Sea of Greed Page 4

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Cox said. “The platform is gonna roll before too long.”

  “They can’t walk,” Nash replied.

  “Then we’ll carry them.”

  Clipping the radio to his belt, Cox lifted one of the men to a standing position and shouldered the load as they walked.

  As the man leaned on him, Cox felt his injured leg cry out in pain. It almost buckled, but there was no way he was going to allow himself to fall. He’d pushed too hard and drilled too deep. And he’d probably gotten half the crew killed in the process. If at all possible, he would lead the survivors out of this misery.

  Nash and Haney helped the second man up and the five of them moved across the tilted floor. They arrived at a buckled door. Putting all his weight into it, Cox managed to wedge it open. The gap was just wide enough for each man to slip through. Cox began to step through but stopped.

  The corridor ahead of them angled downward. Water swirled at the far end. That was bad enough, but when Cox shined the light toward it, he noticed gas bubbles popping as they reached the surface. “Go back,” he shouted. “Everybody back.”

  He pushed his way through the door as the water burst into flame and a line of fire surged through the corridor toward him. The rush of flames singed Cox’s neck as he dove through the gap.

  Turning around, he saw Nash slam the door shut. It was supposed to be watertight, but the bent frame meant it no longer sealed tightly and water soon began to trickle in under the sill.

  “We’re sinking and listing,” Cox said. “That’s why we haven’t capsized.”

  “And that corridor is the only way out of here,” Nash said.

  “Not true,” Cox replied. “We can go out through the window in my office.”

  As the tool push, Cox got an office connected to the control room. He didn’t do much in there, except sip scotch at the end of the day, but the room had a large window that looked out onto the Gulf. Normally, it would be a sixty-foot drop to the water, but considering the list and the flood coming down the corridor, the window couldn’t be more than a few feet above the water now.

  Working together, the men crossed the room, thankful that they were heading toward the high side. They pushed into the office and found that all the furniture had slid down against the near wall.

  The window was on the far side. It was scorched in places and covered in a spider’s web of cracks. They could see no daylight through it, only thick, dark smoke and the occasional tongue of orange flame.

  “So, we either drown or burn,” one of the injured men said bitterly.

  Cox doubted they would do either, the fumes were growing toxic. They would pass out and die from smoke inhalation long before anything else.

  Hoping to avoid all three of those fates, Cox went to the jumble of furniture and looked for something to attack the window with. He would have preferred a fire axe, but all he could find was the old 9 iron he kept by the desk, which he used to hit golf balls off the top deck from time to time.

  He moved back toward the window and swung with all his might. The steel head of the club hit and rebounded, causing little more than a chip in the window. Summoning all his strength, Cox swung again and again and again. He swung until he dropped, but the window, made from multiple layers of high-strength plexiglass, was still intact.

  “It’s no good,” he said. “That window is designed to take a direct hit from a sixty-foot wave.”

  He sat down, coughing and exhausted. Across the tilted floor, water began seeping under the office door.

  Nash tried to stand and take the golf club from his boss, but he could hardly move. The fumes had begun to choke them and the fire in the corridor was consuming all the oxygen.

  He made only one swing and then dropped to the ground, his chest heaving. “There’s . . . no . . . air . . .”

  The rig suddenly settled further and the view through the window changed. Half was smoke and fire, while the lower portion was now a blue-green shimmer like that of a dimly lit pool. They would be underwater soon. The only reason the room hadn’t flooded was the bubble of air trapped in there with them.

  Cox knew it was over. “I’m sorry, boys . . . I shouldn’t have . . .”

  His eyelids drooped but he kept them open. He thought he’d seen movement on the other side of the splintered and frayed window. It looked like a reflection, but it continued growing brighter, coming closer and moving faster.

  Just as the light got blindingly bright, something slammed against the window from the outside. This time, the plexiglass shattered and green water began pouring in over the sill. The yellow nose of a strange-looking vessel remained lodged there for a moment and then pulled out of the way.

  Cox recognized it as a submersible, much like the ROVs they used to inspect the pipelines and wellheads.

  The submersible pulled back, the main hatch popped open and a figure in advanced firefighting gear climbed out. By now, Cox thought he was hallucinating, but the man jumped into the water, swam up to the shattered window and allowed himself to be washed inside.

  Once he’d escaped the torrent, the man came over to Cox. He wore a full-face helmet, but, as he spoke, his words came through a small speaker on the outside of the helmet. “How many men in here?”

  “Five,” Cox stammered. “Five of us. Who are you?” he added. “Where did you come from?”

  “We’re with NUMA. Our ship is about five hundred yards away. That was as close as we could get. We heard your radio call. Sorry it took us so long to find the control room, but it’s not where it’s supposed to be.”

  “NUMA? I know a few guys in NUMA. What’s your name, son?”

  “Kurt Austin,” the man said. “Now, let’s move.”

  Cox didn’t know if he was dreaming, seeing reality or already dead, but the room was half filled with water and the fire was burning outside the door. Whether this was real or not, Cox didn’t want to miss the ride.

