Gideon's War/Hard Target (8 page)

She was puzzling over this when she noticed the embassy press attaché, Tina, directing several of the cameramen to set up on the deck.

“Dr. Ransom, one of my people will show you to your cabin down on B Deck. Will you ex>

Without waiting for an answer from Ransom, Kate rushed over to the press attaché, shouting over the roar of the State Department chopper, which was circling slowly past the rig a few hundred yards away. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You can’t film your news conference here.”

“Why not?” the press attaché said.

“Because it’s not safe,” Kate said, flashing her eyes angrily.

The attaché gave her a bright, slightly condescending smile. “Oh no, we have to do it here.” She formed a rectangle with her thumbs and fore-fingers, framing the derrick rising above the deck. “See? It’s perfect.”

Kate shook her head. “Wait a minute—”

But Tina was already looking past her, at a reporter who was calling over to her. “Sorry, I have to get this,” the attaché said, offering another calculated smile before rushing off to the other side of the deck.

Safety regs were nonnegotiable on an oil rig. You stepped foot on a rig, you put on a hard hat. Period. Too many things could go wrong when you started bending the rules. This was quickly turning into a highly unsafe situation. And to make matters worse, the chopper deck had no railings along its perimeter to prevent some careless reporter from falling eighty feet into the sea.

Kate waved sharply at one of her roughnecks, who was standing near the stairs. “Eddie!” she shouted. “Come here, please.”

Seeing her urgency, Eddie trotted over. “Get these people off this deck now. And I want hard hats on every damn one of them.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said.

“Starting with those guys right over there.” She pointed at the camera crew on the far end of the rig.

“Sorry, Tina,” Kate said, catching up to the press attaché. “I know this is a great photo op, but I cannot and I will not permit this to happen up here. It’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t force me to go over your head, Miss Murphy.”

“Listen to me carefully, Tina.” Kate gripped the press attaché with a firm hand, her voice low and intense and nonnegotiable. “On this rig, my head is the only one that counts. Now get your damn news crews below deck—” Kate stopped suddenly when she saw what was happening.

How it happened, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t see the event itself. All she saw was the roughneck, Eddie, falling backward over the edge of the deck, away from the camera crew, his face a mask of horror and surprise. He clawed at the air as he toppled backward, screaming. Kate saw him through the steel mesh deck, tumbling toward the surging sea below, his arms and legs circling. There was a strange, dreamlike quality to his fall. For a moment she couldn’t believe it was happening. Then he disappeared, her vision cut off by a section of the rig below the chopper deck.

Kate started to move, but by then it was too late.

At the far end of the chopper deck, one of the cameramen had opened a case, pulled out a sh toрort, stubby tube, and flipped up some kind of eyepiece. The State Department chopper was still circling overhead when a rush of flame erupted from the stubby tube. Something belching white smoke shot from the tube and tore through the air toward the chopper.

A missile.

The trail of the missile stretched out like white taffy. Then there was a loud whump, and what had been a helicopter was now a ball of flame, spewing randomly shaped black debris that slammed into the steel superstructure of the Obelisk. Within moments the chopper hit the water, rolled once, then disappeared, swallowed by a twenty-foot wave.

“Oh my God,” the press attaché whispered.

Kate turned to see the cameramen and journalists all stooping simultaneously, throwing open their cases with the precise coordination of dancers in some lethal ballet.

There was no camera equipment in the cases. As the camera crews stood, they were all holding guns. Kate recognized them as AK-47s, the kind with the big curved ammunition clips.

The two marine bodyguards and the Secret Service man were raising their weapons when the counterfeit news crews opened fire. The noise was deafening.

The two marines and the Secret Service man dropped like bags of meat, blood erupting from their necks, faces, and bodies.

One group of terrorists started roughly rounding up the rest of Kate’s on-deck crew, as a second group broke off, quickly descending the stairs toward the lower decks, sweeping and taking ground as they did. Using the chaos as cover, Kate started moving toward the second stairwell to try and warn Parker’s group, when she found herself face-to-face with Ransom. She gestured for him to come with her, when she noticed he was holding an automatic pistol. And it was leveled point-blank at her head.

