was en route to Florida, the danger — at least from that source — could be eliminated within the next week to ten days, maybe sooner.
And if that were to happen, Mac figured he would have a real shot at finding out who’d hired the operator and why.
“We’re back to square one,” he said. “How do we destroy this rig?”
“A half ton of dynamite, I suppose,” Defloria said. “Hurt it so badly that there’d be nothing left that was worth rebuilding. And I doubt if the company would be willing to supply Dr. Larsen with another platform.”
“I don’t mean hurt it,” McGarvey said. “I mean how do we send it to the bottom of the Gulf with all hands aboard?”
Defloria spread his hands, and shook his head. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“What’s the most vulnerable structure aboard? The legs?”
“If you released the high-pressure air and punched holes below the waterline, they’d flood, and the platform would settle to the surface. If a big sea was running, the waves would do a lot of damage, but the platform would probably still float.”
“At least long enough for us to get everybody into the lifeboats,” Lapides said.
They weren’t thinking like terrorists bent on destroying the rig, they were engineers working out how to save it. But McGarvey saw it. “What if we destroyed any two adjacent legs?”
Defloria was thinking about it now, really thinking, and the conclusions he was drawing were extremely disturbing. He looked like a man who was lost, and was just beginning to realize it. “And you’re here to protect us?” he mumbled.
“You have to think like them.”
“Like who?” Defloria asked. He was angry but intimidated.
“Would it sink?”
“The platform would capsize. But it might not sink right away, not until the compartments in the superstructure flooded out. And even then there might be enough reserve buoyancy in the empty oil storage tanks and tool lockers to keep us afloat. But what would you do with the crew? Some of them would probably survive. Or would they be murdered?”
“Is there a space that could be sealed that’s big enough to hold everybody?” McGarvey asked.
“The crew’s mess,” Lapides said.
“More reserve buoyancy,” Defloria said, but he looked sick.
“Could it be flooded?”
Defloria took a moment before he answered. “What kind of people are you talking about? Islamic terrorists? Nine/eleven fanatics, willing to die for the cause? I mean, this is nuts, isn’t it? Completely crazy?”
Both he and Lapides were trying not to understand what McGarvey was asking for, it was perfectly clear from how they looked at him, and yet they knew. And it was obvious that they knew.
“Two hatches, one from the main corridor and the other through the kitchen to the loading area at the rail,” Lapides said. “They could be spot-welded in place. And when Vanessa turned turtle the ventilation shafts would be underwater.”
“Could someone swim out?”
“Too far,” Defloria said. “And besides, the water would be rushing in. It would be like trying to swim against the stream of a fire hose.” He shook his head again. “They’d all die in there.”
“Anything else?” McGarvey asked.
“It would have to be done from aboard the platform. Unless they had a sub and fired a couple of torpedoes, it would be just about impossible to get close enough to plant explosives if there was even a small sea running.”
“When do you get under way?” McGarvey asked.
“We’re about done here, everything else we can finish en route,” Defloria said. “The tug will be heading out to us tomorrow, and Dr. Larsen has her news conference on Thursday. When that’s done we can get under way.”
McGarvey hadn’t been told, but it was about what he should have expected. Eve and her people couldn’t think like a terrorist any more than Defloria or Lapides could. “I didn’t know about the media being here,” he said.
“It was the company’s idea. Is there a problem?”
McGarvey shook his head. “No.” On the contrary, he thought, because it was possible that his contractor would come aboard to look things over, and he had to suppress a little smile. Maybe the bastard would make a mistake after all.
Defloria gave McGarvey a hard hat and walked with him through the main pipe and cable corridor along the back of the platform directly beneath the superstructure. The sound of the wind was muted, but each time a wave broke against the windward legs the entire rig shuddered a little, and the racket of metal crashing on metal, of welding torches and cutting tools and the two large lifting cranes was practically deafening, so they had to shout to be heard.
“You don’t paint a pretty picture.”
“It’s just a precaution,” McGarvey said.
Defloria was angry. “The thing I don’t get is why everyone is willing to risk our lives? It makes no sense. Are we being used as bait?”
McGarvey wanted to tell him that there were bigger issues at stake, that the attack on Hutchinson Island, the assassination attempt in Oslo, and possibly one against this rig, were only three parts of something much larger. As long as oil was being pumped out of the ground and used as a major source of the world’s energy, experiments like Eve Larsen’s had to be stopped. Trillions of dollars were at stake.
But Defloria’s questions had been rhetorical, and he pointed out a hatch at the end of the corridor. “Five flights up.”
“You’re not in this alone,” McGarvey said.
Defloria’s eyes were hard. “Somehow that doesn’t give me much comfort. And what do I tell my crew?”
“Nothing for the moment.”
When McGarvey reached Eve’s lab on the fifth level the expansive space with wraparound windows was a beehive of frenetic activity. Most of the techs and postdocs were dressed in jeans and GFDL or NOAA sweatshirts, a few in khakis, and Don Price in white coveralls, and they were unpacking electronic equipment from the boxes and crates and aluminum cases and installing all of it in racks, or on four computer consoles that formed a broad U. Don was the first to spot him at the doorway. “He’s here,” he said.
Eve, who’d been on her hands and knees behind one of the consoles got to her feet, the look of happiness, total joy, and contentment, maybe even a little excitement, dying a little when she saw him. She too was dressed in white coveralls, the knees dirty from crawling around on the deck.
Some of the others had stopped what they were doing to look at the former CIA director who had twice been there to protect
“Okay, listen up,” Eve said, coming around the console and laying down a screwdriver. “And that includes you, Lisa.”
A few of her techs chuckled, but they stopped what they were doing.
“For those of you who don’t know this gentleman, his name is Kirk McGarvey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who has been of some service to me. He’s here to help with security and I’d like you to listen to what he has to say.”
“You’re busy, so I’ll only take a couple of minutes,” McGarvey said. “It’s likely that the Reverend Schlagel and some of his followers will stage some sort of a Greenpeace-type demonstration against your project.”
“The hell with them,” someone said.
“They might even try to get in our way, somehow stop us from reaching Florida. But I don’t think they’ll be very effective. This platform is just too big.”
“Will they try to board us?” a young woman who’d been working at one of the computer consoles asked.
