The Ark

in information retrieval. Locke often used his services to salvage electronic data from disaster sites, but Aiden was a renaissance computer whiz and could tackle almost anything Locke threw his way. Locke wasn’t surprised to see that he was checking his email at 8:45 on a Saturday night.

Tyler, my man, I’ve got your answer. You awake? the message said.

I am now. Where are you? Locke replied.

At home, playing Halo and shooting Red Bull with some nerds from the office. I’m kicking ass, BTW. I would have answered you sooner, but I just saw your message.

What did you find out?

You haven’t heard from John Coleman in a while, have you?

Not for six months. Why?

He’s dead. Freak accident.

Dead? John Coleman was only in his fifties and seemed to be in perfect health.

What happened to him? Locke typed.

Instead of a reply, the computer window said, Connection lost. Great timing. Just when they were getting to the good part.

Locke checked his connection to Scotia One’s wi-fi network, but it was showing 100 %. He tried to pull up Google, but all he got was an error page. That meant the rig’s connection to the Internet was down.

Scotia One was equipped with a satellite antenna that served as its connection to the outside world. The workers on board could use it to surf the web and send emails when they weren’t working. It also served as a backup to the platform’s radio. There could be only two explanations for the connection to be down. Either there was some kind of internal glitch, or the antenna itself was disabled.

Locke looked out the window. The fog was still heavy, and the sea was relatively calm. The conditions made a mechanical failure unlikely. With no storm to damage the equipment, the antenna should be intact. It must have been some kind of electrical or software problem.

He picked up the phone and called the control room. It was answered by Frank Hobson. Locke remembered him as timid man with black horn-rimmed glasses who always worked the graveyard shift alone.

“Hi, Tyler,” he said in a reedy voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Frank, I’m having some trouble with the Internet. When will it be back up?”

“I didn’t even know it was down. You’re probably the only one up at this hour using it. Let me check.” Locke heard tapping on a keyboard. “Yup, it’s out here, too.”

“Can you isolate the problem? I was messaging someone and got cut off.”

Hobson paused. More tapping. “The software checks out. Maybe it’s a mechanical problem. Might be the satellite dish. I’ll have to call someone to look at it.”

“I can do that for you.” Locke was awake now and eager to get the rest of the story from Aiden, so he thought he might as well get some air.

“You know where it is?”

“Yeah, Grant and I were working on it a couple of days ago when we were trying to diagnose that electrical problem. If it looks like an electrical glitch, I’ll haul Grant out of bed.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Locke hung up, stood, and stretched. He threw on his jeans and jacket and headed outside.

The night air was crisp, and the ever-present smell of oil flowed over him with the breeze. Even this late, workers roamed the rig, oil production being a 24-hour job. Visibility was limited to 30 feet. The screech of some sort of grinding tool pierced his ears every few seconds.

Locke stepped onto the catwalk that led to the top of the habitat module, where the satellite dish was located. Ahead of him, barely visible through the haze, Locke could make out the figure of a man dressed in a black jumpsuit disappearing into the mist toward the lifeboat evacuation stairs. He had something slung over his shoulder, but Locke couldn’t make out what it was before he was gone. Maybe he had already fixed the dish. Locke called out twice, but the man didn’t respond. Must not have heard him over the grinding noise.

Locke reached the stairs and climbed up to the antenna cluster that formed Scotia One’s communications link. The satellite dish was about six-feet across, pointed at a geosynchronous satellite, and the radio antenna was 30-feet tall, with plenty of power to reach St. John’s 200 miles away. Neither was damaged.

He trailed the wires leading from the dish, and an iciness knotted his stomach when he saw the problem. The wires had been cut and a section removed. Whoever had done it was skilled. Locke followed the wires from the radio mast and found the same thing. The wires ended in a control box, which had been smashed. Someone didn’t want them in touch with the outside world.

Locke could think of a few reasons why someone would go to that trouble, and none of them had a happy ending. He rushed down to the control room and burst through the door, startling Hobson, the only man inside it. His thick glasses magnified his eyes to a cartoonish size.

“We have an emergency,” Locke said curtly. “Someone cut the wires to the antennas and destroyed the control junction.”

Hobson leaped out of his chair. “What? Who would do that?”

“Get Finn and tell him there’s an intruder on the platform.”

“An intruder?” Hobson said, recoiling at the thought.

“I saw him a few minutes ago. At the time I just thought he was just a rig worker wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen before, a black jumpsuit.” The intruder must have known it wouldn’t take much time for the crew to discover the destroyed equipment, which meant he wasn’t going to be on board much longer. Locke had to catch him before he got away, and for that he needed Grant’s help. For all Locke knew, there were multiple intruders, and they were heavily armed. That notion disturbed Locke, but it would terrify Hobson, so he didn’t mention it.

“How could anyone get on board?” Hobson asked.

“Maybe he climbed up. Doesn’t matter. Before you call Finn, get Grant Westfield and tell him to meet me at the lifeboats. Quietly. You know his cabin number?”

Hobson nodded. “Should I activate the alarm?”

“No. That’ll tip off the intruder that we know he’s here.” Locke needed to find out why this guy would want to cut off their communications. He wished he could get his hands on a gun, but an oil platform was the last place that they would let him bring his trusty 9mm Glock, and they certainly didn’t stock shotguns on board.

He had to hope he and Grant would be able to handle the situation. In a battle, Locke preferred staggering force against an overmatched opponent. If there were two armed intruders, he and Grant could handle it. They had been up against worse odds than that before. But if there were three or more, they could have real problems, so some kind of weapon might make a difference.

Hobson snatched up the phone and dialed. Locke went to the door, but before leaving, he said, “Frank, tell Grant to stop at the tool room and pick up two big, fat wrenches.”

ELEVEN

Locke crept down the stairs until the lifeboats were in view. He felt naked. No gun. No situational intelligence. No plan. Although he could improvise with the best of them, he’d rather put together a well-thought- out plan of attack that — like all Army operations — went to hell after the mission started. Instead, he’d already skipped to the second part, which made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.

Through the fog, he saw the man in the black jumpsuit hunched over the hatch of the rightmost lifeboat, attaching to something to it. He was in his thirties, dirty blond, medium build, no visible tattoos. A silenced Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hung from his shoulder by a strap. He seemed to be alone. Visibility was now over 30 feet, and lot of open space separated him from Locke. It would be almost impossible to sneak up on him.

Locke felt a tap on his shoulder. Fists up, he whirled around to find Grant crouching behind him. For a big man, he was as light on his feet as Fred Astaire. Locke was glad Grant was on his side.