by Shaun Clarke
‘I’ve got it,’ Barker said. ‘Now what about this radio? I think we should knock this out as well, once we’ve used it ourselves.’
‘No,’ Masters said. ‘They can’t detect us with a radio. And we’ll still need communication with the terrorists when we get back to Bravo 1.’
‘If we get back,’ Barker said.
‘Yes, if we get back.’
They went to work. Barker turned on the radio. Masters crawled under the operator’s console and reached out to the steel plate. It had a small handle set flush with the steel plate. Masters raised the handle and the plate came out with a harsh, grating sound. He laid it aside. The PM glanced at the hole it left. There was no sound of movement, so clearly the noise hadn’t been heard out there.
Meanwhile Barker was on the radio, getting in touch with Bravo 1. He had the volume turned down low and the other two heard him whispering into the microphone. Masters crawled from under the console, stood up, wiped his hands on his overalls and then grinned at the PM. The latter was watching Barker, listening to what he was saying; Barker was talking in nautical terms and arranging the pick-up. After finishing, he turned off the radio and told the other two: ‘It’s all set.’
Masters went to the table, picked up a box of matches, and put them in the pocket of his overalls.
‘Right,’ he said to the Prime Minister. ‘Please listen carefully, sir. Barker here knows the rig well, so he’s going to guide you. You’ll go down through that hole. There’s a steel ladder below it and it goes down twenty feet. I want you to go down carefully and wait at the bottom. You should be hidden by the crates. Barker’s going first, so he’ll already be down there and he’ll guide you the rest of the way. It’s pretty simple – but dangerous. There’s a door right by the ladder. It leads to the outside of the rig just beneath the main deck. That ladder drops to a catwalk that’s on top of the pontoon leg, running down two hundred feet to the loading barge. Don’t look down or you’ll get dizzy. And don’t let go for a second. You’ll be hanging on the outside of the pontoon leg and the wind there is rough. The deck stretches out above you. That means the terrorists won’t see you. They might see you when you jump on the loading barge, but I think it’s too dark. You’ll both wait for me there. Give me forty minutes from now. If, by that time, I don’t show up, just get in a small boat. Barker knows how to use them. He’ll take you out to where the helicopter should be hovering, and they’ll pick you both up.’
‘Fine,’ the PM said unconvincingly, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. ‘So what about you?’
‘If I don’t show up, I’ve been caught. You’ll find out soon enough. The terrorists are bound to ring Bravo 1 and give you the good news.’
‘And what do we do then?’
‘You can go back to square one. You can either give in to their demands or let them blow up the rig.’
The PM stared at him and was aware only of his grey, driven eyes. He looked at Barker, who just nodded, and they went to the console. Barker crawled under first, then slithered down through the opening. He kicked at air until his feet found the ladder, then his head and hands disappeared. The PM smiled bleakly, then knelt on the floor. He crawled under the console, put his legs through the hole, found the ladder and started lowering himself down. He glanced back up at Masters, who was waiting to follow him. The PM, knowing he might not see him again, grinned at him and waved. ‘Good luck,’ he said, then dropped down through the hole.
Masters waited for a moment, gazing around the radio shack, listening carefully at the door, then went to the console and disappeared into the darkness below.
11
Standing on the ladder just beneath the radio shack, Masters pulled the steel cover back over the hole. It dropped back into place and he checked that it was secure. There was a good chance that when McGee entered the hut he wouldn’t notice the trapdoor. Then Masters looked around and saw the ceiling of the drilling floor. He was twenty feet above the floor, just above the packing crates, and he looked beyond them at the large, cluttered workshop, the pipes and chains of the moonpool. It was very quiet out there, with no work going on. He saw some terrorists wandering lazily to and fro, holding MPS sub-machine-guns in their hands, though not at the ready. They seemed very far away and their conversation echoed dully. The lights blazed and the machinery cast great shadows that swallowed whole areas.