  He grabbed one of the injured men and helped him through the window into the water. Nash and Haney followed with the other injured crewman and Austin followed behind, helping them paddle to the side of the submarine, where they crawled aboard and up toward the hatch.

  Cox helped pull the last man up before squeezing into the submersible himself. There was almost no room to breathe. The small submarine, designed for two men, now held six people, the five who’d been rescued and the pilot, an athletic-looking man with close-cut dark hair and the name Zavala stitched to his jumpsuit pocket.

  “This will be a short trip,” Zavala said. “So, I’m afraid we won’t be serving drinks.”

  Austin’s helmeted face appeared over the hatch above. “Looks like this bus is full,” he said. “You guys get out of here, I’ll catch the next one.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Cox said.

  “We got another call,” Austin replied. “One of your lifeboats is hung up, I’m going to knock them free.”

  Cox was glad to hear that at least some of the men were alive, but he doubted Austin’s chances to reach them.

  With that, Austin grabbed the hatch and shouted to Zavala, “I’ll be on the south side. Don’t forget to come back and get me.”

  “And lose all that poker money you owe me?” Zavala said. “Not a chance.”

  The hatch slammed shut, the wheel spun and locked tight and the submersible backed away from the edge of the oil rig, turning as it went and then submerging beneath a wall of fire.

  To Cox’s surprise, the water itself was lit up all around with multiple columns of fire. The flames didn’t start at the surface, they were burning all the way down as far as the eye could see.

  “It makes no sense,” Cox said. “Fire shouldn’t be down in the water. It just shouldn’t be down here.”

  Cox couldn’t know it but Joe Zavala was thinking the exact same thing.

 
6

  NUMA VESSEL RALEIGH

  CAPTAIN BROOKS stood on the Raleigh’s bridge as the windows slowly blackened from soot and the paint began to blister on the outer edge of the hull. They’d sailed in through the first waves of fire, cutting a path like an icebreaker in the Arctic, but as they neared the Alpha Star platform the flames became impenetrable, forty feet high, half hidden in the black smoke.

  They’d stopped two hundred yards from the shattered rig, deployed the submarine and spent twenty intense minutes waiting and blasting at the water around them with the ship’s firefighting hoses. When the heat became too much for the men on the deck, the nozzles were locked in place and left on full blast. The result was a bubble of safety in the middle of the firestorm with an outside temperature approaching two hundred degrees.

  Brooks looked on as the ship’s executive officer used the mast cameras to search for Kurt and Joe.

  “They’re ten minutes late already,” the executive officer said.

  Brooks didn’t respond. Instead, he turned the windscreen wipers on to scrape away the grime that was slowly blocking their view. It wasn’t much help, smearing everything. “Any sign of them on the cameras?”

  “Nothing on either wavelength.”

  “They’re probably keeping below the surface,” Brooks said. “Use the sonar array. Angle it directly to port.”

  The executive officer switched to a second control panel and powered up the bow-mounted sonar emitter, which was contained in a bulbous housing beneath the front of the ship. At the touch of a button, it began sending pulsed sonar signals in a wide band, sweeping the turbulent waters between the Raleigh and the imperiled drilling platform.

  “There must be something wrong with the sonar,” the XO said. “The readout is distorted.”

  Brooks looked over at the sonar display. He saw a pixelated image with areas of gray and black, other sections of the image were clean, including an area showing wreckage on the bottom. “It’s not the sonar unit, it’s the water. Or more accurately the bubbles in the water, those are walls of gas coming up from below.”

  The radio squawked before the XO could reply. “Raleigh, this is Zavala,” a cheery voice announced. “We’re on the surface fifty feet from your stern. Ready to unload survivors.”

  Brooks grabbed the microphone. “Great job,” he said. “How many did you find?”

  “Five,” Joe replied. “But we’re not done yet.”

  The hell you aren’t, Brooks thought. “I’m putting a stop to the risks being taken. Sit tight, we’ll haul you aboard.”

  “Negative,” Joe said. “I have to go back.”

  “The safety of the ship and crew takes priority at this point.”

  Joe did not relent. “If we leave now, you’ll be leaving one of the crew behind. Kurt went for the lifeboat. He’ll be waiting for a pickup.”

  Brooks turned his eyes to the wreckage of the oil rig. The part of the rig housing the control center had broken off slowly and sunk. The rest stood tall, engulfed in flames, like a proud tree in a forest fire. Equipment and pieces of the structure were falling from up high, weaker materials bending and melting in the heat, dropping from the structure like meteors.

  Austin’s reputation may have preceded him, but Brooks now thought Kurt had to be certifiably crazy. “If Kurt lives through this, I’m ordering him to have a full psych eval,” he grunted. “Get the survivors on board and go look for him. We’re pulling the ship back at least half a mile.”

  “We’ll meet you out there,” Joe promised. “I’m approaching the lower cargo hatch. Send some of the crew to open it and get these people inside. As soon as they’re off the sub, I’m going back.”

  7

  ALPHA STAR PLATFORM, LOWER LEVELS

  KURT HAD TAKEN plenty of firefighting courses during his years in the Navy and NUMA. He knew the basics, advanced techniques and everything in between. He’d helped blow out oil rig fires on land several times. All his training told him one thing. Fire was a living thing that needed to breathe. Take away the oxygen and you cut off the fire’s life.

