Abyss

FORTY-ONE

Three days after Oslo, Eve went back to her office at Princeton to make the final preparations for moving out to Vanessa Explorer, and McGarvey cabbed from Dulles to his apartment in Georgetown.

None of Schlagel’s crowd had been there at the airport, which had not been a surprise to McGarvey after the assassination attempt, but it had been a momentary relief for Eve.

“How’s Mr. Jacobsen, have you heard anything?” she’d asked McGarvey at the airport.

“Tore up his right shoulder pretty badly, but he’s a hero for saving your life,” McGarvey told her.

“I’m glad. He’s a genuinely nice man.”

“What’s next?” he’d asked her before they parted.

“Depends on when the next shot will come.”

“I think you’ll be okay for now,” McGarvey told her, and yet he was having a hard time accepting that the situation was all that simple. The assassination attempt and the shooting of the two assassins had ended it all a little too neatly for him. He just wasn’t sure that it was over with yet. Some intuition, some voice, niggled at the back of his head.

She shrugged. “In any case Princeton first, then back here to Washington for a couple of days, and then out to my rig. The extra million-plus will be a big help, because Commerce doesn’t want to give me any funding, and NOAA’s strapped.” She’d smiled uncertainly. “What about you?”

“We’re still looking for the guy at Hutchinson Island, but we’re coming up empty-handed.” Which was a puzzlement to McGarvey, because Yablonski was damned good and Otto was even better. Whoever the contractor was, he’d left absolutely no track. Almost as if he were a street person, homeless with no background, no driver’s license, no passport, no traceable bank accounts, no criminal record, nor any record tying him to any military service in the world, including the South African Defense Force.

Eve got serious. They were standing outside in the queue for a cab, and the place was noisy. “Do you think he’ll be the next to come after me?”

“Not just you personally. He’ll want to sabotage the oil rig somewhere out in the middle of the Gulf. Send it to the bottom.”

“With me and everyone else aboard.”

“Whomever he’s working for definitely wants to see you fail.”

“InterOil gave me the rig.”

“To prove your project can’t work.”

Eve had turned away, a sudden look of anguish and incomprehension coming over her, as if after finally reaching this point, the Nobel Prize, the rig, the vindication of her science, she still had enemies who not only wanted to see her fail, but were willing to do horrible things to make that happen. “I always figured that I knew what rationality was. Rational thoughts, rational arguments, which would result in logical outcomes. But I’m not so sure anymore, you know?”

McGarvey felt sorry for her. “How rational are two professors fighting for the same tenured position?”

She looked startled, as if it were a new concept, but then she smiled and nodded. “You’re right, of course. You should see the fights. No holds barred. Common sense out the door. Pitiful, actually, because it’s all about professional jealousy. But this isn’t the same, is it? It’s not that simple.”

“No,” McGarvey admitted. “But what they’re doing is rational from their perspective because they’re protecting what amounts to several trillions of dollars over the next fifty to one hundred years. And all that’s not just for the rich guys. It includes the oil field workers from the geologists all the way down to the grunts, most of them with families to support, mortgages, braces for their kids’ teeth, college funds, eventually retirement, and you’re the one who wants take all that away from them. And Schlagel is an opportunist, and from his pulpit what he is doing is rational. He wants to be president, he needs a cause, and you’re it. Do you think any of them would hesitate to pull the trigger if they thought it would make their lives a little better, a little safer?”

Eve’s lips compressed, but she nodded. “I see your point,” she said. Her cab came and she kissed McGarvey on the cheek. “Dinner in town when I get back?”

“Sure thing,” McGarvey said.

After he’d shaved, taken a shower, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a white shirt, and a dark blue blazer he found the note from Gail on the kitchen counter, welcoming him home. The Air France flight had landed around one, and now it was a little past three, and she’d written that she would be at the office when he got back. He found the note slightly disconcerting. It was the message from a wife to her husband, possessive, expectant, confining just now.

Staying in his apartment, cooking, making love, was giving her a sense of ownership. It was a natural feminine emotion to make sure that the nest was safe from predators that his wife Katy had found early on didn’t work with McGarvey. Couldn’t work. Same as his career with the Company. They wanted ownership. Some years ago a deputy director of operations had called him an anachronism, a throwback to the Wild West, a cowboy. And the man had argued that the CIA no longer had need of his kind. Yet they’d kept calling him back to figure out the mess of the day that couldn’t be addressed by any governmental agency on any sort of an official basis.

Sitting in the backseat of a cab heading out to Tysons Corner, he wondered, as he had wondered before — often — if it wasn’t finally time to get out. But it was a meaningless question, especially now that he had the bit in his teeth.

Otto called on his sat phone. “Oh, wow, Mac, she really looked good on stage. Especially the freedom of speech thing. Have you watched CNN’s take on the assassination attempt?”

“No, what’s happening?”

“Oslo took the wind out of Schlagel’s sails, and he’s backed way off.”

“Just for now,” McGarvey said. He was beginning to have a grudging respect for the reverend, who was no tent revival preacher, no simple circus performer. The man knew when to strike, and when to lay back. His timing was that of a national level politician, of a serious presidential contender. Though he would never directly attack Eve, he was capable of inciting it — that was already proven — and he had the motivation.

“That’s for sure, but it gives you some breathing room.”

“Anything new on our contractor?”

“Nada, but I have a couple of ideas that we can talk about over dinner tonight. Bring Gail with you, because she’s part of this thing, too.”

McGarvey was feeling cornered again, the same anger he’d carried around for more than a year still simmering just beneath the surface, but Otto was an old friend — his only friend. “Don’t play matchmaker,” he warned.

“I’m not, honest injun. But you haven’t seen Audie for a long time.”

“Not tonight.”

“Why not?” Otto insisted, and it was unlike him. His wife, Louise, had probably made the suggestion. Strongly.

“Because I’m not ready to expose my granddaughter to another woman. Another relationship.”

Otto hesitated for a long time, and when he spoke he sounded resigned. “It’ll have to happen sooner or later, kemo sabe, and maybe everybody knows it except for you.”

McGarvey was on the verge of lashing back, but a wave of sadness nearly overpowered him. “Later,” he said quietly.

“La Traviatta around the corner from your apartment. We’ll get a babysitter. Eight?”

“Eight,” McGarvey said and he broke the connection.

When he looked up a minute or two later he realized they were just getting on the Beltway outside Falls Church, less than ten minutes from the office, and he also realized that he had nothing to say to Admiral French that made any sense at this point. He told the cabbie that he’d changed his mind and to turn around and take him back to Georgetown.

Gail hadn’t tried to call the apartment to find out what was keeping him, which McGarvey appreciated. It gave him a little time alone to get his thoughts and emotions in order, and to get back into focus. Sitting by the bow windows that looked over at Rock Creek Park, an oasis of calmness and serenity in a city that had always kept a frenetic pace, he tried to balance his need to work alone with the realities of the situation they would be faced with out in the Gulf. The Coast Guard could escort them all the way to Florida’s east coast. A SEAL team could be stationed aboard the rig, or stand off in a submarine that would shadow the platform. Short of that, the rig could be put under constant satellite surveillance and at the first hint of trouble a rapid response team could be deployed from McDill Air Force Base in Tampa or, when the rig was farther south, from Homestead Air Force Base in Miami.

But all of that would do nothing more than delay the attack on the rig, which might not even take place until after it was anchored, and the Pax impellers installed. If a cable on one of the huge water augers were to part, serious damage would be done to the platform, and certainly there would be casualties, including deaths.

When the attack did come, McGarvey preferred that it would be out in the Gulf, where he had a better chance of dealing with it. In tight quarters aboard the rig he figured that he could more easily handle a strike force that probably wouldn’t involve more than a half-dozen men. Professionals, which would be their one exploitable weakness: pros were predictable. It was their training.

McGarvey looked up suddenly as someone came to the door, and he reached for his pistol and glanced at the wall clock at the same time Gail walked in. It was a few minutes after seven already, and he hadn’t noticed the fading light outside until just now.

She started to smile when she saw him by the window, but then spotted the pistol in his hand, and her expression dropped. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” He’d been lost in operational details, and reaching for the gun was merely a reflex move. Like most professionals he too was predictable, something the contractor who had done Hutchinson Island had not been. It was the one troubling aspect left to consider.

She came across and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I watched her acceptance speech. Bright lady. But she doesn’t look like the type who suffers fools gladly.”

“I think she’s a little overwhelmed,” McGarvey said, and he didn’t catch the odd set to Gail’s lips, because she’d turned away to put her coat over the back of the couch.

“And the shooting afterwards was nothing less than stunning. How is she doing?”

“She’s tough. But I don’t really know what she’s thinking. She holds in just about everything.”

“I figured you’d come out to the office this afternoon. The admiral wants an update.”

“It was a long trip, and I had some stuff to figure out.”

“If you’re tired I can fix us something to eat here.”

“I’m meeting Otto and his wife at La Traviatta around the block at eight,” McGarvey said. “And I want you to come with me because this concerns the operation.”

“Has he come up with something?” Gail asked, suddenly bright.

“He has some ideas he wanted to talk about, and so do I because I want you with me on the oil rig, just you and I.”

Gail saw the logic. “A Coast Guard escort would scare them off, and you want them to attack. Risky, isn’t it? They could drop a couple dozen men on top of us before anyone knew what was happening.”

“Not if it’s the same guy from Hutchinson Island. He’ll have help, but it won’t be squad size.”

“Why not?” Gail asked.

“Because he’s too arrogant, too sure of himself,” McGarvey said. “Anyway it’s a moot point. We’re getting no help because no one believes Eve is in any danger now. The bad guys were taken out in Oslo. And it would be politically incorrect to interfere in a civilian operation.”

After a moment she nodded. “I’m in,” she said.

It was a Sunday evening and the Italian restaurant was only half full. Otto and Louise were sitting at a booth near the rear of the dining room, and when McGarvey and Gail walked in Otto waved them back. He jumped up. “Oh, wow, you’re Gail, and you’re prettier than Mac said you were, honest injun.”

Gail smiled. “Thanks.” She and Otto shook hands, and Otto introduced his wife, Louise.

“Welcome to the club,” she said, her smile warm, as she and Gail shook hands.

They all sat down, and for the first minutes busied themselves with Chianti and breadsticks and ordering their food. And McGarvey watched the naturalness between Otto and Louise and Gail, which compounded his feelings of being painted into a corner. But it was warm, and despite the bit of resentment nagging at the back of his head, he relaxed and went with the flow, because they were no nearer to any answers that made sense than they had been from the beginning and he was with friends.

“I think the assassination attempt on our lady scientist is a dead end now — no pun intended — but Kirk told me that you might have some ideas about our contractor,” Gail said. “Eric didn’t say anything to me, but have you guys worked out something?”

Otto shrugged. His usually out-of-control frizzy red hair was brushed back and tied into a ponytail, and although he had no tie, his shirt was clean and his dove gray sport coat was new, all due to Louise. “We’re getting nowhere trying to trace his background by any conventional routes. He’s a total blank, as if he doesn’t exist.”

“But he does,” Gail said, and McGarvey just listened.

“We saw the back of his head in the video, we have the record of his renting the car, and we have the murder of a gay schoolteacher in San Francisco. But he left no physical evidence behind, not at Hutchinson Island or anywhere else. He even wiped down the hard hat and visitor pass he used on the tour.”

“Makes him a professional,” Gail said.

“Maybe the best since Carlos.”

“Methodology,” McGarvey said, knowing exactly where Otto was taking it.

“That and his connections and the motivation. He’s good, which means he’s been well trained, though we’ve come up blank down that path. But it also means that he’s well paid. Somebody with big bucks hired him.”

“Schlagel’s got the money,” Gail suggested.

“Too obvious,” Otto said. “He couldn’t afford to have such an immediate tie to his organization. And he’s distanced himself from the two guys in Oslo.”

“Oil,” McGarvey said. “Marinaccio in Dubai with help from the Saudis, and Octavio with help from his pals in Caracas.”

“It would fit,” Otto said. “But those people are all but unapproachable unless we have rock-solid proof. And even then it’d be next to impossible to dig her out of Dubai and especially not him out of Venezuela.”

“They have to travel,” Gail suggested.

“With bodyguards,” McGarvey said. “And most governments don’t look kindly on the FBI snatching people and hauling them across national borders — especially not people with that sort of money.” He smiled slightly. “But there are ways.”

“Proof?” Gail asked.

“A few years ago, just after Marinaccio showed up in Dubai, a Frankfurt Stock Exchange minister and his mistress were shot to death in his lake house outside the city. Assassin or assassins unknown. But the Marinaccio Group was under investigation by the FSE, and the driving force behind the investigation was the minister — Rolph Wittgen.”

“What else?”

“Two years ago, Charles Atkenson was shot to death in his Washington apartment. Assassin or assassins unknown, but whoever did it was good. There was tight security on the apartment building, and even tighter security on his penthouse apartment, but absolutely nothing showed up. And the man’s wife was asleep in the next room and she hadn’t heard a thing.”

McGarvey remembered the still unsolved murder because it had hit all the newspapers, especially The Wall Street Journal . Atkenson was an assistant director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Another Marinaccio connection?”

“He’d been head of the team investigating her since before she bolted,” Otto said.

Gail looked from Otto to McGarvey. “Okay, so what’s next? Can we give it to the Bureau?”

“They already have it,” McGarvey said. “Both the woman and Octavio are multibillionaires, and they have connections just about everywhere, so nothing will be done.”

Otto was suddenly alarmed. “We don’t have enough for something like that.”

Gail sat up. “Something like what?”

“If we can’t get to either of them officially, Mac could go in alone and take care of each of them,” Otto said.

“Isn’t that how your mysterious contractor operates?” Louise asked quietly.

McGarvey shrugged.

“But to different ends,” Gail suggested. “Doesn’t that make this different?”

“Sure,” Otto said, looking at McGarvey. “But not until we have the proof.”

Which might never happen, McGarvey thought but didn’t say. “I think that they’ll want to try to take Eve and her oil platform down. Probably in the middle of the Gulf.”

“That’d suit Marinaccio and Octavio as well as Schlagel,” Otto said. “Which is the other idea I’m working on. Schlagel has to be connected to them, and I just gotta find out how.”

“What about Eric?” Gail asked.

“That one was his idea, and he’s already on it,” Otto said. “In the meantime what about you two?”

“We’re going to take a ride on Eve’s oil rig,” McGarvey said, and there was nothing else left to be said because Louise and Gail, and especially Otto, understood the idea of Eve Larsen as a lightning rod, inviting the strike.

None of them were happy, but none of them could see any other viable means to a solution. And especially McGarvey, because he meant to put some innocent people in harm’s way, which made him every bit as arrogant, at least in his own mind, as their contractor. “Doesn’t it ever bother you to put people’s lives on the line?” his wife Katy had asked him just before she’d given him the ultimatum — the CIA or her — that had caused him to run to Switzerland. He should have stayed and tried to make her understand the only answer he could have given her. Did it ever bother him? All the time.

FORTY-TWO

A few of Eve’s techs from the GFDL’s lab at Princeton had already gone down to Louisiana to ferry crates of equipment out to Vanessa Explorer, but the others were waiting in the small lecture hall on the Forrestal campus, and when she walked in with Don Price everyone got on their feet and applauded and cheered loudly enough for her to blush.

There were other Nobel laureates on campus, but as the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Director Brian Landsberg had told her just before she’d left for Oslo, none of them had faced such an uphill battle for recognition as she had. “And it has sometimes been public and ugly.” Nor had either of them thought it was really possible that someone would actually try to kill her.

“At least no one’s pushing for me to recant like Galileo,” she’d told him, but she’d been pleased that he had taken the time to see her off and to reassure her that she had his, and therefore the university’s, approval and full support.

It had meant a lot to her, just as this outpouring now did.

“On the backs of the poor serfs who serve her!” Lisa, one of the young postdocs, shouted, and everyone laughed even harder than the comment deserved because they were so happy, so proud and even awed to be working elbow-to-elbow with a Nobel doc, especially one who’d survived a pair of gunmen. It was almost like the Wild West, or at the very least a television series. Exciting stuff.

But it struck her that Landsberg had no appreciation for the real threat that her project faced, just as her techs here today had no idea. Their heads were buried in the sand, as hers had been, she supposed, before Kirk McGarvey had shown up on her horizon. She’d done a little research on him, but beyond the fact of his employment with the CIA, and the murders of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law, which had caused him to drop out until he’d shown up with the NNSA, she’d found little of anything substantial. Except that he was a man who commanded a great deal of respect on both sides of the Beltway. And being inside his circle she’d felt power radiating from him, like heat from a furnace. She didn’t know if she liked the sensation, or was simply being a moth diving toward the flame. Whatever it was that he had — charisma, self-confidence, or arrogance — he was a seductive man.

