Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “My guess is that they built the oil rig mock-up, and the two brighter images were standing on top of it closer to the netting,” Otto said. “Now watch this.”

  Three nights later two brighter images showed atop the platform again, while four other heat blooms in two pairs approached from separate directions.

  Yablonski sat forward. “That’s a military operation if ever I saw one,” he said.

  Less than twenty minutes later, the four images on the ground stopped and then came together, and after a few minutes they walked away and disappeared, as did the two heat blooms on the platform.

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Watch,” Otto said, and the two panel vans appeared from beneath the netting and headed to the northwest. The next day the camp was once again deserted, and it remained that way.

  “Thank you, Don,” Otto said. “That’ll be all for today.”

  “Yes, sir. Would you like me to quit this program?”

  “Yes, please,” Otto said, and after the images on the Dome blanked out and the auditorium’s lights came up, he turned in his seat and watched until the lights in the booth went out.

  “I didn’t realize that we had this capability,” Yablonski said, impressed.

  “And more,” Otto said. “But what’s more important is that I did some digging, and I found out that an ex-South African Buffalo Battalion officer by the name of Brian DeCamp used the training base about nine years ago. We have someone in Gadhafi’s government who found out for me. It was risking an asset, but I leaned on him and he came through.”

  “It’s a start. Where’s he been since then?”

  “He disappeared. No trace, not even a glimmer. And my source in Tripoli had no idea who used the base or why. But DeCamp fits our profile.”

  “Do we have a photograph of him?”

  “No. Not even a decent physical description. Our asset never actually met him.”

  “Have you shared this with McGarvey?” Yablonski asked.

  “I will this afternoon, I gotta check out something else first,” Otto said, and he explained McGarvey’s suspicion that one of the journalists who’d come aboard Vanessa for the news conference could have been DeCamp.

  “Check their backgrounds. See if all of them actually filed stories, because it’s a safe bet that DeCamp is a killer but not a journalist.”

  “I already have, and it’s a dead end,” Otto said. “But assuming our contractor is Brian DeCamp, the same guy who hit Hutchinson Island, and assuming he’s going after the oil rig — who’s paying him to do it and why?”

  “Back to the money trail.”

  Otto nodded. “For now it’s our best bet.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  The accommodations level aboard Vanessa Explorer was always reasonably quiet because as shorthanded as they were, the roustabouts, welders, and construction crew worked twelve hours out of twenty-four on rotating shifts — six hours on, followed by eight off, and then another six on followed by four off — someone was always sleeping. This schedule also meant that each crewman got his own compartment, a luxury usually observed only for foremen and above.

  It was around one in the afternoon and after making sure that no one was coming down the corridor, Gurov knocked lightly on Kabatov’s door. Both their sleep times had coincided for the first time and early today they’d agreed to meet in secret. No one aboard knew that they were friends, and both of them had kept to themselves, so aloof and surly that no one bothered them. As long as they did their jobs, no one cared.

  Kabatov let him in. “Any further word?”

  “No,” Gurov told him. “But it’ll happen in six days, so I thought now would be a good time to go over everything.”

  “You’re right. And I’m getting goddamned tired of actually working for a living.”

  Gurov had to laugh, even though both of them had done plenty of manual labor when they were kids growing up — Kabatov in Siberia working with his father and uncles in the coal mines, and Boris in a foundry in Noginsk, outside of Moscow. But when they’d met almost ten years ago on the mercenary circuit they found that they, and just about every other gun for hire, were kindred spirits. “It’s a hell of a lot easier blowing up shit and killing people than working in a factory.”

  Kabatov unfolded a floor plan of the platform and spread it out on the bed. “Between what information you’ve brought, plus what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I think we have all the comms units spotted.”

  “Except for sat phones.”

  “Well, we know that Al Lapides, the delivery skipper, has one, and Price told you that the bitch has her own phone, but it’s usually stashed in her cabin.”

  “He promised to take care of it when the time comes,” Gurov said.

  Kabatov looked up. “Leaves us with two problems, the first of which is McGarvey and the broad he brought with him. I’ve seen both of them around the rig and neither one of them are carrying anything that looks like a sat phone. But both of them are armed.”

  “Naturally,” Gurov said. “And the second problem is the tug?”

  “Right. It’ll be equipped with a SSB transceiver, maybe two, and the skipper will most likely have his own sat phone. Somebody will have to get aboard and take care of the crew before they can send a Mayday.”

  “I think he’s got it covered,” Gurov said. “I don’t think much gets past the bastard.”

  “He was wrong about the first approach with scuba gear.”

  Gurov conceded the point and nodded. “But he was man enough to admit it, and listen to our advice.”

  “Have you ever heard of him before this job?”

  “Rumors only. But he’s got money and it showed up in my account on time.”

  Kabatov nodded. “And mine, too. So he’s got deep pockets, but I’m wondering just how reliable he is in the field, and who the other guys are he’s bringing along.”

  Gurov had had the same rising misgivings over the past few days. He and Nikolai had worked together before, and they knew and trusted each other’s tradecraft and abilities. And in normal circumstances, if there was such a thing in this business, teams were assembled long before an operation and trained together until they got it right. This time was different, and it was worrisome.

