He raised it to his lips. “I threw my damned back out, but I’m almost to the superstructure. How about you?”
“The door to the accommodations block is welded shut,” Cabrillo replied. “I busted out a window and yelled for Linda, but I got nothing back.”
“Can you crawl through?”
“No, it’s just a small porthole. I’m looking around now for another way in. This thing’s built tighter than a castle.”
“Some rescue team we are, huh?”
“We’ll get her back,” Cabrillo said with utter certainty.
Max continued on, a fist pressed to his lower back to ease some of the pain. The superstructure was painted in a dull white that showed the ship’s hard years of operation. Corrosion ate at the metal in places, leaving behind rust streaks that drizzled down her plating. There were two hatches giving access to the interior spaces, and when Hanley reached the first one, he found that it had been locked from the inside. He tried pulling on the handle harder.
The second door was also battened down. He looked up. A catwalk ran the width of the building-sized superstructure, but it was twenty feet above him. Farther up on the bridge deck was a second walkway, and above that loomed two squared-off funnels covered in soot. There were no windows, and no way to access anything forward. Max was trapped, and he had noticed since they’d landed that the Hercules’s list had noticeably steepened.
CABRILLO WALKED AROUND the accommodations block, searching for any way inside. Two sides of it abutted the edges of the rig and were nothing more than open grilles over the water, with handrails at waist height. There were two more doors, but each was locked from the inside.
Staring up the blank sides of the structure, he saw that a pulley had been rigged in order to fly a flag off an aerial that rose ten feet above the roof. The metal cord was badly abraded and fraying, but it just might work.
He opened the turnbuckle that converted the wire into a continuous loop and looked around for something to tie off one end. A half-full drum sat a short distance away. Able to use only one hand, he took several minutes to walk it closer to the pulley. He lost more precious time tying off an end of the wire around the middle of the barrel. If the knot failed, he’d probably break his neck, so it had to be perfect.
Then he made a one-foot loop in the other end of the wire. The hardest part was wrestling the metal drum onto its side. He had to get down low and press with his back and legs, straining to tip the barrel until it crashed over with a sloshing clang. He slipped his foot through the loop and pushed the barrel so it was parallel with the rig’s deepening incline.
For a few seconds, his weight was enough to keep him anchored to the ground, so he put his other foot against the barrel and gave it a shove. Gravity did the rest. The drum started rolling across the deck, and, as it did, the wire went through the pulley, and Cabrillo made a stately ascent up the side of the building, his foot in the loop, his good hand clutching the line. He made it to the roof in just a couple of seconds and nimbly jumped clear. The loop jammed in the pulley, arresting the barrel’s journey across the deck.
The top of the block was a maze of looping vents and commercial-grade air handlers. It took Cabrillo a few minutes to figure out which trunk lines went into the building and which were the returns. When he knew which one he wanted, he flicked open a pocketknife. It was an Emerson CQC (Close Quarters Combat) that Linc had turned him on to.
Rather than mess around with the tarred screws securing the two-foot-square ducts, Juan plunged the blade straight through the metal and hacked open a big enough hole like he was slicing paper. There wasn’t a mark on the blade when he was done.
He crawled into the duct, mindful of his aching shoulder, and slithered forward until he came to an elbow that bent down through the roof. The insides of the duct were coated in a thick layer of dust that clouded around his head with every movement and forced him to sneeze hard enough that he banged his head. Just enough light leaked through the opening and around his body for him to see that the duct dropped away four feet and then bent in another ninety-degree corner.
He muscled his way back out of the duct and reentered it feet-first. When he got to the elbow, he flipped onto his stomach and eased himself over the edge, his shoulder screaming in protest. He felt with his toes until he touched the bottom of the duct and then shifted his weight entirely. The metal popped and echoed as it adjusted.
