The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  Faced with the grim alternatives of reentering the Great Pearl Bank or sailing into the noxious oil fields, Hardin saw no real choice. He no longer voyaged from coast to coast. He had made his break from the land, which he had come to see more as an obstacle than a destination. Deep seas were his haven now. Shallows were anathema, the last place he would go for refuge, and he would have sailed through burning water rather than risk the Swan’s hull on another reef.

  He neared the edge of the oil field, and burning water seemed to be what waited. Flames rimmed the sky, dulling the electric lights on the sea rigs to pale, white dots, and the stench of gas grew so strong that he feared he would be poisoned by the wind.

  A giant fireball leaped fitfully from the top of a sea rig a mile away, wrestling with the night, strangling the dark. It silhouetted closer rigs and threw their tortured shadows on the water like the victims of a jail-yard riot. Hardin steered away from the flare, afraid that the light of its thrusting flames would reveal his presence to a tow crew passing close ahead.

  They were pulling a long string of pontoon-supported pipe that looked like the fleshless backbone of a dinosaur. The tugboat, the turban-topped figures of the deckhands, and the skeletal pipeline etched sharp black lines on the fiery backdrop of sea and sky, and only when the tug moved beyond the range of the fireball did its green and white running lights escape the grip of red.

  Hardin waited until the hollow rumble of the tug engine faded into the darkness. Then, quickly, he sailed the bright waters, holding his breath until he had reached the next dark patch, an area of several miles around and devoid of activity. From the darkness, he saw planes sweeping low on the horizon.

  He pointed the Swan toward the big platform he had seen when he had first emerged from the Pearl Bank. Its gold crown still glowed warmly and it glistened with hundreds of electric lights that crusted its spindly legs, lined its upper decks, and shone in its windows. He closed within a half mile and watched as a pool of light suddenly filled on the roof and a twin-rotor helicopter settled into it.

  A number of boats were darting to and from the platform. He released the extended jib halyard and dropped the sail. A boat tore past, unseeing, and faded into the night. Hardin raised the jib again and proceeded northwest into a forest of drilling rigs.

  That this was a new field was apparent by the gangs of men working on the rigs. Some of the towers were under construction. Others, completed, shook with the ceaseless rocking of the drilling arms. In the distance, a single pillar of fire marked the sky. Hardin moved through the rigs, veering from lights, hiding from men, seeking the shadows.

  The hot breeze was from the south now—it had been shifting every few moments—and he didn’t hear the workboat’s engine until it was alongside. Roustabouts sat on the stern, sagging with weariness. Perspiration glistened on their naked torsos and reflected the reddish sky. Hardin doused the jib again. The workboat swung across his bow and entered a lighted channel. Hardin left the jib down and started his engine, relying on the almost constant murmur of machinery to block the quiet exhaust of the Swan’s diesel at half speed.

  Ahead was a brightly lighted pumping derrick. He steered north of it. The wind, which had shifted again astern, brought the hollow airy sound of a tugboat coming up behind, hauling high empty barges and closely followed by a second tow.

  Hardin swung the Swan south, but before he could get on a new course to take him past the derrick, on which a work gang was unloading a freight boat, a push-tow barge and tug loomed ahead. Hardin swung north again and cut his engine. He was in the center of a two-hundred-yard-wide stretch of water between the oncoming push tow and the overtaking barge pulls. Ahead, dead center, were the workmen on the derrick.

  He looked back and growled a curse. Forging past the barge tows was a big dhow under sail—utterly out of step in the macabre drilling field, a visitation from another place and time—that threatened to run the Swan down from astern.

  He thrust the throttle forward and steered toward a slot between the barge tows and the derrick. As he drew near he could see the men laboring in the damp heat, heaving crates and drums of wire and hose onto the loading dock where others humped the material toward an open freight elevator.

  The tug towing the barges was pulling alongside, fifty yards away, a dim crenellated shape against the distant gas flares. Hardin glanced back and timed his passage by the derrick to share it with the dhow. He speeded up. The men loading stopped and, as he had hoped, stared the other way at the unlikely sight of the wooden ship.

