But the brightest oranges, the heaviest loads, were well below the water’s surface, along the seam of the cradle that held the passive damping system.
Suddenly the model on the screen began to move. Hypothetical waves and other vectors caused the skeletal rendering of the Obelisk to sway from side to side, just as the massive waves outside were doing to the real rig. As the rig flexed, the struts supporting its passive damping system changed colors, going back and forth from green to orange. The weight and stress on the various component parts of the rig shifted and redistributed, but the rig remained intact. Even at thirty-five feet, the highest predicted wave height, the Obelisk remained standing.
“If this is right,” Prejean said, “if Ransom’s numbers are accurate, the Obelisk will get through the storm. It’ll get rough, but the rig will still be standing.”
“As long as Gideon disarms the bomb,” Kate said. Her relief at the rig’s structural integrity under typhoon conditions was tempered by her persistent awareness of what still had to be done to save her crew. She had seen Garth and Eddie killed, and Big Al had told her about some of the others who’d been shot trying to resist. And as much as she didn’t like Stearns and Tina, their deaths had shaken her. Their safety had been her responsibility, and she had failed them. She would do whatever she needed to do to save the rest of her crew. Even if it meant sacrificing her own life.
Her somber resolution was interrupted by the sound of voices in the corridor outside the cabin. “Quick, chérie, put that away.” She closed the computer just as the door opened. Kate expected Earl Parker, but her face fell when she saw Gideon being shoved through the doorway, his wrists and ankles bound. Timken appeared behind him, shoving him again, harder this time. He tumbled to the ground, barely able to catch his fall with his cuffed hands.
Timken closed the door, ignoring Prejean’s glare. Kate went to help Gideon to his feet. Despite the ugliness of the moment, Gideon felt an unaccountable wave of happiness at seeing Kate, who asked him what happened.
“It’s Parker . . .” He trailed off and shook his head.
“I don’t understand,” Kate said.
“He’s been playing us the whole time. He’s behind this.” Kate and Prejean were visibly stunned. Gideon gave them a moment to absorb this before he explained that Parker had staged the siege of the Obelisk and framed his brother in order to provoke a military response from the United States. The bearded man with the counterfeit tattoo was just some sadistic mercenary named Orville Timken, who bore some physical resemblance to Tillman and who had killed him in order to assume his identity, as he had done with Cole Ransom.
“Then you were right . . . about your brother,” Kate said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” Gideon said, comforted by her sincere sympathy.
Prejean couldn’t help but notice the connection between them. He’d sensed something in her voice before, when she had described this man Gideon, but now Prejean saw for himself that their connection was mutual. But his satisfaction was short-lived when he glanced at his watch. He reminded them that they now had less than eight hours to disarm the bomb, and that their only viable plan had just been scuttled.
“Not to make it more difficult than it already is,” Gideon said, “but there was no bomb in D-4. All I saw were some fairly elaborate electronics which looked like wireless triggers. Which means it could be anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” Kate said, exhaling her frustration. “Before, when I identified the weakest structural point on the rig, I only considered the section above the water. But the most vulnerable points are actually under the surface. The cradle that holds the passive damping system is more than fifty feet underwater. The piers that stabilize the rig each have vibratory nodes that sway at a certain frequency and—” Kate saw that she was losing them. “Sorry. Bottom line is this221±€†: the cradle is anchored by three big steel braces that connect to the piers. If those braces are taken out, the passive damping system will fail. There’s a four-hundred-ton weight in the cradle. Once it starts moving, it won’t stop until it yanks the piers apart.”
“The components I saw had wires leading out of the cabin,” Gideon said. “Could they feed into the ocean from D Deck?”
Kate nodded. “There’s a conduit outside the cabin that runs power down to a bunch of work lights under the rig.” Kate opened Ransom’s computer, turned it around, hit a key, and said, “Here. Look at this.”
The animation of the Obelisk appeared, wobbling back and forth. Kate hit a button that paused the simulation. “Right there. See these orange sections? They’re the most vulnerable points, the link connecting the damper cradle to the pier.”
Gideon studied the image, then said, “Here’s what I don’t get, though. I counted twenty-four wires leading out of the detonation control unit. Why so many? I could understand a few extra wires—monitor circuits, dummy circuits, redundant circuits, whatever. But twenty-four?”
“It makes sense,” Kate said. “When a building is demolished, they use multiple sequenced charges to take out the most important structural members. It’s almost surgical. A few small explosions properly placed can create a very dramatic structural failure. Blow out a couple of bolts and beams, and let the weight of the structure do the rest. It implodes.”
Kate zoomed in on the rig, tighter and tighter. The view closed in on the cradle. Kate touched the seam between the cradle and the pier, twelve dots spaced equidistantly. “See that? Twelve bolts. Two sets of wires for each bolt. It would have been easy enough to set the charges, probably took a two-man dive team an hour, tops.”
“And it would be a two-man job to disarm them,” Gideon said.
“Except we can’t do anything as long as we’re stuck in here,” Prejean said.
CLUNK!
The floor and the walls shook again. Gideon looked at Kate for an explanation. “That’s the damping system I mentioned . . . the one Ransom was supposed to repair.”
“How long do we have before it fails?”
“Big Al and I were just reviewing Ransom’s simulations. Turns out we caught a break. If Ransom’s numbers are right, the rig should actually make it through this storm.”
Gideon’s eyes lit up with an idea. “But Parker doesn’t know that.”
“As a matter of fact, no, he doesn’t,” Prejean said, trading a look with Kate, who was beginning to understand where Gideon was going with this.
“For Parker, this is all political theater,” Gideon said, explaining Parker’s intention to provoke a war. “But he needs a global audience. The last thing he wants is for the rig to come down before anyone can see it happen.”
Kate was already working the keyboard with a flourish. “I can alter Ransom’s simulation to demonsPre±€†trate that the rig’s gonna come apart. If we can get Parker to send us down there to fix the problem we can disarm the bombs.”
The computer’s disk drive light went on for at least a minute as it chugged away.
“Look at that,” she said, mesmerized by the increasingly violent sway of the skeletal rig. “If you decrease the periodicity of W by fifty percent, theta zero starts to go asymptotic.”
“I’m guessing there’s a way of saying that in English?” Gideon said.
“Let me just show you,” she said, turning the computer around.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
Gideon and Big Al watched the screen as one of the struts...
“Well, that ain’t good,” Big Al said.
Gideon shuffled over to the cabin door and started pounding on it. A moment later, the door opened and Timken appeared.
“What the fuck do you want?” Timken said.
“Get Parker down here,” Gideon said.
“Why?”
“Tell him this rig is about to come apart.” The certainty in Gideon’s voice unnerved Timken. But if that wasn’t enough to motivate him, the cabin shook again, as if on cue. CLUNK! Kate tried not to betray her excitement at the lucky timing, even as she allowed herself a glimmer of hope that she might have bought her crew a second chance.