A minute later he was lying prone in the lower section of duct-work, grinning to himself when he saw light up ahead. He pushed with his feet until he was over a ceiling vent that was easily large enough to crawl through. He’d assumed he’d have to cut his way out of the air-conditioning system. Instead, he pounded out the grille with his heel, oozed his way into the opening, and allowed himself to drop to the floor of the oil worker’s cabin. The room had a single porthole overlooking the ocean and an iron bed frame without a mattress. Whatever else had been in here had been removed long ago.
He stepped out into a hallway beyond, calling Linda’s name as he searched thirty identical rooms and a large space in the middle of the building that had been a rec center or conference room. It was nothing now but bare walls, linoleum floors, and fluorescent lights affixed to the ceiling.
The stairwell to the next level down was pitch-black. He pulled a halogen penlight from his pocket and rotated the bezel until it threw a tight shaft of light.
“Linda,” he called when he cleared the stairwell. His voice echoed and crashed back like he had entered a massive space. The air carried the lingering effects of an ozone tang. It smelled of old electronics and burned wire.
He could tell right away that the room had been extensively modified. The dropped ceiling had been removed as well as all the partition walls. The windows had been blacked out, and additional vents in the form of silver collapsible tubes rose up another stairwell and snaked across the floor. What drew Cabrillo’s attention, though, was what else had been added. Floor-to-ceiling racks in tight rows filled the entire space, and on them were rank upon rank of powerful-looking computers, all linked into one massive parallel processor. There had to be ten thousand or more machines all working as a single computer. The amount of processing power boggled the mind. It probably rivaled that of a large university or even NASA. The extra ductwork was to dissipate the heat buildup created when the machines were in operation.
He searched the room as quickly as he could on the off chance Linda was here and then descended to the next level, where he found an identical setup. Thousands of computers sat mutely in their racks with thick data cords linking machine to machine.
He puzzled at what Croissard needed all this number-crunching capability for. Somehow it must tie in with whatever his man Smith had recovered from the Buddhist temple in Myanmar, but he had no idea how.
Again, Cabrillo swept the room and failed to find Linda Ross.
He hated to think that she was on one of the lower levels under the rig’s main deck. It would be a rabbit warren of crawl spaces, corridors, and storage rooms that could take hours to search. He didn’t want to even consider that she could be stashed down in one of the rig’s legs or giant floats. He flicked the light onto the face of his watch and was dismayed to see that he’d already been aboard the J-61 for more than an hour. He also estimated the rig’s list had increased a few degrees in that time. She was still solidly planted on the Hercules, but for how much longer?
The next level was the accommodations block’s ground floor. His first task was to unlock and prop open one of the doors leading to the catwalk that hung off the seaward side of the structure. The fresh air helped dispel the ozone stench. He also took a moment to check in with Max. Hanley had yet to find a way into the ship. He told Juan that Adams was about to move the chopper onto the rig’s pontoon and use its undercarriage winch to haul him up.
This level, Cabrillo discovered, was mostly offices as well as changing rooms for the roughnecks. There was no sign of Linda, so he set off once again, descending
into the guts of the rig, his tiny light unable to do more than push at the murky gloom.
A screech of steel on steel boomed and roared through the platform like the shriek of a speeding train slamming on its brakes. Juan felt the whole structure shift and then stabilize. The list increased another couple degrees in as many seconds.
They were running out of time.
ERIC STONE PUSHED the Oregon mercilessly. Rather than take the command chair in the middle of the Op Center, he remained in his customary seat at the helm, where he had a better sense of how the ship was responding to the waves and therefore could make minute adjustments to eke out the most speed.
The tramp freighter had never let them down before and she was delivering again, cutting across the sea like an offshore powerboat, her bows slicing cleanly through the water while a boiling wake astern marked her passage.
They covered the eighty miles to the Hercules in record time, but when they arrived, he knew immediately that they were too late. The heavy-lifter was so far over that she looked ready to capsize at any moment. The towering oil rig astride her deck leaned far out over the water, casting a long shadow that darkened the sea. He imagined only its tremendous weight was keeping it glued in place.