As Masters climbed down the ladder, the drilling floor disappeared. The packing crates were piled high above his head when he stood on the lower floor. The floor rose and fell, swaying gently from side to side. The Prime Minister was about five feet away, standing close to the wall. There was a steel door beside him, and the handle squeaked when Barker turned it. Barker winced and glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Masters, who nodded back, gesturing for him to continue. Barker carefully pulled the large handle down until it locked into place. The sound of the lock echoed, seeming louder than it was. Masters turned away to peer through the packing crates at the vast, silent drilling floor.
None of the terrorists had heard the sound. They continued wandering back and forth, moving in and out of the shadows, talking lazily, bored by their vigil.
Masters turned back to Barker as he was pulling the door open. He stepped outside and waved to the PM, who hesitated, then followed him. Masters waited till they had gone, then checked the drilling floor again. There was no sign that anyone had noticed their activity, so he walked through the door.
He was slapped by an icy wind, which beat and moaned around him. He was on the catwalk of a circular deck that was thirty feet wide. It was the top of a pontoon leg, and the main deck loomed above it. The leg plunged two hundred feet to the sea, where reflected lights slid over the waves. The catwalk was dark and the surrounding night was black with clouds. The wind moaned and rushed in from the sea and he heard the waves hammering, smashing against the pontoon leg. Masters turned back and closed the door behind him, making sure it was locked.
‘I can’t do it,’ the PM said, looking down through the catwalk. He was staring at the ladder that was fixed to the huge leg and dropped vertically to the sea way below. It was exposed to the beating wind. He would have to climb down that two hundred feet and he just couldn’t face it.
‘Don’t look,’ Masters whispered. ‘Just forget it. Just get on and climb down.’
The wind howled around the catwalk, beating and tugging at the Prime Minister. Gripping the railing and shivering with cold, he was looking down fearfully at Barker, now already on the ladder, hanging in an all-enveloping darkness with nothing below him.
‘Go down!’ Masters snapped.
He grabbed the PM’s shoulder, shook him roughly and pushed him down. The PM trembled visibly, licked his lips and then murmured: ‘Oh, God!’ He turned his back to the sea, gripped the railing even tighter, put his right foot on the step just above Barker’s head and followed him as he started his descent.
Masters watched them go down, which they did very slowly, hanging in a black, howling void without shape or dimension. The sea wasn’t really visible: the darkness just fell down and deepened. The silvery-grey head of the PM was bobbing in the middle of nothing. The wind howled around the ladder, and Masters heard it rattling. He looked down and saw the grey head disappearing, watched it melting in darkness.
Masters dropped to one knee, kneeling in front of another trapdoor. He grabbed the handle, pulled up the steel plate and looked into a black, seemingly bottomless pit. There were rumblings in that darkness and the noise reverberated. The pit, which was the interior of the huge pontoon leg, was circular and thirty feet in diameter.
Masters lowered himself in and the icy air clamped around him. His right foot kicked the side and found the ladder, then his other foot followed. He climbed down a few rungs, then reached out for a switch. When he turned the lights on, he looked down and saw the dizzying depths.
The pontoons were filled with water which rose halfway up the leg, splashing up and down as the tapering
leg swayed from side to side. The circular wall was webbed with ladders that ran down into the water, tapering off into single lines before they finally disappeared.
Feeling dizzy and claustrophobic, Masters almost stopped breathing. The water outside the leg made a hollow, drumming sound; the water inside, in that shadowed pit below, splashed and sent up its echoes. Masters looked to his right and saw a black, three-foot hole. It was the entrance to one of the support legs and it echoed as well.
He looked into the support leg and saw the glint of steel through darkness. The knowledge that he would have to crawl down there made him feel queasy. Reaching up above his head, he pulled down the steel cover. It clanged shut and the noise reverberated up and down the main leg.
Masters started his descent, moving slowly and carefully, hearing the echo of his footsteps on the ladder, watching the wall rise above him. He didn’t look up – only left and right. He closed his eye when he passed the dimmed lamps, and moved through shadow and light. The leg was swaying from side to side. The curved walls creaked and shuddered. The waves outside the leg pounded dully; the water inside was splashing.
