“That might be the least of our worries,” McGarvey said.
She gave him an odd look and then left.
He called Otto on the sat phone. “Have you come up with anything new?”
“Nada,” Otto said and he sounded dejected. “Rats in the attic?”
“Just a feeling.”
“Me too, but honest injun, kemo sabe, there’s nothing anywhere near you other than Schlagel’s flotilla, and I’d be just about willing to bet the farm that if and when trouble comes your way it won’t be from that direction. They’re major jerks and Jesus freaks and full of themselves but they’re not like the antiabortion crowd willing to kill for their beliefs. They’re not even as bad as Greenpeace. None of them will try to stop you. They’ll just hassle you all the way to Florida.”
“No ships coming our way to or from Tampa or Port Manatee?”
“Nothing within a hundred miles — and even that close it would take ’em more than four hours to get to you. We could have the Coast Guard to you in one-fourth that time. My guess is if they’re coming it’ll either be by chopper from Tampa or someplace like that, flying low and slow under radar, either that or a go-fast boat, something like a Cigarette or hydrofoil. The timing might be a little tight for them to make the hit, and in any event they’d have to get away clean, because I don’t think DeCamp is such a dedicated jihadist that he’s willing to give his life for the mission.”
“No,” McGarvey said. The hairs on the back of his neck were bristling. “But we’re missing something, goddamnit.”
“Has anyone from the flotilla tried to make contact either with the delivery crew or with Eve Larsen?”
“I don’t know about Eve or any of her people, but Defloria said they’ve been getting a steady stream of radio traffic on the VHF.”
“If they’re interfering with ship-to-ship channels, or tying up sixteen I can get the Coast Guard out there on a violation complaint.”
“Except for the noise they haven’t tried to interfere with operations so far,” McGarvey said.
“I could ask Coast Guard Tampa to come out and make an inspection, sewage dumps overboard or something.”
“No.”
“You’re not thinking straight. If something goes down out there and someone gets hurt you’ll take the heat even though the Bureau and everyone else says no one is going to try anything. So let’s make an end run.”
McGarvey had thought about that very thing from the start. If an attack did come someone would get hurt — possibly a lot of people. Since the Bureau or the Coast Guard were officially hands-off, the only alternatives would have been to postpone moving the platform to Florida or to cancel Eve’s project altogether. The first might have given them time to find DeCamp, now that they knew his name, though there was no telling how long that might take. The man was a professional and he’d not made many mistakes in his career. It was possible they’d never find him. And it was equally possible that whoever was behind the threat might hire someone else and they would have to start their search all over again. And canceling the project was totally out of the question. Even if NOAA tried to pull the plug Eve wouldn’t stand for it; and now as a Nobel laureate she carried a lot of weight.
Which left what?
At one point Otto had suggested smuggling a SEAL team aboard, or having a submarine trail them, but the Pentagon had declined, nor would pressuring the White House have worked either. The official stance was hands-off because the Saudis and other OPEC countries were becoming increasingly nervous with each step Eve’s program came nearer to completion and the administration couldn’t afford to antagonize its oil suppliers. If OPEC made sharp cutbacks the nation would be in serious trouble, much worse than the gas lines of the seventies because the U.S. had become ever more dependent on foreign oil.
The stakes had simply become too high for them to back away, and he said as much to Otto. “There’s a real possibility that DeCamp won’t try to pull anything off until Schlagel’s flotilla is gone. Too many witnesses.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“To tell the truth, I don’t know what the hell I believe anymore,” McGarvey said, some bitterness welling up. He felt as if he were itching for a fight, wanting it to come, wanting to get it over with. “Gail and I are just along for the ride.”
“I hear you, Mac,” Otto said. He sounded subdued, as if he’d tried to talk some sense into a friend, but had failed. “But God help the bastards if they do try to hit you.”
“Yeah,” McGarvey said, and he switched off and laid the phone on the desk. He wanted to hurt someone.
Even here inside his cabin McGarvey could hear the boat whistles and horns and faintly the music and sounds of singing and laughter down on deck, and truly wondered if he had any other choice, if he’d ever had a choice from the moment he’d helped Eve get away from the power plant.
He checked the load in his pistol, holstered it at the small of his back, and pocketing a spare magazine he headed down one deck to the galley to get a cup of coffee, expecting to see at least a couple of Defloria’s people, but the place was empty. It struck him as odd. There was always someone here
“Anyone home?” McGarvey called. He went across to the pass-through and looked inside. Nothing was on the grill and the kitchen was deserted, though a pot of something was steaming on one of the stoves.
No blood, nothing out of place, no reason whatsoever to be concerned. He turned and looked toward the open door to the corridor. Defloria had given his crew the evening off, and some of them would be up in the rec room, or catching up on sleep in their cabins. Some of them liked to fish from the lower decks during their time off. It was even possible a few of them had joined the party, especially Defloria and his construction foreman.
McGarvey used the house phone next to the galley door and called the delivery control room, but there was no answer after four rings, and the hairs at the nape of his neck bristled again.
Hanging up, he stood for several moments listening not only to the sounds of the rig, the distant sounds of the party on deck, and of the boat horns, but to some inner voice that his wife Katy had called his early warning detector. He’d been born with whatever it was that sometimes gave him an almost preternatural sense when something bad was about to happen. And he’d learned over the years to really listen as if his life depended on understanding what he was hearing, because on more than one occasion it had.
But just now nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, except for the deserted galley.
“Goddamnit,” he said, frustrated.
He had the almost overwhelming feeling that whatever was going to happen had already started.
He went across to the corridor door where he held up for just a moment, and suddenly he picked out another sound from the other noises, louder now and getting louder, and he realized that he had heard it earlier. A helicopter was incoming. It’s what he’d been missing all along; it was the Jet Ranger on the aftdeck of one of boats in Schlagel’s flotilla. The bastard was involved after all.
Drawing his pistol he peered around the door frame but the corridor was still empty, and he stepped out and hurried to the companionway where he took the stairs two at a time, mindful to make as little noise as possible.
The helicopter was much closer now, just about on top of them. But the chopper only carried a pilot plus four passengers, so unless DeCamp had managed to place some of his people aboard at Biloxi the odds weren’t all that bad. But McGarvey had to consider the possibility that one or more of them were here and had already taken out some of the off-duty crew. And maybe any scientist or technician not at the party, maybe taking a break or something.
At the top McGarvey eased around the corner in time to see a stockily built man dressed in black coming down the corridor, a suppressed MAC-10 in his hand.
McGarvey ducked back behind the stairwell bulkhead, as the intruder opened fire, bullets ricocheting all over the place.
The ultracompact Ingram wasn’t very accurate at any range over a few yards, even less accurate because of the long suppressor barrel, but its major disadvantage was its high rate of fire. A thirty-round magazine on full auto lasted less than two seconds.
McGarvey had this in a split second, and keeping flat against the bulkhead he fired two rounds against the corridor wall, the 9mm bullets ricocheting away with high-pitched whines.
The shooter sprayed the corridor, but the firing suddenly stopped and McGarvey heard the empty magazine
