Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

On the deck of the smaller tanker, the helicopter lifted off and began its journey back. Working two men at a time, Todd and his companions threw off the heavy hooks securing the Zoroaster to the Tiberius . The thumping vibrations of the helicopter grew louder as it approached the supertanker’s landing pad.

“Disconnect those hoses,” Todd shouted. “Move it!”

With a large swell, the Zoroaster lurched, tumbling them backward into the water cannons. Todd smashed his elbow against a large red pipe, but managed to grab the rail of a foam-monitor station. Everything was going wrong. Todd felt as if he were standing in the path of an avalanche. One of the men smacked his helmet on a release valve, and water began to spray from a nozzle.

No longer lashed together, the two tankers drifted apart by a few more feet.

The transfer hose at cargo hold 7 sheared away, spraying oil in all directions. With a loud pop , the hose connected to cargo hold 8 tore off. The Zoroaster began to tilt sideways, away from Tiberius .

“She’s going down!” Todd shouted. For just a moment he wanted to run in blind panic to the empty chopper pad, but he had to get his crew off. He shoved Jimmy Mack toward the landing platform. “Go! Now!”

“Yes, sir!”

All three men began a scramble for the helicopter pad near the stern deck. They were covered with petroleum slime, the rough metal deck plates slick with crude. Jimmy Mack tumbled to his knees, disoriented with panic. Todd reached out a big hand and helped him up. “I told you I keep my word!”

The helicopter came in and tried to land, but the Zoroaster tilted fast. Todd grabbed a rail to keep his balance. Just as the second team of three made it to the landing circle, the copter rose up and circled back around, leaving Todd and the two others to scream for it to come back. The tanker lurched again.

Over the side of the ship, the black petroleum looked like a vile quagmire, bubbling like lava. Fumes burned Todd’s face and eyes like acid. He couldn’t imagine a death worse than drowning in several feet of crude oil.

The helicopter wheeled overhead and landed with a skid, bouncing across the deck. Without waiting for the rotors to slow, Todd and the others ducked their heads and scrambled to the open door. They tumbled into the back in an oil-stained pile of bodies. The last one on, Todd still hung halfway out of the hatch as the copter took off. “Yeeee-hah!”

The pilot flew without speaking, his jaw clenched, as they lifted up and away from the Zoroaster ’s tilting superstructure. Todd struggled to a better position to watch through the scratched plexiglass cockpit window.

Below, the Tiberius pulled away from the sinking Zoroaster . Sliding down, rolling sideways as it lost its slippery grip on the Fort Point ledge, the Zoroaster toppled in a slow-motion avalanche. Todd’s stomach sank with it. Water and oil foamed gray in the churning violence of the plunge. The supertanker’s hull yawned open wider, geysering black crude into the waters.

Before his eyes, the disaster became a thousand times worse.

Despite the desperate lightering operations, nearly 50 million gallons of crude oil remained in the breached cargo holds. Cold, dark water swallowed the doomed supertanker in less than fifteen minutes.

Todd watched, sick with disgust. From inside the Zoroaster , oil would continue to gush upward for years… and now there was no way to stop it.

The Zoroaster spill was a shit-storm in a small room, but Speaker of the House Jeffrey Mayeaux had to cover a smile as he faced the audience for the news conference. He took grim pleasure in knowing he had arrived on the scene a full three hours before the Vice President was due. The rooster-faced V.P. didn’t even know he had been upstaged yet.

A techie wearing jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt scurried stooped over like a hunchback, checking leads to the microphones on the podium. Mayeaux walked in, flanked by his Chief of Staff Franklin Weathersee and a Secret Service mastodon. He fixed his eyes on the reporters; they looked like crawfish in a bowl, and he was about to have them for dinner. He wore his gravest “I’m from the government, I’m here to help you” expression.

The Honorable Jeffrey Mayeaux would do his best to witness the concerns first-hand and say the necessary words to foster hope. He was good at that. Yes, the government would do everything possible to help the San Francisco area cope with this crisis. You betcha.

The Executive Branch would be pissing Tabasco sauce by this evening.

Mayeaux had skipped out on his Acapulco “conference” early for the sole purpose of stealing the V.P.’s thunder. Unannounced, Mayeaux was the first high-level government official to respond to this serious disaster—and the bozos at 1600 Pennsylvania would not get the credit this time. Mayeaux would shake the hands and kiss the babies; Vice President Wolani—Miss Congeniality—would get the tough questions a few hours from now. The whole escapade should add at least another ten grand onto Mayeaux’s lobbyist salary after he retired from Congress in a year.

A half dozen video cameras jockeyed for position as he turned to expose his best side. He eyed a cute brunette gripping a microphone bearing the letters KSFO. Watching the way she wrapped her fingers around the shaft of the microphone, holding its head close to her red lips, Mayeaux thought how deliciously erotic it looked. Admiring the swell of her bodacious breasts against her silk blouse, Mayeaux made a mental note to have Weathersee offer her an off-the-record interview, “inside sources,” before he had to jet back to the east coast. Often enough, promotion-hungry lady reporters were willing to go to extremes for a scoop. And you didn’t know unless you asked.

Like a few other Louisiana politicians, Mayeaux didn’t give a coonass’s damn about scandal. His constituents watched it with the fascination of spectators at a car accident—but as long as they knew some of Mayeaux’s obvious weaknesses, they didn’t dig too deep for hidden flaws. The old saying went that every person owned the same total allotment of vices… so the folks who looked squeaky clean usually had some very twisted skeletons in their closets. According to that theory, a holy roller like V.P. Wolani probably got off by pulling legs off live frogs.

Mayeaux straightened, pulling himself to his full height of five and a half feet. For his opening statement, he spoke slowly, careful to smother his leftover Cajun accent, as he always did in public speeches.

“Incredibly devastating,” he said. “This could set back the advances we’ve made in environmental management by decades. I have personally contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to encourage their best efforts here. I also advocate calling out the National Guard, but of course that’s up to the administration, whenever they get here. I understand the Vice President is on his way, so you can ask him yourselves. He’ll be along any time now.”

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker!”

He scanned the crowd until he caught the brunette’s eye. He raised his eyebrow a fraction before nodding to her. He didn’t give a rat’s ass for her question, but he kept his public face on autopilot. He wondered how much of a challenge she would be. “Go ahead.”

“How will this affect the proposed new gasoline tax? Will the administration back the House’s legislation calling for a majority of the tax to be used for cleaning up the environment?”

He pegged her: tough reporter type, arrogant and driven, looking for the big story. Willing to do just about anything for it—and he bet his Louisiana homegrown hot link would satisfy her. “I don’t see how the President could refuse to sign the bill, especially now, with this mess right in America’s lap.”