Misery Bay

by Chris Angus

  Kitty stared at this new menace. She’d never seen Lonnie before, and anyone who saw the man for the first time never forgot him. The wedge of his neck rose from thick knots of muscle on his shoulders. He was huge and filled the door frame.

  “Who the hell are you?” said Craig.

  It was perhaps the wrong thing to say. Lonnie stared at the man’s naked body and then at Kitty, still being held by the other men, everything in a frozen tableau. Then he kicked Craig in the groin in a move so quick that it seemed to be over before it began. The security chief screamed and went down as though poleaxed. Lonnie paid him no more attention, stepped over his prostrate and writhing form, and dispatched the two other men, who barely had time to open their mouths and gape. In a moment, all three were down, the two holding Kitty out cold, Craig still groaning on the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Lonnie asked.

  She stared at this huge man as though the archangel Gabriel on steroids had suddenly appeared on her doorstep. Then her knees buckled, and she began to slump to the floor. Lonnie caught her and picked her up carefully, like she was a rare flower he might damage.

  “Who … ?” said Kitty.

  “I’m Lonnie, Garrett’s cousin. We’ve been tracking what happened to you. Sorry it took us so long.”

  Slowly, Kitty placed her arms around his huge neck and put her head on his chest. She felt safe for the first time in many days.

  “Thank you,” she said in a voice that was a whisper. Then she lifted her head. “Have you found Sarah?”

  Lonnie stared at her. “Sarah’s here?”

  She nodded. “DeMaio’s men took her right from her house and brought her here. Probably to get leverage over Garrett, but also to replace me for their sex clients after I escaped. We’ve got to find her.”

  “No argument from me. Can you stand up now?”

  She nodded but clung to him a moment longer. Then Lonnie put her down, though she kept one small hand on his arm.

  “Sarah must be in one of the other rooms,” she said. “I heard them walk her away and it wasn’t far.”

  Lonnie took several plastic wrist locks out of his jacket pocket. He cuffed all three men’s arms behind their backs and around a heavy steel heating duct that ran floor to ceiling through the room, effectively immobilizing them. From another pocket he took a small roll of duct tape and slapped a piece across each man’s mouth. Then he and Kitty moved down the hall, opening one door after another. When they came to one that was locked, Lonnie leaned against it for what seemed like only an instant before the door gave way.

  Inside, sitting on a couch and staring at them with their mouths open, were Sarah and Garrett.

  Garrett recovered first. “What took you so long?”

  “Thought I was making pretty good use of my time,” Lonnie said. “No Deputy Commissioners and the like wanting me to get permission to blow my nose.”

  Garrett slapped his cousin on the shoulder and grinned. “Hoped you might show up,” he said. “My own rescue efforts weren’t going so well.”

  Lonnie nodded at Sarah, who had gone over at once and hugged Kitty. “You all right?” he asked.

  “I am now.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “Question is, what do we do next?”

  “Any idea how many more men there are?” Garrett asked.

  “There were at least fifteen we actually saw,” said Kitty. “I killed five. Lonnie just took care of five more. That leaves maybe half a dozen. But there could be others, including some oil executives who came in to enjoy their special privileges. I haven’t seen anything of them.” She glanced back down the hall at the two men still lying silently in a tangle. “What about them? Shouldn’t you cuff them too?”

  Lonnie shook his head. “Hit them together pretty hard. They’ll be out a while and will be pretty concussed when they wake up. They’re not going to be doing much more than staring cross-eyed at the floor for a couple of days. Still, I’ll drag them into the room and close the door, so they won’t be stumbled upon.”

  Garrett said, “The men who captured me had plenty of weapons. Not something you might expect on a simple operating oil rig. We could try to take over the platform, but I think the risk would be too great, especially with Sarah and Kitty here.”

  “I agree,” said Lonnie. “I sent the boat that brought me away. He would have been too conspicuous hanging around the rig and he was at the edge of the craft’s ability to withstand the storm. How did you get here?”

  “Roland. He’s sitting a ways off pretending to fish. Or at least he was before the weather began to deteriorate. But maybe it’s time to bring in reinforcements. We’ve certainly got proof now of what’s been going on here. Cell phones haven’t been reliable, but they must have a radio communications center.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Kitty. “I can take you.”

  “First, we should try to call in Roland’s boat and get you two out of here,” Garrett said.

  “No way. I’m not going to leave you here,” said Sarah. “We finish this together.”

  Garrett looked exasperated, but Kitty sided with Sarah. Lonnie’s presence had given her, indeed all of them, new confidence. As far as Kitty was concerned, Lonnie was the Army, Navy, and Air Force all rolled into one.

  “I agree—we stick together,” said Kitty. “But we’re not going to finish anything here today. DeMaio’s not on board.”

  “And he won’t be easy to get to,” said Garrett. “Wherever he is. He has foreign ties and spends most of his time abroad, from what Alfred Nichols told me. For all I know he may have dual citizenship somewhere. Some place you can bet doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Canada. He had to figure a day like this might come.”