“Thank you for that, Lisa,” Eve said, walking down to the head of the hall where on Mondays she laid out the coming week’s work with her group, and they all shared the previous week’s progress of lack thereof. The meetings were almost never lectures, and they were always freewheeling. A bunch of very bright people exchanging ideas. Arguing, debating, endlessly debating, but never disparagingly. Everyone respected everyone else, and it was one of the prerequisites Eve insisted on before hiring someone new. No idea, however far-fetched it might be, would ever be dismissed out of hand.

Prove it right or prove it wrong. It was a team mantra, chiseled in stone.

They all laughed again. Something was up.

“We have a lot of work to do before the Gulf, and this is not a Monday so will someone explain what this is all about?”

A lot of scientists were like children, eager and excited. It was on all their faces now, including Don’s. He pulled a stool out in front of the lectern and motioned for her to have a seat.

“What?” she demanded, which nearly brought down the house.

“Please,” Don said.

“This better be goddamned good,” she groused, but good-naturedly because this was the same way Don had acted when he’d brought the news that she’d won the Nobel Prize, and she felt a little tickle of nervous apprehension. But a good tickle.

Don took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a fax that came in overnight, and I caught it first thing this morning before you got to your office.”

“From who?” Eve asked.

“Let me read it,” Don said, and he grinned. “A drumroll is appropriate at this time.” He paused for a moment. “This is a letter from Mr. Ahmad bin Mubashir al Mustapha, president and CEO of the United Arab Emirates International Bank of Commerce in Dubai, UAE. Addressed to, and I quote, ‘The Honorable Dr. Evelyn Larsen,’ here at your office in the lab.” He looked up for a beat. “Short and to the point. ‘May I, on behalf of the bank and its officers, offer our heartiest congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize. In recognition not only of this great honor that has been bestowed upon you, but of your continuing work with the World Energy Needs project, and your recent breakthroughs in the production of energy with the possible additional benefit of someday controlling adverse weather conditions, we would like to offer you a conditional grant in the sum of one billion dollars U.S.’”

Eve was rocked to the bottom of her soul, and it took a seeming eternity before she could breathe again, and realize that her people were watching her, waiting for a reaction, just like people watched television when the sweepstakes winner opened the door and was told they’d just won ten million dollars. Only here and now, they were a part of the sweepstakes pot, not just voyeurs.

Then it came to her, what the message said. “Conditional on what?” she asked. Where’s the catch? Banks — oil banks — did not hand out that kind of money to the Queen of the High Seas without a lot of serious strings, maybe unacceptable strings, attached.

“‘When electricity flows from Vanessa Explorer to the U.S Eastern Interconnect, thus proving that your project is a practical reality,’ and I quote again, ‘the full amount of the grant will be made available to you to use any way you see fit.’”

Eve’s people held their breath, practically on the verge of exploding.

“And the last line is sweet and to the point,” Don said. “‘Details to follow. Again, our heartiest congratulations.’”

“What else?” she asked.

Don shook his head. “Lots of other verbiage, about your visionary thinking for the future of the planet, service to mankind despite numerous obstacles and even setbacks.” He looked up. “And brilliance.”

“That’s a gross understatement!” one of her techs shouted, and again everyone laughed harder and longer than the comment deserved.

They were keyed up to the max, and Eve figured today was either going to be a bust, production wise, or set some kind of a record for manic frenzy.

“Speech!” someone shouted.

“No,” Eve said. “We leave for the rig in two days, and I’ve given all the speeches I’m going to give this year.”

“Champagne?” Don asked.

“Work,” Eve said, standing up.

“Boo.”

“Slave driver,” Lisa said, but everyone was getting up, huge smiles on their faces, and heading out the door, chattering like excited schoolchildren. They couldn’t help but look over their shoulders at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

Don handed her the fax. “With this kind of money on the table, along with InterOil’s rig, Schlagel becomes practically a nonissue. Oil and money equals power.”

But she didn’t agree and he saw it on her face.

“What are you worried about now?” he asked.

“We’re still facing the same trouble. Only now the stakes are higher.”

Don was vexed. “Landsberg said practically the same thing when I showed him the fax. He wants to see you as soon as we were done here.”

And Eve softened; she couldn’t help it because of Don’s obvious disappointment. He’d gotten over his snit from Oslo, in part because of the shooting, and he refused to understand why she wasn’t over-the-moon happy, why she was still nervous. It’s what all of her team, and especially him, wanted for her. “Did you actually bring champagne?” she asked.

“In the lab. Only four bottles.”

She grinned. “What the hell. Let me talk to Landsberg first.”

Eve walked across campus from the GFDL lab building to Sayre Hall where the AOS program director and staff had offices. Forrestal was also home to the Princeton plasma physics department. A lot of bright people here, she thought, watching the foot and bicycle traffic, most of them dressed in standard scientific uniforms — jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts, and sometimes photographer’s vests with lots of pockets for pencils, pens, markers, scientific calculators, iPods, BlackBerries, and for the older faculty, endless scraps of paper with world-shattering notes, observations, or calculations.

Home. She carried the thought further, places like this were the only homes she’d ever known. She felt comfortable here. Safe. Cocooned — there was something to the ivory tower notion after all — and mostly accepted.

Landsberg’s secretary, an older woman with gray hair up in a bun, scurried around from behind her desk and gave Eve a warm embrace. “My goodness, we’re so proud of you.”

This now was exactly what she’d been thinking about on the way over. “Thanks, Doris, but my team had a lot to do with it.”

“Of course, we know, but, my goodness, what an achievement. Not many lady laureates you know.”

“Well, we’re changing that statistic,” Eve said. “Is the director in?”

“He’s expecting you.”

Landsberg was a tall, lanky man, all arms and legs and angles, who never seemed to sit or stand still. Common campus wisdom was that if he ever did pull up short it would mean that his extremely fertile mind had shut down; his movements were a physical manifestation of his thoughts.

He was seated behind his desk, his fingers flying over his keyboard, and he looked up and smiled. “Quite a surprise, I’ll bet,” he said, without interrupting his typing.

“The money or the assassination attempt? “Eve asked, sitting down.

“Both, but I wanted to talk to you about the money.”

“Do you want to finish what you’re doing first?”

“Nope, just answering a few e-mails,” Landsberg said. “I have a friend on Wall Street who has advised me on how best to manage the occasional big grant we receive. I talked to him this morning and mentioned your good fortune.”

“Might be a bit premature. We haven’t got the rig over to Florida, let alone up and running.”

Landsberg glanced at the screen for just a second then looked back at Eve as he continued typing. “I don’t think there’s any question that you’re on the right track, and you’ll get the money. Problem is handling a billion dollars is complicated. You’ll need help.”

“I don’t know if I trust the guys on Wall Street,” Eve said. “Not after all the crap we’ve gone through over the past few years. A lot of them didn’t seem so smart.”

“His name is James McClelland, manages a couple of successful hedge funds, one of them that includes InterOil who gave you the rig. And he’s done fine by this institution. All I’m suggesting is that you sit down and talk to him.”

“When the experiment is a success,” Eve said, and she knew that she was being stubborn. She supposed it was her British parsimony because of her upbringing, but the grant was hers.

Landsberg read something of that from her posture, because he stopped typing. “You’re a brilliant scientist, but I read your monthly financials and department budget and expenditure reports. If I didn’t know better I would have to assume that you flunked fifth grade arithmetic.”

Eve was startled for just a moment, but then she laughed out loud, all the way from her gut. “You’re right,” she sputtered, spreading her hands. “Damned if you’re not right.”

“Manage your own prize money, but a million or so dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to what the bank has offered you.”

“When the time comes I’ll talk to your friend.”

“Good,” Landsberg said, and went back to answering his e-mails. “If I don’t see you before you head to the Gulf, bon voyage.”

“I’m going to Washington first,” Eve said. “But thanks.”

FORTY-THREE

William Callahan, the FBI’s assistant deputy director for counterterrorism, had never been to the White House except once about five years ago on a public tour with his wife. He’d been impressed then, but he was even more impressed this afternoon as he was escorted by a White House staffer to the West Wing office of Eduardo Estevez, because the president’s adviser on national security affairs had called this morning to ask him over for a chat.

“To get all of our cards on the table,” Estevez had said mysteriously, and Callahan had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, and he said so. “The Hutchinson Island attack. The president wanted me to kick around a few ideas with you.”

The incident concerned the Bureau’s domestic intelligence and criminal investigation divisions, but Estevez said he wanted to start with counterterrorism. “Around two o’clock?”

It was that time now, and Estevez, who was seated on a chair facing two men on the couch, waved Callahan in. “Bill, glad you could make it.”

“Yes, sir,” Callahan said.

A desk and credenza were set in front of a window at one end of the pleasantly furnished office. A small conference table on one side of the room faced the couch and easy chairs.

“I don’t know if you’ve met Marty Bambridge, he runs the directorate of operations over at the CIA.”

Bambridge stood up, reached across the coffee table, and shook hands. “Heard good things about you,” he said.

“Of course I think you must know Joe Caldwell. He’s deputy secretary over at the Department of Energy.”

“You were on Meet the Press a few weeks ago,” Callahan said, shaking hands, and Estevez motioned for him to have a seat in a chair drawn up from the small oval conference table.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Estevez, but I’m at a total loss why I’m here,” Callahan said, and he looked at the others to see if they were wondering the same thing. But if they were it wasn’t obvious.

“Hutchinson Island, as I told you on the phone this morning,” Estevez said. “And what it could mean for us. Future ramifications.”

“I understand that Kirk McGarvey came over to have a talk with you,” Bambridge said, almost too casually, and Callahan caught a glimmer as to why he’d been called.

“A couple of months ago. Right after Hutchinson Island.”

“Care to share with us the general substance of your meeting?” Estevez said. “It wasn’t a privileged conversation was it?”

“No, not at all,” Callahan said. He didn’t like the position he had been put in, but at this point he could see no way out, nor had McGarvey asked that their meeting be kept confidential. “The NNSA asked him to investigate the incident and he wanted to know what, if anything, the Bureau had found.”

“It’s only natural,” Caldwell said. “He was there when it happened, after all, and he helped limit the damage. Lost his partner.”

“Did he share any early conclusions with you?” Estevez asked.

“He mentioned the Reverend Schlagel who’s been capitalizing on the incident to further his political career. Then, of course, there was the incident at Oslo.”

“The reverend’s people. Both dead.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway McGarvey was suspicious even two months ago about the coincidental nature.”

Estevez exchanged a glance with the others. “He’s a bright man. What else?”

“We discussed Schlagel’s possible connection with a hedge fund manager in Dubai and the UAE International Bank of Commerce. The Bureau has had them under investigation.”

“Anne Marie Marinaccio,” Estevez said. “We know all about her.”

“And that’s about it,” Callahan said. “We agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence to link Marinaccio or Schlagel to a professional who apparently pulled off the Hutchinson Island attack with only one man inside helping out.”

“Yes, we know about that, too,” Bambdrige said.

“Any contact with McGarvey since then?” Estevez asked.

“No.”

“Where are you at with your division’s investigation? Any progress you could share with us?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have a thing other than the probability that the hired gun is someone at the top of his game. Likely international, with a lot of experience and enough intelligence and professionalism that he’s left no tracks which we could use to trace him.”

“We’re running into the same problem,” Bambridge said. “Even Otto Rencke is drawing blanks.”

“What are the chances McGarvey will come up with something useful?” Estevez asked the CIA officer.

“He’s never failed before. Walt Page has a lot of confidence in him.”

“You’re aware that he’s become something of an attachment to Eve Larsen. Almost her personal bodyguard,” the Energy Department’s deputy secretary said.

“He thought that whoever was behind the Hutchinson Island attack would go after her again,” Bambridge said. “Seems he was right. Just maybe he’s using her as a lightning rod.”

What they were saying made a certain chilling sense to Callahan. “The Marinnacio Group deals mostly in oil derivatives,” he said. “And it would be in her best interest, and in the best interest of the major oil-producing nations to limit the development of alternate energy sources.”

The three men looked at him, but said nothing.

“That would include nuclear energy. There’s a rising public sentiment against the thirty or so permits for new construction, a lot of it engineered by Schalgel. So I see where McGarvey is taking it. And it would also include an opposition to Eve Larsen’s project — especially now that she’s received the Nobel Prize.”

“Your point, Bill?” Estevez asked.

“We need to help out. We need to protect her. And Homeland Security and the NNSA need to up the threat level and increase security on all of our existing nuclear facilities.”

“And there is the crux of the problem the president is faced with,” Estevez said. “Besides the fact the guys who tried to take her out in Oslo have been bagged we have to deal with the interim, and we need to provide the solution.”

“I’m not following.”

“In November the President met with Salman bin Talal — he’s the the new Saudi oil minister — here in the White House, mostly about continuing basing privileges for our Air Force, and the Iranian nuclear issue.”

“It was in the news,” Callahan said.

“They were very cooperative,” Estevez said. “The president scored a couple of points. But what wasn’t in the news was Talal’s warning that we not rush so quickly into unproven alternate sources of energy. Americans, he said, aren’t willing to give up their SUVs yet. Coal is unsustainable in terms of carbon dioxide, and it will take a viable oil industry to meet demands. First, he said, switch to all electric transportation — for which oil will be the primary resource alongside nuclear energy. Then on a small scale, investigate alternate energy, because such resources may be as far off as the next century.”

“Nonsense,” Callahan said.

“Of course. But the implied threat was that if we put national resources behind projects like Dr. Larsen’s water wheels, the Saudis and other OPEC nations would began to decrease outputs by substantial percentages. It would place the U.S. in an untenable position.”

“Worse than the gas lines in the seventies,” Caldwell said. “Strangely at Interior agrees.” Strangely Blumenthal was the Secretary of the Department of Interior, which regulated oil drilling.

“Blackmail,” Callahan said.

“Real-world politics,” Estevez said. “We can’t afford to drag our heels on alternate energy research, but we’ve been forced into that position. So unless people like Dr. Larsen can come up with a solution, and I mean a plug-and-play fix, we’ll have to keep hands off.”

“Or appear to,” Bambridge said. “Which is where McGarvey has already been useful, and it’s up to us to keep him in the middle.”

“We can’t give him any overt assistance,” Estevez said. “As I understand it, he may ride Dr. Larsen’s oil rig all the way to Florida, and we won’t stand in his way. He’s doing this on his own.”

“We can let it leak that there may be a romantic interest there,” Caldwell said. “He lost his wife eighteen months ago.”

Callahan thought the suggestion was pure sleaze, but he said nothing.

“It would be a good fit,” Estevez said. “Plausible.”

Callahan wanted to ask if this was what the national security adviser had meant by real-world politics, but he thought he knew what the answer would be

“It also helps that she got the Peace Prize,” Caldwell said. “Trivializes her work to some extent. She’s making a noble effort and all that — no pun intended — but her science wasn’t sound enough to get the physics prize.”

Estevez was nodding. “I see your point, and it helps,” he said, and he looked at Callahan. “Don’t be confused by what you think you’re hearing. All of us here have the utmost respect for Dr. Larsen and her project. What we’re actually trying to do is protect her.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see how unless you’re willing to have the rig accompanied by the Coast Guard or Navy, perhaps have a SEAL team standing by.”

“That’s exactly what we can’t do,” Estevez said. “Let me explain something. We know about Schlagel’s connection with Marinaccio and probably with the bank in Dubai. And do you know how that information came to us?”

“Not from the Bureau,” Callahan said.

“And not from the CIA. It came to me directly from Abdullah al-Naimi, right here in this office in November. And if the name’s not familiar, al-Naimi is the deputy director of the GIP, which is the Saudi’s chief intelligence agency.”

“We’re keeping an eye on Marinaccio and Schlagel,” Bambridge said. “There’s no proof that either of them were connected in any way with Hutchinson Island, or the incident in Oslo, but we think it’s a fair assumption that the bank might have provided some or all of the financing.”

“We’re helping Dr. Larsen by monitoring the probable source of the money that would be used to harm her, while complying with the Saudi’s warning to go easy on alternate energy for now,” Estevez said. “Al-Naimi gave us a quid pro quo.”

Real-world politics, indeed. “You do understand that if this thing goes bad, and McGarvey is in the middle of it, a lot of bodies will probably pile up. Worse than Hutchinson Island.”

“We won’t allow piracy,” Estevez promised. “We’ll get a message to him that if he needs help, we’ll back him up.”

But Callahan wondered if he believed the president’s national security adviser.

