rest of the construction and delivery crew, including Herb Stefanato who’d been at the party with Defloria.
She didn’t think it was likely for her to take all of them out or even save the rig from destruction, but she figured they would be elsewhere engaged setting their explosives so that she would have a shot at getting Eve Larsen and her people out of the storage locker and into one of the automatic lifeboats and launch them into the sea.
DeCamp said something to his operators, two of whom immediately headed over to the outside stairs that led up to the helipad, while the others went with him to the main corridor hatch that led in one direction to the science control room and in the other across to the living quarters.
All that was left were the two bodies, the party table, the constant noise of the boat whistles and horns, and the pipe locker. Since her father’s death and especially since what she considered were her failures at Hutchinson Island, Gail had come out here with the selfish motive of proving herself to Mac. It was important because the only other man she’d ever loved had been shot to death in downtown Minneapolis by a street bum, and she didn’t want to lose Mac or disappoint him.
She waited a full two minutes after DeCamp and his operators were gone, then cocked the hammer of her SIG and stepped out of the shadows, hesitated just a moment longer to make sure no one had been left behind, then hurried across to the pipe locker. She could hear murmurs from inside, like pigeons in a hutch, and she leaned in close.
“Dr. Larsen, it’s me.”
The murmurs stopped and Eve was right there on the other side of the door. “Can you get us out of here?”
The broad muzzle of a suppressor tube touched the side of Gail’s face and she started to bring her pistol up.
“No need to die here, Ms. Newby,” Kabatov said. “Not now, not like this.”
She was seething with anger. She’d let this happen. She’d walked right into it as if she’d been wearing a blindfold. Again she hadn’t trusted her instincts that had been singing the tune loud and clear: DeCamp was a professional who hardly ever made mistakes. Price had been a traitor, so he would have informed DeCamp about Mac and about her. And setting the trap, which she’d walked into, had been child’s play.
“Decock your weapon and raise it over your shoulder, handle first.”
She’d been trained to suddenly move her head a couple of inches to the right, bat the muzzle of Kabatov’s weapon to the left while firing her pistol over her shoulder into the man’s face. But he was a pro and she didn’t know if she had the luck.
So she did as she was told, her disappointment in herself raging as deeply and strongly as the grindingly heavy chip she’d been carrying on her shoulder for as long as she could remember.
“Bastard,” she said.
Kabatov laughed and stepped back. “Pull the pry bar out and step inside, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about.”
Gail turned to look at him, his face flat, his lips thick, a five o’clock shadow darkening his already swarthy features. He was a pit bull ready and willing to tear her throat out with the slightest provocation, and she shuddered inwardly.
She pulled the pry bar out of the latch, a momentary urge to hit him in the face with it, instead she handed it to him, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Eve and the others had backed away, and for just a moment seeing who it was they lit up, but then they spotted Kabatov and the door was closed, plunging them into near-total darkness, the only light coming through the seams at the corners.
“Where’s McGarvey?” Eve demanded.
Gail was certain that Kabatov was still listening. “I think he’s dead,” she said for his benefit.
“Christ,” Eve said.
And in that one word Gail found that she had genuine pity for the woman because she knew for certain that Eve was in love with Mac. Probably head over heels, judging by her despair. An even if they got out of this, both of them would end up disappointed.
They heard something rattle into the latch, and Gail knew that it wasn’t the pry bar. It was a padlock. She put her ear to the door in time to hear footfalls moving away, and then nothing except the boat horns and the normal machinery sounds of the platform’s various systems.
“Anyone got a flashlight?” she asked.
“On my key ring,” someone said.
“Won’t he see it through the cracks?” Eve asked.
“He’s gone,” Gail said.
A thin beam of light suddenly came on, enough so they at least could see each other. Eve and her techs and postdocs were frightened half out of their skulls.
“Is it true that Kirk is dead?” Eve asked. “Or did you just tell us that for his benefit in case he was listening?”
“I don’t know,” Gail said. “At least I hope he isn’t. But in the meantime we’re on our own. Everyone look around see if we can find something to use to get us out of here, and maybe a weapon of some sort.”
“What good will that do?” one of the techs asked. “Someone on the bridge must have sent a Mayday by now.”
“That’s where I went when I heard the helicopter. But they’re all dead and the radio gear has been destroyed.”
“I say we don’t antagonize them,” the same young man said. “My God, look what they did to Don and Mr. Defloria. Let them do what they came to do, and when they’re gone we’ll take to the lifeboats. We can always come up with another oil platform.”
“They’re not going to let us out of here,” Gail told them.
“But they said they’re going to blow up the rig or something.”
“Yes, and we’ll ride it to the bottom of the Gulf,” Eve said. “They have to make sure no one aboard survives.”
“But why?” a young woman asked.
“There’s no reason,” someone else said.
“They can’t let us live, we saw their faces,” Eve said. She turned and looked at the others. “Where’s Lisa?”
SIXTY-THREE
McGarvey’s hands had been tied until this moment. Lying in the darkness on the platform that had once accommodated the workspace for the base of the exploration drilling rig about thirty feet above the main deck, he was in a position to see everything that had gone on below, plus the helipad one hundred feet to the left and ten feet above him.
His pistol and Franchi shotgun were all but useless at those distances, so he couldn’t have risked trying to take his shot.
DeCamp and his people were all gone, two up to the helicopter where they’d retrieved two satchels and disappeared belowdecks, and the others into the main lateral corridor below and to McGarvey’s right that ran the width of the platform with access not only to the living and recreation decks, but in one direction to the science control room and the other to the delivery bridge.
The contractor who’d locked Gail and the others inside the pipe locker had walked away and McGarvey was about to go down to the main deck when the man came back, obviously taking pains to conceal his return, and McGarvey eased back into the shadows.
But now the main deck was deserted, and so far as McGarvey could tell no sentries had been posted, though he was fairly sure that at least one or two of DeCamp’s people were looking for him, while the two who’d carried the satchels from the helicopter were setting the explosives to sink the rig. Which made them priority one.
