by Peter Nealen
The man screamed as bullets tore through his boot, pulping muscle and tendon and smashing bones to splinters. He collapsed, and Flanagan pumped three more rounds into him as he hit the deck. The last one tore through his heart and lungs, and he slowly shuddered to utter stillness, blood pumping out onto the steel.
Footsteps pounded on the decking, and Flanagan rolled onto his back, bringing his rifle around, but stopped himself as he saw it was Wade, dashing along the catwalk he’d already crossed.
Wade slowed as he got closer, his rifle and eyes still trained up toward the decks and girders above. “You good?” he asked.
“I’m great,” Flanagan growled, as he rolled back over and heaved himself to his feet. His entire body felt like one enormous bruise, and he was pretty sure the saltwater that hadn’t dried in his cammies was slowly eroding his skin away with every move he made. He still got to his feet, carefully, scanning for any more terrorists hiding in the pipes.
Wade was set up on the ladderwell, his rifle pointed up toward the first landing, waiting for him. Fighting to keep from limping—his knee was suddenly throbbing, and he hadn’t even realized he’d hit it that hard—Flanagan moved to join him.
Together, trying to cover every angle at once, the two men started up.
Chapter 17
“I think I can see one of the bombs,” Jenkins said.
Santelli and the rest were lying prone behind their rifles on the helideck, and Santelli was cussing at great length and with a viciousness that would have made Melissa blanch to hear him. He was kicking himself for getting his element into that position in the first place; they hadn’t been able to cross the helideck fast enough, and now they were pinned down by one or two sons of bitches hiding in the superstructure across the platform.
Another shot cracked by, and a second nicked the edge of the deck with a bang. Fortunately, that guy was situated in a position that was lower than the top deck, or else they’d really be fucked. As it was, though, they didn’t dare get up or get too close to the edge.
“How the hell can you see one of the bombs?” Curtis demanded. “If they’re on the wells, then they’re below us, under the derricks. And unless you’re Superman, and got X-ray vision and shit, I don’t think you can see through the damned helideck.”
Santelli was about to tell them both to shut up when Hancock’s voice crackled over his radio, the sound of which was muffled from being stuffed in a pouch in his chest rig, presently pressed between his barrel chest and the deck.
“Goodfella, Surfer,” Hancock was calling.
With a renewed torrent of bit-off cursing, Santelli rolled halfway over to get the radio. Another shot went by overhead, close enough that he didn’t just hear the snap, he felt it. “Go for Goodfella,” he answered.
“Woodsrunner and Angry Ragnar just went down below,” Hancock told him. “They’re going after the bad guys who have firing positions on us, so watch your shots.”
What shots? We can’t see shit, much less shoot at it. “Roger that,” Santelli replied.
“Contact, high!” Childress snapped, his voice practically drowned out by the report as he opened fire. Santelli looked up from the radio, squinting as he tried to spot whatever Sam was shooting at. But he was in a bad spot; he couldn’t see anything, unless the bad guy Childress was lighting up was on the far side of the derrick. Or maybe the crane.
“Hey, Carlo,” Hart said. He’d wriggled over on his belly until he was next to and behind Santelli. Santelli craned his neck around to look back at him. “What if I went down below?” he said. “I might be able to sneak in there and start defusing bombs.”
“Were you not paying attention, Don?” Santelli asked. “They want us to try that!”
“I can get in there,” Hart insisted, sounding a bit petulant. Or maybe that was Santelli’s imagination. “They’re gonna be focused on you guys up here, and John and Joe over on the other side. If I can get close enough, they might not even notice me.”
Santelli actually considered it. They were in a tight spot, there was no doubt of that. But it was a long shot, and one that he really wasn’t willing to take, not with Hart. The guy had shown flashes of competence, but he found he really didn’t trust him to stay steady, particularly not on his own, and with that hole in his shoulder.
Then he heard the thump of rotor blades above and behind them.
