by Mims, Lee
Pushing back from him to catch a breath, I ran my fingers across his chest, stopping to play with his puckered nipples.
“It happens,” he said, grinning as he rubbed his thumbs over mine now protruding through bra and blouse. “I’ve gotten you all wet. Come. Let me dry you off upstairs where it’s cool.”
“Okay,” I said. Then, being my practical self, I added, “But I need to strip off these wet things first.”
In the comparative privacy of the screened-in porch, I dropped my wet shorts and reached for the button on my blouse, but Viktor’s hand pushed mine away.
Shortly after this, I had the answer to a question I’ve wondered about all my adult life. Is it possible to have sex in a one-person net hammock and not bounce yourselves out? The answer is no. At one point we managed to power-shoot ourselves into the wall. I thought I might have killed myself, but Viktor, undaunted, carried me upstairs, which is where we were when I thought of another question. “Viktor, what does mya morkovka mean?
“Ah,” he said, raising his head and resting in the palm of his hand. “You are interested in the romance of the Russian language. That’s good.”
“I don’t know about all that, but what does it mean?”
“It’s just a … term of endearment. A name my mother called me when I was very small. It means ‘my little carrot’,” he said, pulling me close.
“Doesn’t fit you anymore,” I said, noticing he was ready for round two but not sure if I was. I didn’t have time. I needed to get back out to the Magellan. Just at that moment my companion demonstrated a creative gesture of endearment, which caused me to postpone my leave taking.
Two hours later, Viktor was still napping, so I jotted him a back-late-don’t-forget-to-lock-up note, adding the location of the hide-a-key just in case he should need it, and phoned the transport service in Beaufort. The helicopter pilot who answered sounded suspiciously like the maniacal aerobat who’d flown Bud and me on our first trip. I started to hang up, but I really needed to get on board, so I instead told him I’d be right out.
My worst fears were confirmed upon seeing the ex-military chopper pilot from hell bull through the glass doors as I waited on the tarmac.
Forty minutes later, limp as a wet cat, I spilled from the copter onto the deck. Saying, “Let me know when you’re ready to leave,” my tormentor disappeared from sight within seconds.
“Never again in this life,” I muttered.
After notifying the radioman that I was aboard Magellan, I set off for the bridge and the conference room off the helm. Several copies of the site survey, along with other documents and maps pertinent to the well, were stored there, ready to be handed out if a situation arose that required a group think. There were also copies of different sections of the 2D seismic survey. I was looking for the area surrounding the wellhead out 4,000 feet, the length of the ROV’s tether.
As I reached for the conference room door, one of Powell’s assistants stepped from the helm. “Ma’am, we were just getting ready to call you. Captain Powell needs you in the DC.”
“Uh, okay, thanks,” I said and waited for him to return to the helm. He didn’t. He just stood there watching me as if he meant to make sure I didn’t ignore his directions. I turned and headed for the DC, disappointed that I’d have to put off following my hunch until later.
Upon reaching the DC, I was interrupted again when someone behind me called out, “Hey, Miss Cleo, you’re back!” It was Ricky, the ROV tech.
“Hey,” I said, turning to face him. “What’s up?”
“Just heading back after a break and seeing you reminded me. I found copies of an article you left in the printer. I kept them for you if you want to drop by and pick them up.”
I choked back panic and tried to sound confused instead, repeating, “Copies of an article?”
“Yeah. Something about Hitler refitting a submarine. I didn’t have time to read it.” Then, realizing my confusion, he added, “At least I thought they were yours since I found them in the print bin not long after you left that last day you visited us.”
I shook my head with slow sweeps. “Not mine.”
“Oh, I bet I know what happened,” he said. “It’s probably something that was in the queue on Hunter’s computer before the printer broke. When you printed something else after it was fixed, they printed too.”
I nodded—mystery solved, undoubtedly—and willed him to drop the subject. No luck.
Thinking for a few seconds, Ricky snapped his fingers and said, “Since there were two copies, he must have meant them for the twins. Can’t imagine why, but I’ll call them and let them know I have them.” Giving me a smile and a wave, he turned and headed aft in the direction of the ROV van.
Uh oh. “Ricky, wait!” I shouted, but he didn’t hear me over the ambient roar of drilling.
A chill shook me that had nothing to do with the opening of the DC door. I had to stop him from drawing the twins’ attention to the article. I should have told him they were mine—that might have been the best thing—but he caught me off guard. Now I had to fix the situation: tell them they were mine after all and hope he’d forget about it. Unfortunately, before I could run after him, Phil Gregson appeared. “There you are. We were really starting to worry about you. It’s about time to pull the logging device up.”
“I got tied up … kind of,” I mumbled, following him back into the DC.
“Hi there,” Bud said, standing beside Duncan Powell, who was studying the monitors with David Grant.
“Bud!” I said, truly surprised. “What are you doing here?”
He nodded toward Powell and Grant. “We just came down to give David the word to pull the logging device up.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard that. What are you doing here?”