FORTY-FOUR

McGarvey went into the office, bringing Admiral French up to speed, including what had happened in Oslo, and his plan for him and Gail to ride the oil platform to Florida with Eve Larsen and her techs. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to have some backup? A Coast Guard escort?”

“I don’t want to scare them off,” McGarvey said.

“You’re expecting an incident?”

“I think it’s possible.”

French just stared at him for a few beats, then shook his head. “It’s why I hired you,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I have to like your methods or even approve of them. When do you leave?”

“A couple of days, I think. Whenever Dr. Larsen has her equipment and people aboard.”

He spent the afternoon working with Gail and Eric in the computer center, connected through several programs with Otto over at the CIA, and all of them were frustrated by the total lack of progress. McGarvey especially so because he’d wanted some lead, even the barest of hints about what might be coming their way, before he flew down to Mississippi and joined Eve and her crew aboard the oil platform.

During a break when he’d stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air, Gail joined him and they sat at one of the picnic benches in the park across the street without saying a word to each other for at least ten minutes. Until Gail broke the silence.

“Do you still want me on the rig with you?” she asked, not looking at him.

He’d felt her tension over the past few days. “Can’t order you to come with me.”

“Not what I asked, Kirk.”

“What then?” he said, refusing to get sucked into the discussion he knew was coming.

“Us.”

He turned to face her. “There is no us,” he said, and he held off her objection. “Not until after we’re finished with the situation and it’s time to get back to our jobs.”

She’d searched his eyes. “I don’t think you’re coming back. You’re not NEST team trainer material.”

“A lot of them need it. Gruen needs it.”

“I can handle that part,” Gail said. “Teach them what I learned from my mistakes. What I’m still learning. From you.”

McGarvey didn’t have the answers she wanted. Maybe having her at the apartment had been a mistake, and thinking about it now he didn’t know why he’d made the decision. Fear for her safety? Loneliness? Maybe more of the latter. But he didn’t want being lonely to drive his decisions. Especially not in the field when his life and the lives of a lot of other people were on the line.

“Yes, I’d like you to come out to the rig with me,” he said. “You’re a good cop, and everyone else aboard will either be scientists and technicians, or InterOil’s delivery crew. I can’t cover everything twenty-four/seven.”

She smiled. “If you knew how much I hated shift work you’d really appreciate my telling you I’ll be happy to help out. When do we leave?”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said. “I’ll find out in the next day or two. I’m supposed to have dinner with her at some point.”

“Since this concerns me, shouldn’t I tag along?”

And it was exactly what he hoped she wouldn’t say, but knew she would, and why. “There’s no need for you to be jealous,” he said, and she reacted as if she’d been slapped, but before she could say something, he finished the thought. “Nothing is going on between us.”

She looked at him, her eyes squinty whenever she was frustrated. “I’m anything but jealous. And even if there was something between you it’d be none of my business.”

McGarvey shrugged, not wanting to provoke an argument.

“You and I have a working relationship. You’ve already made that very clear and I’m going along with it.”

“On the rig we’re partners not lovers,” McGarvey said, and the instant he did he regretted it, because he saw that Gail had been stung and she was angry. Having her stay with him at the apartment had been a mistake, and making love to her had been an even more colossal error. He hadn’t been thinking straight; he’d been thinking through his loneliness, not considering the kind of hurt she would feel afterwards — like right now — when he had all but told her that there would never be anything between them.

It had been the same last year during her training, when they’d fallen into bed together. Both of them had been lost, hungry, needy. And he’d handled that aftermath just as badly as he was handling the situation now.

But he refused to lower his eyes. “I’m sorry, Gail. That came out badly. What I meant to say is that we have to keep an eye on what we’re doing twenty-four/seven, no distractions. Once we make it to Florida we can decide which way we’re going.”

But she already knew what the outcome would be and it showed on her face, her anger gone, replaced by sadness. “Then I should start packing.”

“I’m going to fly down to take a quick look at the platform first. I want to see if it’s going to be the kind of security nightmare I think it’ll be. In the meantime I want you here to work with Eric and Otto.”

“I need to go down to St. Lucie and pick up some things from my apartment.”

“It could get rough, so pack accordingly.”

She nodded. “What about weapons?”

If there was more to say, and McGarvey suspected there should be, he didn’t know what it was. “I’ll get what we need from the CIA.”

She got up to leave, and managed a slight smile. “No pressure, Kirk.”

“None felt,” McGarvey said, and they knew that both of them were lying.

Later that afternoon, even more frustrated with their continued lack of progress, McGarvey cabbed it back to Georgetown and on the way his cell phone chimed. It was Eve, and she sounded out of breath. She was in Washington up to her eyeballs with last-minute work before heading down to the rig the day after tomorrow, and she wanted to have dinner with him tonight. Five thirty at the restaurant in the Watergate. Her apartment was just across the parking lot, and she needed to make an early night of it because she still had a ton of work to do.

McGarvey found that he was glad to hear from her, in part because he finally had a timetable. And she was waiting for him in a booth at 600 at the Watergate, a reasonably priced restaurant, she said, with a reasonable menu and reasonably decent food. They had a view of the Potomac, and the place was less than half full because of the early hour.

When their drinks came, and they had both ordered filets, Eve came straight to the point, and McGarvey thought that she seemed a little more intimidated than she had been outside the Fox studio after her interview and again when they’d first arrived in Oslo.

“Up in Princeton in my lab, I pretty well run the show. I’m my own boss, but down here in Washington it’s a different story, because technically my project comes under NOAA’s umbrella, and sometimes they can get pretty heavy-handed.”

McGarvey shrugged. “I’ve worked with and for the government for most of my adult life, so I know what you mean. But they’re the ones with the big bucks.”

Eve brightened a little. “You haven’t heard about my good news.”

“No.”

“If we get the rig to Hutchinson Island, and set up the impellers so that we’re delivering electricity to the grid, I’ll be given a nonconditional grant for one billion dollars.”

Alarm bells immediately began to ring, but McGarvey just smiled at her. “NOAA?”

She laughed. “Not a chance. This comes from Dubai, from the International Bank of Commerce. The fax came to my office two days ago, but we’ve decided to keep it quiet until Florida.”

But it was an empty gesture meant to lull her into a sense of complacency, make her believe that with that kind of money no one would try to stop her. But that’s exactly what the offer meant. No money would ever be paid to her, because the rig would never reach the Gulf Stream and the UAEIBC would make sure of it.

“That’s a bank funded primarily with oil and oil derivatives money,” he said.

She was taken by surprise, and she shook her head. “That’s what Bob Krantz told me yesterday. Almost word for word. He’s head of special projects for NOAA, which makes him my boss. He suggested I turn it down.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” McGarvey said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you realize what that kind of money will do for my project? How many impeller-generators we can anchor out in the Gulf Stream? It’ll give me a five year head start.”

“If you get to Hutchinson Island.”

Suddenly Eve was alarmed. “Bob tried to get a Coast Guard escort for us, but they turned him down flat. No evidence that we would come under attack, especially now that the guys who tried to kill me in Oslo are no longer a threat.”

That wasn’t surprising to McGarvey, considering the tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and just about every OPEC country. The U.S. government had made enough mistakes in Iraq, and combined with its unwavering support of Israel against the Palestinians, U.S. popularity in the region was nil. The administration had to be walking a fine line, because it needed OPEC more than they needed the U.S. Any oil not sold to the U.S. would be snapped up by the Chinese; it was becoming a worldwide sellers’ market.

“I’m coming with you,” MacGarvey said.

She laughed nervously. “Do you actually think someone will try to stop me?” she asked. “Try to sabotage the rig? The same people who hit Hutchinson Island?”

“I thought it was a possibility. Now I’m sure of it.”

“Because of the grant offer?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Her eyes were round. She looked a little overwhelmed, as if she’d been given a problem that had no solution or set of solutions that made any sense. “I can’t accept it.”

“We’ve already gone over their reasons, and nothing has changed. You represent a serious threat to a lot of people.”

“Explain this to the Coast Guard, or the CIA, you have the connections.”

“Won’t help. The government will not get involved, unless an actual attack takes place.”

“By then it would be too late.”

“It’s why I’ll be aboard the platform, and I don’t want you telling anybody who I am. As far as your people are concerned, I’ll just be a part of the delivery crew.”

“Don will know.”

“Ask him to keep it quiet, your lives might depend on it,” McGarvey said.

She wanted to argue, he could see it in the set of her jaw, in her eyes. “One man against however many they — whoever the hell they are — send against us?”

“I’ll bring one other person with me.”

“And you’ll be armed. You’ll have weapons.”

“Yes.”

Again she was nearly overwhelmed by what he was telling her. “What if they just drop a bomb on the rig, or fire a missile at us?”

“I think it’d take more than that to destroy something that large,” McGarvey said.

“Okay, so they plant bombs,” Eve argued, her voice rising.

“I’m going to fly down to the rig and take a look, see how I would do it if I wanted to stop you.”

“All right, what about a suicide bomber?”

“They’ll be professionals, which means they’ll want to get away. It’s their one weakness.”

She laughed humorlessly. “Some weakness. And I suppose I can’t refuse your help. I don’t want to put my people in harm’s way, most of them are just kids. But, goddamnit I’m not going to let the bastards beat me. This experiment is too important.”

“I agree.”

“But what about afterwards? I mean if my experiment is a success, and we begin delivering power to the SSP and L connection with the grid, what then? Armed guards forever?”

“Maybe, at first,” McGarvey said. “Until you go to the next phase and anchor your impellers to the ocean floor. And sooner or later, if I understand what you’re trying to do, there’ll be hundreds of them.”

“Tens of thousands,” Eve said absently.

“By then the project will be far too large to sabotage.”

She focused on him. “I just have to survive long enough for that to happen,” she said, and smiled wanly. “Welcome to the team.”

FORTY-FIVE

Brian DeCamp, dressed in desert camos, lay in a hollow, studying the fantastic-looking structure nearly the size of a soccer field that a squad of Libyan Army engineers had knocked together over the past thirty days. It was the middle of the night in the deep desert more than six hundred kilometers southeast of Tripoli, the only time the construction crews worked, and the only time DeCamp and his three operators came out of their tents, or moved from under the camouflage netting that covered just about everything.

One of the engineers came to the rail of the partial mock-up of Vanessa Explorer, and pissed over the side. It was an insult to the four nonbelievers he knew were preparing for another assault exercise. But an insult that meant absolutely nothing to DeCamp and his team.

“Lead, team two set,” Nikolai Kabatov radioed in DeCamp’s earpiece. A former KGB senior lieutenant who’d killed a pair of prostitutes in Lengingrad, and had resigned his commission for the good of the agency, lay in the sand fifty meters to the east, with his teammate Boris Gurov, a former Spetsnaz captain who’d been kicked out of the service for driving a squad of men to such depths of exhaustion during a winter exercise above the Arctic Circle that four men had died.

“Go in thirty,” DeCamp replied.

“Copy.”

The two men in addition to DeCamp’s teammate, Joseph Wyner, who’d been a helicopter pilot with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, were all that he figured would be needed for the initial stage aboard the rig, which would be manned only by the scientists and technicians, plus the delivery crew. A total of thirty people, none of them with any combat experience.

Finding the three operators had been a simple matter of logging on to the Web site of Contractor Services Unlimited, which like the old Soldier of Fortune magazine was practically an employment agency for contractors and military officers and enlisted personnel, who for one reason or another had either resigned or been forced to resign, and were looking for work. Actually, as Gurov had explained, when DeCamp had interviewed him in London, guys like him wanted to get back into the game, wanted the thrill of combat, wanted to blow up something, kill someone.

“The bigger the bang the better,” he’d said. “And I don’t give a pizdec’s asshole who the target is.”

Out of nearly one hundred résumés online, DeCamp had picked three men to meet face-to-face, and he’d hired all of them, because they were perfect: they were well trained, they had combat experience — Chechnya for Gurov and Kabatov, and Afghanistan for Wyner — they were hungry, and they were expendable.

He’d arrived in Tripoli two months ago, where he met with his Libyan military contact, the assistant chief of staff, Lt. Col. Salaam Thaqib, set up a financial presence with the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank in the amount of two million euros, one hundred thousand of which was transferred into Thaqib’s Swiss bank account, and rented four adjoining suites in the Corinthia Bab Africa, the country’s leading hotel.

Three days later blueprints of the reworked oil platform had been delivered by a messenger from the Czech Republic embassy on behalf of the ABN Commerce Bank in Prague where DeCamp maintained an account. The drawings had originated from his contact aboard the rig via InterOil and spreading them out on a conference table he’d ordered be brought up, it had taken him less than ten minutes to find the rig’s weakness and devise a number of plans to send it to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Included with the blueprints was a list of everyone who would be aboard, all of whom would go down with the platform. There would be no survivors.

That afternoon he’d had two copies made of the blueprints, sending them by courier over to the colonel’s office, one to be used to construct the mock-up in the desert and the second to build a scale model of the rig that had been brought over to the hotel and set up in his suite ten days later, making at least one of his plans perfectly clear. In some ways, he’d thought, toppling the platform would be easier than the assault on Hutchinson Island had been.

During his off hours in those weeks, DeCamp kept in shape by running five miles each day, swimming in the Med, and working out for hours at a time in the hotel’s spa. His meals were nearly all protein, and he drank no alcohol, a regimen he’d learned in the Buffalo squadron before any tough field assignment. The protein built lean muscle mass, and the lack of carbohydrates toned him down, sending him into a form of ketosis, almost like a diabetic whose hypoglycemic index was altered, only in this case giving him a lot of extra energy. Almost like floating an inch off the ground after the first week. Almost like being on uppers.

Thirty seconds later Wyner raised his left fist and pumped it once and DeCamp nodded.

“Now,” DeCamp said into his comms unit, and he and Wyner headed up out of the hollow, crawling on their hands and knees toward the plywood and canvas full-scale mock-up of one of Vanessa Explorer’s four semisubmersible legs.

Waiting for his three operators to show up at the Corinthia, DeCamp had worked out two possible scenarios; one of which was dropping two scuba-equipped teams from different directions one mile out from the rig. The insertion boat would be a low-slung cigarette, showing no lights, capable of speeds in excess of sixty knots, and perfectly capable of crossing the Gulf to reach the platform.

They would set explosive charges well beneath the waterline on two of the legs, then swim back to the boat. When the charges went off, the two legs would rapidly fill with water, and the unstable rig would suddenly list sharply to one side, so suddenly that nothing aboard could be done to stop a capsize.

Twenty feet away from the leg, DeCamp could see why it would not work, and he stood up. “Abort,” he said softly into his comms unit.

Wyner saw it, too. “Shit,” he said, and he got to his feet. “Unless the seas are flat calm we won’t get anywhere near the leg. Too much movement. Barnacles would cut us to shreds.”

“I didn’t see it from the blueprints or the model,” DeCamp said without rancor. Mistakes in the field could get you killed. Mistakes in a training mission were usually only embarrassing. He’d learned a part of that lesson the hard way from Colonel Frazer on the streets in Durban, and the rest of it in the field with the Buffalo Battalion when he helped carry casualties out of the hot zone; the blokes who made the mistakes, the ones who’d not paid enough attention in the training missions, were the ones who returned to base in body bags.

Wyner was tall and slender, like a greyhound, and he stood relaxed, most of his weight on one foot. He’d taken ballet lessons as a teenager, not because he’d wanted to go on stage, but because he wanted to develop his agility so that he could become a better fencer. He was deadly in a knife fight, which was all about footwork; DeCamp had never seen a better man with a blade.

“We could use magnetic attachers,” he suggested. “With whisker poles we wouldn’t have to get all that close.”

“No,” DeCamp said.

Kabatov and Gurov came out of the darkness from the east side of the rig, both of them short, sturdy men with broad Slavic features and sometimes sly smiles that made it impossible to guess what they were thinking. They looked like oil roustabouts, roughnecks who’d done manual labor all of their lives; they looked like men who’d grown up on the wharves of busy seaports, or in coal or uranium mines in Siberia, on the high seas aboard container ships — the men who would be sent forward in a storm to replace the chains on a stack of containers about to topple overboard, because they were just so much cannon fodder in the minds of the captains and the owners. And it was exactly the reason DeCamp had hired them, because they fit perfectly, especially for the only option left open. Something he’d thought might be difficult but not impossible for the right men.

The three of them had filtered separately into Tripoli over a five-day period, Wyner first, Gurov, with his rough humor, three days later, and Kabatov the day after that. They were put on DeCamp’s regimen without grousing because they’d been promised one million euros each; the catch, making the payday a big one, was that the chances one or all of them might end up dead was better than fifty-fifty.

“I’m the paymaster, which makes me the squad leader,” DeCamp told them when they were all together in his suite. “You guys are good, which means I want to hear what you have to say. My door is open twenty-four/seven to any idea, any complaint, any suggestion, any comment, starting now right through the end of the op.”

