‘Yeah, but—’ Chaz began to argue.
Jason was growing more irritated and cut him off. ‘Let me put it another way. If this had been an actual break-in attempt, on a scale of importance to this country’s security your oil-platform hijack would have equated to a handbag snatch in comparison . . . There’s nothing more we can do. Deal with it. Good day to you.’ He headed out of the room.
Binning gave Stratton a sympathetic look and followed his boss.
Stratton watched them go before looking back at the small screen. ‘Sounds like you’re going to have to sit this out for the next twenty-four, Chaz.’
‘That’s just friggin’ brilliant!’ Chaz shouted. ‘We
‘I know exactly how you feel. What was the task?’
‘Dropping in some new surveillance device that these guys put together.’
‘When are the assault teams supposed to be getting in?’
‘First packet in the next forty-eight hours. Two more to follow soon after.’
‘Where’s the forward mounting base?’
‘Aberdeen initially. Then on board one of the assault ships. They’re going to give us our RV within the hour.’
‘Any task timings?’
‘No. But they want to have the ability to assault asap. This puts us back big time. Someone’s going to be pissed off in Poole.’
‘I’d better let them know the bad news,’ Stratton said as he realised what he was going to have to do.
‘Sorry, mate.’
Stratton suspected that Chaz was going to get it in the neck. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll talk to you later.’
Chaz’s frustrated look filled the small screen.
Stratton headed back to the main complex.
7
The wind whipped at Deacon as he walked down a set of metal steps beneath the housing deck that was sandwiched under the main deck. He stopped to look further down between multiple cross-struts at a couple of his men working below. ‘How’s it coming?’ he shouted.
The Scotsman looked up, grimacing unhappily. ‘It’s coming,’ he said as he fixed a thick malleable plastic pack horizontally to one of the massive supporting legs that reached down into the foaming grey water thirty metres below. The metre-long pack joined the end of a string of others fixed around the leg. The Bulgarian handed Jock another pack from one of several large plastic containers that the team had brought with them.
‘That storm front’ll be here in an hour,’ Deacon shouted. ‘That stuff’ll need to withstand a good pelting.’
‘You do your job, I’ll do mine,’ the Scotsman shouted back without looking up.
‘Good enough,’ Deacon mumbled to himself. His satellite phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out to read the screen. He pushed the call button and put it to his ear. ‘Yeah.’
‘You are cleared to go to the next phase,’ a rugged male voice said.
Deacon checked his watch. ‘We’re ahead of schedule, then.’
‘The schedule was always meant to be flexible.’
‘Will do,’ Deacon said, unconcerned. He turned off the phone. ‘How much longer will you be?’ he called out.
‘Ten, maybe fifteen minutes,’ the Scotsman shouted.
‘Head up to the control room when you’re done. I need you to do that video feed.’
‘Am I the only bastard with any brains in this outfit?’ Jock shouted.
The Bulgarian paused to look at the Scotsman as he handed him another explosive charge.
Deacon knew that the man actually relished the responsibility. Jock was one of only two on the team whom he’d met previously. The first time had been in 2004 in the Green Zone US military hospital in Baghdad. Jock had had three bullet holes in him. Deacon had only had a piece of shrapnel in his leg. The Scot had been the sole survivor of an ambush on a six-vehicle, thirty-man convoy to Mosul.
A couple of hundred insurgents had hit them from all sides on the outskirts of the city. It had been a soldier’s worst nightmare. They’d had no support, no air cover, no reinforcements and no hope. Jock’s steel-plated black pick-up had been riddled with armour-piercing bullets within seconds and the next thing he remembered was running down the road back the way they’d come with a couple of colleagues on his tail. They’d all taken hits. The others had gone down but Jock had managed somehow to keep on going. Stopping would have meant death.
He wouldn’t have survived had it not been for a local who’d happened to come out of a driveway. God only knew why the man had chosen that moment to go for a drive. Iraqis tended to put all survival judgements in the hands of Allah. Operating on full survival mode Jock had shot the man through the head, yanked him out of the car, jumped in and hit the accelerator.
Within a couple of months he’d been back on the convoy route. The man was part crazy, Deacon was certain of that.
Deacon headed back to the accommodation block and went in through a door and then another immediately after it that acted as an airlock. The doors closed with a bang behind him, slammed shut by the rising wind. ‘Viking, this is Deacon,’ he said into his walkie-talkie. ‘I’m heading to the galley to set up the first media scenario.’
‘Understood,’ a voice came back.
Deacon pocketed the radio and walked along a narrow corridor of rooms, some with their doors open to reveal beds and closets. Bedding and clothing lay on the floor of the corridor as if there had been a hasty exit. There was no one here.
Deacon pushed through a door at the end, past vending machines, emergency firefighting equipment and signage, through a pair of swing doors on his left and then into another long corridor. Near the far end Viking and the Lebanese thug stood outside yet another door, carbines to hand, magazine pouches on belts around their waists, pistols in holsters on their thighs and radios dangling around their necks.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Deacon called out as he approached.
The red-headed warrior glanced at his Arab colleague and then back at Deacon.
‘Yeah, you,’ Deacon said, looking at Viking.
‘I answered,’ Viking explained.
‘So what are you still doing here? Go set up the bloody camera!’
The Norseman understood, grabbed his foul-weather jacket off a hook and hurried away.
‘Viking idiot,’ Deacon muttered as he pushed in through the door they had been guarding. The Lebanese thug jammed it open with his foot, his weapon at the ready.
Inside the large dining room a hundred and sixty-four platform workers minus those maintaining the rig’s life-support systems sat on the floor, hands secured behind their backs with heavy-duty plastic cuffs. They were a variety of shapes and sizes, many of them big or just overweight, dressed in dirty clothes and looking dishevelled. Among them were the rig manager and the security supervisor. They all eyed Deacon, their expressions ranging from curious to self-pitying, from coldly calculating to angrily malevo - lent. The room felt uncomfortably warm with that number of bodies crammed into it and the smell of sweat and other body odours was almost overwhelming.
Banzi and Pirate squatted on the edges of the counter in opposite corners of the room with guns held easily in their hands. Queen walked between the hostages, offering water which he squirted none too accurately from a plastic bottle into their open mouths. He looked approvingly at one handsome young man and gave him an extra helping.
Deacon took a moment to look them all over before stretching out a hand and pointing to one after another. ‘You, you, you, you, you, you. Stand up.’
The randomly selected six men looked from one another to Deacon, each waiting for the others to make the first move. Several of them looked concerned about their possible fate.