“I told you,” Bud said, beaming with joy at being on one of the world’s biggest big-boy toys. “We just came down to …”
“You, Bud. What are you doing here?
“My, my, a little testy today aren’t we? And somewhat bedraggled, I might add.”
Unconsciously, my hand shot to my hair wadded up under my hard hat. Ticked that I’d let him elicit such a girly response from me and impatient to get out of the DC and find Ricky, I snapped sanctimoniously, “Sorry if I don’t come up to your new standards, but this is what a little hard work will do for you.”
David feathered the joysticks, Powell stared intently at the monitors, and Phil cleared his throat and ventured, “Er, Cleo, if you’ll direct your attention to this updated drill log, you’ll see how our new azimuth direction put us right in the new bright spot.”
“Thanks, Phil,” I said. After catching us up on where we were in the hole, Powell thought we needed to go back to the conference room and look at some detailed figures on one of the formations that was causing pressure concerns. That put a real kink in my plan to go over the site survey again. Darkness was beginning to fall, but the ship’s lights hadn’t switched on yet. My head was beginning to pound from the long day and the ghastly ride over. What’s more, I was exhausted from my … workout with Viktor. But, more than anything, I desperately needed to find Ricky.
I was trying to come up with a way to accomplish this when Bud fell in beside me. “Sorry if I rattled you back there,” he said. “I was just worried about you.”
“You’ve had over six years to get used to your new job description—i.e., not worrying about me. One would think a smart fellow like you could have mastered that by now.”
Stepping ahead of me to lead the way through a narrow, dimly lit space interspersed with giant iron support beams, Bud said over his shoulder, “It’s just that you look really tired. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”
Dark circles? I was just about to lay Bud low with a withering remark when I ran smack into one of the beams. “Oof!”
Turning back to me, Bud demanded, “D
id you just run into that beam?”
“No.”
“Yes, you did. You’re dead on your feet. I know you.”
“Shut up,” was all I could think to say. Resisting the urge to shake my head and realign my eyeballs, I stepped past him, caught up with Powell, and said, “Do we know how many billions of cubic feet of gas it’ll take to put Global back in the black?”
Powell shrugged. “Not really. All depends, I guess, on how deeply in dept they are.”
From what Bud had told me, we’d better hope we hit the mother lode.
After an hour of discussion on variations in formation pressure, I excused myself for a bathroom break and made a beeline for the ROV van. I didn’t have to go all the way to the van, though, as I saw Ricky coming out of one of the Internet rooms.
“Hold up, Ricky,” I said to his back, noting he seemed in a hurry.
“Hi, Miss Cleo. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing really, I was just wondering about that article …”
“Oh yeah, it was only three pages, so I just scanned it, placed it in a folder, and emailed it as an attachment to the twins, then threw away the hard copies. I figured if it was something Hunter meant for them to have, they’d know about it; if not, they could just delete it.”
I’m sure I paled visibly because he quickly asked, concerned, “You okay?”
“Oh sure. Just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Well, gotta go. I’ve been told by the powers that be that the end’s in sight and to get ready for end-of-drilling operations.”
“Right. See you later.”
“Nice working with you, Miss Cleo.”
Back in the conference room, we connected with Hiram Hightower and his team in Houston. It was after nine o’clock. Phil and I’d been over the logs several times and were in concurrence on the size of our gas discovery. On screen, Hightower tossed a pen down on the log sheets that spread from one end of the conference table to the other. With a heavy sigh, he crossed his arm over his barrel chest and said, “I’m confident our log analysts, even after a week of screwing with these figures, will come up with the same number we have.”
Phil chewed a hangnail, then said, “On the upside, the quality of the gas is exceptional—dry, no contaminants, and the size of the reservoir is about what we expected—”
Hightower impatiently cut him off, “Yes. Yes. But what wasn’t expected is that within this very high-quality, lower Cretaceous reservoir we’d encounter a payzone of only about ninety feet of natural gas.”
Bud cleared his throat, “Gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sensing a bit of panic here. I’m neither a geologist nor geophysicist, so correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we just make the very first discovery of dry natural gas ever off the East Coast of the United States, and isn’t it substantial?
“Well, substantial is a relative term,” Braxton Roberts said. “The eight hundred fifty billion cubic feet we just tapped into is a far cry from the two trillion cubic feet we need to save the company. Especially when we know there’s at least a major field of one to five trillion cubic feet and, more probably, a giant field of five to fifty trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas down there … somewhere.”
The silence in the conference room was punctuated only by the steady hum of the diesel engines and generators below us and the buzz of florescent lights above us.
“What I’m trying to point out,” Bud said patiently, “is that, according to Cleo, the gas probably is there in sufficient quantity, it just leaked out due to a fracture somewhere. We just need to keep going.” Bud looked at me. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” I said, directing my comments to Hightower on the screen. “Phil and I can go over the 3D images until we’re blue in the face, but the fact remains, we’re still in the reservoir and the deeper we go, the greater the likelihood of equaling the recent finds by some of our competitors in Azerbaijan and Mozambique. If we just change—”
Roberts cut me off, booming, “I’m just not inclined to keep pouring more money down a weak hole. I say we pull out and start another well on our adjoining block. That would still keep us in the thickest part of the structure, but closer to the bright spot that we first looked at. Why don’t we just admit we picked the wrong spot and start over?”