  “We’ll take it as it’s handed to us,” he said. “Either that or quit right now while we’re still within helicopter range of land.”

  But Kabatov shook his head. “No way I’m walking away from a payday like this. I’m just telling you that we need to cover our own arses, just in case something should go south at the last minute. Dead mercs can’t collect on payday no matter how good a job they did.”

  “I agree,” Gurov said.

  The first principle wasn’t the mission, it was personal survival, something definitely not taught in Spetsnaz training, which had been all about mission and teamwork. But the drill instructors hammered home one overriding skill that the good operator — the man who completed the mission and returned to base for debriefing — needed, which was the ability to improvise. Think on your feet, come up with the right solution in the field when you’d run into an ambush, or had no way out, or found yourself in an impossible situation.

  After five years of basic training and advanced schooling, each officer candidate was given a one-man operation for his final examination. Most candidates didn’t make it past this point, and reverted to the rank of sergeant. A great many ended up disabled and a few dead.

  Gurov and four other officer candidates were airlifted as prisoners to the Kara-Kum military prison in the middle of Turkmenistan’s desert of the same name, their status in Spetsnaz unknown to the prison guards. Their mission was to escape, singly, and make their way to the town of Kizyl Arvat, two hundred kilometers to the southwest. It was high summer with daily temperatures that could reach fifty degrees Celsius, and there was no water or food, except what they could carry from the prison.

  Three of the candidates gave up before nightfall of the first day, so dehyd
rated and sunblinded they’d been unable to hide from capture.

  But Gurov had improvised. He’d not only carried water, he’d brought one of the prisoners with him — a man accused of killing his family in a drunken rage while at home on leave from the army for which he was serving a life sentence with no hope of parole. They traveled by night and hid behind sand dunes during the day, their water running out less than thirty-six hours after they’d escaped. With thirty kilometers to go, both men nearly on their last legs, Gurov pulled out a knife, slit the prisoner’s throat, and drank the man’s blood. Survival at any price.

  Four days later he was commissioned as a Spetsnaz lieutenant along with only a handful of graduates from a class of one hundred during ceremonies outside Moscow. And he’d spent the remainder of his relatively brief career improvising and surviving — priority one. Nothing had changed now.

  “Did he tell you anything about the other four guys he hired?”

  “No,” Gurov said, and that too was slightly bothersome. “And you’re right that we need to cover our arses, because I think in the end we could end up dead. We need a plan.”

  “Funny you should make the suggestion, Boris, because I’ve worked out a few things.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  McGarvey awoke, automatically reaching for his pistol on the nightstand, not knowing what he’d heard. It was five in the afternoon, and he was still a little slow on the uptake. He’d spent the last few nights prowling around the rig, looking for the things he’d missed on his previous inspections, and wondering sometimes if he’d been too long away from the field and his tradecraft had become rusty. He took catnaps during the day, and although he and Gail were often together, they were just as often not. They mostly maintained separate schedules in an effort to keep an eye on things 24/7.

  His sat phone rang a second time, and he laid his pistol down, got up, and went to the phone on his desk as it rang a third time. It was Otto.

  “We think we know who our contractor might be. An ex-Buffalo Battalion light colonel by the name of Brian DeCamp. No photographs, of course, which means he was able to erase his records and change his identity, and in all the years since the Battalion was disbanded he only ever made one mistake. And he’s done it again.”

  McGarvey was impressed and he said so.

  “Eric actually came up with the idea that if our contractor wanted to hit the platform it stands to reason that he would have to train a team either on an oil rig in the Persian Gulf or somewhere like that, or on a mock-up. Maybe full scale of at least a part of the rig. Louise made a couple of calls, and I came up with a search engine for all of our surveillance satellite feeds over the past month and a half, and displayed it for Eric in the Dome.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “A Libyan army desert warfare training base about six hundred Ks southeast of Tripoli. Been used off and on over the past few years by the Libyans and possibly by al-Quaeda, so we’ve keep an eye on the place. Just lately it’s been deserted, but about seven weeks ago workmen came in and put up a lot of camouflage netting, and built something very large under it. Took them four and a half weeks working only at night.”

  “The mock-up?” McGarvey asked, and he could see the sense of it. And he could also understand why DeCamp, if he were their contractor, would have expected total anonymity out in the desert. As far as he was concerned no one would be looking for him in Libya. No reason for it.

  “I think so, and Eric agrees,” Otto said. “Anyway, six warm bodies showed up about a week after the work crew left — project apparently completed — and then it got interesting. Two of the infrared images seemed to be stronger than the others, and we’re guessing it means they were at a higher elevation than the others. Closer to the underside of the netting.”

  “On top of the mock-up.”

  “Right. And then what had to be a practice run for a military operation, the other four approached the mock-up from two separate directions.”

  McGarvey saw that too, and he walked to the window and looked outside at the flotilla still circling Vanessa. “They’ll be coming from the sea, from the protestors. I didn’t think Schlagel would take the risk.”