  The wind suddenly picked up, as though someone had turned a switch. It howled through the rig, banging loose parts and blowing anything that wasn’t tied down swirling off into the near blackness of the storm. Then a tortuous, rending sound split the night, like metal being ripped apart. It rose above the wind, dominating the nighttime cacophony.

  “My God,” Sarah cried. “What’s happening?”

  “Come on,” said Garrett. “Let’s take a look.”

  He led the way down the corridor and opened the first outside door they came to. The wind almost tore it out of his hand. The rig’s lights were back on, and they gathered at the opening and stared at a mind-numbing sight.

  The enormous crane that the men had used to force Kitty and Sarah to give up was swinging in the wind. In all the excitement the operator had evidently not battened it down sufficiently. Even as they watched, the wind swung the crane back and forth, screeching metal protesting the ill treatment. Then, suddenly, the support gave way and the entire crane collapsed onto the rig with a sound like a Boeing 747 crashing into a metal scrapyard.

  The entire rig shook from the impact and they were barely able to keep their feet. Across from them, another door opened and several men stood, wide-eyed, peering out at the devastation.

  Kitty stared at them with daggers coming out of her eyes. Every last one of the men working on this rig was aware what went on here and what had been happening to her. If it had been in her power, she would have killed them all. “You should have put a bullet in the others while you had the chance,” she said to Lonnie. “Someone will find them, and we’ll have to deal with them all over again.”

  “Maybe,” Lonnie said, gently. “But we’re talking about five men. I wasn’t ready to kill that many just for the pleasure of it.” He raised one massive hand. “Believe me. I understand where you’re coming from. None of us have gone through what you have. Maybe it was a mistake to leave them alive. It could stiffen the odds against us again.”

  The men spotted them. One gestured animatedly, clearly urging his companions to go after them. But no one was in a mood to go out onto that platform. Who knew what was going to come crashing down next?

  Lonnie closed the door, which only minimally lowered the sound of the wind. “No one’s goin
g anywhere in a boat in this,” he said. “And communications are probably down too.”

  “I agree,” said Garrett. “Roland must have taken off as soon as things began to really deteriorate. I hope he makes it home. I wouldn’t want to be out in this weather in a small fishing boat.”

  “He may be better off than we are,” said Lonnie. “He’s a good seaman, and who knows if this rig can withstand a full hurricane. Looks like we’ll be testing Global’s engineering, and given the rest of their operations, that’s not a reassuring thought. More than one oil platform has gone down in something like this.”

  Kitty and Sarah looked at him with new horror in their eyes.

  “What are we going to do?” Sarah asked.

  Garrett put an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger from the rest of the men on this platform. They’ve got to be as worried as we are about being out here in this blow.” He looked at Lonnie over Sarah’s head. “Anyone know enough about oil platforms to have any idea where the safest place to be is in a storm?”

  “Back in Halifax?” Lonnie suggested.

  Garrett stared at him. “That’s not entirely helpful.”

  The big man shrugged. “If this thing topples, there is no safe place.”

  Kitty said, “When I was hiding in a storage room, I saw survival suits and what looked like some sort of emergency rafts or flotation devices. If you really think this thing might blow over, they may be our only hope. They were located inside one of the concrete piers, which should be about the safest place to be, short of a catastrophic failure of the rig.”

  “All right,” said Garrett. “Can you take us there?”

  She nodded and they all looked simultaneously at the door to the outside. Going out into that maelstrom was not an attractive idea, but they had no options.

  “I’ll lead the way,” said Lonnie. “Hold onto one another. I don’t want anyone blowing away out there.”

  Then they were outside. Kitty was almost at once disoriented and unsure of where to go. The collapse of the crane had turned the entire floor area into a mass of tangled steel, cables, and collapsed smaller structures. There were still lights, fortunately, though it was unclear how long they would last. Every so often, they flickered ominously.

  Holding on to one another, they were blown along by the gale-force winds.

  “Will it get worse than this?” yelled Kitty, not quite believing the violence of the wind.

  Sarah had been in hurricanes before. “This is nothing,” she yelled back. “Barely hurricane force. Maybe seventy-mile-an-hour winds at most. If we get hit directly, it could get twice as bad.”

  Kitty led the way, skirting around the jumble of metal parts, looking for a way through to the storage room. Lonnie held onto her, clearly worried that the wind might pick her tiny body up and simply blow her away.

  The night was black, the wind cold, and icy spray from a hundred feet beneath them whipped high into the sky, only to fall back on their soaking clothes. In addition to the howling wind, there were periodic crashes all around them of unseen objects that had come loose from far above and plummeted to the platform. Every so often, the electrical grid simply went away for a few seconds and they were plunged into blackness. Then they stood, unmoving, fearful of taking a step that might throw them over the side into the swirling maelstrom until the lights flickered back on again.

  Finally, to their universal relief, Kitty found the entrance to the storage room. Once inside, it took all of Lonnie’s strength to push the door shut against the wind. Garrett turned on a powerful flashlight he’d picked up from the debris on the platform. They stood like a pack of drenched rats and surveyed their surroundings. “At least we’ll be able to see,” he said, “if the lights go out permanently.”

