Arctic Gold

strongly reminded of the FLIP, or Floating Instrument Platform, an odd-looking vessel used by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography since the 1960s. Like FLIP, the Russian undersea oil platform appeared to be designed with ballast tanks that let it rotate ninety degrees into a vertical position, bow high. It could then be anchored by cables to piers sunken at the planned drill site, and then, unlike with FLIP, ballast and trim tanks could submerge the structure to any desired depth, all the way down to three thousand feet. The drilling rig ran down the length of the vessel, from bow to stern; feeder tubes could be raised to the surface on flotation buoys to take on air if necessary, though he saw provisions in the blueprints for desalinization plants to make fresh water, and hydrolysis units to break oxygen out of seawater. Other tubes could be raised in order to pump oil or natural gas up to a waiting tanker.

“GK-1 is a prototype,” Rubens continued, “a test bed for new technology and proof-of-concept. The bugs Lia planted in Sochi have led us to a Houston company called Wildcat Technologies.” More schematics appeared of a design identical to the Russian structure. “They call the thing Deepsea. It’s an oil rig anchored to the sea floor at a depth of anything from a few hundred feet to half a mile down. Teleoperated robots and something like the Canadian arm used on the Space Shuttle let them take drill segments passed down from a ship on the surface, piece them together one after another, and add them to the drill train.”

Dean studied the schematics for a moment. “So… it doesn’t need anything at the surface at all? The whole thing’s entirely underwater?”

“Obviously, once the structure’s in place, it needs to be serviced by ships on the surface. During the drilling operation, a vessel like the Lebedev lowers the drill sections down to the rig, but once the well is producing, the design allows supply ships to come and go without needing to shut down the operation between visits. A relatively small crew lives on board the submerged rig. Docking ports here… and here allow miniature submarines to ferry personnel and supplies to and from the surface. The whole thing can be self-sufficient for a couple of months at a time, maybe longer.”

“Like one of our nuclear missile subs,” Dean said. “They can stay submerged for months. I don’t see any engines, though.”

“The structure is designed to be towed into place. No engines, except for station-keeping thrusters. Oil or natural gas brought up from the sea floor is pumped into large collapsible bladders secured to the hull until they can be transferred to a tanker. The bladders increase the structure’s buoyancy as they fill, of course, but that’s counteracted by progressively flooding onboard ballast tanks.”

“So the whole drill rig can’t be affected by waves or storms, and they can carry out long-term drilling operations underneath the ice.” Dean nodded. “Slick.”

“Exactly. Icebreakers give access from the surface when they need to send down supplies, or to fill a tanker. When a well gives out, they just attach guide cables from above, release the anchor cables below, and float the structure up to a hole cut in the surface ice, where it’s righted. Then they tow the whole thing to a new location.”

“So what’s the payoff?” Dean asked. “It sounds expensive.”

“It is. The big oil companies have been using semi-submersible rigs since the 1960s, using ballast tanks to partially sink the rig, but this idea required a lot of new technology. The project was initiated ten years ago, with the idea of developing an oil platform immune to storms.”

That made sense, Dean thought. There’d been several nightmarish accidents when storms had toppled conventional oil rigs on the surface. He remembered reading about one, the Ocean Ranger, a drilling platform that had sunk in a storm in the North Atlantic in 1982, killing all eighty-four people on board.

“There’s also a considerable public relations bonus if it works,” Rubens went on. “Environmentalist groups have been targeting visible drilling operations off of Los Angeles, and in the Texas gulf. If the drill platforms are out of sight, they’re out of mind. That was the idea, anyway.

“But the real advantage, of course, would be for drilling underneath the Arctic ice cap. A couple of the global oil giants have been working on the technology for some time, now. They’ve known for years that the North Slope fields extend pretty way out into the Arctic basin. They just weren’t sure how far, or how extensive they might be. The Russians have been doing exploratory drilling up there for at least fifteen years now. According to the data Lia found on Kotenko’s computer, it’s a bonanza.”

“You said this is an American design?” Dean asked. “Did the Russians buy it, or did they steal it?”

“We’re… investigating that. We’ve come across an interesting tidbit. One of the Greenpeace people at Ice Station Bear used to be a mid-level manager at Wildcat Technologies.” A new image came up onscreen, a dark- haired, bearded man with a worried look on his face. “Harry Benford. According to some of the intelligence we developed in Solchi, he evidently was working for the Russians. He might have provided them with the Deepsea engineering specs.”

“Something’s not right here,” Dean said. “When I was at the ice station, we found that little one-channel radio receiver in the bunk belonging to either Steven Moore or Randy Haines. Seems like it’s pushing things a bit to assume that there were two Russian spies at the base.”

“I agree. It would have been easy enough for Benford to plant the radio in another bunk, especially in all of the confusion when the Russians arrived at the base. Of course, it’s also possible that Wildcat was cutting a backroom deal with Moscow.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve been doing some checking. Wildcat is in deep financial trouble right now. The company put a lot of money into R and D for this thing, but the oil companies that might have purchased Deepsea are holding off on investing in the new technology.”

“God. Why? This looks like a really decent idea.”

“Because it is so damned expensive. Because a lot of the technology is still unproven. And the way things are going with the Arctic environment, it may be they just need to wait a few years for all of the ice up there to melt. Then they could build cheaper, traditional ocean-rig platforms.”

But the Russians, Dean thought, might not want to wait for that to happen.

“Anyway,” Rubens went on, “there are laws that would block the transfer of some of this technology to another country. The Justice Department will be investigating to see if any of those laws were broken by Wildcat… or if this is simply a case of simple industrial espionage.”

“I see.” Dean considered the situation for a moment. “So we’re going to take them down.”

He didn’t like this. It was inevitable, perhaps, that as oil reserves dwindled around the world, as war continued to wrack the Middle East, as the demand for oil increased, those countries dependent on petroleum for economic and political stability would begin to squabble among themselves over what was left. It was a depressingly Malthusian scenario.

“Just so you know, Dean,” Rubens said, “this is not about oil.”

Damn. Sometimes Dean swore that Rubens could read minds. “No, sir. I didn’t say it was.” Not out loud, at any rate.

“Espionage aside,” Rubens continued, “it’s the President’s assumption that the Russians have a perfect right to drill for oil up here. That’s not the issue. They do not have the right to hold American citizens hostage, to take over American science stations, or to claim half of the Arctic Ocean as their own personal backyard.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And they especially don’t have the right to kill or capture my people.”

That, of course, was the telling point-especially to a former Marine. Presidents and politicians might take their countries into war for the most selfish, shortsighted, vainglorious, or otherwise idiotic of reasons… but the men on the front lines didn’t fight for political causes. Not really. They fought for their buddies, the other grunts in the trenches with them. That had most likely been a basic principle of war even before Narmer united Egypt.

“If Braslov’s up here, I’ll find him,” Dean said.

“Good. Alive. I’ll also want you to keep an eye on the people the SEALs rescue, make sure they all get out okay. Two of them are intelligence operatives, remember-Yeats and McMillan-and McMillan is one of ours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“According to the diplomatic communique, two of the hostages are injured, one of them seriously.”