  Hardin slowed his engine to make less noise. When he was fifty yards from the derrick he saw a red glow in the shadows behind the loading dock—a laborer was sneaking a cigarette. He turned lazily toward Hardin, staring at nothing.

  On the other side of the derrick, the dhow cut across the path of the oncoming push tow. The push-tow helmsman screamed his outrage. The return abuse from the dhow’s wheelhouse drew hoots of laughter from the men on the derrick. The laborer peeked around the corner where the shouts were emanating.

  The laughter stopped. The laborer sat down again with his back to one of the massive legs that speared through the loading dock. He took a deep drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke in the air, and looked out at the water.

  Hardin cut his engine. Distant sounds took its place. The Swan sliced along on momentum, approaching the laborer’s field of vision. He was no more than a hundred feet away, so close that Hardin could see that he was not Arab, but European, with light hair and a muscular body overlaid with fat. His head lolled to his shoulders as if he was drifting to sleep.

  Astern, Hardin heard the second tow coming up. Would the barges distract the man, or wake him, or create a dark backdrop which would make the white Swan even more visible?

  She was almost past the derrick, but slowing markedly. Then the laborer turned his head so that Hardin was once again about to drift into his field of vision. The tug’s long barge line crept by to starboard.

  Hardin pulled the throttle all the way back and nudged the starter button. The engine gave a quick grind, but didn’t catch. He eased the throttle forward a notch, trying to start quietly. Again it wouldn’t. The wake of the barge line was advancing behind him. He set the throttle at the normal start position and waited while the diagonal wave caught up. At the moment it lapped over the exhaust port, he hit the starter. The engine caught and the rising wave muffled the sound.

  Hardin throttled back, engaged the prop, and eased away from the derrick. He looked back. The cigarette glow brightened, then arched after him as the man flipped his butt into the water. He stood and stretched, still staring. Hardin felt as if his eyes were boring into the Swan. The man stopped in midstretch, his arms held high like a referee’s signal.

  The son of a bitch saw him.

  Hardin hit the throttle. The Swan shot forward. The laborer grew small astern. A second man appeared from around the corner of the loading dock and gesticulated angrily. Casting a final glance over his shoulder, the laborer scurried back to work.

  He let his breath out with a long sigh and pointed the Swan toward the next fireball four or five miles away. It was a split flame and it lunged at the sky like a reptile’s tongue. Numerous oil derricks sprinkled the distance. Those near towered higher than the Swan’s mast; their shadowy frames reminded Hardin of the empty girders of half-built skyscrapers. Those far were stubby black marks at the bottom of the fiery sky.

  He raised the jib and cut the engine.

  The Swan glided into water that quivered with the flamboyant sheen of an oil slick. The floating crude glossed the surface and shone like a liquid mirror, trapping the light the way soft tar might hold a dancer’s feet, retarding the reflections, making each ray pirouette so slowly as to bare everything. Colors separated, sharpened, multiplied. What had seemed red became many reds—a bleeding rainbow—scarlet, cherry, ruby, wine, magenta, copper, brick.

  The spilled crude had an oddly pure smell, sharp, stinging the nostrils, but less noxiou
s than the stink of the burning gas. It left a murky line on the Swan’s white hull. Something flickered against the boat. Hardin jumped back, startled. The dying sea snake struck again, rolled belly up, and sank.

  Hardin passed a half mile south of the lunging split-flame fireball and found another flare to steer by. The oil tankers in the north seemed closer. A dark form, inbound, blanked his steering mark. He turned several points south, still pointing north of west, to avoid converging with the tanker route, and crossed a broad, dark empty stretch devoid of rigs and wellheads.

  Something white gleamed to port. He watched it with his glasses. Breaking water. A reef. Too close to the Pearl Bank. Spinning the wheel, he turned ninety degrees and headed north on a beam reach, his feet tingling for the sudden rupture of coral against his hull.

  Hardin maintained the new course until he had crossed the sea-lane. The flow of ships would be a better barrier between him and the reefs. He found a new flare and steered west.

  Two young men took off from bases on either side of the Gulf. The Arab was flying a Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force jet-turbine helicopter. The Persian was at the helm of an Iranian Navy landing Hovercraft, an amphibious vehicle designed to deliver a pair of battle tanks to the enemy coast.

