Mason motioned towards Kate. “We're all secure here. Come on out.”
It took her a moment to get moving. She was supposed to get up, but it felt strange. She was going out there. Her knees began to shake as she stood.
Kate wasn't afraid of heights, but she felt nothing but vertigo as her feet touched the concrete. The helipad was just an elevated square overlooking the rest of The Aescylus, the highest point save for the crane cabs. Water stretched beyond two of the sides, the steel bones of the rig beneath the other two.
Mason whistled and swirled one arm in the air, his index finger to the sky. Four men broke position and jogged back to the center. She saw that one of them had a grenade launcher, and she shuddered, wondering if that kind of firearm could have caused some of the damage to the upper platform.
“All right, listen up!” Mason said. The men huddled. “High ground is secure. There's nowhere to go but down. We stagger movement and secure this place sector by sector.”
“I never thought I'd be hoping for some jihadies,” the one with the big gun said. “This is some weird shit, man.”
Mason shook his head. “Different shit, same day. In any case, you know the drill. No chances.”
“And what exactly were you told?” Kate asked.
Mason looked at her, his expression unreadable. “We have our mission, and you have yours. When we clean up the mess, you can decide how you want to report it. That is your job, right? Figuring out how to report this to the shareholders?”
Kate put one hand on her hip. “It's a little more complicated than that, thanks.”
“So is our job. And if you don't mind, we'd like to get to it.” He turned to AJ. “Only one stairwell down, is that right?”
AJ nodded. “That's right, it goes right to the main deck. There are three paths down from that point. The northwest end leads to the employee barracks and housing units, the southwest end to the storage tanks. Drilling operation is one level down from there. And the east stairwell goes to security and the generator levels. They all connect at the bottom where the boat deck is. That's a hike no matter which route you take.”
Mason nodded. “Yeah, that gels with the blueprints. You think more than four men are needed to secure the top deck though, huh?”
AJ looked at Dutch and then back. “Considering we don't know what we're dealing with, I'd say so.”
Mason grunted. A moment later, he jogged off, sending the four men ahead of him to the stairwell.
Kate turned and was surprised to see AJ looking hard up. “You all right?”
“Yeah. I guess I didn't think it would matter so much being here.”
“And it does?”
He shrugged. “She's my baby. I didn't build her, but it was my job to make sure she stayed safe.”
“It would have if you were still here, man,” Dutch said.
AJ spat, and Kate winced; it was a vulgar gesture. “Yeah, that's part of what pisses me off.”
Someone cursed below, and then Mason reemerged from the stairwell. “It's blocked from the other side. Onto Plan B.”
“There's no other way down,” AJ said.
Mason chuckled and slapped him on the arm. “That always was your problem old buddy: you don't think outside the box.”
The bigger motioned to his fire team. “Rappel lines. Here and here. Ready?”
The men nodded, drawing nylon rope from pouches on their vests. They were light and thin, each one containing a huge clamp at the end.
“Aren't you too heavy for that?” AJ asked, looking at the hairy guy who'd tackled him on the beach.
The man slapped on a clamp and flashed AJ his teeth. “Your mama,” he said, and hopped over.
It wasn't free fall, but it was a close thing. Each man dropped effortlessly, their feet bouncing against the side wall. They detached and fell the last three feet to the ground, facilely moving to cover. Mason followed, and it didn't look like his age slowed him down one bit.
Kate watched as the team scattered, setting up fire positions around the cargo containers. Their tactics were perfect, each man covering another, the whole unit moving in a wave across the deck. When they got halfway across, they held position, each man surveying the deck with the barrels of his gun.
“Excuse me,” Melvin said, pushing past Kate and Dutch. He was attaching his own rappel line to the railing.
“Just leaving us here, eh?” Dutch asked.
AJ's buddy from the beach, Nicholas, stepped through. “You'll be fine, old pal. Back in no time. Besides, Hal will be here.” He indicated the chopper behind them, where the pilot was smoking a cigarette.
“Nick,” AJ said, his tone serious. “What's down there?”
The boy's smile faded as he strapped on his harness. “You don't want to know.”
He and Melvin dropped out of sight. Kate thought that at the rate the team had been moving, they'd have the whole platform cleared in ten minutes. But it was over an hour before they heard back.
6
Reiner saw the island before his pilot did. He tapped Marten and pointed. “There it is. Hell of a good size.”
The pilot flipped a switch on the console. “Alpha team leader, come in. This is Delta. Target is in sight, over.”
Mason's voice shot back a moment later, permeated with static.
“Say again, team leader?”
This time, nothing but noise.
Marten sighed and looked at Reiner. “Your call.”
“Let's have a look.”
Marten tilted the rotor, and the helicopter began to move, revealing more of the land mass beneath them. Even at their present distance, Reiner could see more of the black tar tendrils twisting and coiling across the landscape. Their Valley Oil representative had thought it was some kind of organism that had emerged from underneath a tectonic plate. A Scotia Plate anomaly. But for all he knew, it could have been caused by a goddamned meteor. Bring up something like that in a room of military grunts, and everyone laughs at you, but he wondered if his teammates were laughing now.
“Now we don't have any notion that this new anomaly, whatever it is, had anything to do with what happened to the crew.” That's what their Valley Oil contact had said. He'd said it with a straight face too, like he really believed it. “For all we know, they could have gotten scared when it started showing up and ran off. You know how superstitious they are down there. Or maybe its appearance caused some kind of dispute and they had a mutiny. Maybe they were hit by terrorists and its appearance is completely coincidental. We just don't know. But the fact is, the site is unsecured. We need it locked down, and we need everyone who's had contact with this new anomaly accounted for. We can send in our analysis teams once that happens, but until it's been declared safe and we get those workers away—”
“If we can find them,” Mason had cut in. “And if they're alive.”
The representative had smiled then. “Yes, of course, but let's not jump to conclusions. We just need you to assess the damage from on site, gather the workforce, and make sure no one else comes near the place. With communications down, this has turned into a bit of a situation.”
Reiner grimaced. A situation. Is that what you called it when you sent in nine men with enough firepower to level a small town? As to the three civilians who had come along for the ride, that was a dirty deal. Reiner had done too many things in his line of work to worry about dirty deals, though. Life was cruel.