Ian Slater - South China Sea

“Mr. President,” Noyer said, “I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t tell you that that’s exactly what we might end up with.”

“Initially,” the President conceded, “we may not be able to prevent that, but my point is that if it starts, we’re not going to have a grannies’ conference here and take six months to decide what we’re going to do. I want the information about what’s going on down there confirmed and reconfirmed, and I want a U.S.-led U.N. multilateral strategic and tactical plan on my desk within seventy-two hours. That will tell me what we are in a position to undertake and, perhaps more importantly, what we are not in a position to do at the moment.”

“We’ll do the best we can, Mr. President.”

“Another thing, David,” the President warned Noyer, “I don’t want any CNN reporter scooping me on the ‘Larry King Show.’ Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did they do that in Iraq? I mean CNN getting all that stuff out of Baghdad?”

“Used what we call a four phone, Mr. President,” Noyer explained. “You take a small umbrellalike antenna, beam it up to the satellite, and bounce it off right to home base. Very expensive.”

“Well, I don’t want any four phones popping up with anything we’re not ready for, understand?”

“I understand, sir, but they’re a determined lot.”

“Then you be more determined.”

“Very good, Mr. President.”

“And notify the U.N.’s secretary general about this Spratly situation as soon as you have details.” The President turned his attention to Admiral Reese. “George, I assume the Navy’s already on to this, trying to find out just what happened to that drill ship.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I’ve contacted COMSUBPAC in Hawaii and we have an SSN sub, the USS Santa Fe, west of Borneo and the Spratlys in the Sulu Sea. It’s part of the Enterprise battle group and is being dispatched via Balabac Strait between the Philippines and the Malaysian part of Borneo.”

“Surface or submerged?”

“Surface through the shallow straits and submerged once we get into the Spratly area, but we can’t get too close to the drill ship position because the bottom is relatively shallow around those coral reefs, et cetera.”

“Then how are you going to get anybody in there, at least without advertising the fact?”

“The sub, Mr. President. It wasn’t the closest, but it’s one with an SDV aboard.”

“SDV?”

“Swimmer Delivery Vehicle. Can carry up to half a dozen divers, and they can exit the vehicle quickly. It’s a separate container behind the sail of the sub.”

“So we’re sending in frogmen?”

Reese couldn’t hide a smile of amusement. “I haven’t heard that term in thirty years, Mr. President. The swimmers will fan out and gather what evidence they can.”

“You think they’ll find any?”

“They’re the best we have, Mr. President. And COMSUBPAC has notified our British liaison officers with the Royal Brunei Army. British Petroleum naturally wants to know what’s going on as well. Apparently the rigs and drill ships are equipped with safety video units in cradles high above the deck. It’s designed — the video unit, I mean — to be easily scooped up from a chopper.”

“All right. Let me know as soon as you have something.”

“Yes, sir.”

The reflections of flames danced madly in the blister-shaped cockpit of the Brunei army’s BO-105 helicopter as it sped out like a dragonfly across a flickering orange sea in response to the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s request. It sped toward the enormous flame shooting high above the drill ship’s rig, one man in the chopper safely harnessed and ready to extend his reach down after steadying himself on the starboard strut to extract the videocassette from the high stanchion above the well deck mast by lifting a bamboo hoop attached to the camera unit.

While maintaining forward flight, the pilot lowered his lever, using the stick and pressing his rudder pedal to hover over a spot he’d selected below, on the well deck’s forward hatch, the fuselage rotating slowly about the main hub’s axis. The bamboo hoop, video camera, and cassette in their all-weather plastic sheath had sensibly been painted phosphorescent red, and showed up clearly in the frenetic shadows cast by the fire whose roar was now so loud that the pilot and his observer in the harness could hear it above the near-deafening sound of the four-bladed rotor engine. Now the cockpit bucked violently and the pilot could feel the increasing torque as he fought to keep the helo steady in the waves of superheated air which, above the sea’s cooler, denser air, created savage and short-lived convection currents and wind shears that buffeted the helo.

The Bruneian pilot wrestled for control. Five times the helo rose and fell abreast of the stanchion, each time getting a little closer, until the Bruneian in harness could reach out and grab the “hula hoop” and yank the attached video camera assembly out of its weather-protected cradle.

A sudden gust blew the helo toward the stanchion, and the pilot immediately moved to counteract it. But he was a split second too late, one of the rotors striking the stanchion, the helo dropping like a stone toward an enormous shadow of itself on the ship’s deck, sliding the full length of the stanchion and crashing into the well deck. One of the rotor’s spars cartwheeled and sparked across the well deck and then into the derrick that was red hot from the roaring flame. The spilled gasoline from the helo instantly became a river of fire that quickly raced back to the helo’s fuselage, engulfing the shattered cockpit and the two men. There was an explosion which sounded like no more than a pop beneath the steady roar of the gas fire still flaming unabated hundreds of feet up into the night sky.

Though at a state dinner for the British ambassador, His Royal Highness the Sultan of Brunei was informed immediately of the situation. He was the richest man in the world, and every Bruneian citizen had one of the highest living standards in the world — all because of Brunei’s oil, from offshore as well as onshore. His Royal Highness immediately put his tiny but superbly equipped 4,657-man armed forces on high alert, ordering Brunei’s three Waspada-class fast patrol boats to sea with two surface-to-surface Exocet missiles per boat, but with express orders from the sultan to search, rescue where possible, and identify but not to engage unless attacked.

Within ten minutes the three Bruneian patrol boats had six radar blips on their screens, indicating anything from four junks to other commercial shipping, including what looked like an empty supertanker off the coast of the Brunei coastline heading south from the Malay state of Sabah in Northern Borneo and past the stricken drill ship’s position.

No survivors were found in the surrounding waters, but the patrol boat nearest the drill ship was close enough to see, in the spill, of light created by the fire of escaping oil and gas, bodies, some of them blackened, strewn about the well deck and the stern near the galley. Aboard the patrol boat a British army observer, Captain Owen, from one of the thousand-man Gurkha infantry battalions — one of three British battalions stationed in Brunei to help protect British petroleum interests— volunteered to go aboard the drill ship. He and two of the patrol boat’s crew were shortly on the well deck, but the heat was so intense that they could feel it through their Vibram soles, paint on the well deck already blistering and flaking.

“We’ll have to go back!” Owen shouted. “Hose it down first!”

For the next ten minutes, while the two other boats headed farther out to sea, the patrol vessel with Owen aboard used its fire hose to drench that part of the well deck immediately beyond the drill ship’s ladder, the paint blisters now washing off like great gobs of wet newspaper, revealing spots of the red antirust primer below.