“One of our Gulfstreams is standing by to get you and your gear down to Biloxi. We’ll keep your car here for the duration, if that’s okay with you. Or I can have someone take it wherever you’d like.”
“Here is fine,” McGarvey said.
He and Gail followed Nowak across the commons to a low brick building that served as the Farm’s armory and primary inspection center for new weapons sent down from Langley for field evals as well as a repair depot for everything the recruits misused or destroyed. Everything from Knight Armament Company personal defense weapons to Wilson and Rohrbaugh sidearms, to Colt Commandos, Sterling silenced submachineguns, MAC-10s, Steyr AUG 9mm paras, and especially AK-47s in a variety of configurations, plus at any given time a number of exotic weapons, most of which didn’t stand up to field trials.
“Mr. Rencke was quite specific that you wanted only the simplest, most tested equipment, including a variety of flash-bang grenades — we’ll give you a half-dozen Haley and Weller E182s, old but proven — along with a few small bricks of Semtex with a variety of fuses, night-vision oculars for each of you, our new body armor — a lot lighter and more flexible than the standard Kevlar vests, yet capable of stopping most armor-penetrating projectiles fired from handheld weapons — a pair of thermal imagers, plus our new EQ high-frequency comms units, which should work well in the environment you’ll be operating in.”
“What about weapons?” Gail asked.
“We’ll leave that up to you, but for reliability I don’t think you can get too far off the mark with the standard Beretta 92F for a sidearm, and for a close-in balls-to-the-wall firefight, the Franchi SPAS-12 automatic shotgun.”
“Weight will be an issue,” Gail said.
“Can’t help with the ammunition, but we’ve managed to shave a considerable amount of weight from any weapon you might chose,” Nowak said. “But if you’ll pardon me saying, ma’am, I believe you can handle yourself. I know about your father. He was a good man in a bad situation.”
Gail asked how he knew.
“I do my research. Like to know something about the people I’m sending into the field.”
Jeane Davis, a petite woman with large brown eyes and long chestnut hair up in a bun, worked as the chief armorer for the camp, and she was ready for them. Like Nowak she was new since Todd and Liz, and like Nowak she had a ready smile and pleasant demeanor.
“I’m told that you’ve switched back to your Walther, in the nine millimeter version,” she told McGarvey. “Not much stopping power, but then I’ve learned that you prefer the head shot, so caliber isn’t so important. Will you be sticking with that weapon for this op?”
“Unless you have another suggestion.”
“No,” she said. “Ms. Newby, what’s your preference?”
“I’ll take the SIG P226,” Gail said. “I’ve used it before.”
“Not my choice, but it’s a fine weapon,” Jeane said. “All your equipment will be completely untraceable, so if the need arises you may safely drop your gear in place and run.”
“Sounds good.”
“Questions?”
“No,” McGarvey said, and his cell phone rang. It was Otto, and he stepped outside to take the call. “What do you have for me?”
“Twenty-one people in all for the news conference — four networks including Fox, their cameramen, actually one woman, Time, Scientific American, Smithsonian, plus three photographers and five newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times , and five foreign papers, two from the UK, one German, one Japanese, one French, and the Mexican wire service Notimex.”
“Have you had time to check them out?”
“They’re all clean, Mac. I’m sending your sat phone a précis of their jackets along with photographs. A couple of them, especially Marcel Allain from Le Figaro, could be a fair match with our contractor, as far as size and general build go, but all of them have rock-solid backgrounds. I shit you not, it doesn’t look like our guy is on the list.”
FORTY-NINE
By noon they were flying southwest toward Mississippi aboard one of the CIA’s Gulfstream G550s, with a crew of three including a young attendant named Melissa who served them Bloody Marys before a lunch of lobster salad with French bread and a good Pinot Grigio. Afterwards she left them alone, seated across a cocktail table from each other looking at the information and photos Rencke had sent to McGarvey’s sat phone.
Had the information come to them from anyone other than Otto, McGarvey would have questioned the validity of the material. And as it was, Otto had sent the list of names to Eric Yablonski who’d independently come up with the same background information and the same photos
“Only two real possibilities,” Gail said. “The French guy from Le Figaro , and the Mexican from Notimex. Same general build, but darker skin.”
“That could be fixed,” McGarvey said distantly. Even if their contractor had managed to place one or more of his operators aboard Vanessa he’d still want to take a look for himself. At the very least his ego would demand it. He was a man who paid attention to details, which was why he’d never been caught. And the more McGarvey thought about him, the more respect he had.
Gail looked up from the images on the sat phone screen. “What?”
“He’s coming.”
“Are you sure?”
McGarvey nodded. “Yeah, one way or the other he’ll be in this group. Or maybe as a last-minute addition. But he’ll need to see the rig with his own eyes.”
“He could have people aboard,” Gail suggested. It was a technique he’d drummed into the heads of everyone he’d trained for NNSA fieldwork. Anytime an idea was floated it was the duty of everyone to try to shoot it down. Find the weak points, find the flaws, find the improbables, come up with what in the aircraft design and construction industry had always been called the unk-unks , the unknown unknowns. The problems that no one had foreseen, the ones that unexpectedly cropped up out of nowhere to blindside everyone involved.
