker’s left eyebrow rose slightly.

“Sir, Gideon Davis is heading out here on a speedboat as we speak. He’s been given . . .” Here Timken couldn’t stifle an ironic grin. “He’s been given Tillman Davis’s personal guarantee of safe passage.”

Earl Parker nodded. “Well done, Timken.”

“I assume you want—”

“Of course I want him dead. The moment he’s in range, take him out.”

“Understood.”

“You said that before, Timken. And here we are.” Parker turned to Chun and said, “Take me back to thet="ဆ cabin.”

“Sir, there’s something else. That typhoon’s about to hit us.”

“That’s good news,” Parker said. “It means we don’t have to worry about another assault dropping on our heads.”

“Yeah, except that engineer I took out, Cole Ransom? He was coming here to check on the damping system that keeps the waves from tearing this rig apart.”

Parker waited for more.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Haven’t you been hearing that noise? It’s gotten worse...

“This is a billion-dollar rig. It’s not going to fall apart.” But Parker saw that Timken wasn’t mollified.

As if on cue, the floor shook, and deep noise welled up through the rig.

Parker conceded with a grudging nod. “Get the rig manager up here and talk to her about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parker started to leave but paused in the doorway. “Just make sure you don’t screw up this time with Gideon Davis. He was supposed to be dead before this operation started.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AN HOUR HAD PASSED since she’d been returned to the cabin, and Kate once again found herself being escorted to the upper deck by masked men. She felt the same nauseating buzz of fear. Although her wrists were cuffed behind her, she felt some small consolation that they hadn’t covered her face with a hood this time. It wasn’t much, but she was grateful to have her bearings and to be spared the indignity of bumping into rails and pipes she couldn’t see.

The jihadis prodded her forward, into the control room, and her chest tightened at what she saw through the windows. Yesterday, when the rig had been seized, the sky had been a bright cheerful blue. Now it was low and leaden, and a heavy rain pounded the windows of the control room. To the left of the stairs was the weather station—rain gauge, digital thermometer, barometer, and a wind speed gauge. Its propellors were a blur, spinning so fast she couldn’t see the individual blades.

Below the rig, the waves were looking nastier. She couldn’t tell if they were actually higher than they had been—but the wind was shredding the tops, capping them with crests of white foam. It was a steady, hard wind now, blowing west-southwest without the slightest deviation. Just the sort of wind that made for big waves. Night had not yet fallen, and there was enough light that she could see darker clouds and a heavier sheet of rain bearing down on the rig.

She heard footsteps ringing on the metal deck. Striding toward her, the wind snatching at his uniform, was the American jihadi—Abu Nasir or Tillman Davis, or whatever his name was. The anger and frustration and fear that had been building for hours suddenly erupted from her.

“What did you do with my people?” Kate shouted at him. “I want to see them!”

One of the jihadis slammed her in the kidney with a rifle butt. The pain ran up her side, so sharp it made her nauseated. She lost her balance and fell to one knee. The American said something in a language she didn’t understand, and the jihadi who’d hit her hoisted her to her feet.

“That’s not going to happen, Ms. Murphy. The reason I brought you up here, I’ve got a couple questions about the damping system. I keep hearing that clunking noise, and I want to know if I should be concerned.”

Kate looked at him point-blank and said, “Yeah. You should be.”

“How concerned?”

“Very.” Kate gave him a brief history of the problems with the damping system. She nodded out the window toward the horizon. “That typhoon may take down the rig if we don’t fix it first.”

She was hoping to rattle him, and she could see that she had. But before he could ask her anything more, Abu Nasir was interrupted by a big Asian guy who looked more Korean than Mohanese. “Gideon Davis is hailing us again.”

“What does he want now?”

“Confirmation that you’re giving him safe passage.”

Abu Nasir nodded. “Tell him what he wants to hear,” he said.

The Asian guy ran back down the stairs toward the drill deck. The Obelisk’s radio, Kate knew, was located in the control room on the drill deck.