They’d nodded, but said nothing.

“Refuse a direct order, hesitate for one second, drink alcohol, smoke, or try to communicate with anyone in the real world other than the four of us in this room, and I will kill you,” DeCamp said. “Questions?”

“No, sir,” Wyner said. “What’s the mission and how do we get there?”

DeCamp removed the bedsheet covering the oil rig model. “Vanessa Explorer,” he said. “She’s an out of commission oil exploration platform anchored right now in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the Mississippi coast. Sometime in the next thirty days her anchors will be pulled up, and an oceangoing tug will tow her out into the Gulf and around the tip of Florida where she’s to be positioned on the Atlantic coast north of Miami. We’re going to sink her with all hands before she gets there.”

The three operators gathered closer to the model, none of them showing any signs that they were surprised or skeptical. Missions with million euro paydays were always interesting, but never easy.

“What about the crew?” Gurov asked.

“Fourteen scientists and technicians from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, plus seventeen delivery crew and deckhands, give or take, including electricians, pipe fitters, and welders who’ll be doing work on the rig while en route.”

“I didn’t know oil exploration was going on in that part of the Atlantic,” Wyner said.

“It’s a scientific experiment, but that part is irrelevant. I was hired to send the rig to the bottom.”

“That’s thirty-one people versus the four of us,” Gurov said. “Any of them with security or military backgrounds?”

“To this point no, and we will have the help of one person aboard who’ll provide us with real-time intel.”

“Military background or not, the crew will not simply jump overboard when we show up. Some of them will resist,” Kabatov said. “What equipment will we have to use?”

“That will depend on which option we go with,” DeCamp told them. “At this point there are two, and I’ll want your input.”

“It’ll take a hell of a lot of explosives to do any real damage to something that large,” Wyner said. “I did a year of contract security work aboard one of them in the Persian Gulf, during the first American war. The Saudis were a little nervous with all the ordnance flying around, and the money was good.”

“I didn’t see that in your résumé,” DeCamp said, vexed.

Wyner shrugged. “I didn’t put down every job I’d ever had.”

“Anyone else with oil rig experience?”

The Russians said no.

Patience was another of the virtues that the colonel had taught him in Durban. “The angry man is the out-of-control soldier, usually the first to die in battle. Remember it.”

“The delivery crew and deckhands have shore leave days on a rotating schedule. Option one is to arrange for an accident that would take out four of them, and then apply for jobs aboard the rig.”

“Doesn’t wash,” Wyner said. “Why would they hire the four of us and not someone else?”

“InterOil does the hiring, and we have help there. But you’re right, might be a bit of a stretch. The alternative would be for us to take out only two.”

“Assuming it would be two of us, and not you, how would you and whoever else get aboard?”

“They’ll have a media event, which I would attend, for starts, to legitimize myself. And then when the rig is well offshore, we’d return aboard a helicopter with four more operators and take over. If we go with that option it would be your job to disable whatever communications gear you could get to, including sat phones.”

“And number two,” Wyner asked.

“We scuba to the rig, and plant explosives in a pair of the legs.”

Gurov suddenly grinned, seeing everything. “Only one problem with that scenario. The rig will capsize and sink, but there will be survivors. The only way we’re going to get rid of them all is to kill them first and lock their bodies in one of the compartments, so there’d be no floaters.”

“Why kill them?” Kabatov asked. “Just herd them into the crew’s mess and lock the door.”

DeCamp had wanted to try the scuba approach first, mainly because it had been drummed into his head to plan for every possibility and to train for each one and find the unknown variables, the overlooked problem that could ruin everything. Like this tonight.

“So, what’s the problem?” Gurov asked.

“Won’t work this way,” Wyner said, and he explained.

From the moment DeCamp had realized the scuba approach wasn’t going to work, he’d decided on the other simpler plan, more elegant, less chance of failure. He would make a call to his contact aboard the oil platform to arrange for two of the least skilled men on the construction crew, roustabouts, to be fired for whatever reason he could find, and replace them with Kabatov and Gurov. The contact’s name had been supplied by Wolfhardt, who’d apparently had something on the man. Money, DeCamp had suspected, which was one of the great motivators, and he didn’t expect any difficulties. And it would give them additional inside information, the only danger if either Kabatov or Gurov — especially Gurov — got into it with one of the legitimate crewmen or scientists aboard the rig. They would have to keep their mouths shut, and do their work until the attack. Perhaps one week, or a little less.

“We’re flying back to Tripoli tonight,” he told them. “We’re done here.”

“What’s next?” Wyner asked.

“Nikolai and Boris are going to make their way to Biloxi, Mississippi, where they’ll be hired as replacements for a pair of deckhands aboard the rig.”

Gurov brightened. “How will we know which guys you want us to take down?”

“Won’t be necessary. Just show up at the union hall and you’ll get the jobs.”

“Too bad.”

“You’ll have plenty of chance to spill blood,” DeCamp said. “A lot of blood.”

“What about me?” Wyner asked.

“You’re coming to London with me to hire four more operators, familiarize them with the rig, and from there move the ops to New Orleans, where we’ll pick up our equipment.”

“How will we communicate?” Kabatov asked. “In case something changes or goes wrong.”

“I have a Nokia encrypted sat phone for you.”

“How do we get out of there when it’s over?”

“By helicopter out to a ship heading to the Panama Canal.”

“A lot could go wrong,” Wyner commented.

“And probably will,” DeCamp said.

Gurov laughed. “I say fuck it! I’m in.”

And the others nodded.

FORTY-SIX

They didn’t notice the stiff breeze when the 737 touched down at the Biloxi Airport, because it was right on the nose, but when the big passenger jet left the runway and trundled slowly to the terminal it almost felt as if the airplane would tip over on a wing. Then they came into the lee of the big building and it seemed as if they’d come indoors out of a gale.

“I hope the helicopter pilot knows what he’s doing,” Eve said. “Vanessa is twenty-five miles out in the Gulf, and it’s going to be a lot worse out there.”

“Oil rig ferry pilots have to be good enough to pull guys off the platforms in all kinds of weather,” McGarvey said, trying a little to soothe her.

She’d been preoccupied all the way down from Washington, not about a possible attack but about the two tons of equipment that had been trucked from Princeton. As of eight this morning when she’d talked to Don, who’d come down two days ago, the truck hadn’t shown up yet. Which was just as well. Keeping her focused on the logistics and then the science of her project would make his job all the easier.

“You’re right,” she said. “And I’m acting like an idiot.”

McGarvey laughed. “At least a smart idiot.”

And she laughed, too. “It’s not that I’ll be glad when it’s over, I’ll be glad when it starts at Hutchinson Island. Because that’s really the beginning, to actually see if the damned thing works.”

“Doubts?”

“Yeah, plenty of them,” Eve said. “Don calls it healthy skepticism.”

Most of Eve’s clothing and personal things she would need for the twelve-day trip and afterwards when the experiment began had been packed aboard the truck with the scientific equipment, which was just one more minor irritant she’d been facing. One among a million, she’d confided in him at one point.

“Scientists are absolute nitpickers,” she’d said. “Detail people, patient, persistent, persevering, unremitting, and usually unhurried. But almost always worried that they’re overlooking something, not seeing the forest for the trees, missing the obvious.” She’d smiled. “The best of them have the capability to step back at just the right moment and see the whole picture. Einstein lost in some calculations, suddenly daydreams about a man riding up in a glass elevator that’s accelerating with the same force as earth’s gravity. Someone outside watches the guy in the elevator let go of a tennis ball, and the elevator floor rises up to meet it. But every experiment inside the elevator convinces the guy that the tennis ball fell to the floor because of gravity. And voilà, he saw the big picture and gave us relativity.”

“And he got the Nobel Prize.”

“Yeah, but not for relativity, special or general. He got it for showing how the photoelectric effect works. You know, the device that opens the door for you at the supermarket.”

She was bitter all of a sudden, and in some ways McGarvey understood her Angst. Eve Larsen was a complicated woman, filled with a lot of self-doubts and insecurities that even a Nobel Prize had been unable to unravel. He’d known people like her at the CIA, especially in the Directorate of Intelligence, who were geniuses at what they did, but who needed constant approval, constant pats on the back, constant reinforcement, or else they would fall into depressions sometimes so deep that they would commit suicide.

“You won the Nobel Prize.”

“Not for physics,” she practically shouted, and several people getting off the plane with them gave her an anxious look. “Only two women ever got that prize — Madam Curie and Maria Mayer, and they had to share their prizes with men.”

When they reached the gate area inside the terminal McGarvey took her aside. “You’re betting just about everything on this experiment working, I understand that. But you’ve gotten yourself so wound up that it might just happen that you won’t be able to step back and see the whole picture.”

She was angry. “How can I help it?” she asked, her voice crisp. “You’ve tagged along as my bodyguard, once again, because you think my rig will never make it to Florida.”

“Concentrate on the science, and let me deal with security,” he said just as tightly.

She wanted to argue, but she compressed her lips and nodded, visibly coming down. But it took a few seconds. “My ex never figured out how to do that,” she said. “Get me to take a deep breath.” She touched his arm. “I’ll worry about my part and let you take care of the rest. Deal?”

“Deal,” McGarvey said, figuring that it would take an extraordinary man to be married to her. She was as high-strung as she was brilliant and she was carrying a very large feminist chip on her shoulder, probably something from a long time ago.

They carried just their overnight bags, Eve because her things were being trucked down, and McGarvey because he was planning to stay aboard the platform just long enough to meet the delivery crew and figure out in practical terms what it would take to send the rig to the bottom.

Don Price, dressed in jeans and a Princeton sweatshirt, was waiting downstairs in front of the baggage claim area, and when he spotted McGarvey he scowled and turned away as if he were going to walk off. But then he stopped and turned back.

“Thanks for coming to pick us up,” Eve said pleasantly, trying to ignore his show of displeasure. “How’s everything going on Vanessa?”

“I was hoping that you would change your mind,” Don said, glaring at McGarvey.

“He’s going to provide security for us.”

“With any luck I’ll just be along for the ride,” McGarvey said.

“Stay the fuck out of our way.”

Price was posturing for Eve, and it struck McGarvey as almost funny, even a little pathetic. But there was something else in the man’s manner. Something in his attitude, how he held himself, the words he was saying that wasn’t adding up. It was as if he were hiding something, as if he were afraid of something. Losing her to another man?

McGarvey shrugged. “Sure thing.”

Price held on for a moment or two longer, as if he wanted to push it, but then nodded tightly, took Eve’s arm, and headed out to where he had parked an InterOil van, leaving McGarvey to trail behind.

“The truck got here an hour after you called, and we’ve managed to get most of the stuff out to Vanessa.”

“Good,” Eve said. “Computers?”

“Most of them are up and running, and we’ve already got a good start on stringing the cabling for the monitors to all four pods.”

“How about housekeeping?”

“It’s not the Ritz but we managed to help get the water treatment plant up and running, so we have plenty of hot water for showers. Separate showers at that. And the food isn’t any worse than we get on campus.”

“Problems?” Eve asked.

“The biggest are the deck mounts for the impeller cabling and restraints,” Don said and she protested but he held her off. “Defloria is working the construction crews practically around the clock. But they’re so goddamned stupid and inefficient it’s a miracle that anything gets done. Anyway he promises that the mounts will be in place by the time we get to Florida. Before, if the weather cooperates.”

“What about the wind today?”

“It’s a little hairy on deck, but inside you can’t feel a thing, except it’s damned noisy, drives you nuts sometimes, especially at night.”

They got in the van, McGarvey in the backseat for the short drive over to the InterOil hangar. “Who’s managing the rig for you?” he asked.

Eve turned around. “Justin Defloria. He and the construction crew and delivery people are on loan from the company.”

“I want you to set up a meeting with him and the delivery captain as soon as we touch down. I’d like to make an inspection of the entire rig with them, and share some of my concerns.”

“No problem.”

“Then I’ll want to meet with your scientists and technicians for about ten minutes.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Don said. “You’re staying out of our way.”

McGarvey ignored him. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to your people.”

“We’ll all be up in the control room,” Eve said, and she said something to Don that McGarvey didn’t catch, but whatever it was it seemed to work because Price shut his mouth and concentrated on his driving.

From five miles out Vanessa Explorer looked impressive, the whitecaps below the helicopter little more than harmless patterns on the water. But as they got nearer it became obvious that no matter how large the oil platform was it couldn’t compare to the Gulf of Mexico. Every fifth wave that slammed into the two windward legs parted and rose monstrously almost to the main deck level more than fifty feet above the water, the spindrift rising even higher.

“Don’t worry, it looks worse than it is!” Don shouted to Eve.

The chopper pilot was good, but the big machine shuddered with each gust, and coming around into the wind he kept well clear of the upper levels of the superstructure, approaching the landing pad slowly, and easing down, dumping the lift five feet above the center mark. Immediately two deck hands scrambled up on to the pad and lashed the helicopter’s landing struts to the deck. As soon as they gave the thumbs-up, the pilot cut the power, and the engines began to spool down.

Most of the tube-framed web seats in the helicopter’s main bay were folded up against the hull, and the space was filled with sturdy cardboard boxes, a few wooden crates, and a large number of aluminum cases, all marked with numbers and other abbreviations.

“This is the bulk of it,” Don said. “Maybe one more load this afternoon.” He slid the hatch open and instantly the helicopter was filled with a howling wind that was cold and damp and smelled of a combination of oil, diesel fumes, presumably from the electrical generators aboard, and the sea.

“I want this unloaded as quickly as possible,” Eve said. “No telling when this weather will deteriorate, and I want everything aboard before dark.”

“I’ll send Tommy and some of the others up,” Don said, and he and Eve jumped down to the pad, without bothering to thank the pilot.

“I need a ride back in a couple of hours,” McGarvey told him. “Can you hold that long?”

“No sweat,” the pilot, a fussy-looking man with thinning black hair and a ruddy complexion, said. His name tag read Dyer. “I’ll probably be in the crew’s mess, give me a ten-minute heads-up if you would.”

“Sure thing,” McGarvey said and he patted the pilot on the shoulder. “Good flying.”

The pilot grinned. “Nobody lost their lunch.”

Before Eve headed up to the control room she sought out Defloria, who was in the construction foreman’s space two levels up from the main deck where he and another man were busy on a CAD display of the impeller cabling mounts. They looked up. “You might want to take a look at this, Doctor,” Defloria said.

“Don told me that you might be having a few problems,” Eve said, glancing at the display. “But it doesn’t matter as long as the work is done by the time we get to Hutchinson Island and the impellers are barged down to us.”

“It’s the stress loads they’ll put on the deck. We think they’ll be greater than the specs that the GE engineers gave us, so we’re going to reinforce the underlying structure before we begin welding the restraint tripods.”

“The extra weight won’t matter?”

Defloria shook his head. “Negligible,” he said. “We don’t want to have a repeat of what happened to you at Hutchinson Island.”

“No,” Eve said. “Costs?”

“The company’s picking it up.”

“I’ll go along with whatever you recommend,” Eve said. “Would have in any event.”

Defloria and Eve looked up as McGarvey came in. “I’m surprised to see someone like you here.”

“Do you know each other?” Eve asked.

“I doubt Mr. McGarvey knows me, but he was in the news when he was the CIA director. Are you here to sightsee, or here to tell us something?”

“A little of both,” McGarvey said, immediately liking the man’s straightforward nature.

“Justin Defloria,” the OIM said, shaking his hand. And he looked a little wary, as if he knew he was about to hear something he didn’t want to hear, but could find no way out of it.

“I’ll be topsides with my people whenever you’re ready,” Eve told McGarvey. “Anyone can direct you.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. McGarvey?” Defloria asked when Eve was gone.

“Who’s your delivery captain?”

“Al Lapides.”

“Is he aboard?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to the two of you, and just the two of you right now, if it’s possible.”

“Shit,” Defloria said, but he took a walkie-talkie out of his jacket pocket and made a call.

FORTY-SEVEN

They met in Defloria’s personal quarters, a nicely furnished space about the size of a luxury hotel suite with a bedroom, sitting room, and large bathroom, and broad views of the platform, alive at this moment with workmen despite the nearly gale force winds. A framed photograph of a pleasant-looking woman and two teenaged girls sat on a desk strewn with papers and blueprints.

Lapides, in his midfifties, was a short, very slender man with a large nose and ears, salt-and-pepper hair, and the deeply lined outdoors complexion of a man who’d spent a lifetime on the sea.

Defloria made the introductions and they sat on the couch and chairs in front of the desk.

“Assuming you’re not here merely to continue as Dr. Larsen’s bodyguard, what do you want?”

