FIFTY-SIX
The accommodations level aboard Vanessa Explorer was always reasonably quiet because as shorthanded as they were, the roustabouts, welders, and construction crew worked twelve hours out of twenty-four on rotating shifts — six hours on, followed by eight off, and then another six on followed by four off — someone was always sleeping. This schedule also meant that each crewman got his own compartment, a luxury usually observed only for foremen and above.
It was around one in the afternoon and after making sure that no one was coming down the corridor, Gurov knocked lightly on Kabatov’s door. Both their sleep times had coincided for the first time and early today they’d agreed to meet in secret. No one aboard knew that they were friends, and both of them had kept to themselves, so aloof and surly that no one bothered them. As long as they did their jobs, no one cared.
Kabatov let him in. “Any further word?”
“No,” Gurov told him. “But it’ll happen in six days, so I thought now would be a good time to go over everything.”
“You’re right. And I’m getting goddamned tired of actually working for a living.”
Gurov had to laugh, even though both of them had done plenty of manual labor when they were kids growing up — Kabatov in Siberia working with his father and uncles in the coal mines, and Boris in a foundry in Noginsk, outside of Moscow. But when they’d met almost ten years ago on the mercenary circuit they found that they, and just about every other gun for hire, were kindred spirits. “It’s a hell of a lot easier blowing up shit and killing people than working in a factory.”
Kabatov unfolded a floor plan of the platform and spread it out on the bed. “Between what information you’ve brought, plus what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I think we have all the comms units spotted.”
“Except for sat phones.”
“Well, we know that Al Lapides, the delivery skipper, has one, and Price told you that the bitch has her own phone, but it’s usually stashed in her cabin.”
“He promised to take care of it when the time comes,” Gurov said.
Kabatov looked up. “Leaves us with two problems, the first of which is McGarvey and the broad he brought with him. I’ve seen both of them around the rig and neither one of them are carrying anything that looks like a sat phone. But both of them are armed.”
“Naturally,” Gurov said. “And the second problem is the tug?”
“Right. It’ll be equipped with a SSB transceiver, maybe two, and the skipper will most likely have his own sat phone. Somebody will have to get aboard and take care of the crew before they can send a Mayday.”
“I think he’s got it covered,” Gurov said. “I don’t think much gets past the bastard.”
“He was wrong about the first approach with scuba gear.”
Gurov conceded the point and nodded. “But he was man enough to admit it, and listen to our advice.”
“Have you ever heard of him before this job?”
“Rumors only. But he’s got money and it showed up in my account on time.”
Kabatov nodded. “And mine, too. So he’s got deep pockets, but I’m wondering just how reliable he is in the field, and who the other guys are he’s bringing along.”
Gurov had had the same rising misgivings over the past few days. He and Nikolai had worked together before, and they knew and trusted each other’s tradecraft and abilities. And in normal circumstances, if there was such a thing in this business, teams were assembled long before an operation and trained together until they got it right. This time was different, and it was worrisome.
“We’ll take it as it’s handed to us,” he said. “Either that or quit right now while we’re still within helicopter range of land.”
But Kabatov shook his head. “No way I’m walking away from a payday like this. I’m just telling you that we need to cover our own arses, just in case something should go south at the last minute. Dead mercs can’t collect on payday no matter how good a job they did.”
“I agree,” Gurov said.
The first principle wasn’t the mission, it was personal survival, something definitely not taught in Spetsnaz training, which had been all about mission and teamwork. But the drill instructors hammered home one overriding skill that the good operator — the man who completed the mission and returned to base for debriefing — needed, which was the ability to improvise. Think on your feet, come up with the right solution in the field when you’d run into an ambush, or had no way out, or found yourself in an impossible situation.
After five years of basic training and advanced schooling, each officer candidate was given a one-man operation for his final examination. Most candidates didn’t make it past this point, and reverted to the rank of sergeant. A great many ended up disabled and a few dead.
Gurov and four other officer candidates were airlifted as prisoners to the Kara-Kum military prison in the middle of Turkmenistan’s desert of the same name, their status in Spetsnaz unknown to the prison guards. Their mission was to escape, singly, and make their way to the town of Kizyl Arvat, two hundred kilometers to the southwest. It was high summer with daily temperatures that could reach fifty degrees Celsius, and there was no water or food, except what they could carry from the prison.
Three of the candidates gave up before nightfall of the first day, so dehydrated and sunblinded they’d been unable to hide from capture.
But Gurov had improvised. He’d not only carried water, he’d brought one of the prisoners with him — a man accused of killing his family in a drunken rage while at home on leave from the army for which he was serving a life sentence with no hope of parole. They traveled by night and hid behind sand dunes during the day, their water running out less than thirty-six hours after they’d escaped. With thirty kilometers to go, both men nearly on their last legs, Gurov pulled out a knife, slit the prisoner’s throat, and drank the man’s blood. Survival at any price.
Four days later he was commissioned as a Spetsnaz lieutenant along with only a handful of graduates from a class of one hundred during ceremonies outside Moscow. And he’d spent the remainder of his relatively brief career improvising and surviving — priority one. Nothing had changed now.
“Did he tell you anything about the other four guys he hired?”
“No,” Gurov said, and that too was slightly bothersome. “And you’re right that we need to cover our arses, because I think in the end we could end up dead. We need a plan.”
“Funny you should make the suggestion, Boris, because I’ve worked out a few things.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
McGarvey awoke, automatically reaching for his pistol on the nightstand, not knowing what he’d heard. It was five in the afternoon, and he was still a little slow on the uptake. He’d spent the last few nights prowling around the rig, looking for the things he’d missed on his previous inspections, and wondering sometimes if he’d been too long away from the field and his tradecraft had become rusty. He took catnaps during the day, and although he and Gail were often together, they were just as often not. They mostly maintained separate schedules in an effort to keep an eye on things 24/7.
His sat phone rang a second time, and he laid his pistol down, got up, and went to the phone on his desk as it rang a third time. It was Otto.
“We think we know who our contractor might be. An ex-Buffalo Battalion light colonel by the name of Brian DeCamp. No photographs, of course, which means he was able to erase his records and change his identity, and in all the years since the Battalion was disbanded he only ever made one mistake. And he’s done it again.”
McGarvey was impressed and he said so.
“Eric actually came up with the idea that if our contractor wanted to hit the platform it stands to reason that he would have to train a team either on an oil rig in the Persian Gulf or somewhere like that, or on a mock-up. Maybe full scale of at least a part of the rig. Louise made a couple of calls, and I came up with a search engine for all of our surveillance satellite feeds over the past month and a half, and displayed it for Eric in the Dome.”