Abu Nasir turned back to Kate. “Ever hear of Gideon Davis?”

Kate didn’t answer. She had, of course, heard of Gideon Davis. You couldn’t read a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing Gideon Davis’s face.

“We’re brothers.” The bearded American smiled. “Ironic, huh?”

Kate sighed.

“Am I boring you? Maybe if one of my men tuned you up a little, you’d be more interested in my witty observations.” Abu Nasir laughed. “Well, anyway, the president of the United States has just sent him out to negotiate with us.”

“Good,” Kate said.

“The thing about my brother, we never got along. Every time we talk, we end up in a fight. So I’m wondering if talking to him would be . . . what’s the word I’m looking for? Unproductive?”

As Abu Nasir was talking, several of his men came up on the deck and began setting up a large machine gun on a tripod near the edge of the chopper deck.

The American turned back toward Kate with a shrug. “Honestly, at this point, what would we gain by a bunch of chitchat? Once I’m done here, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to tell me how to fix that damping system.”

A cry from one of his men drew his attention to the far side of the chopper deck. Several other calls followed. The jihadis were pointing out into the sea.

Blasting toward them out of the whitecapped seas was a boat. Given the crazy size of the waves, it seemed a very small and vulnerable craft. But the boat was obviously powerful and was banging through the turbulent waves toward them at a high speed. Kate could make out two people on board. One was piloting the boat and the other was crouched in the bow. The man in the bow was waving at the rig, his hands moving deliberately, unhurried.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her as he started toward the far side of the platform where the jihadis had just finished setting up the heavy machine gun, oblivious to the driving rain.

As the boat got closer, the American leaned over the machine gunner. “On my signal, light him up.”

Kate was sickened. This monster was going to murder his own brother.

The machine gunner leaned forward.

“Not yet.” Abu Nasir yanked the gunner’s shoulder. “Wait.” Abu Nasir lifted his finger in the air, keeping it suspended for another thirty seconds, then dropping it decisively. “Now.”

The noise of the machine gun was astonishing. The cartridges were the size of small bananas, and the concussion rattled her ribs.

The boat veered away from the trail of bullet splashes in the water and disappeared behind the face of a huge wave.

The noise resumed, shell casings cascading onto the deck as the mouth of the big gun spit fire at a thousand feet per second.

The boat swerved again. The burst of gunfire missed the boat, but just barely, and then the boat wheeled, heading up the face of the next wave. As powerful as it was, the vessel had to strain to make it up the wave. Its speed dropped precipitously. The big engines howled as it raced the track of bullets chasing after it.

In the end, the race was no contest. The bullets caught up to the boat, chewed through the stern, set one of its engines on fire, then hit the boat pilot. One moment he was a human being, and the next he was a scrambled mass of blood and tissue, sliding across the deck along with a wash of seawater. It was the most horrific thing Kate had ever seen. Her entire body was trembling.

The crippled boat heeled to the right and headed straight toward the rig, the bullets still smashing it to pieces. The man in the prow was still alive though, crouching like a swimmer about to dive off a cliff. To Kate’s shock, he leapt straight from the boat into the ocean. The boat disappeared from view, obscured by the bulk of the rig. She heard a terrible rending crunch, and the entire rig shook. The boat must have hit one of the massive concrete piers holding it up. A fireball appeared briefly, replaced by a cloud of inky smoke, which was immediately ripped apart by the wind.

“Shoot him!” Abu Nasir shouted.

Every jihadi on the chopper platform leaned over the edge and began firing down into the water.

Kate looked around. Her two guards had moved to the side and were blasting away with their AK-47s.

Nobody was paying her the slightest attention.

Now was her chance. Now or never.

She sat down on thu Nñ€†e wet deck and wriggled her hips until the rain-slick wrist cuffs passed under her butt. From there it was a simple matter of pulling her heels in and passing her arms in front of her.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Then she stood and sprinted to the door, down the stairs to...

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.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Why had they shot at him? The man Gideon had spoken to on...

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!”