hit the deck. He stepped up around the corner as the man slammed a fresh magazine into the handle.
“Raise your weapon and you’ll die,” McGarvey said.
The helicopter had landed, the noise of the rotors fading.
Gurov stood motionless, his eyes narrowed, and McGarvey thought he recognized the man as one of the new employees who’d been taken on just before the platform had gotten underway.
“How many of you came aboard at Biloxi?” McGarvey asked. The man looked Eastern European.
Gurov made no move to raise his weapon. But it was clear he was weighing his options, and just as clear he was willing to waste time here.
“Only five of your people came over aboard the helicopter, one of them Brian DeCamp. How about the others, Russian
Gurov said nothing.
McGarvey suddenly walked directly toward the Russian, who at the last moment started to raise his weapon, but Mac shot him in the right knee, knocking him down. Before he could recover Mac bent down and jammed the muzzle of his pistol into the side of his head.
“Talk to me,” McGarvey said.
“Fuck you,” Gurov grunted. He batted the pistol away from his head with his left hand and raised the MAC with his right.
McGarvey grabbed the end of the still hot suppressor tube and twisted the muzzle under Gurov’s chin as the weapon went off, completely destroying the man’s head.
McGarvey took the man’s weapon, removed the magazine, and jammed the suppresser barrel against the deck and, using his foot, bent it a few degrees rendering the submachine gun useless. He found a walkie-talkie that he pocketed as he ran down the corridor to his room. Otto could have an Air Force special ops team here from McDill in Tampa in under an hour. All McGarvey had to do was delay DeCamp and his team, and keep as many of the people aboard Vanessa alive for as long as possible.
But his sat phone lay in pieces on the floor of his room. One of the contractors had been here.
The music on deck had stopped but there’d been no shooting, no cries of alarm. It wouldn’t last for long.
McGarvey took the Franchi twelve-bore shotgun from his equipment pack, quickly loaded it, stuffing a couple dozen shells in his pockets, along with several one hundred-gram packets of Semtex plastic explosives and a number of pencil fuses.
The equation had definitely changed, and he was going to change it further.
SIXTY-ONE
Brian DeCamp and the other three contractors got out of the Bell Ranger as Wyner completed the shutdown. Burt and Mitchell used two of the tie-down points on deck to secure the machine, while Helms ran to the edge of the pad to watch for someone coming up to investigate. It was Kabatov, who’d been waiting for them on the helipad. Like the others, he was dressed all in black, his face blackened, and he was armed with the silenced MP5 SD6.
Someone laughed below on the main deck but the music had stopped.
“Where is Boris?” DeCamp asked. The platform didn’t feel right to him. Something was nagging at the back of his head. “Instinct is your best friend on the battlefield,” Colonel Frazer had drummed into his head from day one. “Feed it good intel and then trust it, boyo.”
“He went to look for McGarvey’s sat phone,” Kabatov said.
“How about the other communications equipment?”
“All of it disabled.”
“Good,” DeCamp said. Here aboard the rig they would communicate with low-powered Icom walkie-talkies. He pulled his out of his pocket and keyed the push to talk switch. “Boris, status.”
“Someone’s coming,” Helms called from the dark. “Two men. Shall I take them out?”
“Help him,” DeCamp told Mitchell. Gurov wasn’t answering. “Status,” DeCamp said again.
“What do you want me to do?” Helms called urgently.
DeCamp hesitated a moment, thinking about the situation. Either Gurov was down or he was in a situation where he couldn’t answer. Kirk McGarvey was aboard because he’d suspected this attack, but DeCamp had been assured by his contacts that the U.S. government did not share the view; not the FBI, the CIA, or Homeland Security.
“Kill one, take the other hostage,” DeCamp told him, and he turned back to the walkie-talkie. “Boris does not answer, so for the moment I have to assume that Mr. McGarvey has somehow gotten involved. Am I correct?”
Defloria came up the stairs onto the helicopter pad and Helms pointed the MP5 at him. “This way please,” he said, motioning toward Mitchell who also held his weapon pointed at the OIM.
“Jesus,” Defloria said, rearing back.
Stefanato came up right behind him, and when he saw the two men and the guns he tried to turn away but Helms tapped him twice in the side of the head at nearly point-blank range and the construction foreman pitched sideways and fell heavily ten feet to the first landing, dead before he’d hit it.
DeCamp walked over to the three men, and held out the walkie-talkie in front of their hostage. “What is your name, sir?” he asked.
Defloria had the look of a defeated man. He was large enough to have played professional football at some point in his life, but he wasn’t a fighter. “Justin Defloria,” he said.
“And your job here is?”DeCamp asked.
“I’m the Operations Installation Manager.”
“Did you get that?” DeCamp said into the walkie-talkie.
“Yes,” McGarvey said. “But I suggest that you get back in your helicopter and get out of here while you still can. Help is on the way from McDill.”
“Oh, I doubt that seriously,” DeCamp said. “If you want to avoid any further bloodshed this is what you are going to do for us, because my mission here is to destroy this platform and send it to the bottom, but not kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. Lay down your weapon and join the party on the main deck. We’ll have everyone, including you and your assistant, loaded aboard the automatic lifeboats, and once you’re all safely away we’ll go about our business.”
McGarvey didn’t answer.
Wyner was finished securing the helicopter and he came over to the edge of the helipad with the other two men. Defloria was impressed.
“In that case, here is what we will do,” DeCamp said. “We’re going to secure all the personnel aboard this platform including the scientists, especially Dr. Larsen. If you make any overt move against us we will kill them all.”
The walkie-talkie was silent, and after a couple of seconds DeCamp stuffed it in his pocket. “Mr. McGarvey prefers to make it difficult for us, so let’s keep on our toes.” He prodded Defloria with the muzzle of his MP5. “We’ll join the party on deck. Whoever bags McGarvey will receive a fifty thousand euro bonus.”
Defloria hesitated at the stairs. “The second your helicopter was spotted the delivery crew called for help.”
“The radios have been disabled,” DeCamp said. “No calls went out.”
“You’re forgetting the tug, you bastard.”
There were parts of every job he’d ever been on that were DeCamp’s favorite. Like these when the target began using up his chips to bargain for his life, never dreaming that he was facing a royal flush.
Kabatov took the lead because he knew the layout, Mitchell and Helms directly behind him, followed by Defloria, Burt, and Wyner. At the bottom DeCamp held them up behind one of the large pipe storage lockers welded to the main deck.
“Where is McGarvey’s assistant?” he asked.