***
Wade stayed in the lead as he and Flanagan climbed the stairs. He knew there was at least one shooter up there; he’d gotten a few shots off at the guy, but his target had ducked back behind the thick steel support beam, and he wasn’t sure if he’d hit him at all.
It made him mad. It hadn’t been that long a shot. He should have cored the bastard’s brains out and been done with it. That it had been a really small target, and he’d been snap-shooting with a red dot, didn’t enter into his calculations. He should have hit the guy and killed him, he hadn’t, and it pissed him off.
He was climbing as fast as he could while still being reasonably sure he could shoot accurately. They really should be clearing systematically, but he knew where he’d last seen his quarry, and he wanted that one dead. So he bypassed the first two decks, continuing upward, his rifle up, on the hunt. Flanagan didn’t say anything, didn’t even hesitate. Whether or not the other man knew what he was doing, he stuck with him.
Wade didn’t even slow down as he hit the landing he was aiming for. He pounded up the steps and out onto the deck full of girders, pipes, cables, and equipment, his weapon up, his finger just outside the trigger guard, looking for his quarry. Flanagan was right behind him, turning the opposite direction and spreading out.
There was no sign of the terrorist. A quick check showed him that the guy wasn’t still behind the support beam where he’d last seen him. He glanced over just long enough to make eye contact with Flanagan and signaled that he was going to start moving along the deck. He wanted his kill. Flanagan inclined his head fractionally, and they started to glide forward, leaning into their weapons.
Wade found he liked working with Flanagan. The guy was a pro, and could have been the poster child for “quiet professional.” He was sparing with his words, and always watching, always calculating. Wade could see it; just like him, he knew that Flanagan looked at everyone with the same question in his mind: “If things go south, how am I going to kill this person?”
He stopped just behind a towering jumble of pipes and power conduits. Something wasn’t quite right; something was warning him not to just go right around the next corner. He sank to a knee, even as he saw Flanagan out of the corner of his eye, angling around another corner and vanishing.
Shots rang out. A fast pair, then a rolling thunder of four or five shots, hammering at something just out of sight. He surged to his feet and went around the corner, following his rifle muzzle.
The terrorist was on his side, twitching, blood pouring out of ragged holes in his neck and head. Flanagan was advancing on the body, rifle leveled.
Wade didn’t have time to yell, as he saw another blue-gray-clad shape pop up over the railing at the far edge of the platform. He just snapped his rifle up and fired. He only had one shot, but he saw the terrorist’s head snap backward, spraying red obscenity into the air, and then he was gone.
The two of them continued to advance on the one Flanagan had shot, who was going still. That one was gone. Unfortunately, they had no idea just how many were on the platform.
Wade wanted to pull the guy’s balaclava down, see who he was. But they weren’t out of the woods yet; there could still be several more lurking around.
Then the man’s radio crackled. “Recall, recall, recall,” said the voice that had taunted them over the rig’s PA system. “Time’s up, lowlifes. Move your asses.”
Wade looked up and around. Where the hell were they going to go? The Blackhearts were between them and the boat decks, and held the helideck.
Then he just about kicked himself. Of course there were other boat decks; if
something went wrong, the builders weren’t going to condemn everyone on half the platform to die. There would be lifeboats on all sides, just in case. They had to be heading for the north boat deck.
A glance at Flanagan told him that the other man had reached the same conclusion. Rifles coming up, they started toward the edge of the platform.
They still had to move carefully, checking corners and dead spaces, trying to cover every gap and loophole as they passed it. They saw no more charges, and no more terrorists, until they got to the edge, nearing the railing that stood between the deck and the drop toward the Gulf of Mexico below.
No sooner had they reached the rail than a long burst of automatic fire hammered at the deck, the railing, and the pipes, forcing them back. It was coming from down below, and Wade knew he’d been right. The bad guys were down on the boat deck.
Which meant that as soon as they were clear, they were probably going to blow the platform.