“If I wanted to send this rig to the bottom of the Gulf, with everybody aboard, how would I go about doing it?”

“Good Lord almighty,” Lapides said.

“You think that someone will try to do something like that?” Defloria asked. “Schlagel and his group of fanatics?”

“They might try to pull a Greenpeace against you, try to stop you from reaching Florida, but there’d be no violence.”

“I’ve dealt with that group before,” Lapides said. “In the North Sea. They’re a pain in the ass, but mostly just a danger to themselves.”

“Who then?” Defloria asked. “And why?”

“This is merely speculation to this point,” McGarvey said. “There’ve been no warnings and we have no solid evidence that anything is going to happen. But I’m going to come along for the ride and mostly keep my eyes and ears open.”

Defloria was angry. “I’m not going to place my people in harm’s way,” he said, his voice tight. “If you think we’re facing a problem call the goddamned Coast Guard for an escort.”

“They’ve refused.”

“I’m pulling my people off,” Defloria said. “Al?”

“Whatever the company wants,” Lapides said.

Defloria got a sat phone from his desk and speed-dialed a number as he walked out into the corridor.

“How do we destroy this rig?” McGarvey asked the delivery skipper.

“Not my area of expertise, I’m just a pilot. Maybe if you had a couple of fighter aircraft, drop some bombs, but even something like that might not do much of anything but superficial damage unless the bombs were very big. Of course, if we were pumping oil a stick or two of dynamite would start a fire. Still might not sink the rig. But why would anyone want to do such a thing? Where’s the gain for them?”

“Some people might want to stop Dr. Larsen’s project,” McGarvey said, and he watched the light turn on in Lapides’s eyes.

“You’re talking about oil people,” he said. “Could make some sense if InterOil hadn’t donated this platform, and wasn’t paying for its conversion and delivery. But the company has made a sizeable investment here, and they’re going to want something in return. At least that’s the way I always thought business was supposed to work.”

“It could be nothing.”

Lapides was troubled. “But you wouldn’t have come out here to warn us if you didn’t think so.” He shrugged. “Justin’s right, we’re not going to put our people at risk. It’s not our project. Maybe you should hire private contractors to come aboard if the Coast Guard won’t help. With a few guns on board it would be pretty tough to hijack something this large.”

“I thought about it,” McGarvey said. “But I don’t want to call attention to what might happen. I just want to make sure that the platform ends up offshore from Hutchinson Island and that no one gets hurt. I’m here for your protection.”

“One man?”

“I’ll have some help.”

Defloria came back, looking a little angry and perplexed, and even more troubled than Lapides. He stood for a moment in deep thought, before he pocketed his sat phone and sat down. “The company thinks that it’s a possibility some of Jerry Schlagel’s people might stage a protest, but we’re not in any real danger. At least not of the sort that Mr. McGarvey’s talking about.”

“So we stay,” Lapides said.

“Spencer said the company spoke with people at the DOE, Commerce and the Coast Guard who gave us the green light,” Defloria told him. He turned to McGarvey. “They were frankly surprised that you were here.”

Those instructions had probably come either from Page or from the White House, who were willing to go along with the suggestion that if an attack on the rig were planned by the same contractor who’d hit Hutchinson Island he wouldn’t go ahead in the face of a show of force. Eve’s worst-case scenario that she would have to hire contractors 24/7 to secure her experiment might become fact. But if he was lured into hitting Vanessa while she was en route to Florida, the danger — at least from that source — could be eliminated within the next week to ten days, maybe sooner.

And if that were to happen, Mac figured he would have a real shot at finding out who’d hired the operator and why.

“We’re back to square one,” he said. “How do we destroy this rig?”

“A half ton of dynamite, I suppose,” Defloria said. “Hurt it so badly that there’d be nothing left that was worth rebuilding. And I doubt if the company would be willing to supply Dr. Larsen with another platform.”

“I don’t mean hurt it,” McGarvey said. “I mean how do we send it to the bottom of the Gulf with all hands aboard?”

Defloria spread his hands, and shook his head. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“What’s the most vulnerable structure aboard? The legs?”

“If you released the high-pressure air and punched holes below the waterline, they’d flood, and the platform would settle to the surface. If a big sea was running, the waves would do a lot of damage, but the platform would probably still float.”

“At least long enough for us to get everybody into the lifeboats,” Lapides said.

They weren’t thinking like terrorists bent on destroying the rig, they were engineers working out how to save it. But McGarvey saw it. “What if we destroyed any two adjacent legs?”

Defloria was thinking about it now, really thinking, and the conclusions he was drawing were extremely disturbing. He looked like a man who was lost, and was just beginning to realize it. “And you’re here to protect us?” he mumbled.

“You have to think like them.”

“Like who?” Defloria asked. He was angry but intimidated.

“Would it sink?”

“The platform would capsize. But it might not sink right away, not until the compartments in the superstructure flooded out. And even then there might be enough reserve buoyancy in the empty oil storage tanks and tool lockers to keep us afloat. But what would you do with the crew? Some of them would probably survive. Or would they be murdered?”

“Is there a space that could be sealed that’s big enough to hold everybody?” McGarvey asked.

“The crew’s mess,” Lapides said.

“More reserve buoyancy,” Defloria said, but he looked sick.

“Could it be flooded?”

Defloria took a moment before he answered. “What kind of people are you talking about? Islamic terrorists? Nine/eleven fanatics, willing to die for the cause? I mean, this is nuts, isn’t it? Completely crazy?”

Both he and Lapides were trying not to understand what McGarvey was asking for, it was perfectly clear from how they looked at him, and yet they knew. And it was obvious that they knew.

“Two hatches, one from the main corridor and the other through the kitchen to the loading area at the rail,” Lapides said. “They could be spot-welded in place. And when Vanessa turned turtle the ventilation shafts would be underwater.”

“Could someone swim out?”

“Too far,” Defloria said. “And besides, the water would be rushing in. It would be like trying to swim against the stream of a fire hose.” He shook his head again. “They’d all die in there.”

“Anything else?” McGarvey asked.

“It would have to be done from aboard the platform. Unless they had a sub and fired a couple of torpedoes, it would be just about impossible to get close enough to plant explosives if there was even a small sea running.”

“When do you get under way?” McGarvey asked.

“We’re about done here, everything else we can finish en route,” Defloria said. “The tug will be heading out to us tomorrow, and Dr. Larsen has her news conference on Thursday. When that’s done we can get under way.”

McGarvey hadn’t been told, but it was about what he should have expected. Eve and her people couldn’t think like a terrorist any more than Defloria or Lapides could. “I didn’t know about the media being here,” he said.

“It was the company’s idea. Is there a problem?”

McGarvey shook his head. “No.” On the contrary, he thought, because it was possible that his contractor would come aboard to look things over, and he had to suppress a little smile. Maybe the bastard would make a mistake after all.

Defloria gave McGarvey a hard hat and walked with him through the main pipe and cable corridor along the back of the platform directly beneath the superstructure. The sound of the wind was muted, but each time a wave broke against the windward legs the entire rig shuddered a little, and the racket of metal crashing on metal, of welding torches and cutting tools and the two large lifting cranes was practically deafening, so they had to shout to be heard.

“You don’t paint a pretty picture.”

“It’s just a precaution,” McGarvey said.

Defloria was angry. “The thing I don’t get is why everyone is willing to risk our lives? It makes no sense. Are we being used as bait?”

McGarvey wanted to tell him that there were bigger issues at stake, that the attack on Hutchinson Island, the assassination attempt in Oslo, and possibly one against this rig, were only three parts of something much larger. As long as oil was being pumped out of the ground and used as a major source of the world’s energy, experiments like Eve Larsen’s had to be stopped. Trillions of dollars were at stake.

But Defloria’s questions had been rhetorical, and he pointed out a hatch at the end of the corridor. “Five flights up.”

“You’re not in this alone,” McGarvey said.

Defloria’s eyes were hard. “Somehow that doesn’t give me much comfort. And what do I tell my crew?”

“Nothing for the moment.”

When McGarvey reached Eve’s lab on the fifth level the expansive space with wraparound windows was a beehive of frenetic activity. Most of the techs and postdocs were dressed in jeans and GFDL or NOAA sweatshirts, a few in khakis, and Don Price in white coveralls, and they were unpacking electronic equipment from the boxes and crates and aluminum cases and installing all of it in racks, or on four computer consoles that formed a broad U. Don was the first to spot him at the doorway. “He’s here,” he said.

Eve, who’d been on her hands and knees behind one of the consoles got to her feet, the look of happiness, total joy, and contentment, maybe even a little excitement, dying a little when she saw him. She too was dressed in white coveralls, the knees dirty from crawling around on the deck.

Some of the others had stopped what they were doing to look at the former CIA director who had twice been there to protect their scientist, most of them with curiosity, but a few of them, Don Price included, with resentment and perhaps fear.

“Okay, listen up,” Eve said, coming around the console and laying down a screwdriver. “And that includes you, Lisa.”

A few of her techs chuckled, but they stopped what they were doing.

“For those of you who don’t know this gentleman, his name is Kirk McGarvey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who has been of some service to me. He’s here to help with security and I’d like you to listen to what he has to say.”

“You’re busy, so I’ll only take a couple of minutes,” McGarvey said. “It’s likely that the Reverend Schlagel and some of his followers will stage some sort of a Greenpeace-type demonstration against your project.”

“The hell with them,” someone said.

“They might even try to get in our way, somehow stop us from reaching Florida. But I don’t think they’ll be very effective. This platform is just too big.”

“Will they try to board us?” a young woman who’d been working at one of the computer consoles asked. “Like the Somali pirates?”

“Not them,” McGarvey said, and it took several beats for the real meaning of what he’d just told them and its implications to sink in.

Don Price started to protest, but Eve touched his sleeve. “Continue,” she said.

“We believe that there are people other than some religious fanatics who don’t want this platform to reach Florida. They want to see your experiment fail.”

“What people?” Don demanded, his anger spilling over.

“We don’t know for sure,” McGarvey said. “But it’s possible they’re the same ones who attacked the Hutchinson Island reactor.”

“Speculation,” Don fumed, and Eve didn’t stop him from voicing his opinion. “What proof do you have?”

“None,” McGarvey admitted. “But I’m hitching a ride with you across the Gulf just in case something does develop. I wanted you to know who I was and why I’m here.”

“So now we know,” Don said. “Just get the hell out of here, we have a lot of work to do.”

“Could I have a word with you?” McGarvey asked Eve.

And before Don could object, she nodded and went with McGarvey out into the narrow space at the head of the steel stairs.

“Sorry about Don. He can be overbearing sometimes.”

“Don’t worry about it,” McGarvey said. “I’m interested in your news conference the day after tomorrow.”

“Interested or concerned?”

“Interested. Do you have list of the media people coming out?”

“No. InterOil set it up, and it was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Eve said. “Should I be worried?”

And what was the answer? McGarvey wondered. By his nature he was, if not a worrier, a man who paid very strong attention to the details. Especially the ones he had no direct control over.

He smiled. “No, that’s my job, remember?”

Her smile was a little less certain, but she nodded. “You’re leaving now?”

“Yes. But I’ll be back in time for your news conference.”

FORTY-EIGHT

McGarvey went back to Washington, calling Rencke on his sat phone before boarding the commercial flight at Biloxi-Gulfport Airport to find out the latest in the search for the contractor. “This guy doesn’t exist,” Otto said, and he sounded frustrated.

“But we know he does.”

“Yeah,” Rencke had said. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“He’s had years to devise his cover, but you’ve only had a couple of months to break it,” McGarvey said.

He’d spent a good deal of time over those same weeks trying to think like their contractor, trying to get inside the man’s head, trying to figure out what motivated him, trying to work out his background, and the direction he was headed — had likely always headed. And he had come to a few conclusions, actually just probabilities, based on the notion: If I were in his business, what would I do? Where would I live? How would my life be structured?

“He probably doesn’t live in the States,” he said.

“Eric thinks so too, but we don’t have any indicators,” Rencke said.

“Just bear with me. If he lived here he might have made mistakes. He’d likely to be in some database somewhere. City taxes, car registration, something. The only reason I think that he doesn’t live here is because he killed a teacher in San Francisco for an identity to get into the power plant.”

“He wouldn’t crap in his own nest.”

“Something like that. So where does he live?” McGarvey asked. “Not in some Third World country. He’s doing this work for what’s probably a great deal of money, which means he likes his comforts.”

“I’m working Switzerland, the Channel Islands, the Caymans, honest injun.”

“Let’s forget the money trail for a moment. Gail said the clerk at the Southern Power reception desk told her that the man had an English accent, but not Australian. Right now South Africa seems the most likely.”

“I’ve come up with nothing from SADF records.”

“Computer records,” McGarvey said. “I’m betting that this guy got out of the service before the South African military went digital.”

“Shit,” Rencke said. “Good point, Mac. I wasn’t thinking.”

“So where would a guy like that go to ground? Someplace civilized.”

“Europe,” Rencke said. “With the immigrant problem, a Westerner with culture and money would get no hassles from the local authorities. Long as he kept his nose clean no one would give him a second look. Switzerland, Germany, France.”

“Maybe France,” McGarvey said. “It’d be easy to get lost in Paris.”

“It’s a start,” Rencke said. “But there’d have to be more.”

“A woman. He wouldn’t live alone.”

“She’d leave no traces.”

“She might if she were bored,” McGarvey said.

And Rencke saw it all at once, his frustration giving way to excitement. “Oh, wow, kemo sabe, you’re right. When this guy is at home, he’s really at home. With his lady twenty-four/seven. But when he gets an assignment he’d have to drop out of sight for a week or two, maybe for months at a time, and she would get bored. She’d want to do something to keep from going crazy.”

“He would have warned her against getting too friendly, so whatever it is she does for pleasure will have to be very low-key. Maybe a garden club, maybe a tour guide or museum docent. If it’s Paris there’d have to be hundreds, probably thousands of such women.”

“Who don’t socialize.”

“It’s a start.”

“I’m on it,” Rencke said. “In the meantime have you found anything useful down there?”

“I think I know how he means to sabotage the rig, but he’ll have to get aboard to do it, and he’ll need some help.”

“When are they heading out?”

“Probably by the weekend, but they’re holding a news conference the day after tomorrow, on InterOil’s suggestion. See if you can come up with a list of who’ll be there.”

And Rencke saw that, too. “You think that he’s going to try to get aboard. Reconnoiter?”

“It’s something I might try.”

“Do you think it’d be worth the risk?”

McGarvey had thought about that too on the way back from the oil rig. There’d be only one reason for the man to take such a gamble, and that would in part depend on inside knowledge. “If the company plans on giving the media a guided tour he’d have to try it.”

“That’d mean someone at InterOil was feeding him information.”

“Find out what you can, but especially the names of everyone invited. And I want them vetted, all of them, including the cameramen and anyone else in the group.”

“I’m on it,” Rencke said.

McGarvey found that it was impossible to relax on the flight up to Washington. He couldn’t get out of his mind how vulnerable even something so large as an oil exploration platform was. A few kilos of well-placed Semtex as shaped charges on two legs would do the job, and once they exploded nothing could stop the platform from capsizing and ending up on the bottom of the Gulf.

A couple of operators could easily handle that task in fifteen minutes or less. In the meantime three or four others would round up the crew and technicians and herd them into the mess. But the biggest problem would be finding and destroying the oil rig’s single sideband radio used for communications with the company before a Mayday could be transmitted. Sat phones would present another problem, as would the crew and communications equipment aboard the tug.

And it came to him that he’d missed something obvious, something beyond the possibility that the contractor would be coming aboard with the media; in fact the man might have no need to take such a risk, not if he’d already managed to place one of his operators aboard. Probably as a deckhand. Someone who had worked on an oil rig at some point in his career.

It was late by the time he got back to Washington and cabbed it to his apartment in Georgetown, and he would forever remember that at this point he’d become a man in a hurry, and in some ways a man worried that he had been forgetting something important that could get a lot of people killed.

Gail was in bed, but not asleep when he let himself in, and she got up, a shy expression in her eyes on her face, as if she was worried that he’d brought her bad news. She was wearing one of his shirts. “How’d it go?” she asked.

“I found out how they’re going to sink the platform, but we might have caught a break,” McGarvey said, putting down his bag. And he knew just by looking at her what she was thinking and why, but he didn’t want to go there, not yet. “We’re flying down tomorrow afternoon. Can you be ready by then?”

“I’m packed,” she said, and she seemed to relax a little. “Why don’t you take a shower while I fix you something to eat, and we can talk.”

And McGarvey hesitated, wondering for just that moment what he felt about her, or if in fact he’d redeveloped the ability to feel something about anyone after his wife’s assassination. Too soon, he wanted to say, and he wanted to turn around and walk out. But in the end he couldn’t.