Masters kept going down, passing girders that formed shelves around the wall, red with rust, strewn with debris. The divers often came down here, leaving plastic cups and bits of wire. Masters felt a brief annoyance when he saw this, but he kept going down.
He kept looking from left to right. He was convinced the bomb was here. He was sweating fifty feet above the water when he finally saw it.
The bomb was resting on a narrow girder that circled around the wall, about two feet away from Masters’s head. As Masters had expected, it was the size of a tea chest, had a slotted iron frame, and was attached to the base of the girder with two cast-iron clamps.
There was no dynamite.
Masters cursed his own ignorance. Of course there wouldn’t be dynamite. The plutonium metal core would be surrounded by TNT and packed tight inside the sealed explosive shell. Masters swore again, his voice echoing and returning. He gripped the ladder as it swayed from side to side, as the shadows fell over him. Still, he had found the bomb. Now at least he could dismantle it. Reaching out, he nearly fell off the ladder, so he grabbed it again.
Cursing, he just hung there. The ladder swayed with the pontoon leg. The shadows darted up and down the rusted steel, changed their shapes, crept around him. He remained on the ladder, hearing the water far below, recalling that the men who worked here were normally tied on with safety straps. But he had no safety straps; he had nothing to hold him on. He would have to climb up on that girder and do it from there.
Masters briefly closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the ladder. As he felt it swaying gently from side to side, he heard the water below. He didn’t want to look down. That vertical tunnel was terrifying. It plunged down to the water, which now looked much darker than the sea. Masters opened his eyes and felt the sweat on his brow. He heard the rumbling of the sea all around him as he moved up the ladder.
He climbed on to the girder, which was eighteen inches wide. On his knees, he pressed himself against the wall and tried not to look down. The glint of water caught his gaze. His eyes were drawn against their will. He looked down past the bomb, down that spiralling fifty feet, and saw the round pool of water far below, very black, deadly cold. Masters knew how cold it was and that he couldn’t survive in it. If he fell, and if he couldn’t find a ladder, he would freeze to death in five minutes.
He fixed his eyes on the bomb.
Disarming it was easy. He was surprised at his own skill. It was a skill that he had picked up in the Royal Marine Commando Munitions School, though not during work on live plutonium bombs. Still, he managed to do it, as the basic principles were the same, requiring only his pocket screwdriver and past experience. He pulled the connecting wires loose, unscrewed the explosive lenses, then dropped the separate pieces into the water fifty feet below. When he had finished, he loosened the clamps and tried to push the bomb off the ledge. But he couldn’t budge it an inch – it was too heavy to move. Smacking it with the palm of his hand in frustration, he decided to leave it.
According to his watch he had nineteen minutes left. He felt a cold, sneaking panic that made him crawl back up the ladder. Reaching out with one hand, he grabbed the ladder and swung back down, kicked out with his feet and found the rungs and then hauled himself up.
He felt better as he ascended and saw the roof of the leg above him. It was swaying from side to side and creaking loudly, but this didn’t concern him now. He kept going up, feeling a warming exultation; it was born of his need to escape from this chill prison. This mood carried him upward, rekindling his fire. Then he reached the narrow entrance to the support leg and his panic returned.
The support leg was three feet wide and merely part of an immense steel web. The support legs criss-crossed beneath the decks and ran down to the pontoons. Masters had to go down there, but he really didn’t want to do it. Instead, he wanted to climb out of this leg and breathe the fresh air. Yet he had to cross the rig in order to reach the drilling room, located in a module on the drilling floor, just beyond the moonpool. As he couldn’t get to the drilling floor, he simply had to go under it. He could do so by going down this support leg until it joined with another. That was sixty feet down. From there he could climb the other leg. That second leg, also sixty feet long, would bring him out on to the lower deck, not too far from the drilling room.
Masters clung to the ladder, looking down the support leg. It was narrow and its ladder fell steeply and disappeared into darkness.
