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He was shivering as he climbed onto the berm. He lay gasping on the dry earth for a few minutes before finally rising to his knees. The air was probably close to ninety degrees, but the water had been cold enough to lower his core temperature several degrees. He was shaking so violently he felt as if he might fall over if he stood. But he knew he had to start moving—both to distance himself from the ambush site and to get warm.

Gideon began walking slowly down the side of the road. His tuxedo was soaked and stinking. Manure appeared to be the fertilizer of choice here. Gideon smiled ruefully. Fifteen hours earlier, he’d been sitting on top of the world, at the center of its attention. And now, here he was, creeping around some forgotten part of the world, absurdly dressed and smelling of shit.

What surprised him most was how good he felt. Not just good, but vibrantly, gloriously alive. Why? he thought. Was it just a natural reaction, endorphins running wild after nearly getting killed? Or was it something else? Gideon didn’t have much time to consider the question. Before he’d gone more than a few yards, he heard something moving toward him. A rustling in the tall grass. He sank to his haunches. The sound grew closer. A sentry? A farmer? Suddenly the rustling sound gave way to a ferocious bark. A dog. His heart began to race. The dog sounded like some kind of monster.

He knew that if he ran, it would catch him. Better to prepare to fight. He picked up a fallen branch from a nearby tree and braced himself for confrontation.

From the volume and pitch of its bark, he had pictured some giant slobbering beast, a mastiff or a Doberman. So when he saw the little mutt bursting into the clearing, he laughed. Still, he feared the dog’s furious barking would draw the unwanted attention of some villager.

He crouched down and held out his hand.

The dog stopped, hurled a few more tentative barks at him, then approached him cautiously. Finally it sniffed his hand. One quick sniff, then it quivered all over, as if it was trying to shake off the stink.

“I know . . .” Gideon patted the dog on the head. “I smell like a goat fart.”

The dog ran a quick lap around him.

Gideon decided he’d better keep moving. Although the dog had quieted down to a breathless pant, someone might still come out to investigate. He moved as quickly down the road as he could without making noise. The dog trotted after him. The berm on which the road was situated ran as far as he could see. Which wasn’t very far. But he remembered a tree line in the distance, maybe half a mile down the road. If he could get into the jungle, he felt confident he could avoid being discovered.

Twice on the way down the road, cars passed by. Each time he was forced to slip off the side of the berm and back into the foul-smelling mud of the adjoining rice paddy. The first vehicle just barreled past him. But the second slowed, then stopped. He heard the sound of harsh voices, then someone jumped out of the vehicle.

Click.

The sound of a rifle being cocked. Probably an AK. Jihadis? Probably. Gideon shivered. He still wasn’t close to being warm yet.

Footsteps, moving toward him. Gideon flattened himself against the berm. He considered slithering back into the water again, but he was afraid he might be heard. So he stayed pressed against the warm earth, which stilled his shivering body.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped, replaced by a chorus of raucous laughter. Then a thump and yelp.

It took Gideon a moment to figure out what it was. One of the men had apparently kicked the poor animal. As much as Gideon wanted to kick the man back, he stayed put.

Doors slammed and the vehicle skidded away, throwing up a shower of gravel.

Gideon waited until the engine noise had faded before he climbed over the berm. The dog lay on the ground, whimpering.

“You okay, boy?” He bent over and stroked the dog’s flank. It slowly rose to its feet, licked his hand, then began limping toward the tree line. “You and me both,” Gideon said softly.

The tree line was visible now, the tops of the trees frosted with silver. The moon was starting to rise. That was good. He’d be able to make better progress with some light.

By the time he reached the trees, the moon was visible. A full moon. Bright enough that he could see every leaf on the trees, every stone and blade of grass on the ground.

As he moved into the jungle, the dog followed, limping gamely along after him. He turned, dropped to the ground, and patted its head. “Okay, gimpy, time to head home.”

The dog didn’t budge, looking up at him with pleading black eyes.

“Go home!” He snapped his finger, pointed back toward the village. “Go!”

The dog cocked its head and blinked, st

Gideon's War and Hard Target

They walked together, man and dog, for several hours.

Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, the dog trotted off into the woods. It was a silly thing, but the moment he realized the dog wasn’t coming back Gideon felt afraid.

CHAPTER SEVEN

KATE MURPHY HEAVED A sigh of relief as the Sikorsky Sea King hit the deck of the Obelisk. She hadn’t slept well on the plane, frazzled from the stress of testifying in Washington and anticipating the major problem she’d been having with her rig. Its motion-damping system was in desperate need of repair. To top it all off, her BlackBerry was still on the fritz.

But the air calmed her nerves. Jet fuel and seawater. Back in Washington, she’d felt frightened and out of place. Here, in the middle of the South China Sea, at least she knew what she was up against.

As soon as she stepped onto the deck of the Obelisk, she spotted the tool pusher, Big Al Prejean, her number two on the rig. He was a bear of a man about twenty years her senior, and right now he didn’t look very happy.

“Did you get my messages, chérie?” he shouted, shielding his face from flying debris with a clipboard. Even with the roar of the chopper, Big Al’s Cajun accent was unmistakable.

The world Kate worked in was an intensely macho one. In all the years she’d worked on oil rigs, she’d never allowed anyone to call her babe or hon. Except for Big Al. He was an exception. He wasn’t just a legend in the drilling business, he was her best friend. So even though she was his boss, she let him call her chérie—the French word for “dear.”

“My BlackBerry died,” she said. “I didn’t get any messages.”

Kate had flown in with some welders who were now descending the stairs with their equipment. Prejean waited until the last one disappeared below deck before he spoke. “I was wondering why you didn’t call me back.”

“Call you about what?” Kate said.

“Don’t you feel it?”

She squinted at him curiously, about to ask him what he was talking about, when she felt the vibration through the soles of her boots. A tremor so subtle that you wouldn’t notice it unless you spent a lot of time on oil rigs. Then it stopped. Then there it was again. Not too strong, but still troubling.

“Yeah. I feel it.”

Prejean pointed at the blue waves rolling slowly beneath the platform. “There’s a typhoon east of the Philippines. Right now, the waves are running eighteen, twenty feet.”

Her face creased with concern. “I need the latest weather report.”

“Forecast says the typhoon’s heading north. The chance of it hitting us is less than five percent, so we should be okay.”

Al’s assurance left her om" t‡ddly unsatisfied. Underscoring this was her creeping realization that something else was wrong. Once the chopper was gone, she realized what it was.

The noise. Rather, the absence of it. There was never a time when an oil rig didn’t have noise, the relentless cacophony of generators and compressors, flame-offs and crane motors. She surveyed the drill deck. One forty-foot string of pipe hung listlessly from a chain, swaying in the wind. The drill deck was deserted.

This was a billion-dollar oil rig with a complement of nearly a hundred personnel. Labor and interest on investment ran forty thousand bucks an hour. Every minute you weren’t drilling, you were hemorrhaging money into the ocean.