He went to her and took her in his arms. “After tonight we’re going to become a couple of professionals with a job to do. Nothing more. Understood?”

Gail nodded.

“I’ll take a shower, but forget the kitchen. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said happily.

“We can talk in the morning on the way down to the Farm.”

John Nowak, the new commandant of the CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary on the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia, was expecting McGarvey and had an escort at the main gate waiting to bring him and Gail down to the office. His was a new face to McGarvey, but according to Otto, morale at the Farm, which had taken a dive when Todd Van Buren and his wife Elizabeth were assassinated, was recovering.

He was a short, rotund man in his late forties or early fifties, with a red jowly face and a broad smile; he was a man who obviously enjoyed what he was doing, and when McGarvey and Gail got out of the Porsche SUV he came out and dismissed the young officer in training escort, and shook their hands.

“This is a great pleasure finally getting to meet you, Mr. Director,” he said effusively. He was dressed in camos, his boots bloused, a Beretta holstered across his chest. And his boots looked scuffed, well worn. Otto had said that appearances to the contrary Nowak could easily keep up with the youngest trainees; he’d been a top sergeant with the army’s Delta Force. “Mr. Rencke told me what you folks were in need of and we have everything ready for you. It just wants your approval before we pack.”

“Transportation?” McGarvey asked. He wanted to like the man, but it was difficult. The only reason the Farm had a new commandant was because Todd and Liz were dead.

“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 making 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.

Right after 9/11, Seceretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld told a group of journalists, who wanted to know how such a thing could have happened, that our entire nuclear arsenal had been of no use to us. This was a different sort of war and different ways of defense were needed. Problem was, no one had figured that out yet.

FIFTY

McGarvey and Gail spent a couple of hours poking around the rig, checking the two satellite dishes on the roof of the control center, access to which was ridiculously easy, either through a pair of corridors and up one flight of stairs or outside up stairs attached to the side of the superstructure like fire escapes. And getting to the legs beneath the lowest deck was nearly as simple. The platform was just too big and too complicated to easily defend, nor had it been designed to withstand an attack.

Standing at the south edge of the main deck, looking at the massive oceangoing tug, Tony Ryan, Gail brought up her earlier point. “What about the tug’s crew? At the first sign of trouble up here, her skipper is going to call for help. And it’s going to get hell of lot more complicated when Schlagel’s people show up in force.”

“There’ll be a lot of confusion,” McGarvey said. The huge cable harness connecting the tug to Vanessa was slack. But when the platform was actually under tow a tremendous strain would be taken up and any small boat that happened to stray anywhere near would be in serious trouble. If something like that were to happen, especially late at night, or very early in the morning before dawn, it wouldn’t matter what was going on aboard the rig, the tug’s crew would be engaged in a rescue operation.

“Do you think Schlagel is a part of this?”

McGarvey had considered it, and there were plenty of reasons for such an alliance to be possible, chief among them the reverend’s bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in two years. He was, in his own words: “The architect of the new back-to-fundamentals program that made this country great in the first place.”

“I don’t think he or his people would be so stupid to be a part of the attack, but they’d make great witnesses. When this platform went to the bottom he’d be able to say ‘I told you so.’”

Gail looked at him, a wry expression on her lips. “You don’t watch enough television to know how popular Schlagel has become since Hutchinson Island. People are frightened that things are going to be taken away from them by a power or powers they can’t understand. Everyone’s afraid of nuclear war and yet rich corporations want to keep building nuclear power plants. It’s tough enough as it is to make a decent living, yet the same corporations give their CEOs multimillion-dollar bonuses. It’s obscene. Gas prices keep going up, health care costs are bankrupting the country, but nothing is being done. Essentially it’s the lobbyists who’re running everything. And we’re selling our souls to the Saudis for oil and sending all of our manufacturing jobs to China.”

“It’s the world we live in,” McGarvey said, not meaning to sound as callous as that. But it was the truth.

“Yes, and it’s a world that we made,” Gail said passionately. “We’re either a part of the problem or a part of the solution, and our hands aren’t clean, Kirk.”

“Mine especially,” McGarvey said, a flood of dark memories overtaking him. He looked at her. “But we’re not going to turn away from this. The Coast Guard’s not along for the ride because no one wants to piss off big oil, especially the Saudis and the rest of OPEC, and no one wants to get in the way of the handful of heavy hitters making big money with derivative funds and credit default swaps.”

“They buy the lobbyists.”

“That’s only a part of it. These people fund armies, insurgents, soldiers for God, al-Quaeda, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizballah, al Muhajiroun, Jamat e-Islami. The list goes on. Nuclear research in Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. We’re in a war, and have been since the eighties, and certainly since Nine/eleven. Not about religious freedom, not about territory, but about oil and money and power. And the jury’s still out.”

“We’ll end up a second-class country,” Gail said bleakly.

“It’s certainly possible, unless we can give the Eve Larsens of the world the time to change the tide.”

They had dinner in the practically deserted mess hall one level up from the main deck. Oil rigs were usually worked around the clock, and the kitchen was always open. Oil men in general had large appetites, and when they were hungry they expected to be fed. None of Eve’s people were there. “It’s not just the Eve Larsens, it’s the nuclear people, too,” Gail said. “There’re thirty applications for new generating stations, and even if every one of them were to be approved today not one kilowatt of power would be produced for at least ten years, and probably longer.”

“We can’t wait that long.”

“I worked at Hutchinson Island long enough to understand that we’re facing a crisis right now, and no one knows exactly what to do about it. Everything’s so fabulously expensive that it’s almost impossible to make any sort of a decision for fear of losing billions of dollars.”

“If Schlagel gets his way, and it looks like he might, nukes will be out. Which brings us back to Eve Larsen’s project.”

“We can’t let it fail,” Gail said with some passion. She did not want to be on the losing end of an operation twice in a row. “But it makes you wonder about Washington, and what sort of collusions are going on.”

Have always been going on, McGarvey wanted to say, but he didn’t.

Schlagel’s God’s Flotilla, as Fox News was dubbing it, started arriving at the platform just after dawn. At first only a pair of shrimp boats, but by eight in the morning dozens of boats, some of them as large as the 120-foot ex-Japanese fish factory ship now named the Pascagoula Trader , refitted three years ago, according to Rencke, as a private yacht belonging to the Reverend Wilfred Sampson, head of the Mississippi-Alabama Baptist Alliance. A small Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was tied down on an afterdeck.

The media was scheduled to arrive aboard an InterOil chopper from Biloxi at noon, something apparently whoever was in charge of the flotilla knew, because the boats merely circled the platform and its tug, giving both a wide berth, making no attempt to interfere or create a problem. That wouldn’t happen until the cameras were pointed in their direction. Schlagel’s machine was slick and professional.

McGarvey and Gail had walked over to the superstructure that housed Eve Larsen’s lab and operations center and stood outside on one of the lower-level balconies just above the main deck to watch the gathering fleet, still more boats showing up on the northern horizon.

“Your lady scientist knew this was going to happen, but seeing it now like this can’t make her very happy,” Gail said. “She won’t be able to ignore us.”

“It’s not so much her, she came to me for help in the first place. It’s her assistant, Don Price. He’s in love with her.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Gail said. “And you’re her Sir Galahad who’s come to rain on his parade.”

“Might be more than that,” McGarvey said. Rencke had vetted Eve’s people too, and they’d all cleared with flying colors, including Price who held two Ph.D.s, one from M.I.T. in ocean science and engineering and the other from Princeton in oceanography. His paper on the origins of the Gulf Stream and how it controlled climate was, according to Otto, nothing short of stunning, groundbreaking.

“The guy’s probably an asshole,” Rencke had reported after Oslo. “But he’s a smart asshole and from what I can tell one hundred percent devoted to Larsen and her project, even though he could have had his own lab and funding by now.”

“What does he want?” McGarvey had asked. He’d been fishing, because he had nothing solid to go on, only intuition.

“Reflected glory,” Rencke was quick to suggest. “His boss got the Nobel Prize and he was the number two man on her team. Part of the credit goes to him. Pretty good paragraph on a résumé.”

McGarvey still wasn’t sure about Price, but it was nothing he could put his finger on. No solid reason for mistrust, only mutual dislike.

“Let’s go up and introduce you and let them know how we’re going to handle today and the rest of the trip,” McGarvey said, and he started to turn toward the door, but Gail put a hand on his arm.

“I just had a thought,” she said. “All these media types, unless they’re just kids, are going to know your face, and they’re going to want to know why you’re aboard, right?”

“So what?”

“No use advertising why you’re here. You went up against Schlagel’s people in New York, and you were there in Oslo, so if your name pops up again he’ll probably think you’ve targeted him. But our contractor will know better. So why don’t we keep you in reserve, as a sort of a nasty surprise?”

“I want to see exactly what the media people are shown, and I want to know if any of them takes a particular interest in anything, especially the communications equipment and the legs.”

“I can do that,” Gail said. “Otherwise why did you bring me along? Let me earn my pay.”

It was penance for her self-perceived failure at Hutchinson Island. But she had a point, and McGarvey conceded it. “You’ll stay in the rear, but use the EQ, I want to know everything.”

“I’ll save you some champagne,” she said, and she glanced toward the door to the corridor and the stairs up to the control room. “Do you want to introduce me now, or should it wait until we’re under way?”

But it was difficult for him. He’d lost some good people in the past, Lundgren at Hutchinson Island, and his family, so that it was hard to let go, hard not to be in the middle of things, in charge, calling the shots. And a part of him, because of his age he supposed and his upbringing by strict fundamentalist parents on the western Kansas plain, made him chauvinistic at times. His first instinct was almost always to open the door for a woman, take her coat, hold her chair, pick up the dinner check. Go into harm’s way first.

“Later,” he told her. “There won’t be any trouble this soon. When it comes it’ll be farther out in the Gulf and it’ll be late at night or early in the morning before dawn. But watch yourself.”

Gail glanced at her watch. “We have a couple of hours, what do you want to do?”

“I want you to find Defloria and tell him that you’re going to tag along on the tour, and in the meantime I’m going to check on something.”

“Anything I should see, too?”

“I’ll let you know,” McGarvey said, and he turned and headed back along the corridor to the stairs that led to the lower levels of the platform.

FIFTY-ONE

Kirk McGarvey was cut from a different material than any other man Eve Larsen had ever met, and yet there’d been the brief moment in New York and again in Oslo, where she thought that she’d known him all of her life. In several ways she’d been reminded of her father’s strength and unshakable self-assurance that what he was doing, that the direction his life was leading, was correct. And yet, like her father who’d understood his place as a low-paid mill worker, and had accepted his lot in life, even though he didn’t like it, there was a sadness in McGarvey’s eyes that Eve was familiar and even comfortable with.

Standing at one of the large plate-glass windows looking down at the flotilla — Schlagel’s flotilla — that had started gathering three hours ago, she thought about him, and wondered where he was and why he hadn’t warned her. He’d come aboard yesterday but she’d been too busy, too excited, even a little overwhelmed by the progress they were making to take much notice until this very moment.

“They’re buffoons,” Don said at her side.

She looked at him. “Enough of them to easily take over this platform. Even Kirk and whomever he brought with him wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

Don glared at her. “Those fools out there don’t intend to hurt us. They’re making their stupid mumbojumbo fundamentalist points by calling us names. And the only reason they came out here this morning is because of the news conference. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the networks tipped them off. The bastard is gathering sound bites, and once the TV guys are gone, the mob will head home, and we can finally get underway.”

She wanted to believe it was that simple. But the incident in Oslo had deeply shaken her, and made her wonder how the situation might have turned out if McGarvey hadn’t been there. Jacobsen, who would recover, had taken the bullet for her, but it was McGarvey’s fast action, pushing her down to the walkway and covering her body with his, that may have saved her life.

“The man’s a magnet for trouble,” Don said as if he’d read her mind. “I looked him up online, what little there is that makes any sense involves him in at least a half-dozen incidents in which there was a shooting, and in one case the car bomb a few years ago in Georgetown. Yet he was actually picked to head the CIA — which proved what I’ve always said about Washington — and we had Nine/eleven.”

“There were larger issues than just one man,” Eve argued. She was no politician, though it was something she would have to become if her project really did blossom after the Vanessa Explorer experiment, because she was going to need funding — government funding on a very large scale. And neither was Don, politically savvy, even if he believed otherwise. But she felt a surge of affection for him, because he was just trying to be worldly for her sake. An arm around her shoulder to assure her that everything would turn out all right.

The rig’s interphone buzzed, and Josh Taylor, a gangly grad-school tech from the U.P. Michigan, picked it up. He was working on his doctoral thesis, under Eve’s supervision, on saline variations in the Gulf Stream and their effects on energy distribution among eddy currents compared with industrial- and farm-produced dust concentrations in the atmosphere and their effects on low-pressure systems in the prevailing westerlies across the North American continent. He held up the phone. “For you, Eve.”

“Anyway, he’s been a help to me,” Eve told Don. “So try to be at least civil to him, okay?”

He managed a brief smile. “You’re the boss,” he said. But it looked like he was angry or maybe just as frightened as she wanted to be, but trying to hide it.

Defloria was on the phone. “The helicopter is twenty minutes out.”

“Any last-minute no-shows?” Eve asked.

“No such luck, Doctor. And you can bet that the first questions they’re going to ask won’t be about your work, but about the circus outside.”

“I’m starting to get used to it, but I’ll depend on you to answer their questions about the platform.”

“No problem,” Defloria said. “The reception area has been set up on the main deck in front of the housing superstructure. The wind shifted, so we had to switch sides. We can start and end there, if that’s okay with you.”

“Just fine,” Eve said. “I’ll need about ten or fifteen minutes for my opening remarks and initial questions and then we can either come directly up here, or head below.”

“We’ll start at the top and work our way down,” Defloria said. “See you on deck in about fifteen minutes?”

“Yes,” Eve said. “Have you seen Mr. McGarvey this morning?”

“No. Would you like me to find him for you?”

“Not necessary,” Eve said a little too quickly, and when she hung up she saw Don looking at her.

Defloria’s people had set up two dozen folding chairs facing a small podium equipped with a portable PA system out of the wind in the lee of housing. All work aboard the rig, except for normal maintenance, had been suspended for the afternoon, and the platform was eerily quiet so that when Eve came out on deck she heard the heavy chop of the incoming InterOil helicopter from Gulfport.

She had decided to change into clean white coveralls rather than a blazer and the khaki slacks she’d worn for her presentations despite Don’s objections.

“You’re a good-looking woman. People appreciate it.”

“I’m a scientist, not a Rockette,” she’d countered, and now glancing up at the control-room windows, she saw her techs watching her, but Don wasn’t with them, and she was a little disappointed.

Defloria came out of a hatch with a slightly built and attractive woman and they walked over to where Eve was standing next to the podium. “Don’t think you’ve met,” he said, introducing her as Kirk McGarvey’s partner at the NNSA. “Ms. Newby will be tagging along for the tour.”

They shook hands and Eve got the distinct impression that the woman was carrying a chip on her shoulder; she seemed to be angry about something, but was keeping it just beneath the surface. Her smile was forced.

“I don’t think we have,” Gail said. “But Kirk has certainly told me a lot about you.”

“All of it good, I hope,” Eve said in an effort to keep it light. “Will he be joining us?”

“No, Doctor, it’ll just be me. And as far as the media is concerned I’m just one of Mr. Defloria’s gofers.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” Eve asked, but instead of letting her off the hook Gail merely shrugged.

And approaching the platform from the northwest, the InterOil helicopter flared above the landing pad, and they watched as it touched down. Several of Defloria’s people were up there to meet the media people, hand them hard hats, and then guide them down to the corridor that led across the rear of the platform.

“Do you want me to introduce you?” Defloria asked.

“No need,” Eve said, and although she’d done dozens of these things she was still nervous, her Nobel and the UAEIBC funding notwithstanding. Thankfully this would be her last media event until the Hutchinson Island experiment either succeeded or failed. “The damn thing works,” Don’s comment aboard the Big G had become the team’s mantra, and a comfort just now because she felt a little unbalanced that Kirk wouldn’t be here. She needed him, and although she knew that she was being irrational about it, she was vexed that he hadn’t felt it, hadn’t read her mind.

The media people came through the hatch onto the main deck, and Defloria went over to help them around the maze of piping, cabling, and pumps to the reception area out of the wind. At first some of them looked and acted like tourists in white hard hats, rubbernecking the seemingly haphazard superstructures, spindly cranes, and the remnants of the drilling tower. Gail had moved to one side, well away from the podium, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, just another deckhand or roustabout, and Eve had to smile, because the woman wasn’t so bright after all. She stuck out like a sore thumb. Kirk’s picking her as his partner was a mystery, and oddly it made her relax a little.