McGarvey picked up the intercom phone and called the flight deck. “I need to make a sat phone call.”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Director,” the pilot told him.
Otto answered on the first ring. “I was just about to send you tomorrow’s schedule.”
“Will they be taken on a guided tour of the rig?” McGarvey asked.
“Yup, just like you suspected, right after Eve Larsen briefs them on her project these guys will get to see everything.”
“What else?” McGarvy asked. He was looking for something, an opening that he could use to get close to the media people. The point at which they would have gotten what they’d come for and would be the most relaxed.
“A champagne reception on the main deck for everyone, scientists and crew,” Rencke said. “Sort of a send-off party. All the media should be gone no later than four, and the rig under tow first thing in the morning.”
“Anything from Schalgel and his people?”
“I was going to call you about that, too. He’ll be on Fox and Friends in the morning. They’re calling it a major announcement in his war against the God Project.”
“Good. As long as he stays out in the open we don’t have to worry about him,” McGarvey said.
“Wrong answer, Mac. He’ll be making his speech live from Biloxi.”
“Is he going to try to get aboard?” McGarvey demanded.
“He hasn’t said. But I did some checking on marinas from New Orleans to Panama City, and just about anything that floats and is capable to crossing the Gulf has been chartered, starting tomorrow morning.”
“Under the name of his church?”
“Individuals, some of them local charter boat and shrimp skippers. You’ll have company.”
It was about what McGarvey had expected. “It’ll just be background noise. They can’t stop the rig.”
“What if our contractor and maybe some of his operators are aboard one of the boats?”
“He wouldn’t risk mak
ing an attack out in the open among all those witnesses. He still has to get aboard the rig. And when he does we’ll have him.”
“Alive if possible, kemo sabe,” Rencke said. “We need to know who hired him.”
“We know who hired him,” McGarvey said. “We just need the proof.”
* * *
One of Defloria’s crew met them with hard hats at the helicopter and brought them across to the main living quarters, which were on the opposite corner of the platform from where Eve had set up her lab and monitoring station. Rising five levels above the main deck the superstructure looked more like an afterthought than a planned part of the overall structure, more like a series of Lego models stacked in an array that staggered outward over the edge with iron balconies, catwalks, and stairs. The wind wasn’t as strong today, and much of the main deck had been cleared of its oil exploration equipment and workmen, but any offshore oil platform was an inherently dangerous environment. Accidents could and did happen nearly every day, and deaths were not unkown.
They’d been given separate but connecting suites each large enough to accommodate a queen-sized bed, a sitting area with a small couch, a pair of chairs and a coffee table, plus a desk with a computer connection routed to a satellite dish. The view from their large windows was out across the Gulf, dozens of oil platforms dotting the horizon. Each of them had their own tiny bathroom, fully equipped with soaps, shampoos, shaving gear, towels, even a hair dryer and toothpaste and toothbrush.
Three pairs of white coveralls had been laid out along with a pair of sneakers and a pair of steel-toed work shoes, all in the correct sizes.
When they’d stowed their gear, Gail knocked on the connecting door and McGarvey let her in. She’d found a generalized floor plan of the entire platform, and she spread it out on the coffee table. “This place is a nightmare,” she said. “Hundreds of places to hide in ambush to pick us off one by one.”
McGarvey had seen it the other day when he’d come aboard for the first time. But they only had to concentrate on the four legs, somewhere just beneath the lowest work deck and the waterline. And no matter what happened they had to remain alive and uncaptured. “Works both ways,” he said.
And she glanced again at the floor plan and nodded. “I see your point, but there’s only two of us, and no way of predicting how many they’ll be.”
“Maybe a half dozen. A couple to take care of the communications equipment, or at least the satelite dishes. A couple to kill or round up the crew and Eve’s people, and a couple more to set the explosives on two of the legs.”
“What about the tug?”
“I think that once he has everything in hand here, he’ll send a boat across and kill the crew. When the rig capsizes and goes down, it might take the tug with it.”
“Will he spread himself that thin?” Gail asked. “The man is a pro.”
“Just him and one other at Hutchinson Island,” McGarvey said.
“The bastard has a plan which he thinks is foolproof,” Gail said bitterly. She still felt responsible for the attack.
“Indeed he does,” McGarvey said.
Someone knocked at McGarvey’s door, and it was Defloria. “I was told that you were aboard,” he said, eyeing the several aluminum cases stacked by the closet door. It was the CIA equipment, weapons, and ammunition from the Farm. “I brought you the personnel list and files you asked for. Three new ones came aboard this morning. Company hires.”
McGarvey took the file, and introduced Gail. “Additional crew or replacements?”
Defloria seemed uncomfortable. “Replacements, actually. Three of my people supposedly got into it with a couple of the scientists yesterday, over what I don’t know, but my guys denied getting into any trouble. Didn’t matter, this is Dr. Larsen’s rig. I’m just the OIM and I do whatever the company tells me to do.”