He tried to force his way forward to get a shot, at least to try to disable the lifeboats, but the terrorists knew they were there, and another long, ravening burst forced him back, bullets slamming into sheet metal and piping around him. Crude oil and drilling mud was seeping out of some of the holes, and the fumes were getting bad.
Flanagan was flattened against one of the bigger steel beams holding the decks up, and had his radio out of its pouch. “Surfer, Woodsrunner,” he was yelling into the mic, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the machinegun fire. “The bad guys are making a break for it from the north boat deck. If they get clear, they’re going to blow the charges. Get in there, now!”
Wade realized what Flanagan was aiming at. The terrorists bugging out meant that they wouldn’t have anyone covering the bombs themselves anymore. It might be their only window.
Provided that Hancock and the others could get past the booby traps between them and the wells. He was suddenly thinking about the fact that they hadn’t disarmed the one they’d bypassed on the way out of the superstructure.
Before he could say anything about it, though, a massive gray shape roared overhead. Wade had to duck back as the Mexican Mi-17 thumped past the platform, the door gunner hanging out of the open side door.
***
Hancock hadn’t waited for Flanagan’s radio call. The fire from across the platform had died down, and Santelli and the rest of his element had quickly scrambled across the helipad to join Hancock, Gomez, and Bianco in the shelter of the machinery and containers. By then, the helicopters were clearly visible and getting closer. “Everybody get down below,” Hancock ordered. “I really, really don’t want to have gone through all this just to get lit up by the Mexican Marines.”
So, by the time Flanagan was calling his warning, the rest of the Blackhearts were inside the superstructure, in the room where Brannigan and Tanaka were strongpointed, and Flanagan’s signal was a weak, broken mass of static and disconnected syllables.
Meanwhile, the fuses on the bombs were burning.
***
Huerta was standing in the door, braced with one hand against the overhead and the other clenched around a strap next to the doorframe itself. He was hovering just behind the door gunner, who was leaning into the MG21 mounted on a scissor mount.
He watched the platform get closer and closer, looking for human figures. He didn’t know if they’d be the terrorists or the gringo mercenaries; it was pretty clear that the gringo mercenary, Brannigan, had boarded the platform and engaged the terrorists.
And he didn’t know what he’d do if his men spotted the gringos first.
You know the right thing to do, Diego. Was it strange that his conscience seemed to have his mother’s voice?
But he waited and watched. Let the situation develop. Maybe the gringos will secure the platform by the time we reach it, and will have the good sense to put their weapons down when we get close.
The door gunner was leaning into the gun, his eyes already at the sights, and Huerta realized that he was getting ready to burn down anything that moved. Knowing what had happened to the first helicopters that had attempted to storm the platform, he couldn’t say he blamed the younger man. But it could turn out to be disastrous if he killed the wrong people.
Or it could be a blessing in disguise. He shunned the thought, but it stayed there, lingering in the back of his mind. It could all be over quickly, once they got onto the platform. It might be strange, two different sets of dead terrorists, but he was sure they could think of a suitable explanation, if they even needed to explain anything to anyone. They could just throw the bodies in the water and be done with it. No questions asked, nothing pointing back to him, no evidence that he had gone over the line, against orders, and hired Norteamericanos to do his dirty work.
No evidence except what that Van Zandt might have documented. But Van Zandt was a gringo, and Mexicans would believe a Mexican officer before they believed a gringo.
But as they swooped in toward the helideck, with no signs of RPGs or MANPADS reaching up to swat them out of the sky, he saw no one in the open, and started to breathe a little easier. At least he wouldn’t have to tell the door gunner to hold his fire, and deal with the questions from that.
But he didn’t entirely relax, especially as the formation began to do a circuit around the platform, the next helo behind starting to pull ahead. He didn’t know where the mercenaries might be, and he still didn’t dare tell anyone to hold their fire.
