Turning the receive volume way down so that he had to bring the handheld to his ear to hear if DeCamp answered, he hurried down the corridor, holding up at the open door to the galley. But the mess hall appeared to be deserted.
At the far corner he held up again, and keyed his walkie-talkie, but didn’t speak.
From somewhere down the corridor, very close, he heard the distinct click of a handheld receiving his signal, and raising his shotgun he peered around the corner, when DeCamp’s voice came over his walkie-talkie.
“Don’t kill him yet.”
Someone in one of the rooms a few feet farther down the corridor reached around the door frame with a silenced MAC-10 and fired a short burst. McGarvey snapped off three shots and ducked back, directly into the warm muzzle of a suppressor.
“You killed a friend of ours,” Burt said, his British accent heavy.
“You have me,” McGarvey said, dropping the walkie-talkie. He raised the shotgun up above his head, the muzzle pointed toward the overhead.
“Prick,” Burt said, and he grabbed the Franchi, his pressure with the MP5 SDG against the back of McGarvey’s head momentarily eased.
McGarvey ducked to the right, the Heckler & Koch firing an inch from the side of his head, and he slammed the Franchi’s receiver into the man’s face, breaking his nose and smashing out two teeth.
Burt grunted in pain as he stepped back and tried to bring the MP5 to bear, but McGarvey kept on him, batting his gun hand away, and yanking the shotgun out of his grasp.
“You should have turned down this job,” McGarvey said, jamming the Franchi under Burt’s chin. He pulled off one round, the twelve-bore taking off the back of the merc’s skull and violently slamming his body against the bulkhead.
As Burt crumpled to the deck, McGarvey grabbed the submachine gun, pointed it around the corner and, one-handed, sprayed the corridor, emptying the magazine.
There was no return fire.
“Get off this rig or I’ll kill you,” McGarvey called out, laying the weapon on the deck softly enough to make no noise. Picking up the walkie-talkie he hurried to the opposite end of the corridor where he ducked down the companionway, holding up on the first stair, and peering around the corner.
But no one was coming, or if they were they were being cautious about it.
McGarvey continued down five levels, taking the stairs two at a time, and making as little noise as possible. By now the explosive charges would have been set on two of the four legs, somewhere as close to the waterline as possible. But he didn’t think DeCamp would push the button until the helicopter was secured. For the moment their primary concern was taking him down and finding out if he’d been telling the truth that he had something they needed.
At the bottom, below the main deck, but still forty feet above the surface of the Gulf, the platform’s four massive legs, each thirty feet in diameter, were interconnected by a latticework of steel beams and girders and a catwalk with high railings.
Still no one had come after him, nor could he see anyone at or near the legs, which had to mean that the charges had already been set and the two men had gone topsides. But they had to know that he was down there. It was possible that DeCamp had sent someone to check out the helicopter and was at this moment getting set to fly off and push the button, but there was something else, McGarvey was certain of it.
DeCamp’s escape. Once the rig went to the bottom he’d be stuck with the flotilla. His only way out was the Bell Ranger, but with a full load its range was limited. They’d never get out of the Gulf.
But DeCamp knew what he was doing. He had a plan, and he was confident in it. McGarvey had heard that much in the man’s voice. There’d been no frustration, no fear, and especially no anger. He was a commander in control of the battlefield, and he had an escape route which he thought was foolproof.
But confident men made mistakes.
McGarvey turned up the walkie-talkie’s volume to counteract the noise of the boat horns, the tug’s massive engines out in front of them, and the wind tunneling through the substructure and the motion-induced waves sloshing against the legs, and pocketed it.
Keeping low, he headed to the leg on the front right corner of the rig relative to the direction it was being towed. He had a fifty-fifty chance at picking one of the two legs that had been sabotaged, but correct leg or not, he still had to find the explosives, while at the same time keep an eye over his shoulder for an attack he expected to come at any moment.
DeCamp knew where he was headed.
McGarvey hurried down the short ramp that led across from the main catwalk to another much narrower- railed walkway that circled the leg. An olive drab satchel, more like a small duffle bag, was shaped in an arc and jammed between the walkway and the curved steel plates of the leg.
Glancing over his shoulder to make sure one of DeCamp’s shooters wasn’t right behind him, McGarvey knelt down in front of the satchel. No wires came out of the thing, which meant its detonator was already in countdown mode, or the explosion would be radio-controlled once DeCamp and his people abandoned the rig. McGarvey gingerly released the snap catch and eased open the top flap. The duffle was half filled with a gray material that smelled faintly sour, like plumber’s putty. It was Semtex, the same explosive he and Gail had brought with them. Exceedingly stable — only an electrical charge would set it off — and extremely powerful. He figured the bag had to contain at least twenty kilos of the stuff, more than enough to take out a large section of the leg.
A radio-controlled detonator probe was stuck in the side of the mass, the light on a cell phone-sized unit green.
He glanced over his shoulder again, but if anyone was back there they were in the deeper shadows. Taking care not to disturb the detonator unit, which was possibly motion sensitive — too big a force or sudden movement would set it off — McGarvey prised the package out of the space between the narrow catwalk and the leg and set it down.
“Don’t kill him just yet,” DeCamp’s voice came from McGarvey’s walkie-talkie.
Kabatov unexpectedly came from around the curve of the leg, where he’d been waiting, and slammed the back plate of the MAC 10 into McGarvey’s temple.
A shower of stars burst inside of McGarvey’s head, and he went down heavily, banging his face on the steel grate.
These guys are good, the thought crystallized as he came around and could understand what he was hearing.
“He’s down,” Kabatov said.
“See if he’s carrying anything,” DeCamp’s voice came from the walkie-talkie. “Joseph says the bird appears to be okay, but I want to be sure the bastard didn’t take something we missed.”
“Standby,” Kabatov said.
McGarvey willed himself to remain loose, as if he were still unconscious, as Kabatov turned him over on his back, and began searching his pockets, finding and tossing the Semtex packets and fuses overboard.
“Semtex and acid fuses,” Kabatov radioed.
“Nothing from the helicopter?”
“Nothing yet, but maybe he hid whatever it is,” Kabatov said, and he laid the walkie-talkie and MAC-10 on the deck and grabbed the front of McGarvey’s jacket so that he could pull him away from the duffle bag to make a more thorough search. It was a mistake.
McGarvey suddenly reared up, headbutting the Russian, driving the man backwards and off balance.
But Kabatov was quick and he slammed his left elbow into the side of McGarvey’s neck, pushing him back, and he dropped to one knee and reached for his weapon, grunting something in Russian.
As he fell back McGarvey managed to kick the submachine gun away, and Kabatov lunged for it as it went over the side of the catwalk into the Gulf forty feet below.
“Oops,” McGarvey said, regaining his feet and charging before Kabatov could get out of the way. He wrapped his left arm around the Russian’s neck from behind to stabilize it in one position, and using his right hand pulled Kabatov’s head sharply to the right, the top of the man’s spinal column snapping.
McGarvey let the man’s body collapse onto the catwalk, and went back to the duffle bag, picked it up with great care, walked back up onto the main catwalk and well away from the leg and gingerly lifted the thing over the