“Well done, lad,” Max’s booming voice came over the ceiling-mounted speakers. He was in the MD 520N, heading back to the ship to pick up men and supplies that were already waiting.
“What do you want me to do?” Stone asked, secretly relieved that he wouldn’t be responsible for the rescue attempt.
“Lay her right up under the rig and shove with everything she’s got,” Hanley said without pause.
“What?” Eric couldn’t believe his ears.
“You heard me. Do it.”
Stone snapped on the ship’s intercom. “Deck crew, lay out every fender we’ve got along the portside rail.” He wasn’t worried about ruining either ship’s paint scheme but was concerned about staving in hull plates.
Afraid that making waves near the Hercules would send her plummeting into the depths, Eric coaxed the Oregon alongside the ship like she was a skittish colt, all the while ballasting her down so that her rail would slip under the rig’s projecting pontoons. The J-61 loomed over them like a castle on a sinking foundation.
“Chopper is down,” Max announced as Stone made tiny corrections to their position.
The two ships came together as gently as a feather falling to earth, the thick pneumatic fenders compressing and easing the contact even further. When the vessels were pressed against each other as snugly as possible, Eric slowly ramped up the Oregon’s athwartship thrusters and cranked the directed-thrust drive-tube nozzles to ninety degrees.
The effect was immediate. Burdened by tens of thousands of gallons of water flooding her starboard tanks, the Hercules was over nearly twenty degrees, but as soon as the power came up, the Oregon managed to shove her eight degrees closer to vertical. The forces in play were titanic but so carefully balanced that the slightest mistake on Stone’s part would send the twenty-thousand-ton oil platform tumbling off the Hercules and crashing down, and ultimately through the Oregon. The worst part was that unless they could shut the heavy-lifter’s sea inlets and pump her dry again, this was a delaying action at best.
Max’s dangerous ploy bought them time. Just how much was anyone’s guess.
NO SOONER HAD THE HELICOPTER settled onto the deck than Hanley, with his back aching, practically fell out of his seat in an effort to get out quickly. Julia Huxley was waiting with a wheelchair, her lab coat billowing around her in the rotor wash. Max was grateful for the chair but had no intention of allowing her to wheel him to the infirmary. He locked the wheels with his hands and watched as Mike Trono, Eddie Seng, and Franklin Lincoln—the men who had planned on spearheading the armed takedown of the Hercules—load up gear they would need to breach the ship’s superstructure and stave off a disaster. They couldn’t simply jump aboard the sinking vessel because there was too much of a gap caused by the rubber fenders sandwiched between the two ships.
In order to save even more time, Eddie would fly over to the ship clipped to the chopper’s winch so he could be lowered onto the pilothouse directly. Three minutes after he landed, Gomez Adams ramped up the engine and lifted away, mindful of his friend dangling beneath the helo’s belly.
He flew up and over the Oregon and came down again seconds later, peering though the Plexiglas at his feet in order to put Eddie on target. He deftly lowered Seng onto the pilothouse roof just inboard of one of the jutting bridge wings.
Eddie unclipped himself from the winch, threw a wave, and leapt down to the catwalk.
Adams then set the chopper down on the forward pontoon, where he’d had to rescue Max moments earlier. Mike and Linc tossed out their gear and jumped free so that Gomez could fly up to the oil platform’s chopper pad and wait for the Chairman to make his appearance.
EDDIE HIT THE FLYING BRIDGE in a tuck roll, springing to his feet an instant after landing. He didn’t bother with the lock but crossdrew a 9mm, shot out the glass half of the door, and leapt through. He hit the deck in another roll and came up next to the navigation console, a massive piece of electronics that spanned almost the entire width of the pilothouse. The room was nearly two hundred feet wide, spartan, and, he quickly discovered, dead. There was no power. All the flat panels were blank, the controls inoperable, and the readouts unlit. It wasn’t only that the crew had killed the engines, but they’d taken the battery backup off-line. The Hercules was truly a ghost ship.