Kate’s brain went into overdrive, trying to absorb what was happening. It became apparent to her that Ransom—or the man who’d claimed to be Ransom—was actually in charge when he addressed everyone on deck. “Listen to me carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,” he said. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice carried. “No one else needs to die.” He prodded one of the dead men contemptuously with his toe. “This was stupid and unnecessary. Cooperate and you’ll be home soon, playing with your kids.”

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—” Tina whimpered.

“Shut up, Tina,” Kate snapped.

Tina stopped talking. Kate confronted the lead terrorist. “What do you want?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

“You’re not Cole Ransom. So who are you?”

“You can call me Abu Nasir.”

Kate felt a cold fear rising inside her. The man Senator McClatchy claimed had bled Trojan Energy for almost fifty million dollars over the last year was now seizing her rig. Her fear suddenly gave way to a primal anger when she heard a burst of gunfire nearby, followed by the desperate screams of men whose voices she recognized as members of her crew. “Leave my people alone, you son of a bitch—”

She lunged toward Abu Nasir, her fingers reaching for his eyes, but he sidestepped her easily and swung his gun-weighted fist across the side of her head, and she went down like a steer in a slaughterhouse.

Kate blinked hard, trying to squeeze the stars from her eyes as she was pulled to her feet by a large Asian man whom Abu Nasir called Chun. She felt her head. A tender knot was already rising under her hairline, where she’d been struck.

“Take Ms. Murphy to B Deck with Stearns and Prejean. Place Deputy National Security Advisor Parker in the stateroom. And after you finish rounding up the rest of the crew, put them in the mess hall.”

Kate saw four of Abu Nasir’s men down on the drill deck, wrestling with the large steel box that she’d seen them rolling across the chopper deck just a few minutes earlier. They were attaching it to the crane used to move drill pipe, winching it down through the drill shaft to some lower point on the rig. The men seemed completely comfortable and familiar with the equipment on the drill deck.

It was quite clear to Kate that whoever these people were, they had extremely good intelligence. They knew the design of the rig, and they knew who was on board.

Earl Parker eyed Abu Nasir. Then he spoke, his voice quiet but full of a calm authority. “I would prefer that you put me with everyone else. As the senior United States government official on this rig, I have a responsibility to take care of these people.”

Abu Nasir turned and eyeballed him with amusement. “You’d prefer?”

The bearded American slapped the older man across the face so hard that his glasses flew off. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his lip.

Earl Parker continued to meet Abu Nasir’s gaze.

“All right then, Tillman. I insist,” Earl Parker said. Again, his voice was not loud. But it carried.

Abu Nasir laughed.

Earl Parker said, “All that I’ve done for you, Tillman . . . and you repay me like this?”

The American slapped him again, even harder this time. Earl Parker staggered backward, and his eyes lost focus. “Take this old bastard down to the control room, Chun,” Abu Nasir said, “while I decide whether or not to shoot his ass.”

The big man whom Abu Nasir had referred to as Chun quickly cuffed Earl Parker’s hands behind him with flexible plastic cuffs, then steered the now compliant deputy national security advisor away.

Abu Nasir surveyed the remaining people on the deck and said, “Anybody else feel the need to share any questions or concerns with me?”

Nobody spoke. Kate’s stomach churned.

“Good.” He turned to one of his men and said, “Round up any strays and get them to the mess hall. In the meantime, take Stearns, Murphy, and Prejean down to my cabin on B Deck.”

Heads nodded.

Tina raised her hand, ducking her head obsequiously. “Um, sir? What about me?”

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Abu Nasir blinked. “What about you?”

“Don’t I go with the VIPs?”

Abu Nasir looked at her curiously. “Don’t you go with the VIPs? Hm. Would it reflect badly on you if you had to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi? Is that the point of your question?”

Tina smiled weakly. “I just meant . . .” Her words died in her throat as Abu Nasir drew his pistol and shot the young woman in the head, then pushed her with his foot. She rolled once, then flopped over the side and fell into the ocean. The wind gusted, died, gusted again.

“Folks, I want you to understand something,” Abu Nasir said, smiling genially. “Any questions you might have, you’re going to get the same answer. This.” He waggled the pistol in front of them. “Do what I tell you, and don’t ask questions. We clear?”

