“Last I saw she was at the party on deck,” Kabatov said.
“As soon as you spot her, kill her.”
“Will do,” Kabatov said.
“She and McGarvey are our primary high-priority targets,” DeCamp said. “Same bonus applies to her. Clear, gentlemen?”
“Yes, sir,” Kabatov and the others replied.
“Then let’s proceed,” DeCamp said. He prodded Defloria ahead. “After you, Mr. OIM.”
They came around the corner, and DeCamp fired a sort burst into the air.
Eve Larsen, standing at one end of the long table that had been set up to hold the drinks and hors d’oeuvres, reared back, and her scientists and techs moved almost protectively around her. Even the musicians laid their instruments aside and moved toward her. It was clear by the looks on their faces, by their scared, nervous postures that they’d been expecting trouble, had probably been waiting for it ever since McGarvey and Gail Newby had shown up.
DeCamp’s people immediately spread out, taking whatever cover they could behind the various storage lockers and equipment bolted or welded to the deck, their heads on swivels keeping an eye on the science team while searching the shadows above and especially behind them for any sign of McGarvey.
Eve stepped forward arrogantly, her lip out. “Who are you and what the fuck are you doing on my platform?” she demanded, her voice rock steady.
DeCamp had to admire her courage, at least a little, and he gave her a pleasant smile. “Oh, I think you know. I think Mr. McGarvey briefed you either before or after Oslo. And, congratulations on your prize, it must be a great vindication for your work.”
“You’d know nothing about it,” Eve said, her voice rising in anger. “We create, while you do nothing but destroy. And not even for principle, only for pay.”
Kabatov came to DeCamp’s side. “She’s not here,” he said, his voice low enough that Eve or the others could not have heard him.
“She’s around someplace, unless she abandoned ship,” DeCamp said. “We’ll find her.”
“She may be with McGarvey.”
DeCamp nodded. “Ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention. Contrary to what you may have been told we mean you no personal harm. We have come here this evening merely to destroy the project.”
“You son of a bitch,” Eve said stepping past her people. She pulled up short when Kabatov pointed his MAC- 10 directly at her. “You’re one of the construction crew,” she said, recognizing him. And she turned to Defloria. “He’s one of yours?”
“I didn’t know until now,” Defloria said. “I’m sorry.”
“We need to make certain preparations, during which you will have to be secured from causing any interference,” DeCamp said. “Your experience will not be particularly pleasant, but it will last for less than an hour, after which you will be released and we will leave. From that moment you will have an additional thirty minutes to get aboard the lifeboats and abandon ship.”
“You’re going to kill us!” one of the young women shrieked.
“I assure you that is not my intention. No one who cooperates will be harmed.”
Helms had opened one of the larger pipe lockers welded to the deck. About the size of a trailer for a semi; long and narrow, the storage bin was empty, and dark almost like a coffin.
“I’m not going in there,” one of the techs said, shrinking back.
Don stepped forward, and before Eve could do or say anything to stop him he walked up to the blond man who obviously was the leader. The terrorists trained their weapons on him.
“No need for that,” Don said. “I’m the man you know as William Bell, your contact here.”
The scientists were shocked, and DeCamp suppressed a smile. None of them had suspected they’d had a traitor in their midst, especially not Eve Larsen who, this man had said, was in love with him. “She’ll do anything I tell her to do,” he had promised.
“Including not demanding a military escort?” DeCamp had asked several weeks ago.
“Especially not that. She thinks having that son of a bitch McGarvey aboard is all the protection she’ll need.”
DeCamp motioned for his men to train their weapons elsewhere, and he lowered his MP5. “You have been of some help, Mr.… Bell.”
“Dr. Don Price, actually, and I’m glad you’re finally here.”
“Why?” Eve asked, her voice strangled.
DeCamp almost laughed out loud. Price was a pompous ass, and the woman was naive. Smart people with no common sense, and in the case of Price, no moral purpose.
“This is nothing but a stupid pipe dream with zero chance of success,” Price said, turning to her and the others. “If you’d listened to me in the first place, if you had actually read my papers, studied my mathematics, you’d know that your experiments are dead ends. Failures. You won’t be able to control the climate and you’ll be the laughingstock of the scientific community — a position you’ve already just about hit. They handed you proof of that in Oslo by giving you the stupid Peace Prize, and not physics. Carbon capture is the future. The only future. My methods, my studies, my papers. My Nobel Prize in Physics.”
“Christ, Don, is this what it’s all about?” Eve asked. “Being famous? Professional jealousy, you dumb bastard?”
Price turned back to DeCamp. “That’s the arrogant bullshit I’ve had to swallow all this time,” he said.
“You could have come to me,” Eve said plaintively.
“So now what can I do to help with the mission?” Don said.
“Why, die, of course,” DeCamp said, and he raised his MP5 and shot the scientist in the face at point-blank range, driving the man backwards off his feet, and sending a spray of blood across the deck.
Some of the women techs screamed, but Eve stood her ground — her mouth open, her eyes wide.
Defloria shoved Mitchell away and bolted, but before he got five feet Wyner raised his weapon and fired two silenced shots, blowing the back of the InterOil manager’s skull apart and sending him to the deck.
“All right!” DeCamp shouted. “Calm down! No one else needs to be hurt.”
“You mean to kill us all,” Eve said when her people finally quieted down.
“Not necessary,” DeCamp said, and he motioned toward the open pipe locker. “If you will be so kind as to step inside, we’ll lock you away for a bit, and you’ll be out of the way and absolutely safe.”
SIXTY-TWO
Gail reached the shadows behind one of the massive impeller cable tripods just as Eve and her postdocs and techs were herded into one of the pipe lockers about fifty feet away and the doors secured with a pry bar.
She’d been gone not much more than five minutes from the time she’d heard the incoming helicopter and slipped away from the party until now, and Defloria and Don Price both were lying dead on the deck, obviously shot in the head with powerful weapons. Silenced weapons, because up in the delivery control room where she’d gone to send the Mayday, she hadn’t heard a thing. All she’d been concentrating on at that moment were the facts that Lapides and one of his crew were dead and the radios destroyed.
Mac had been right again, just as he had been right about an imminent attack. They’d apparently taken on one or more ringers from Biloxi. And when DeCamp’s signal came they’d swept through the rig killing people. Maybe even Mac.
The slightly built man giving orders was DeCamp, the same man she’d seen in the second-floor corridor at Hutchinson Island. Although she couldn’t hear his voice or see his eyes this time, she could tell he was the same man from the way he held himself, his self-assured manner, his apparent indifference. Nor could she clearly hear what he was saying, but she knew that he was issuing orders.
Watching them she felt more alone than she had ever felt, except the night she’d learned that her father had been shot to death. She had to assume the worst-case scenario now, that Mac was down and she was on her own. There were six of them, including DeCamp and possibly an additional one or more somewhere aboard, killing the
