Clive Cussler - Skeleton Coast

He glanced again at the kneeling terrorists lined against the edge of the platform, their arms bound behind them with the flex cuffs he’d brought and electrical wire the workers had provided. None were older than twenty-five, and as his eyes swept the line none of them could meet his cold stare. The bullet-ridden bodies of the six fighters taken out in Eddie’s lightning attack had been laid together and covered with an old piece of tarp.

Only one of Eddie’s men had been injured during the minute-long assault and that was just a flesh wound in the leg from a ricochet. As soon as the remaining rebels realized the ferocity of the attack they dropped their weapons and threw up their hands. A few of them had even begun to cry. Eddie had gone below and found the rig’s crew unguarded in the mess hall and learned eight of their coworkers had been gunned down when the platform was first assaulted.

The rig’s tool pusher had been killed when the rebels swarmed the platform, so it was his second in command who was in charge of shutting off the flow. He detached himself from the men gathered around the well head and approached Eddie. His coveralls and gloves were black with oil and his ebony face was streaked with the grease.

“We can fix it,” he said in accented English. “They replaced the topside Christmas tree with a twelve-inch shunt valve. They opened that valve to let the oil come out and broke off the handle. I think they dropped the Christmas tree over the side.”

Eddie imagined a Christmas tree was what the oilman called the well cap that diverted oil to pipelines connected to shore. “How long?”

“We have another tree in the stores. It’s not as strong as the one we lost, but it will take the pressure.

Maybe three hours.”

“Then don’t waste time talking to me.”

Though it was a mile away, and the crude belching out of the well made a sound like a train roaring past, Eddie could still hear the sustained gunfire from the Chairman’s rig and knew Juan was having a much harder time of it.

FOR a stunned moment Cabrillo had no idea where he was or even who he was. It was only when the constant bark of distant automatic weapons finally cut through the ringing in his head that he remembered what was happening. He opened his eyes and nearly cried out. He hung forty feet over the bubbling mass of oil lapping against the platform’s legs and would have been blown off the rig entirely if he hadn’t gotten tangled in the safety nets encircling the upper deck. The container he’d been hiding behind bobbed on the sea of crude but there was no sign of the wounded man who’d been next to him when the RPG

detonated.

He flipped onto his back and spider-crawled across the shaky net, keeping one eye on the deck perimeter to make sure none of the rebels saw his vulnerable position. When he reached the platform he cautiously peered over the edge. Terrorists still had control of the rig and return fire from his own men was diminished. He could tell only a couple were still in the fight, and by the way they fired only single shots he knew they were low on ammunition. The rebels didn’t seem to have such a shortage and blasted away indiscriminately.

When Juan was sure no one was looking in his direction he rolled off the net and under the crawler treads of the mobile crane. He checked over his weapon and changed out the half-depleted magazine.

He didn’t have a good enough view of the battle to start sniping the rebels without risking another blast from an RPG. He scooted around and wriggled to the back of the crane, cautiously looking around for better cover.

An insurgent suddenly sprang up from behind a crate and was about to toss a grenade across the deck at where a wounded Zimbabwean cowered behind a huge valve. Juan drilled the terrorist with a single shot and a moment later the grenade went off, lifting his corpse and the mangled body of a comrade on a column of smoky flame.

Before anyone could pinpoint where the shot had originated, Juan rushed out from under the crane, running doubled over across the deck, and threw himself behind a pile of six-inch-thick drill pipes. He edged around the pipes so he could look down their lengths. The effect was disorientating, like a rendition of a fly’s prismatic eyes, but he could see one of the rebels moving across the ironworks tower a few feet from where the oil fountained from the well head.

Juan thrust the barrel of his MP-5 into a pipe and triggered off a three-round burst. Two of the bullets struck the interior of the pipe and went wild, but one hit the terrorist low in the abdomen. He staggered back and was caught in the avalanche of oil. One second he seemed to be leaning against the surging mass and the next he’d been pulled in, like he’d been absorbed, and vanished in the cascade draining down to the ocean.

Cabrillo circled back around the pile of pipes when a half dozen rebels raked it with autofire, the impacts making the steel pipes sing. He was beginning to realize the attack might fail. If Linda didn’t finish up below and add her team as reinforcements, Juan had to seriously consider calling retreat. There was nothing theOregon could do to help, not without risking setting the rig ablaze.

With so many rebels still fighting he knew that the climb down to the minisub would be suicide. They’d be picked off before they were a quarter of the way down the ladder. Juan had to think of an alternative and considered taking the platform’s lifeboat, a reinforced fiberglass escape pod that could be automatically lowered. The only problem was the lifeboat’s davits were on an isolated spot on the far side of the deck, surrounded by open space—a killing field if Juan had ever seen one.

He tapped his radio to get Linda’s frequency as another fusillade slammed into the drill string. “Linda, its Cabrillo. Forget about the workers and get your butts up here double time.” When she didn’t respond Juan repeated her name. “Where in the hell is she?”

SHE’D spent five hours a week every week for two straight years. More than five hundred hours training on the mats Eddie Seng had brought into theOregon ’s fitness center dojo. He’d learned from a master who no longer bothered with rankings because there were few people on the planet capable enough to certify him.

Hearing Juan’s voice was enough to get Linda Ross over her moment of panic and into action. She stepped out and back so quickly that the killer didn’t realize the receiver of his gun was now against her hip. Slamming her elbow into his sternum sent a wave of rancid breath across her face. She then smashed her fist between his legs, recalling Eddie’s words at this point in the oft-practiced counterattack: “If you feel his weight on your back, toss him. If not, grab on until he goes down.”

But she felt the man deflate against her. She reached for his arm, cocked her hip, and threw him over her shoulder, holding on to him so their combined weight crushed him against the deck. Unable to get air into his deflated lungs the terrorist gasped like a fish. Linda chopped him at a pressure point on the side of his exposed throat and his eyes fluttered and rolled back into his head. He’d be out for hours.

She got to her feet to see the man she thought of as “the sniper” peering at her through the open counter to the dining hall. He was just lowering his AK for a shot he hadn’t dared to take. She gave him a little curtsy and was rewarded with a broad smile.

Linda threw a pair of flex cuffs around the nearby stove’s leg and secured the terrorist’s wrists as a precaution. Returning to the mess hall, she saw her other two men still guarding the door to make sure none of the workers left to face another slaughter on the deck.

Bodies littered the floor. A few of them were dead but most had just been wounded in the mindless melee. Some of their coworkers were already trying to help get them into more comfortable positions and pressing rags and wads of napkins into their wounds. One man in particular seemed to be leading the medical efforts. He was a white man with a fringe of sandy hair around his red scalp and the biggest hands she had ever seen. He was also one of the most ruggedly handsome men she’d ever seen. When he got up from examining a crewman leaning against an overturned table he noticed her and came across the room in five long strides.