As they circled around the north side of the platform, he was very glad that he hadn’t issued that order after all.
The lead helicopter rounded the corner and promptly banked hard over, diving for the water and away from the platform. The faint sound of automatic weapons fire reached Huerta’s ears, even through his earmuffs and the roar of the Mi-17’s engines. A moment later, he got a look at what had made the lead pilot take such a wild evasive maneuver.
There was a long, low, black shape in the water at the north side of the platform, just to one side of the long boom leading to the burnoff stack. Its cylindrical hull was slightly flattened along the top, with a streamlined, vertical sail jutting from it, about two thirds of the way toward the bow.
And there was a machinegunner crouched on top of that sail, firing long bursts at the Mexican helicopters as they got close.
The machinegunner turned his sights on Huerta’s helicopter as it started to swing around the corner. Seeing the threat, the pilot banked hard away, throwing the door gunner’s aim off, even as he triggered a burst from the MG21 that went wild, the tracers arcing out over the water. Huerta held on for dear life, his hand clamped in a death grip around the strap by the door.
The pilot kept the hard bank, turning around to bring the bird behind the cover of the platform. The engines were howling, and Huerta couldn’t hear if the enemy machinegunner was still at it, but all he needed to do was hold them off for a few seconds until the submarine could dive.
The rest of the flight of helicopters had pulled up hard, circling away from the platform and the submarine. Huerta was cursing, but the pilots were understandably a little nervous after the losses their compadres had already taken in the last few days.
Pulling his headset’s microphone up to his mouth, he keyed the intercom. “Get us around so that we can fire on that submarine!” he bellowed.
“Sì, Contralmirante,” the pilot replied. There might have been a distinct note of reluctance in his voice. But he banked back toward the platform and the burnoff stack.
They didn’t take any more machinegun fire. They were too late. The wake of the strange submarine was fading, and the craft itself was gone. As soon as the helicopters had broken off, the machinegunner must have gone below, and the sub had started its dive.
“Land us on the platform,” Huerta said grimly. The pilot obediently began to climb, circling around to make an approach onto the helideck.
Huerta looked down at the platform as they flew around it. He might have spied a couple of figures moving through the
pipes and girders down there. He took a deep breath and made his decision. I hope it does not mean ruin for me and my family.
“Teniente Medina,” he called over the radio. Hopefully, the Lieutenant had his radio on, and was listening.
“Sì, Contralmirante?” Medina replied promptly. His voice was scratchy and muffled by the helicopters’ noise.
“I have information that there might be a private security force, hired by the oil company, on the platform,” he said. “They are not to be considered hostile. Tell your men to be careful who they engage.”
There was a long pause, as Medina digested the information. Huerta realized that his lie was a bit transparent; most of the platforms on the Gulf, in Mexican waters, were owned and operated by Pemex, the state-owned Mexican oil conglomerate. That Pemex would hire contractors to clear a platform instead of relying on the Mexican Naval Infantry seemed to be a bit of a stretch.
But then, he’d hired mercenaries, and there really was no such thing as standard procedure in such matters in Mexico. Everyone had contacts, everyone did deals outside the law. That was the way things were done in Mexico.
The only people who didn’t play that game were the very poor. And that was why they were very poor.
“Understood, Contralmirante,” Medina answered, his voice flat. “How are we to recognize this private security force?”
“They will be wearing green, and carrying M4 carbines,” Huerta said. “As far as we know, the terrorists are using bullpup rifles.”
There was another pause. It wasn’t the most useful information, especially in a close-quarters fight. But Medina would use it as he felt he needed to. And if he just mowed the mercenaries down anyway, well, Huerta had tried.
Not good enough, Diego. He unplugged the intercom cable to his headset as his helicopter began its flare to land on the helideck. The lead helo had already touched down, disgorged its cargo of Naval Infantrymen, and was pulling away. Checking his P90, he prepared to step off and get in front of the Marines going down into the platform as quickly as possible.