She went to the podium as the television people took light readings, while a couple of the reporters looked at her as if they were examining a bug under a microscope, the same sort of reaction she’d gotten for the past year and a half, maybe more intense now because of the Nobel Prize and because of where they were and why they’d come. The Fox cameraman was panning from left to right across the main deck and then out at Schlagel’s flotilla, before turning back in a complete three-sixty until he focused on Eve.

“Anytime you’re ready,” she said as the reporters settled down.

Lloyd Adams, from ABC, glanced over his shoulder at his cameraman who nodded, and he in turn inclined his head for Eve to begin.

“Thank you for coming out here today for what I think is the first step toward America’s energy independence,” she began. “An important step. A necessary step.”

She and Don had worked on her presentation last night in his cabin, and she felt as if she’d begun on the right note, and she paused for effect — important, he’d assured her — and a deep basso boat horn close by to the west suddenly cut the silence.

Everyone looked up, and other boat horns joined in, a few at first, but then tens and dozens of them, surrounding the platform, the volume rising and falling like a chorus on the wind.

Don had told her to expect this. “Don’t let it fluster you,” he’d told her. “You’re the Nobel doc in charge. You’re trying to do something positive. The freaks don’t stand for anything, they’ll be here only to destroy what they can’t understand.”

“Shall we continue this inside, where it’s a little less noisy?” she shouted.

“No,” one of the newspaper reporters shouted, getting to his feet. “We understand what you’re trying to do and why. And we understand what’s at stake — not just the money, but the climate control issue you’ve talked about for the last year or two.” He swept his hand toward the edge of the platform over his shoulder. “Were you expecting this demonstration, and what do you say to the Reverend Schlagel’s charges that you’re playing God?”

“If the reverend is right, maybe I should just wave my hand and make them all miraculously disappear,” she said, and she regretted the remark the instant it popped out of her mouth.

“Is that what you want?” the Fox reporter asked.

It was exactly what she wanted, but she shook her head. “Of course not, as long as they don’t try to interfere with my work.”

“Like now?” the network reporter relentlessly followed up, and the other media people were curious enough to let him continue.

“A little humility every now and then wouldn’t hurt,” Don had warned her.

Gail had moved to the rear, behind the cameramen, and she shrugged, only this time the gesture wasn’t indifferent, it was sympathetic. Eve nodded.

“I have a big mouth that tends to get me in trouble,” she said. “What I mean to say is that I welcome scientific criticism, not attacks based purely on emotion or popular opinion that has been manipulated.”

“Is that why you were given the Nobel Peace Prize and not physics?” the Time magazine reporter asked.

The cacophony of boat horns seemed to be closing in on the rig, making it nearly impossible to hear or be heard on deck, and Eve wanted to shout back at the smug bastard. At the top of her lungs. This was the twenty-first century, goddamnit, not the Dark Ages. Yet a paleobiologist friend of hers told her recently that more than half of all Americans did not believe in evolution — they thought Darwin was a crock. Talk about Dark Ages. Sometimes it seemed to her as if the country was slipping backwards, the lights were really starting to go out. The age of exploration and discovery had given way to the new age of religious intolerance and war. Worldwide jihad.

She couldn’t help herself. “Why are you here?” she shouted.

“You’re front-page news, Doc,” one of the reporters said. “You and your God Project.”

The news conference, more like a circus with her as the chief clown, ended shortly after that remark. Most of the reporters were only mildly curious about the equipment in the control room, and the work that would be done as soon as the GE-built impellers were barged down to Hutchinson Island and attached to the platform. The depths and exact positions of the generator augers in relationship to the continuous micro-changes in the speed and angle of axis of the Gulf Stream at each particular location, which could affect the electrical output and any given moment, would be monitored. It was unknown at this point if a mechanism to change the depth and angle of incidence for each impeller would have to be designed and installed. Also unknown were the effects of salinity and temperature, or especially the opacity of the water, which might change the parts per million of biological organisms present at any given depth. With an intake diameter of twenty-five feet, a density differential could exist between the tops and bottoms of the impellers, which could affect efficiency.

Hundreds of other measurements would be taken from more than one thousand sensors, in the impeller blades themselves, on the internal bearings and gears inside the generators, on the electrical output — not only the amperage developed, but the consistency. How steady an output could be expected on a 24/7 basis for an entire year? Would this project act like solar cells, which produced energy that was subject to extreme fluctuations depending on how much dust landed on the solar panels, how many clouds were in the sky and how fast they moved, and at what latitudes the panels were located?

“There are a lot of variables,” Eve told them. “It’s what this stage of my experiment is all about.”

“What precautions have you taken to avoid another accident like the one last year in which a man was killed?” the French newspaper reporter asked.

“Better seals and redesigned fail-safes,” Eve answered matter-of-factly, though she was bitter. It was no accident, and everyone in her lab knew it, but there was no proof. No way ever of discovering the proof unless they could find the impeller that had fried its cable and now lay somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. But no one was looking, nor were there plans or money for such a search. So it was an accident.

“What comes next?” Tomi Nelson, who wrote for Scientific American, asked. She and the reporter from the Smithsonian had been the only two really more interested in the science and technology than the men in Schlagel’s opposition. But then they weren’t as interested in spot news as the others.

Don, who’d been missing for the briefing, had come in just as the question was asked. “If all goes well, and nothing bites us in the butt, we’ll hook up to the grid ashore and start giving Sunshine State Power and Light free electricity,” he said, coming around to where Eve stood facing the media people. “Sorry I’m late, Dr. Larsen.”

Press kits, including the bios of Eve and Don and everyone on the team, along with the science including diagrams, a little bit of math, some economic projections, and the long-range weather effects they were aiming for, had been sent ahead of time, so introductions weren’t necessary.

“I meant beyond that, Dr. Price,” Nelson asked. “What’s the next stage, or are you planning on going directly into production?”

“How many oil platforms do you expect it will take?” the Japanese reporter interrupted impolitely. “Excuse me, but do you think your environmentalists will object?”

“Let me answer both questions,” Eve said. “No more oil platforms, this one is just a tool for us to generate needed data. After we’re finished here, we’ll anchor the four impellers and their gen sets fifty feet beneath the surface and continue sending electrical power ashore. There will be no rig, and therefore no environmental issues.”

“And before anyone asks, because of the design of the impellers we will not be making sushi in the Gulf Stream,” Don said, and he got a few chuckles.

The boat horns had been blaring nonstop for about a half an hour, so that it had become mostly just background noise. But the Washington Post reporter nodded toward the windows. “Thad Schlagel promises to follow you all the away to Florida. What effect will that have on your work?”

“We brought earplugs,” Don said. “Anyway the extra publicity when we start giving away free electrical power won’t hurt.”

“If it works,” the Post reporter said.

Defloria and Gail came to the door. Eve introduced them as the tour guides, and although the reporters from Scientific American and Smithsonian wanted to stay and ask more questions, they also wanted to see the rest of the rig, and Eve promised to do follow-ups with them afterwards.

When they had cleared out, Eve took Don aside. “Where were you?” she demanded. She didn’t like being deserted.

“I’m sorry but I had to get the hell out of the way, I didn’t know what I’d say if I got started.”

And Eve came down a little. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Except for the noisemakers.”

“Did you really pack earplugs?”

“I don’t think we’ll need them,” Don said. “Those people will get tired and go home as soon as the media bails.”

Vanessa’s private catering service rose nicely to the occasion, providing a pleasant champagne brunch that afternoon for the media and for the scientific staff, and Eve spent most of the hour and a half answering questions about her project and whether some of Schlagel’s objections might be valid.

“The creationists are still down on Darwin,” she told Enrique Obar, a L.A. Times reporter. “The Flat Earth Society believes Magellan was a liar. There’s proof that we never walked on the moon. Earth is only six thousand years old — and change. Airplanes can’t really fly. Baseballs don’t curve. An arrow can never reach its target. And four thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight angels, or some number like that, can dance on the head of a pin. Makes me one of the crazies.”

“All that sounds good, Dr. Larsen,” Obar said, smiling. “But in fact he’s gained quite a following. What are you going to do about him?”

Gail had changed into jeans and a light pullover and she was standing nearby, drinking a glass of champagne and obviously eavesdropping.

“About the only thing I can do, I suppose,” Eve said.

“What’s that?”

“Prove that the world is round.”

FIFTY-TWO

The flight back to InterOil’s Gulfport-Biloxi VIP terminal went without incident, the weather calmer inshore than it had been out on Vanessa Explorer. A number of the reporters made calls on their cell phones as soon as they came within range of a tower, while a couple of them tilted their heads back and fell asleep, and others were making notes on their laptops or BlackBerries.

Twenty minutes out the Japanese journalist Kobo Itasaka turned to Brian DeCamp. “Tell me what you think.”

DeCamp, who’d traveled as Joseph Bindle, special correspondent to the Manchester, England Guardian, had been busy working out the next steps based on what he had learned this afternoon. The rig was even more vulnerable than he’d first thought, but getting aboard without raising too much of an alarm — enough of an alarm that someone would call for help — remained a problem he’d yet to solve. He wasn’t overly concerned, it would be seven days before it reached the 1,800 fathom mark about two hundred miles southwest of Tampa, but it was the one detail left. He glanced at the Japanese sitting next to him. “Think about what?”

“The chances the woman’s experiment will succeed.”

DeCamp shrugged. “Oh, I shouldn’t think it will,” he said, flattening his rounded vowels so that he sounded more like a Midland’s Plains Brit than a South African. “The science isn’t very sound, is it?”

“Then you agree with the religious right here?”

This or any other discussion that might draw attention to him wasn’t what he’d wanted. But a couple of the other reporters had looked interested and he couldn’t back away. “Heavens no. It’s just that meddling with the weather could very likely have some unintended consequences, I suppose. She means to diminish anticyclones in the Atlantic, but mightn’t that increase the intensity of storms sweeping west across North America?”

“Interesting possibility, something I’ll look into,” Itasaka said, and turned away.

But one of the other reporters was curious. “Who did you say you wrote for?” he asked.

“The Guardian, ” DeCamp said, and all of a sudden he realized his mistake, and he grinned. “I suppose I should have said hurricanes. It’s the three years I did at our Canberra bureau. New habits die hardest.”

“Have you been to Iraq yet?” the reporter asked. Something wasn’t adding up for him, and it was plain by his questions.

“No, and I bloody well have no desire to witness the slaughter of a lot of fools, some of them my own countrymen, for an American ambition. Or for that matter put my arse on the line for the next IED to pop off while I’m on the way to the loo.”

The reporter started to say something else, but DeCamp turned away and looked out the window, dozens of oil rigs in every direction, clouds sweeping in for what looked like a rainy evening to come, which suited his suddenly dark mood.

Using the Bindle identity to get out to the oil rig had carried a set of risks — one of which was running into someone who knew the real correspondent — and another of which was being drawn into a discussion about some subject only an actual journalist would know something about. And Iraq was one of them. He’d been to Baghdad on a number of occasions, once before the second Gulf War had begun, but as an assassin, not a newspaper reporter. He didn’t know the language, or the places where the international press usually hung out, or the little problems and everyday irritations that came with being a newsman embedded with a military unit. He couldn’t talk the talk that would convince a veteran reporter that he was an actual correspondent.

But it had been worth the gamble to inspect the oil platform firsthand. Now he had a much clearer picture of what problems his team would be faced with and the solutions to all but two — how to get aboard and how to deal with the tug’s crew and communications equipment.

And it had been worth the price of fifty thousand euros to the real Bindle, living and working as a freelancer in Paris, to take a vacation in Rome and let DeCamp take his place on the tour. An assignment two years ago required that he be allowed access to the German Parliment building, the refurbished Reichstag in Berlin, but not as a tourist, as a member of the press, which would give him nearly unlimited access to the offices of a deputy on a hit list.

DeCamp had reasoned that an accredited journalist would have just the sort of access that he needed, so he went looking for the right man, who had his similar build and height, who was a freelancer, lived in Europe, and was down on his luck. And Bindle had been fairly easy to find. An afternoon spent on the Internet researching British freelance journalists came up with a list of a dozen men of approximately the right age, five of whom had published a decreasing number of stories over the past five years. Bios on each of them, though scant, led him to two men, one a former Australian yellow journalist who’d come to London nine years ago and had never really made his mark.

And Bindle, who had been a success until four years ago when his output dropped dramatically from twenty or more big freelance pieces per year to just a handful, had brought him to the top of the list. A little digging brought up a London newspaper article about the deaths of Bindle’s wife and teenaged daughter in a car crash. Though Bindle had not tested positive for alcohol or drugs, he’d been driving, and had failed to yield the right of way. The accident had been his fault; he’d killed his wife and daughter.

DeCamp, in disguise, had found him drunk in a Paris bar, followed him home, sobered him up, and offered him the proposition.

“No real way out for me is there,” Bindle had agreed. “Just let me write the actual pieces, and never tell me what you’re really up to, you bugger. I don’t want to know. I don’t care even if you’re a spy for the goddamned Chinese or somebody.”

Which had led to Germany, and the deputy.

DeCamp had followed him into a bathroom on the third floor, killed him with a stiletto thrust to the heart, and placed the body in one of the stalls. He was long gone from the building before the man’s body was discovered and the alarm was sounded.

DeCamp sent his notes and photos for the story to Bindle, via a blind IP address, the reporter obligingly wrote the piece, submitted it to the Guardian , and went back to his drinking.

No one connected Bindle’s visit with the murder, because the next day the reporter’s human-interest story on the differences in governing styles between Berlin and the old post — World War II capital in Bonn appeared in the newspaper. He was a reporter, not an assassin.

Biloxi’s weather had thickened by the time the InterOil helicopter touched down, and the journalists dispersed, most of them aboard the courtesy VIP shuttle over to the airport’s terminal for their flights out. A couple of them cabbed it to the Grand Biloxi Casino and Hotel, making DeCamp the last to leave, taking a cab rather than the shuttle over to the terminal because, he told the driver, he didn’t like mobs.

He had a beer in the lounge, and lost a roll of quarters to a slot machine over a half-hour’s period, then walked across to the baggage pickup area, and outside to get a cab to the Beau Rivage Casino and Hotel on the beach, where he’d stayed in a suite for the past three days.

No one at the desk recognized him as he entered the hotel, passed through the casino, and then made his way back to the elevators and up to his suite where he took out the contacts that made his eyes look bright green, makeup that aged him by ten years, and padding on his torso and hips that’d put twenty-five pounds on him

Afterwards, looking out at the deepening gloom over the Gulf, first making sure that none of the telltales on his laptop had been disturbed, DeCamp felt a bit of nostalgia for Martine and his soft life above Nice. And sadness. Listening to the woman scientist speak about her project, watching the expression on her pretty, outdoorsy face, seeing her enthusiasm for what she was doing, and sensing her fears — some of which probably had to do with the presence of the flotilla, but at least some of which had to hinge on the outcome of her experiment — he could imagine someone like him coming to kill Martine. For perhaps the first time in his life he wanted something different, and for just a moment he thought he could put words to what he wanted; it was a notion just outside his immediate grasp, at the back of his head, on the tip of his tongue.

But then it was gone, and he ordered a bottle of Krug from room service, and when it came he sat down at his computer to make his notes, and download the photographs from his digital camera, sending them to Bindle when he was done.

DeCamp’s cover here was as Peter Bernstein, a businessman from Sydney, who was obviously wealthy, though not filthy rich by American standards, who was quiet and generally kept to himself, although each night he had a different woman up to his suite. He ate and drank well, tipped well, his credit was triple A, and although his losses at the tables — especially blackjack, a game he despised — were modest, they were steady. His initial reservation had been for three days, but he’d extended that indefinitely. “I’m on holiday, in absolutely no hurry,” he’d told the front desk. “Besides, it’s winter in Auz. No reason to go back till spring.”

After a short nap, he took a shower and changed into a European-cut soft gray suit, open-collar silk shirt, and hand-sewn Brazilian loafers. He’d left the television on a local news channel and as he was putting on his jacket, ready to go down to the casino, something caught his eye and he turned up the sound. It was a Fox News report on Eve Larsen’s oil rig and Schlagel’s God’s Flotilla. Schlagel himself had been asked by the Fox reporter, “What comes next?”

“Why, to stop this abomination against the righteous hand of God, of course.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“Make all Americans aware of the danger Dr. Larsen represents,” Schlagel said, his voice rising, and he started on his diatribe delivered in neatly scripted sound bites.