  The problem was this fire seemed to be supernatural. Not only was it an unearthly mix of orange and blue, it burned in sealed compartments where there couldn’t possibly be any free oxygen. It burned in and under the water. He couldn’t swim beneath it, only around it.

  As he made his way from the sinking part of the rig to the surviving section, he was forced to circumnavigate one column of flames after another.

  Reaching the main section of the rig, he climbed out of the water and onto a stairway, moving through a tangled mess of burnt and twisted metal.

  So far, the platform’s auto leveling system was keeping it from tipping over, even if that required taking on so much ballast that the lower decks were now underwater and the remaining section of the platform was slowly settling.

  Making his way around the side, he reached the outer stairwell. Kurt found himself free of fire for the moment but surrounded by smoke and toxic vapors. A monitor strapped to his arm was reading four different kinds of poisonous gas, along with a lethal level of smoke. If Kurt weren’t suited up like an astronaut, he wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds.

  The heat was another problem. Though the heat-resistant suit and the coolant still running through it were keeping his body temperature from rising too much, it wouldn’t last for much longer.

  He checked the oversized chronometer strapped to his other arm. It showed eleven minutes of oxygen and five minutes of coolant left. He would have to work quickly.

  Continuing upward, he climbed three flights, fought his way past a set of loose pipes and spotted his destination, an orange-colored pod, roughly fifty feet long, with a pointed nose and rounded tail.

  The escape boat resembled an oversized torpedo and was designed for its own type of launching. The vessel wasn’t lowered into the sea like a ship’s lifeboat. Instead, it sat on rails that were angled downward. Once the restraining clamps were released, it dropped nose-first, sliding forward and then free-falling from the high decks of the oil rig.

  Kurt had endured a test ride in a similar escape boat. It hit the water at fifty miles an hour and, despite the pointed nose designed to break the surface tension, it felt like they were smashing into a brick wall. Because of that, the occupants sat backward, wearing harnesses and head restraints that kept them from suffering from whiplash. This wouldn’t do them any good unless the boat could get free of its cage.

  Kurt saw the problem as soon as he got close. One of the launch rails that directed the pod as it slid forward had been bent inward by the explosion. It was now acting like a gate, preventing the boat from releasing.

  “That’s not going to be an easy fix,” Kurt said to himself. He wondered why the men hadn’t come out to free themselves or look for a second boat.

  Picking up a length of pipe, Kurt climbed onto the rails and then banged on the hull to get the occupants’ attention. With his gloved hand, he rubbed away the soot and oxidation that had covered the porthole.

  Putting his face up to the glass, he counted ten people inside. They were strapped in and waiting. Even from his limited view, Kurt could see that several were injured and burned. Another man was at the controls, desperately working a radio that he’d used to call for help.

  Kurt banged on the hull again and the man finally noticed him. He staggered over to the porthole. “You’re caught up,” Kurt shouted.

  The man pressed a button and his voice came over a speaker. “We tried to shake the boat loose by rocking it back and forth. But no luck.”

  “And you’re not going to have any,” Kurt said. “If you come with me, I can lead you to another boat. Or we can get to the water. I have a small submersible coming back to pick us up.”

  The man shook his head. “I got injured men and women in here, five with burns, two with broken legs, three more unconsciou
s. None of us has fire gear. It took us forever to climb down two decks just to get in the pod. We’ll never make it.”

  Kurt realized instantly that the man was right, it was either escape in the boat or die inside it. “Strap yourself back in,” Kurt said. “I’ll try to cut you free.”

  “With what?”

  “Swiss Army knife, if that’s what it takes.”

  Kurt looked around for something to slice through the metal rail or bend it out of the way. Nothing obvious jumped out at him. But he had an idea. “Get ready for the drop. It’s going to come suddenly.”

  “Hurry,” the man said. “We’re cooking in here.”

  Kurt had no intention of wasting time. He backtracked to the bundle of loose pipes that he’d climbed over earlier, found a long, thin one made of a lightweight alloy. It had threaded ends where additional pipes could be attached by screwing them together.

  He grabbed three matching pipes, compared the ends and then went back to the stranded escape boat.

  His first thought was to use the pipes as a long lever, bending the misaligned launch rail back and freeing the boat, but that proved impossible.

  “Give me a lever and a firm place to stand,” Kurt said to himself. “But if there’s no firm place to stand—”

  Something detonated in the lower levels. The catwalk shook and debris tumbled toward him from above. Kurt ducked out of the way. The water was the key.

  He quickly screwed the pipes together, twisting them tight. With all three sections linked, he now held an unwieldy forty-foot tube of metal, which he lowered into the water below, deliberately submerging the pipe into a dense area of flame.

  Balancing the pipe against the catwalk, he removed his secondary regulator, split the hose and directed a jet of oxygen across the open top of the pipe. This created a low-pressure area that drew the volatile gas into the pipe and gave the fire pure oxygen to breathe.