One of the chief financial officers for Global, Patrick Donovan—so well-known in the industry as a wizard at numbers that, despite being in his late sixties, he hadn’t been forced into retirement—loosened his tie. “Dammit, Braxton,” he said with a force that belied his diminutive size. “You spend money like it’s water. You’re talking about another hundred million at least. I want to hear why Ms. Cooper thinks we should continue in the hole we’re in. Let her finish.”
“Fine,” snapped Roberts. “Go ahead, Ms. Cooper. Tell us what makes you think the bright spots below our current location aren’t just water? Or salt?”
“Watch your tone,” Bud warned.
“Gentlemen,” Hightower interrupted. “I’d like to hear what Ms. Cooper has to say. She’s our objective opinion and has written extensively on this group of formations.”
“Thank you,” I said. “As you all know, the bright spots might be water, or salt. We just don’t know. But that’s the nature of a rank wildcat like Manteo One, isn’t it? It’s high risk, high reward. What I’m saying is we need to remember the geologic history here. Organic-rich lagoonal shales like the Hatteras Formation lie buried at the foot of the structure, on the seaward edge. If we just change our angle down a little more, head in that direction, and target some of the deeper bright spots along the way, we’re more likely to encounter the type of play we’re looking for.”
“What about the pressure?” Roberts said. “It ramps up very quickly in those lower formations. We’ll need to change casing size to accommodate—”
“That’ll leave us with a soda straw when it comes to production,” Hightower said, suddenly looking decisive. “No, let’s stay with our present casing and drill ahead. I choose to believe Ms. Cooper’s right. In the end, there will be more than one play here. Like Mozambique or Azerbaijan, it will be our net play that counts and it will be more than enough to pull Global out of the red.”
And that was it. Just like magic, the discussion quickly moved to how to accommodate Hightower’s wishes. I silently reaffirmed my wish to be a man when I come back to earth in another life and slipped out of the room. After chugging a Coke and a BC powder, I slipped back into the conference room just in time to hear Powell address the Houston team.
“You’ve made your decision,” he said, “and I can assure you, TransWorld will make every effort to see that it’s carried out to the best possible outcome. Braxton and I will work together and come up with an extension to our well plan based on the new coordinates.”
Roberts wearily nodded in agreement, then added. “First we’ll back up a ways, make the dogleg, then resume drilling. Our new target is at least six hundred feet farther on vertical depth—more, given the new angle to the east—but at about three hundred feet a day, it should only take us a couple of days.”
Everyone headed for the helipad but me. I took off for the head again, where I waited for a few moments before slipping back to the conference room, hoping to find it empty. I was in luck. It looked like a schoolroom at 3:31 in the afternoon. I snagged a copy of the section of the 2D seismic survey for the area surrounding the wellhead, folded it, and stuffed it into my purse. Then, knowing some of Global’s executives had made overnight arrangements on the mainland, I headed for the helipad to hitch a ride.
Bud caught up with me just as I topped the stairs and jogged ahead to the Sikorsky to offer me a hand climbing in. “Thanks,” I said, then made my way to empty seats in the rear.
He plopped down beside me. “Long day, huh?”
“Not at all. I’m just getting warmed up,” I said, determined not to sound
like a person with dark circles under her eyes. “I’m thinking of catching up with some friends later for a drink.”
Bud looked at me dubiously, then his cell rang. He checked the screen and shoved it back in his pocket. “I though you’d be staying out there until they hit the new target,” he said. “You know, be there to actually watch your theory validated.”
“I’ll be back in time for that,” I said, summoning a big smile. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Thankfully the engine spooled up, ending any chance for conversation. I cinched up my seatbelt and jammed my helmet on my head, which was, in fact, still pounding from fatigue and stress.
When we landed, I woke with a start. I was leaning against Bud’s shoulder. As I prepared to leave, I started to apologize for drooling on his chest, but he himself was so deep in sleep I could barely rouse him. I shook him a little harder, and his eyes popped open. “Feel better?” I asked sweetly. “I could tell you desperately needed some rest.”
Once off the tarmac and in the parking lot, I watched Bud trot behind a service truck to his Carrera—the reason I hadn’t seen it when I parked earlier today. Then, changing course, he came back to me and said, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you how proud I was of you tonight,” he said. “You did a masterful job of bringing those guys your way without—” His cell rang yet again. He ignored it.
“Gee thanks, Dad,” I said, “but your pants are ringing.”
Twenty-One
My big challenge during the fifteen-minute drive home was to make it back to the house before Monday became Tuesday while at the same time keeping my eyelids from closing, thus ending my day wrapped around a live oak tree. Some kindly guardian angel must have taken mercy on me, because I made it safely into my drive. The fact that Viktor’s car wasn’t there brought a deep feeling of relief. At last, I could get some rest. Maybe I was getting older.
