CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“SEE FOR YOURSELF,” KATE said, nodding toward Ransom’s computer screen. “It’s all right there.”
Parker slipped on a pair of reading glasses as he stood next to Timken and squinted at the screen, watching the animation of the Obelisk as it swayed back and forth until it collapsed into the ocean.
“Dammit,” Timken said.
“Shut up,” Parker said. He’d been on edge ever since Kate Murphy had told him about the Delta mission. And what little patience he had left was quickly being exhausted by this latest complication.
“There’s a reason you feel nervous when you hear that noise,” Kate said. “The situation is graver than any of us thought. This rig is about to tear itself apart. Ransom would have told you himself if you hadn’t murdered him.”
Timken swore again, this time under his breath.
“How long do we have?” Parker said.
“According to this simulation, there’s a ninety-five percent chance the rig will collapse in the next three hours.” Kate tapped the screen. “See, this function uses the wave height and periodicity to predict structural failure. When the tot="2e waves are below a certain limit, the time-to-failure function is arithmetic, basically a straight line. Over twenty-five feet, time-to-failure gets geometrically shorter—”
“Spare me the engineering lesson, and give me the bottom line.”
“Cole Ransom suggested a temporary fix, but we’ve only got three hours to make it,” Kate said. “If we don’t get it done by then . . .” She looked at the screen, which was running a loop of the Obelisk model falling apart and falling into the ocean.
“Fuck it,” Timken said, turning to Parker. “Let’s just abandon ship and blow the rig.”
Parker gave him a cold look, then ushered him away so they could talk privately. “I didn’t hire you to do the thinking, Timken. Leave that to me.”
“I don’t trust them.”
“It appears we don’t have a choice.”
“And I’m saying we do.”
“I am not blowing this rig in the middle of the storm where no one can see it,” Parker flashed, before calming himself. “If we’ve learned anything from our enemy, it’s that the theater of the war is what counts. A couple of buildings falling down is one thing. But having the whole world watching it again and again, millions upon millions of times . . . that’s the game changer. We need to wait for the storm to pass over and the view from above is clear.”
“And if that clear air gives the opening for a bunch of Navy SEALs to swarm the rig?” Timken said.
“Nothing has changed. We’ve planned for an assault from the very beginning. SEALs, Rangers, Delta—whatever. They’re the cherry on the sundae. The rig blows as they fight bravely against the crazed terrorists. They’ll be martyrs, heroes fallen in the wreckage. And we’ll watch it all from inside the escape pod.”
Timken grunted in grudging assent.
Parker turned back to Kate and said, “Okay, you said there’s a quick fix. Tell me what needs to be done.”
“Ransom’s plan calls for a piece of one-inch plate to be welded over this joint.” She tapped the screen with her finger. “That simple reinforcement should be enough to hold the rig together until the storm passes.”
“How long will it take to weld?”
“No more than an hour. Two at the most. But every minute that passes is a minute we can’t afford to lose.”
Parker studied Kate for a long moment, then nodded. “All right, take whoever you need from the hostage room and get them set up to dive.”
“It’s not that simple,” Kate said. “The hostage your man killed on A Deck a few minutes ago? His name was Garth Dean. He was my diver/ welder.”
“You don’t have anybody else on the rig that can do it?” Parker said. Kate opened her hands, palms up. “Me. I told you before, I paid my tuition by diving.”
Timken and ParkerageÁ€† exchanged glances.
“But it’s a two-person job, so I’ll need help,” she said. “One-inch steel plate is extremely heavy and hard to move.”
Parker furrowed his brow. “If you don’t have any more divers—”
“Mr. Davis just told me he’s a certified master diver.” Kate looked over at Gideon.
“Uncle Earl knows that,” Gideon said, looking at Parker. “He paid for my certification.”
Timken shook his head. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
“We also need a dive tender,” Kate said.
“Let me guess,” Timken said. “Your dive tender’s back in Mohan.”
Kate smiled coldly. “That’s right. But Al Prejean can handle it. He’s done just about every job you can do on an oil rig.”
Before Timken could level any more objections, Parker snapped, “Give them what they need and get it done. We need this rig to be standing eight hours from now.”
They were surrounded by a swirling blackness, pierced only feebly by the bright floodlights aimed down at the raging sea. Kate lowered her voice to make sure she was out of earshot of the jihadis who were keeping them under constant surveillance. “Can we really pull this off?” Kate asked Gideon as they pulled on their diving gear in the howling wind of the dive control station on D Deck of the Bridge Linked Platform.
“If we can get to those explosive charges, I’ll find a way.” Gideon gave her a thin smile. “Either that or I’ll blow us all to kingdom come.”
The dive control station on the BLP was open to the air but fortunately was situated on the western side of the rig, which provided the most shelter from the rain and the driving westerly wind. Below Gideon the massive waves rose and fell, barely visible in the darkness. He tried to ignore the waves, comforting himself with the fact that once they got below the surface, it would be no different than any other diving he’d done. Simple. Nothing to it. But still—he’d been down there once already. And once was enough for a lifetime.
So he focused on suiting up. Most of the diving gear was similar to gear he’d used before—a tight neoprene dry suit, weight belt, buoyancy control device, tank harness, slate for writing messages to each other, depth gauge, and octo. Every diver carried an emergency mouthpiece known as an octopus or octo.
But some of the equipment was unfamiliar. The yellow plastic helmet, for instance.
“This is a Kirby Morgan Superlite,” Big Al said, holding up a yellow plastic dive helmet. “It’s the standard helmet used by our divers. It’s a lot easier and safer to have your whole head pressurized, dry and protected from impact. Here’s the flow valve for ventilation and defogging, and here’s the auxiliary valve that controls breathing air straight through the regulator. As you start to work, your body will require more oxygen, so you can tune it to optimize the flow until you feel comfortable.”
Big Al would be acting as dive tender—tholÁ€†heir topside assistant on the rig. His job was to control the winches that raised and lowered them to the correct depth, all the while making sure they had sufficient air and lines of communication. Gideon took the yellow plastic helmet from Big Al and tried it on. He’d only dived with face masks before, never with a full helmet. There was something slightly claustrophobic about it.
“This is your umbilical.” Kate held up a bright red line that was just under an inch in diameter, with a handful of connectors protruding from the end. “The umbilical jacks into your helmet. It consists of a bunch of separate lines—air, twelve-volt DC, comm line, so on. It’s also got a weight-bearing aluminum cable that’ll clip onto your harness. If it gets crimped or tangled or caught, you’re in big trouble. But the advantage of using one is that when you’re blowing air from the surface, you can stay down indefinitely.”