  It carried no tanks today, only a crew of spotters with binoculars and radar scanners, and consequently it often topped its cruising speed of sixty-five miles an hour. Whenever it did, the increased dynamic pressure—the pressure of forward motion—threatened to overwhelm the pressure of the supporting air cushion. The pilot was experienced, and he was enjoying the game of driving his craft to the brink of stability, stepping over, and skittering back.

  He and the Arab met just north of Ds, a small island fifty miles southeast of Hll. They were on converging courses, the Hovercraft skimming the water on a luminous froth, the helicopter flying at wave-top level, its searchlights blazing. Each saw the other at the same time. Each recognized a denizen of the opposite shore. Neither would give way.

  The only witness to the fiery explosion was the pilot of an Arabian spotter plane and he reported, his voice shaking with rage, that the Iranian craft had deliberately rammed the Arab helicopter. Rumor raced across each force’s radio airwaves, and before the commanders prevailed, several exchanges of gun and rocket fire had occurred.

  Miles Donner did all he knew to patch up the temporary alliance. Now he stood with his back to the conference room and stared out the graying windows, waiting for the sun. Bruce, the Englishman, was asleep on the couch. The managers of Qatar Oil had retired to staterooms, and the only other people in the room atop Wellhead Number One were the Iranian commander and the Arab colonel.

  The Iranian, his eyes weary, sat like stone while the Arab raged. Only once did he respond in any way and that was with a single glance, so filled with hate, that even the Arab seemed to realize that another word might cost him his life.

  The Arab stormed to the door, opened it, announced that his forces were going to search the oil fields.

  “He’s in the Pearl Bank,” the Iranian said evenly.

  “He can’t attack from the Pearl Bank,” said the Arab. “We will stop him.”

  “You’ve got to find him first.”

  “We will find him.”

  Donner turned around and decided to make a final try. “We really ought to concentrate our forces in one place.”

  “Then search the oil fields,” said the Arab.

  “He’s not there,” the Iranian said firmly. “He’s in a cove someplace, in the shadow of a cliff, or camouflaged on a beach.”

  “We will spill no more blood on the Pearl Bank.”

  “Tell your pilots to look out for the derricks or they’ll be spilling a lot more blood,” said the Iranian coldly.

  The Arab slammed the door. Moments later his helicopter thundered off the roof. It circled the wellhead, and for a terrifying instant Donner thought he would strafe them.

  Dawn came to the Gulf like a banked fire. The red sky slowly grayed; the flames seemed to flicker down to glowing coals, then white ash. A leaden mist rose from the water. A morning star shone overhead and promised a clear day.

  It found Hardin, hollow eyed, southeast of Hll, and still searching for a place to hide his boat. The wind had dropped to a light breeze and he was on an open stretch of water, miles from the next oil-rig cluster. He raised a spinnaker. The sail ballooned.

  The Swan ghosted northwest, rolling in the light sea. Hardin heard helicopters. Their noise faded, only to be followed by others, which also passed, unseen. The sky began to lighten in the east and turn pearl with the coming sun. Half an hour more and the Swan would be very visible.

  A gas flare billowed from a group of rigs ahead, but now in the morning light its smoke was more apparent than its flame. Hardin muttered a curse. He had just cleared them when he saw a single rig, a mile ahead. He would have to douse the spinnaker to dodge it.

  He was on the foredeck, stretching to reach the spinnaker pole, when he noticed something different about the oil rig. It showed no lights. No tenders bobbed about it, nor did he see any motion of drilling or pumping machinery. He got the binoculars and scanned it carefully.

  A thought, or a memory, was nagging at his mind. He headed the boat upwind, let the spinnaker collapse, secured it so it would not suddenly fill, and went below to check the Sailing Directions. He skimmed the section on Hll, not sure what he was looking for, but more and more convinced that he remembered something of value. His eyes stung with weariness, and the typeface blurred repeatedly.