  Sarah found a rack of hard hats and handed one to each of them, except Lonnie, who looked at the thing like it was a child’s toy. No way would it fit his enormous head. Then they set about the business of inventorying the survival suits and rafts that Kitty had mentioned. There were lots of immersion suits, at least twenty hung up in rows.

  “Should we put them on?” Sarah asked.

  “Can’t hurt,” Garrett replied. “No telling if we’ll need them but if we do, there probably won’t be a lot of time to get prepared.”

  Kitty eyed the big red suits skeptically. “These are man-sized garments,” she said. “I don’t think they cared about providing outfits for guests like me. I’ll be swimming in one of these. Sarah too.”

  “They didn’t have me in mind either,” said Lonnie. “No way I fit into one of those things.”

  Garrett found a roll of duct tape. “We can modify to a certain extent. For the women, we can tape the arms and legs for a tighter fit. Not sure how we can modify for Lon, though. Maybe if we had a sewing machine, we could stitch two suits together.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Lonnie said. “The rest of you should get into the suits now. Sounds to me like the wind is picking up even more. We may not have a lot of time.”

  His words were sobering. They could feel the rig literally vibrating in the high winds.

  Suddenly, the door to the storage room opened and three men burst in. They struggled to close the door, not realizing there was anyone else inside. They were there for the flotation devices and survival suits and turned immediately to the equipment, only to find Lonnie facing them, holding a pistol.

  Unarmed themselves, the men stared at this almost supernaturally imposing figure and halted in their tracks. Slowly, they registered the others as well.

  “Whoa! Hold on,” said one of the men. “We’re not after you, just some of the safety equipment.”

  “Might not be enough to go around,” said Lonnie casually. The men suddenly looked frightened.

  “Look,” said the one who had spoken. “We’re all in this together now. If this storm picks up to full force, the rig won’t take it. This is DeMaio’s special rig. He wanted it built quickly for purposes of entertaining his international customers. I was here during the construction and they cut corners everywhere.” He pointed to the concrete shell of the piling that made up the walls of the storage room. “See that concrete? It’s way substandard. I’m amazed it’s held up this long. We’ll topple in winds anywhere close to a hundred miles an hour, maybe a lot less.”

  They stared at the man who had just, for all intents and purposes, pronounced their death sentences.

  “Is it your intention to get off the rig now?” asked Garrett.

  The man and his two companions exchanged looks.

  “The others haven’t figured it out,” said the leader. “They’re still inside talking about how to capture you, for God’s sake. It’s madness. They found Craig and the others. But Craig is just security. He doesn’t have any experience with oil rigs. Only thing he’s afraid of is doing anything that might displease DeMaio. But I worked rigs in the Gulf for twenty years. I know what a storm like this can do. We need to get off this thing as fast as possible, before it’s too late.”

  “What exactly is your plan?” said Garrett.

  The man shrugged. “Get in the suits, haul two rafts down to the docking platform, and climb aboard. And I mean now. I’ll take my chances in the sea before I would on this rig, held together with chewing gum and substandard reinforcing rods.”

  It was enough for Garrett. The tense, frightened demeanor of the men was all the proof he needed that they were in serious trouble as long as they stayed where they were. A glance told him the others felt the same.

  “All right,” said Lonnie. “Those that can fit, grab a suit. We’ll work with you for now,” he said to the men. “But I see one wrong move from any of you and I’ll personally break your necks. Understood?”

  55

  ROLAND HAD HUNG HIS NET line to the overhead winch on his boat. It was all for show. There were no fish in this particular area anyway. Fished out years ago. He eyed the rig a quarter mile off his bow. Garrett had been gone for a while n
ow and the winds had picked up considerably.

  He was a lifelong fisherman and had experienced high winds and tortured seas many times. But this blow showed every sign of getting a lot worse. And soon.

  He didn’t really want to leave Garrett and his girlfriend. He’d always had a thing about obeying authority that grew out of his lifelong feelings of inadequacy on so many levels. Garrett knew this and played on it, and Roland knew he played on it. But it didn’t anger him anymore. He understood it was simply his nature.

  Still, what could he do? How long should he wait? If he was going to get back safely to the wharf, he needed to leave now, before the wind picked up any more.

  Maybe he was too far off and had missed Garrett’s signal. He throttled the engine up and began to move closer to the rig. Though it was well into daylight now, the gloom from the approaching storm kept things much darker than normal and he doubted anyone on the rig would see him unless they were really looking for him. If they did, they’d simply see a working fishing boat … granted, one run by a madman to be out in these seas.

  A hundred yards from the rig, he hove to and stared at the enormous monolith. The waves were six to eight feet and the boat wobbled like a top in its final throes. The huge concrete posts embedded in the sea floor towered over him, the waves breaking against them with great sprays of foam.

  There was something strange about one of the towers. He maneuvered closer and saw that as each wave hit the pylon, pieces of concrete broke loose. Not pieces. Chunks. He looked around and saw the same phenomenon on each of the other piers. Roland sat back in his pilot’s chair and pondered this.

  Abstract thinking wasn’t his strong suit. He’d always been a poor student, though he had an innate ability to pick up those things that he needed to know. Thus, he was well versed in carpentry, engine mechanics, and GPS, and had taken especially to computers over the years.