Not having a choice, he started down the support leg, his footsteps echoing as he stepped on each rung, his own breathing amplified. It seemed to take a long time. In fact, it took no time at all. Conscious only of the ringing of his steel-tipped boots, he soon started climbing. The climbing was worse. He kept straining to see the top. Looking up, he heard increasing noise, a dull cacophony of movement. It was the rattling of chains and the clanging of pipes: the general background noise of a rig that was no longer working. The noises made Masters dwell on the world outside; they made him think of the terrorists on the deck and of the time he had left. Yet he finally reached the top. There was a catwalk and a door. Opening the door carefully, he looked out and was blinded by light.
He was on the storage deck and its wall lamps were blazing, illuminating the crates and throwing great shadows across the floor. Masters glanced left and right, but saw no sign of movement, so he stepped out and walked across the steel deck until he came to another door. He opened this and walked through, then climbed up another ladder. There was a low, narrow corridor at the top, leading out to the drilling floor. Masters didn’t go out there, but instead turned left near the exit. He went straight up another steel ladder and walked into a module, located just above the drilling deck. Looking down, he could see the terrorists, wandering back and forth past the moonpool, talking and laughing. The deck was cluttered with equipment, the bright light cast stark shadows, and the men were all carrying their weapons in a careless manner.
Masters entered another corridor, which was bright and low-ceilinged. A man stepped out of a doorway just ahead and nodded curtly and brushed past. Masters walked to that doorway, heard the sound of a TV monitor, looked in and saw a man in a chair, looking up at the screen. The cameras were searching the seabed, scanning over the anchor chains. The bottom was four hundred feet down and the whole view was murky. The man had his back to Masters, his feet up on the desk, and seemed bored as he coughed into his clenched fist and gazed at the monitor. His weapon was leaning against the desk – an MAS Combat Rifle. There was a pile of hand-grenades on the table close by the terrorist’s booted feet. Masters glanced at the floor and saw some magazines for the gun. The man coughed again into his clenched fist, clearing phlegm from his throat.
Masters walked up behind him, moving swiftly and silently, to bring the edge of his calloused palm down on the terrorist’s neck, at the side of the throat
. The man didn’t cry out; he simply grunted and slumped forward. Masters confirmed that he was dead, then closed the door. The monitor above the dead man was still showing the murky seabed.
Looking out through the window at the floor twelve feet below, Masters saw the terrorists gathered around the moonpool, smoking and drinking beer, leaving their weapons scattered carelessly on the deck nearby. They appeared to be having a break and Masters didn’t like that.
He turned off the monitor, then switched off its power supply. Opening a box in the wall, he found the fuses amid a tangle of wiring. He pulled out some of the wires, quickly tied them together, then pushed them back against the wall and closed the box. The monitor was dead. The terrorists, finding it that way, would turn on its power supply. That’s all Masters needed: the crossed wires would do the rest. The whole system would ignite and burn out beyond hope of repair.
A corpse would cause panic, so Masters had to move the dead man. He wanted the terrorists to find the room empty and think the man had just bunked off. But first he checked the grenades, which were not hand-grenades, but ones for use with the launcher that was attached to the barrel of the combat rifle. It was just what he needed.
Masters put on the belt to which the grenades were clipped. Opening the door, he glanced out and saw no sign of movement. Satisfied, he went back to the dead man, pulled him from the chair, and dragged him laboriously out into the corridor, where he hauled him along to the next door, a small storage room. After hurriedly bundling the corpse into that room, Masters returned to the drilling room, where he picked up the combat rifle and then casually walked out.
According to his watch, he had just under ten minutes left. He climbed down the steel ladder and turned left and walked on to the drilling deck.
The terrorists he had seen were still lounging around the moonpool, but others were wandering to and fro, in and out of the shadows. Masters simply started walking. It was a trick he had learnt somewhere. He knew that a total lack of self-consciousness could make people ignore you. He advanced across the drilling floor. A few passing men nodded. They glanced at him and looked away, as if they hadn’t really seen him. He kept walking across the deck, passing through shadow and light, then climbed up steel steps and walked out of the drilling hut, emerging into the cold air of the main deck.