“Max, you there?” he radioed.
“Go ahead.” He was halfway to the Op Center.
“We are seriously screwed. Main propulsion is down. Auxiliary is down, and it looks like they pulled the feeds off the backup batteries.”
“Do you have anything?” Hanley asked.
“No,” Seng replied. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This thing’s dead across the board.”
A moment passed while Max considered their options. “Okay,” he finally said, “here’s what I want you to do. Down in the engine room there will be manual valves to shut off the inlet pipes. You need to reach them and close them. We can’t pump her out, but at least we can stop her from sinking farther.”
“Is that really enough?” Eric Stone had been listening on the open channel. In the few minutes since he’d laid the Oregon alongside the heavy-lifter, they’d started pushing the Hercules laterally through the water, creating waves that rocked both ships. Already one of the indestructible fenders separating them had exploded under the pressure. “I don’t know how long I can hold her.”
“Do your best, lad.”
LINC AND MIKE TRONO went for the direct approach. Rather than mess around with torches or blasting charges, Mike fitted an RPG to his shoulder as soon as Adams was clear and fired down at the doorway leading into the ship’s superstructure. The resulting explosion blew the door completely off its hinges and sent it clattering along an internal hallway. He and Linc clambered down the rope that Max had left behind. The paintwork around the destroyed door was on fire from the blast, but they were ready, and Linc sprayed it with a small fire extinguisher and cast the little canister aside when the flames were gone. The metal was still blisteringly hot, so they eased their way through carefully.
Both carried powerful three-cell batteries and matching 9mm Sig Sauers in case the Hercules wasn’t as deserted as they believed.
Entering the ship in the condition she was in was the same as a fireman running into a burning munitions factory, but neither man gave it a second thought.
The interior of the Hercules was in rough shape. The walls were peeling, the floor was lifted in places, and the cabins had all been stripped bare. Wire conduits sagged from the ceiling and walls where their brackets had snapped over the years. She didn’t look quite as bad as the Oregon was meant to, but it was clear she belonged in the breaker yard where her previous owners had sent her. Mike and Linc were making their way up to the bridge when they o
verheard Eddie and Max on their tactical radios. They turned as if in lockstep and retreated the way they had come.
The ship’s motion in the water remained sluggish because her ballast tanks continued to fill. However, when she yawed to starboard, she went deeper and recovered slower than when she pitched the other way. With her belly so full she was struggling to remain upright, and no matter how skillful Eric Stone was at the controls of their ship, it was inevitable that the Hercules would capsize.
To make matters worse, the clouds Cabrillo had seen at dawn had moved into the area, and a freshening breeze was affecting the surface waves, making them march in long columns that slammed into the side of the ship.
Moving even faster than them, Eddie Seng soon caught up to the pair. All their expressions were the same mask of grim concentration. Juan’s and Linda’s lives depended on them staunching the gush of water flooding the ship’s cathedral-sized tanks.
While every oceangoing vessel was different, the efficiencies built into the field of maritime architecture meant there were only so many ways to access the engine room, and its placement was always logically thought out. It was because of this that the men quickly descended three decks and came across a metal door stenciled ENGINE ROOM. A chain had been wrapped around the handle and padlocked.
Linc set about blasting the chain apart, since shooting the lock off with a pistol in such a confined space would most likely end with the shooter catching the ricochet. He stuck a wad of plastique the size of chewing gum onto the padlock, jammed a detonator to it, and hustled the other two men down the hallway and around a corner.
The blast wave hit them like a hurricane gust, and the noise was deafening even with their ears covered. A thin wisp of acrid chemical smoke hung in the air. The padlock and half the chain links were gone. Eddie quickly stripped away the rest of the chain and was about to throw the door open when the Hercules was caught by a particularly strong wave that seemed to bury its rail in the ocean. For thirty long seconds she hung there, while the massive oil platform shrieked its way closer to oblivion as it slid across her deck.