Abyss

sets as well as the navigation and communications equipment in the control panels and the overheads, stretched the entire width of the superstructure. Two men, both in civilian clothes, were on duty at the moment, one of them at the wheel, the other looking through a pair of binoculars at their tow. The helmsman, seated in a tall chair, his hands not actually touching the wheel, was dark, slightly built and wiry, while the other was heavyset and bald.

The helmsman looked up when DeCamp opened the door and came in, and when he spotted the weapon he reared back and said something in a language that sounded like Greek.

DeCamp fired one short burst, hitting the man in the left side of his chest, his neck, and face, driving him off the chair to the deck, blood flying everywhere.

The man with the binoculars had reacted slowly and he was just turning around when DeCamp switched aim and shot him high in the back, at least one round hitting him at the base of his skull. He flew forward, his face smashing into the rear window and his legs folding as he slumped to the deck.

DeCamp studied the nav gear, making sure that the boat was operating on autopilot, then switched off the two single sideband transceivers and two VHF radios and put a couple of rounds into the front panels of each, rendering them totally inoperative.

At the door he looked back. It had been almost too easy. So far. And although he expected no trouble from the six people back aboard the Pascagoula Trader he was pretty sure that the mission would unfold a bit differently aboard the oil platform.

Wyner met him on deck and had a wild look in his eyes. “Two of them in the galley and one in the shitter,” he said. He was enjoying himself.

“Problems?”

“No. You?”

DeCamp shook his head. “They weren’t expecting us. Let’s get back.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later Gurov was crouched in the lee of the deserted control room, the music still loud below on the main deck as Kabatov scrambled up the ladder to the roof to cut the cables to the satellite dishes — the only remaining links to the outside world except for his and McGarvey’s sat phones.

But it was only a matter of time now before someone discovered the bodies of the six crewmen in their bunks, Lapides plus two of his people on duty in the delivery station, or that of the young woman scientist who they’d caught in the transverse corridor on the way to the control room. She’d just come out of the bathroom and Kabatov had broken her neck before she could cry out, and then they had stuffed her body in an empty tool locker. Her name tag said, LISA.

Kabatov came down the ladder. “Done.”

“Let’s see if we can find McGarvey and the broad,” Gurov said. So far everything had gone exactly according to plan, which in his mind was a little worrisome. McGarvey had a dangerous rep. He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

* * *

Forget It was cruising easily just a few feet from the Pascagoula Trader ’s port side, the nearly dead idle speed they were making ensuring that the water between the hulls was just about calm without bow wakes.

Helms was outside on deck talking to someone on the larger vessel when DeCamp and Wyner pulled up unseen alongside, made the painter secure, switched off the outboard, and scrambled aboard.

Crouching low behind the coaming DeCamp rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead and Helms glanced over his shoulder. DeCamp nodded.

Helms turned back, took out his silenced 9mm Steyr GB pistol and shot the man twice in the chest.

Edwin Burt and Paul Mitchell, the other two recent hires, had been hiding in the darkness behind the bridge. An instant after Helms fired they rushed out on deck as Lehr maneuvered Forget It close enough for the three of them to jump across and head directly for the bridge.

“Get the dinghy under cover,” DeCamp told Wyner and he went up to the bridge where he got a pair of binoculars and scoped the platform first, and then the flotilla boats nearest to them.

“How does it look?” Lehr asked. He’d been a top-flight cop with the German Federal police, and he knew how to take orders even though he’d admitted he hated the bureaucracy.

A good man to have in a mission like this one in which so many things could go wrong, DeCamp thought. All of them were comrades tonight. And once again he could feel a little of the satisfaction of leading good men into harm’s way. “We’re clear so far.”

Wyner came up to the bridge at the same time Helms appeared on the Pascagoula Trader ’s deck and gave the thumbs-up.

“Prep the chopper,” DeCamp said, and Wyner went out and crossed over to the bigger vessel.

“How did it go aboard the tug?” Lehr asked. Like most mercenaries he did not like loose ends.

“As planned,” DeCamp said tersely. “Are you clear on your orders?”

“Stand by out here for pickup once the op is completed, and then get the hell out to our mother ship,” Lehr said. “May I have the coordinates?”

DeCamp gave him a latitude and longitude about eighty nautical miles to the southwest where a Liberian- registered freighter was supposed to be standing by for them, and he programmed the numbers into the ship’s GPS system.

“Danke.”

Everyone else was aboard the other ship and both vessels were on autopilot. DeCamp pulled out his pistol and fired one shot into Lehr’s forehead, driving the man off the helmsman’s chair.

He got on the sat phone and hit Send. The thirty minutes were up. “Status.”

* * *

Gurov answered on the first ring. “We’re holed up in a forward crew quarters passageway. Defloria and his construction foreman are having a powwow.”

“Take them out.”

“Not advisable. We haven’t gotten to McGarvey’s sat phone.”

“Find a way now,” DeCamp said. “Priority one. Our ETA is five minutes.”

“Will do,” Gurov replied and he broke the connection. “They’ll be here in five,” he told Kabatov. “Make sure the landing pad is secure. I’m going after McGarvey’s phone.”

“Watch yourself.”

Gurov replaced the magazine in his weapon with a fresh one. “Even Superman couldn’t stand up to this shit,” he said.

SIXTY

McGarvey sent Gail back to the party that promised to run very late. Everyone down there was having a great time, blowing off a lot of pent-up energy and tension that had been transmitted to them through Eve’s reaction to the possible threat they were facing. Some of them were likely to jump overboard if someone showed up and shouted “Boo!”

“You’ve got a hunch?” she’d asked. They were in his room away from the noise of the party and the constant din from the boat horns circling them, and she’d picked up his antsiness.

“This is the right place and the right time,” he told her.

“Has Otto come up with something?”

“Not as of this afternoon, but I asked him to do a global satellite search for anything moving anywhere in the Gulf, especially anything heading this way.”

“Foreign registry on the way to the Canal? Untouchables without clear evidence?”

“Something like that,” McGarvey’d said, and before she’d left he told her to get her pistol. “Neither of us walks around unarmed from this point.”

“One of those kids catches on that we’re packing and they could start screaming bloody murder.”