“What about their employment histories?” Gail asked.
“Solid.”
“Who did they have trouble with?”
“I’m not sure,” Defloria said. “But from the way I get it, they apparently screwed up something with a pair of sensors that Dr. Price had been working on.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t matter either. We have three new people, and it’s going to be up to me and Al to keep the peace around here.”
“I know Don Price, and I’ll see what I can do,” McGarvey promised. “Are we listed on the rig’s complement?”
“Security hired by the company,” Defloria said. “None of my people know any differently, so you won’t get any static.”
“Will any of them recognize me?”
“These guys watch television, but mostly sports and the Playboy channel.”
“What about communications equipment?” Gail asked. “What’s aboard and where is it?”
“If you mean internally, there’re the platform’s interphones, and walkie-talkies. For rig to shore, our primary link is via satellite — works with the phones as well as the computers — plus we have a dedicated data system that automatically transmits information back to Baton Rouge.”
“How many satellite dishes?”
“Just the one, plus the dish Dr. Larsen’s people set up. They’re both atop the control room.”
“Sat phones?” Gail asked.
“Al and I share one,” Defloria said.
“Where is it kept most of the time?”
“On Al’s belt, unless it’s in the charger in his quarters,” Defloria said tightly. “What’re you trying to tell me? That we’re definitely going to get attacked and the first thing they’ll try to knock out are our links to shore?”
“Just taking inventory,” McGarvey told him. “What about communications with the tug?”
“Normal VHF intership safety on channel six, or if that’s busy we switch to eight. And there must be a half dozen or more handhelds aboard.”
“Lifeboats?”
“Enough for sixty people, slide launched from A deck. All of them equipped with emergency locator beacons, rations for ten days, and portable water makers.” Defloria shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know about any of this, but I suppose I must. May I share it with Al?”
McGarvey nodded. “But no one else. Especially not Dr. Larsen or her people. We’ll take care of that.”
Defloria wanted to argue, McGarvey could see it in his impatience. Vanessa Explorer was his rig until Florida, but he’d been told that he was no longer in charge — by the company two days ago and again here and now. “What else?” he asked instead.
“We’re probably going to have an escort,” McGarvey said. “Schlagel’s people. And from what we’re seeing they’ll probably be an impressive flotilla.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Not very,” McGarvey said. “And not yet.”
“How many crew aboard the tug?” Gail asked.
“Captain Andresen, his first and second officers — who split the watch — and two deckhands.”
“Have you worked with them before?”
“No, but Andresen has a good reputation in the business. His last job was towing one of our rigs across the North Sea in some pretty bad weather. He knows what he’s doing. Should he be warned that something might be coming our way?”
“Tell him about Jerry Schlagel,” McGarvey said.
Clearly unhappy, Defloria nodded tightly and turned to leave, but at the door he hesitated. “Who the hell would want to hurt us? Environmentalists afraid that we’re going to wreck Florida’s beaches? We’re not going to drill for oil, don’t they understand?”
“It’s not the rig, they’re afraid of. It’s Dr. Larsen’s project.”
Defloria nodded again and left.
* * *
McGarvey scanned the personnel files Defloria had given him and sent them to Rencke, who came back in less than ten minutes. “All of them old hands in the business. A couple of troublemakers — the get drunk and brawl sort — but no real badasses, Mac.”
“At least one of them belongs to our contractor,
” McGarvey said.
“Eric and I will keep checking,” Rencke promised. “But honest injun, Mac, I feel really bad about this. It’s like I’ve dropped back into the Stone Age.”
“You haven’t and that’s the problem. Our contractor is very careful how he uses the Internet, and so do the people who hired him. They share most of their information face-to-face, something that’s just about impossible to hack into unless you’re right there when they meet.”
“No one can live without a computer,” Rencke said. “He’s left a trace somewhere, and I’ll find it.”
“Still nothing?” Gail asked.
“No,” McGarvey said. “But someone’s aboard who works for our contractor, so from this point on neither of us goes anywhere unarmed or without our comms units.”
“What’s our first move?”
“I want to take a look at the satellite dishes, see just how vulnerable they are, and then the legs, figure out what it would take to destroy them.”
“What about Dr. Larsen and her merry band?”
“We’ll jump that hurdle in the morning, because I think that before the media people arrive at noon, Schalgel’s flotilla will be out here and I think that when her people, especially Price, sees what we’re up against, they might have second thoughts about ignoring us.”
Gail went to her room to get her pistol and comms unit, leaving McGarvey to stare out the window at the oil rigs in the distance. The last century had really been all about oil, the technologies that used it, the countries that had become superdependent on it and the people and governments who’d made trillions of dollars, and wanted very much to guard the status quo. The problem was that the list of everyone who had a finger in the pie, everyone who had a stake in the game, everyone who had something to lose, some terrible price to pay was, if not endless, nearly so. And therein lay the problem. The enemy base was so broad, so far-reaching that there was no practical way of defending places like Hutchinson Island, or experiments like Eve’s aboard Vanessa Explorer.
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