  “Jazirat Hll . . . Great Pearl Bank . . . Radar Target . . . A light . . . reef . . . tide rips . . . path . . . CAUTION . . . LIGHT . . . FOG SIGNAL . . . Obstructions . . . Anchorage . . . Sea berth.” He went back, knowing he had passed it. “CAUTION . . . oil fields . . .” He found it! “A bank with a least mean depth . . . a 90-foot abandoned and unlighted oil rig is charted in the shoalest part of this bank.”

  He steered downwind and filled the spinnaker and pointed the Swan at the distant tower. Then he ran below, his exhaustion forgotten, and brought up two long nylon lines. He dropped one of the coils in the stern and the other on the bow.

  The tower was closer now. The first rays of the sun lighted its top. Quickly, Hardin doused the spinnaker and started the engine. The rig was a hundred yards off now and he probed it with the binoculars.

  It was definitely abandoned, derelict, empty, and it had about it the air of another age, a reminder of a century past, like the smelter chimneys that Ajaratu had shown him above the played-out tin mines of Cornwall. It was probably less than ten years old, but it held the same promise that never again would man endeavor anything on this spot of the earth.

  Rust streaked the black girders and a quick sail-around revealed that anything of value that could be moved, including its lower cross beams, had been taken off. Nothing remained but the structure itself—an elongated pyramid—four massive legs that sank to the bottom of the Gulf and rose sixty feet, naked, to a steel lacework that looked more graceful the higher it climbed.

  It was impossible to fathom what waited beneath the oil slick inside it. He went in easy, feeling his way with his boat hook. The Swan glided into shadow, past the leg, which was festooned with cleats and jagged metal fittings. Hardin attached a line and walked it astern, then played it out. Diagonally, the distance from leg to leg was almost sixty feet, twenty feet longer than the Swan—and Hardin let her continue until her bow was almost hitting the far leg. Then he snubbed the stern line and hurried forward to tie the bow.

  He let out ten feet, secured it, and returned to the stern, where he pulled up the slack until the boat was riding easily between the legs, which bore a high-tide mark four feet above the water, and for which he allowed extra line. Then he looked up.

  The mast had cleared the lowest crosspiece by six feet, but inside, the tower rig towered another thirty or forty feet above it to a massive cross formed by two huge girders from which the drilling apparatus had been sus
pended. Blue sky showed through the four quadrants around the cross, and sunlight illuminated it with golden shafts.

  Moments later, the sun came over the horizon and it warned Hardin that on this day he would have no shelter from haze and dust and mist. Worried, he drew on strength he hadn’t believed he had left, inflated the rubber dinghy, and rowed out fifty yards. From that distance, he was shocked to see that the Swan was clearly visible: Her white hull gleamed ghostly through the shadows, and as she rose and fell on the gentle swell, her chrome fittings glinted like mirrors.

  An aircraft engine muttered an approach. Hardin pulled on the oars. The engine got louder, closing quickly. He rowed as fast as he could, accidentally forcing the flexible blunt nose under a wave top, half filling the boat. Seconds after he regained the shadows of the old rig, a light plane buzzed past at wave height a mile away.

  Breathing heavily, Hardin gripped the Swan’s gunnel and pondered how to camouflage her. The sails were all white, so he couldn’t drape her, and he had no paint to darken her hull. He shipped the dinghy’s oars, tilting them outward so as not to drip oil on the handles.

  The oil.

  He scooped a handful off the water and smeared it on the Swan. It left a black stain, streaked with white where the calluses on his palms rubbed through the viscous paste. He brought up another handful and repeated the process. Soon he had a patch four feet long from gunnel to boot, as dark as the water. He wiped his hand as clean as he could and climbed aboard the Swan for the mop.

  While he was below, he turned on the radio and dialed VHF Channel 16, the communication link between incoming ships and the cargo facility on Jazirat Hll. He set the volume loud enough to hear it while he worked on deck, then proceeded to dip the mop into the oil slick and swish it along the hull, painting from stern to bow on the starbord side. When what he could reach was covered with the thick brown-black crude, he got back into the dinghy and wiped the underside of the raked bow. Then he started on the port side.

  The radio blared intermittently as tankers from Europe and Japan radioed estimated times of arrival and cargo requirements. Hll assigned berthing pilots or anchorage instructions, and a sound picture emerged of a large busy terminal juggling sea berths and loading time to operate at peak capacity.