  “Well, maybe not, Mac,” Otto said. “The four only approached the rig, but then they stopped, moved together, and in the morning they left. Never came back.”

  “They built something in secret, something they didn’t want satellites to see, used it once, and then left,” McGarvey said. “Someone spent a lot of money for what? To try to reach the rig from the sea, but for some reason decided it wouldn’t work?”

  “My snap guess would be that they wanted to approach the rig underwater, attach explosive charges to the legs, and then back off. The rig would capsize and maybe sink to the bottom.”

  “But they cut off their training op,” McGarvey said. “Because they realized that it wouldn’t work. They couldn’t guarantee that there’d be no survivors.”

  “Means they’re coming aboard.”

  “How’d you come up with DeCamp’s name?”

  “Source Beta in Tripoli, works for Army Logistics. Name is Peter Abu-Junis Jabber, left over from the British SAS training missions. Anyway he’s on his way out of badland, and I figured he was worth tapping. Told me that DeCamp had used the base about nine years ago for some sort of training mission. He wasn’t sure, but he thinks it might have been DeCamp again this time.”

  It was more than circumstantial, it was thin, and yet McGarvey had a feeling that they’d found their contractor at last. “Find out who’s paying him, and maybe we’ll get the why.”

  “We’re working on it,” Otto said. “But if our guy is DeCamp, whoever’s paying him has deeper pockets than Schlagel.”

  “Marinaccio and her friend in Venezuela?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Anyway, kemo sabe, watch your ass out there because he’s coming your way, and if Schlagel is involved it’ll be just as a smoke screen.”

  “I haven’t watched much television lately. What’s he been up to?”

  “He held a send-off rally at the Coliseum in Biloxi for his flotilla. Standing room only in the fifteen-thousand seat arena, and they were stacked up out in the parking lot, and still coming even after it was over. Since then he’s been holed up at his place in McPherson, spreading the message on his SOS network every night from seven till ten central. And the guy is good, he’s generating a lot of buzz.”

  “Serious attention? Enough that we might not have only DeCamp to worry about?”

  “If you mean some nutcase coming after you, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, though Schlagel makes it a point to tell everyone who’ll listen that his is a ministry of peace and all that Lamb of God bullshit,” Otto said. A long time ago he’d worked for the Jesuits and he still had bitter feelings about religion in general. “But if you’re asking for help out there no one is going to lift a finger, he’s become that powerful.”

  “Have you been able to hack into his system?”

  “Yeah, and it was easy. Too easy. There was nothing there. If he has some sort of a secret agenda he’s keeping it to himself, or maybe a trusted adviser or two, just word of mouth. But I did find out something interesting. His real name is Donald Deutsch, a poor kid from Milwaukee who did a stint in the army, got busted for selling tax-free cigarettes and liquor in Europe, and then disappeared in San Francisco about the time the reverend Jeremiah Thaddeus Schlagel showed up.”

  “If he really pushes for the presidency the media will nail him.”

  “Won’t matter, Mac. In fact, if he’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll go public with his past. Had to reinvent himself, had to pull himself up from the gutter, up by the bootstraps. If the timing is right, he’ll get a boost.”

  “And if it’s wrong, maybe we’ll get a boost.”

  Otto laughed. “I’m on it,” he said.

  “I want some options,” McGarvey said.

  “I hear you, but you lost one. Joseph Bindle, the Guardian reporter you th
ought might be our contractor, is a no-go. He filed his story on the platform, and the writing isn’t half bad. DeCamp might be a trained killer, but he’s probably not that good a writer. Bindle’s a freelancer out of Paris.”

  * * *

  Work on the second impeller cable frame was nearly completed, and when McGarvey walked out on deck, the crane was lifting the last of the steel girders into place, and two welders started working, sparks flying everywhere. Defloria was speaking with Herb Stefanato, his construction foreman, and he looked up, a little irritated.

  “As you can see we’re a little busy, Mr. McGarvey.”

  “I only have one question.”

  Defloria nodded, knowing that he had no choice.

  “Would it be possible to get someone aboard by boat, maybe through a hatch in one of the legs, without anyone knowing about it?”

  “No hatches in the legs are accessible from outside the rig, but I suppose someone could toss grappling hooks and climb up over the side. But we’re a long ways off the water, and the seas would have to be calm. Wouldn’t be like the Somali pirates boarding a cargo ship or supertanker.”

  Stefanato, who’d been closely watching the welding operation, looked over his shoulder. “Someone’s on deck twenty-four/seven, and we’re very well lit up. Are you saying something like that might happen?”

  “Other than by helicopter, how do you get people and equipment aboard?”

  “The crane lowers a basket to a resupply ship. And that can be a dicey operation if any sort of a sea is running. People have been hurt.”

  “One other thing,” McGarvey said. “Has anyone from the flotilla tried to contact you in any way?”

  DeFloria gave him a bleak look; he was obviously a man caught between a rock and a hard place, between wanting to get his men off the rig, out of harm’s way, and needing to follow the company’s orders if he wanted to keep his job. “They’re on the radio to us constantly,” he said. “The only channels they don’t interfere with are six and eight that we use for intership communications with the Tony Ryan.”