Everyone nodded. Kate wanted to rage at him, wanted at least to raise her eyes from the deck. But she knew that it wouldn’t do any good. Right now she needed to focus on protecting her crew. And she couldn’t do that from the bottom of the ocean.

“Good.” Abu Nasir motioned with his head toward the stairs. Kate followed Stearns on rubbery legs as they headed back across the chopper deck.

Chun steered Earl Parker to the control room down on the drill deck, pointed silently to a chair, then stood by the door. Parker stared sullenly at the big man, who looked off at the ocean. The skies were low and dark, and the waves were so huge that you couldn’t quite make sense of just how big they were.

According to the last weather forecast Parker had seen, the typhoon off the Philippines wasn’t supposed to hit the rig. But it sure looked nasty out there. Maybe the forecast was wrong.

After three or four minutes, the muscular bearded American walked through the door, a pistol thrust into his belt.

“Can anyone see us?” Parker said.

Abu Nasir shook his head. “They’re all locked up in the cabins now.”

“Then get these goddamn cuffs off me . . . Abu Nasir.” Parker gave the nom de guerre a sarcastic twist.

“Yes, sir.”

The bearded American pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly cut the cuffs off Earl Parker’s wrists.

“Sorry about the face, Mr. Parker,” he said. “You told me to make it look real.”

Earl Parker eyed him expressionlessly, touched the corner of his mouth, then studied the blood on his fingers.

“You want me to get you something for that, sir?”

Earl Parker spit blood onto the deck. “Your people screwed the pooch. Gideon Davis is still alive.”

The bearded American nodded. “I know, sir. My team is still on it, though. They’ll find him. Trust me. He’s a dead man walking.”

“He damn well better be.” Parker stood. “I trust you didn’t bloth=Ñ€w it at Kampung Naga, too?”

“Clockwork. No survivors.”

“Good. Anything else I need to know? Any more screwups?”

“No, sir. Other than the ambush, everything’s right on schedule.”

“Good. Then put me back in with Kate Murphy and that fool Stearns. We’ve still got a long way to go before we cross the goal line, so I want to keep an eye on things from the hostage perspective. But if anything comes up, any decisions that need to be made, any wrinkles in the plan, anything whatsoever that’s above your pay grade—you bring me out. And I mean double-time quick.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Suddenly Earl Parker’s hand shot out. He grabbed the younger man by the collar and jerked him forward so that their eyes were only inches apart. “And if you ever hit me like that again, Timken, it’ll be the last fucking thing you do.”

If you had managed to locate the passport for the leader of the group that had seized the Obelisk, you would have found that his real name was neither Cole Ransom nor Abu Nasir. And it certainly wasn’t Tillman Davis.

Sitting in a safe-deposit box in a discreet bank in Geneva, Switzerland— along with ten passports with ten other bogus names on them—was his genuine passport, the one imprinted with his real name: Orville Timken. The last person to call him Orville, though, was a kid in junior high. After Timken beat the kid to the ground for calling him “ORRRRRRRville,” nobody else had wanted a piece of that, thanks, and it had become understood that he preferred Tim or Timmer or just plain Timken.

Later Timken found out that he shared his name with a company that made ball bearings. He had been sent by his military unit to a convention for weapons manufacturers, where he stumbled across a booth with his name on it. The people who ran the booth had a glass bowl full of ball bearings on the table at the front of the booth. Each ball bearing had his name laser etched on it.

“Half-inch, ultrahigh precision 62100 steel, hardened to Rockwell 59,” the helpful salesman had said. “Every single one of them will mike at plus or minus three ten-thousandths of nominal, guaranteed.”

Timken looked into the bowl, saw his face reflected in hundreds of tiny fun-house mirrors. Something about the ball bearings—their featurelessness and hardness and regularity—gave him a momentary stab of pleasure. He reached into the bowl, grabbed a handful.

“Sir, if you wouldn’t mind limiting yourself to just one or two?” the helpful salesman had said.

Timken had given him The Look.

“Well, I suppose it’s okay,” the salesman said with a tight smile. “What application did you have in mind for them?”