As he preached, Fox ran some of the footage of the flotilla taken from the main deck of Vanessa Explorer that morning. Although DeCamp’s attention remained atuned to Schlagel’s arguments — which he actually had to admire because of the man’s sheer brilliance — he suddenly saw the solution to both of the remaining problems, and he smiled, something he hadn’t done for a very long time.

Simplicity. The concept had been drummed into him from the day he’d come under Colonel Frazer’s roof.

He went back into the bedroom and used the encrypted Nokia sat phone to call Boris Gurov aboard the rig. “There has been a change of plans. For the better.”

“I’m listening,” Gurov said. “But something’s come up out here. Two new people have come aboard, and one of them is Kirk McGarvey.”

“Do you know this name?” DeCamp asked.

“Yes, and you should, too. A few years ago he served as the director of the bloody CIA. And he’s damned good. The best.”

“Who’s with him?”

“Some woman.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, but McGarvey could be trouble,” Gurov insisted.

DeCamp thought about it for a moment. “His presence changes nothing. We’ll deal with him the same as the others. But listen, Boris, this is what’s going to happen.”

When he was finished the line was silent for a long beat, but when Gurov came back he sounded good. “It makes sense. Besides, if they keep up with all the racket, it’ll provide good cover.”

“What about the primary problem?” DeCamp askled.

“Nearly all communications to and from the rig go through a pair of satellite dishes on the roof of the control center. Taking them out will be a breeze. Presuming we do this outside cell phone range, it only leaves sat phones. This one, plus one the delivery captain carries in a holster on his belt, maybe one or more the scientists brought with them, and McGarvey might have brought one.”

“Find them, job one,” DeCamp said. “You have four days.”

“We’ll see you then,” Gurov said.

Schlagel was still on the television when DeCamp walked back into the living room. The reverend stood on the back of a pickup truck in front of a large crowd, exhorting them to make their voices heard in Washington and everywhere across the country. “We must work together to stop this abomination against God’s will.”

DeCamp called the second encrypted phone, that he’d given to Joseph Wyner who’d been holed up in New Orleans for the past five days with a four-man team they’d hired in London. All of them were mercs, Julius Helms and Edwin Burt, former British SAS demolitions experts, Paul Mitchell, a former U.S. Delta Force hand-to-hand instructor, and Bob Lehr, a German cop who’d grown up in the east zone, and whose KGB methods were too rough in the west.

Wyner answered. “You’re early,” he said.

“There’s a change of plans,” DeCamp said, and he told his team leader the same thing he’d told Gurov.

“Sounds good. When do you want us to join you?”

“As soon as possible. I want you to book three rooms at the Beau Rivage, for three nights, starting tomorrow. Absolutely no drinking and especially no gambling.”

“I don’t know if I can keep them under control for that long.”

The Fox camera had pulled back to show a large building behind Schlagel. The marquee in front read MISSISSIPPI COAST COLISEUM & CONVENTION CENTER, and a crawl at the bottom of the screen announced that the Reverend Jeremiah Schlagel’s God Project rally and revival meeting would begin at eight in the coliseum.

“It’ll only be for one night,” DeCamp said.

“We’ll be there before noon,” Wyner said. “What about a boat?”

“I’ll leave that to you,” DeCamp said. “A cabin cruiser in the forty-to fifty-foot range. Spare no expense. But use your work name.”

“I’ll call you with the details.”

“Do,” DeCamp said.

Five minutes later he reached navy captain Manuel Rodriguez at his home outside of Havana. He’d worked with the Cuban two years ago on an assignment in Miami for the government, for which he made an under-the-table kickback payment of fifty thousand dollars. Rodriguez was in his debt, and when DeCamp had called last month with his proposal and an offer of another fifty thousand, the man had been more than willing.

“I’ll be needing my boat ride within seven days. Can this be managed?”

“Of course, señor . Can you supply me with the latitude and longitude at this time?”

“Only approximately,” DeCamp said, and he gave him the numbers for an area in the Straits of Florida, well west of the Florida Keys. “Will this present a problem?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Good. The payment will be made in the usual manner.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Rodriguez said.

DeCamp hit the End button, then went into the bedroom to change back into khaki slacks and a light pullover — more fitting attire than his suit for a religious revival meeting.

FIFTY-THREE

Since the news conference this morning McGarvey had become increasingly restless, and by midnight, unable to fall asleep, he’d gotten up and went across to the crew’s mess where he bummed a cigarette from the cook. He got a cup of coffee and went out on deck, the evening thick, but almost no wind and only a slight sea running.

Schlagel’s God’s Flotilla was still out there, surrounding the rig, some of the boats still blowing their horns, but it had been going on for so long that the noise had just become an ignorable part of the background.

They’d gotten underway a couple of hours after the reporters had left aboard the InterOil helicopter, and he could still make out the glow on the bottoms of the clouds on the northern horizon from the taller condos and casino-hotels in Biloxi and Gulfport.

Their speed was barely two knots, so it would take a week to reach the deeper parts of the Gulf where he figured the attack would come. Time to relax, time to figure things out, time to prepare, and yet McGarvey felt that he was missing something vital. Like he was being outthought

He’d spent the morning more or less trailing the media group, and after they’d left, Gail had sought him out and they had a cup of coffee together in the mess, seated alone in a far corner. “The Englishman,” she’d told him. “His accent was more or less right, but I got a pretty strong feeling.”

“I saw the one you’re talking about, but all I have to go on are the images from your surveillance camera at the power plant.”

“He was in the tour group that walked right past me, and I got a good look at his eyes,” Gail had said. “Different color this time, but they had same expression, or lack of it. Like he was sizing me up, working out how he was going to kill me.”

“Otto vetted him,” McGarvey said, but he too had the feeling that at least one of the reporters was in actuality their contractor.

“So did Eric,” Gail said. “But I’ll have them check again. At the very least see if this guy filed a story with his newspaper.”

They’d spent the rest of the afternoon together, wandering around the rig, which was a gigantic, impossibly complex maze of rooms and corridors, piping and girders, electrical runs, and machinery bolted or welded in what seemed like an endless series of random placements. At least a dozen steep stairways connected all of the levels from the helicopter deck, control rooms, and living spaces down to just above the sea level, where water sloshed over the catwalks. The noise at this level, from the blasting horns and the heavy rumble of the tug’s powerful diesels, rumbled around the struts and hammered off the surface of the water and the underside of the deck above, making it nearly impossible to be heard.

Work refurbishing the platform had gotten underway again, and at one point they’d run into Defloria who’d warned them they were out on deck at their own risk. “I can’t be responsible for your safety unless you stay inside.”

“Thanks, but we have a job to do, too,” McGarvey had told him.

“Just watch yourself.”

Dead tired, McGarvey had turned in right after dinner, seeing the brief look of disappointment on Gail’s face but ignoring it. She was pumped up from the day and she didn’t want to be alone.

But he needed to be.

For all of his career, first in the Air Force, then in the CIA as a black operations field officer, then as an administrator, and finally as a sometimes freelancer, he’d done best working alone. Or at least being alone in the sense that he was not emotionally involved with someone. When his wife had given him the ultimatum — the CIA or her — he’d chosen neither and instead had run to Switzerland, where for a while his life had seemed orderly to him. Until he’d become involved with Marta Fredricks, a Swiss cop assigned to watch him, which ultimately led to her murder. She’d fallen in love with him, and followed him to try to get him back. But she’d stumbled into the middle of an operation and had lost her life.

Because of him.

It had happened again in Georgetown where an explosive device meant for him had instead killed Jacqueline Belleau, a French intelligence officer who’d worked with him on an assignment in Moscow, and who’d followed him to the States.

And again outside Mexico City two years ago when Gloria Ibenez, a Cuban-born CIA field officer, had given her life to save his.

And still again eighteen months ago when his wife and daughter were killed in another attack meant for him.

So much carnage, so many lives wasted uselessly. The list wasn’t exactly endless but sometimes it seemed like it was, and over the years he’d been rubbed so raw that he didn’t know if he could care about anyone ever again. At the very least, he’d come to reason, his proximity to someone very often ended up as a death sentence for them.

“A penny,” a woman said from behind him.

He turned as Eve Larsen appeared out of the darkness. She was dressed in jeans and a dark windbreaker against the damp, chilly night air, and she looked worn-out, almost haggard, her face even a little gaunt. “It’d take more than a penny,” he said.

She inclined her head, and came next to him and leaned her elbows on the rail. “Do you think they have the stamina to keep up the racket all the way to Florida?”

“Probably not.”

“You’re still expecting an attack.”

“I think it’s possible.”

“But no one else does.”

It was more complicated than that, because even the White House thought that an attack on the rig was possible, though not by Schlagel’s group. But there was no proof, not one shred of evidence, not one indication, not one warning, even a distant warning that something like that might happen. Everyone was going on McGarvey’s instincts, while at the same time hedging their bets in case he was wrong. And he’d been in this position before. More than once.

“No.”

She fell silent for a time, staring out at the dozens of boat lights — red, green, and white — surrounding them, while straight ahead the tug’s array of lights stacked up in a vertical column indicating she was engaged in a tow presented an almost surreal image against the thick dark of the overcast night sky and no visible horizon. “I haven’t seen you since you came aboard.”

“I didn’t want to get in your way,” McGarvey said, and in the lights on the rig that lit up the superstructures like a forest of Christmas trees, he saw her expression harden. “Gail and I are here to provide security in case something goes wrong. And believe me, Doc, I sincerely hope this will be a wasted trip.”

“Eve,” she said. “My name is Eve.” And she sounded very vulnerable.

“You have your work … Eve.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“Someone to put their arms around me, tell me that everything will work out, that there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“You have Don,” McGarvey said. He wanted to run.

“No,” she said. “You. Five minutes is all I’m asking.”

He stared at her with absolutely no idea of what to say or do. She was younger than him, smarter than him, and driven so hard that she was almost shaking. It was in her eyes and on her lips, in their swift movements as if she were ready to argue her point or at the very least spring into some sort of a defensive posture. And he thought that her being here like this was the worst thing that could happen, especially with the sort of memories he’d been dredging up.

But then he supposed she really did need him, and he reached out for her and she came into his arms, shivering at first until she slowly began to come down, and he could feel her tears on the side of his face.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“This will work out,” McGarvey told her. “You’ll see.”

FIFTY-FOUR

Late the next afternoon Eve and Don went down to the main deck to inspect the work Defloria’s crew had completed on the first of the four massive steel tripods that would support the 150-millimeter titanium and carbon nanofiber cable holding the huge impeller in place. They were well out into the Gulf now, completely out of sight of land, and the weather had turned nasty with a light drizzle from low overhanging clouds that scudded to the east on an increasing wind, but the weather didn’t seem to be slowing down the work.

“I’ve been in much worse conditions on the North Sea,” Defloria told them, and he introduced his construction foreman, Herb Stefanato, a short, bulldog tough guy from Queens who’d paid his way through engineering school by working as a roustabout on oil rigs.

“We’ve engineered a safety factor of five above what you and the other eggheads at GE told us we’d need,” Stefanato said. “No offense, Doc.”

“None taken, I’ve been called worse,” Eve said. Each tripod, standing nearly the height of a five-story building from base to apex with a spread of forty feet, was a geometric maze of intersecting girders of impressive proportions. The entire rig was bolted through the deck to what Stefanato explained were a series of two-inch-thick stainless-steel backing plates, that were in turn reinforced by a series of girders interlaced like a spiderweb with the platform’s main beams.

The cable, attached to the impeller’s pivot point located at the center of mass, would be led up and over roller bearings at the top of the pyramid, and back down to a winch powered by a donkey engine reeling out cable from a spool.

In addition to the structural purpose of the umbilical cord, the cable also contained the data links from the impeller to the measurement and control devices up in the science room. Once the impeller was up and spinning, and its generator switched on, the electrical energy the apparatus produced would be sent ashore via a heavily sheathed power line lying on the ocean floor.

All four of the impellers would be led from the down-current side of the platform, lowered to a depth of seventy-five feet at the central shaft, which would put the top edge of the blades a little more than sixty feet beneath the surface, plenty deep to avoid even the deepest draft commercial ships.

She’d thought of everything, they’d thought of everything and except for the accident aboard the Big G, the damned thing worked. The only difference now was the scale, and it worried her. But then Don had reminded her almost on a daily basis since Oslo to slow down, trust the data, trust her science.

“There’ll be a considerable drag,” Don said. “We can’t get energy for nothing.”

“This will handle the stress,” Stefanato said.

“What about the stress on the platform with all four impellers on the same side? The rig’s going to heel over.”

“Seventeen degrees at full load,” Stefanato said. “We’ll pump water into the two up-current legs, which’ll even things up a bit.”

“Have you worked out the torsional loads something like that will put on the main deck?” Don pushed.

Eve realized that he had become just as big of a worrier as she was. She’d never noticed it before, maybe because she’d been so wrapped up in her own world, but now she could see that he was actually tense. Maybe even a little frightened that they had come so close, that so much was at stake, that if anything went wrong, the slightest thing, the entire project would go down the drain.

Stefanato smiled tightly. “Listen to me, son. You’re a scientist and I’m an engineer. You stick to your lab upstairs and let me take care of the engineering on my rig down here, and it’ll all work out.”

Don took a shuffling step forward, his aggressive don’t-give-me-any-shit expression on his face, but before Eve could put out a hand to stop him, Defloria broke in.

“Herb is one of the company’s best construction engineers, and he knows oil platforms top to bottom. There’s no one better. I’m trusting my life and the lives of my crew to his judgment.”

“This is our rig now, and let’s just say that I’m a skeptic,” Don said.

“And let’s just say that Vanessa is the company’s rig until we reach Florida and turn it over to your team,” Defloria said mildly. “But if you have a problem with that, Doctors, I suggest that you call the company.”

Don started to say something else, he clearly wanted to press the argument — no simple mechanical engineer was going to tell a man who held two Ph.D.s anything — but this time Eve was able to hold him off.

“Accept my apologies Mr. Stefanato,” she said. “We’ve been working on this project for a long time and there’s a lot at stake for us, including the careers of everyone upstairs who’ve stuck with me despite the nearly universal criticisms we’ve gotten from just about every direction. We’re all a little touchy.”

And Stefanato came down and he nodded out toward the flotilla. “And that crap isn’t helping anyone’s nerves,” he said. “But trust me, when we’re finished Vanessa will hold up to the stresses — torsional as well as traverse, compressional, and repetitive. If you want to stop by my office I’ll show you the CAD programs I used, and the communications I had with GE’s chief engineer on your impeller project, plus with the guy who designed the things, and with my boss, the VP of the company’s engineering division.”

Don actually grinned. “I guess I can be a shit sometimes,” he said. “Sorry.”

Eve almost wanted to reach out and hug him. He had pressed his charm button, and even shook Stefanato’s hand, and yet a little part of her was slightly disappointed because his charm was fake. She didn’t think the engineer could see it, but Defloria had and he remained cool.

“Is there anything else?” he asked Eve.

“Will this be finished by the time we get to Hutchinson Island?” she asked.

“In plenty of time,” Defloria said. “Actually the work is going faster than we thought it would. No accidents yet.”

“Do you expect something like that?”

“This is an inherently dangerous environment. Things happen.”

And all of a sudden Eve’s remembrance of that day on the Big G when the cable parted was painted vividly in her mind’s eye; the blood and gore all over the deck, the look of resignation in the drowning crewman’s face, the hypoxic flashes of light in her head just before she surfaced, and the Fox news producer’s reaction.

“We’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible,” she said.

Defloria looked at her critically. “When’s the last time you got any sleep?” he asked, not unkindly.

“Not much since we came aboard,” Don answered for her.

“Accidents happen to tired people. Maybe you should get some rest. Our work will go at its own pace, and there’s not much for you to do until we get to Hutchinson Island.”

Eve wanted to protest, yet she knew that Defloria was right, and she finally nodded. “Let’s take tonight off,” she told Don.

“I’ll let them know,” he said. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your room.”

And Eve was even more exhausted than she’d realized until this moment, so tired she couldn’t object to what she knew was a chauvinistic gesture on Don’s part, and she went with him, hand in hand almost as if they were schoolkids or lovers, almost meekly.

Back inside, out of the wind and noise from the flotilla, she shivered. Krantz and everyone else she’d ever worked for or with had told her that she was too intense for her own good. That she worked so fast — like a maniac sometimes — that she was bound to make mistakes. Science was supposed to be slow and steady. Her rejoinders from the beginning had been simple: Check my data. And it had shut most of them up most of the time.

But now she realized that she had been pushing herself too hard, since the accident aboard the Big G and especially since Kirk McGarvey had shown up at her side in Hutchinson Island and since Oslo. Her project had become more than a scientific experiment. Practically every eye in the world was turned her way. Academics, engineers, big oil, the media, and even the religious right, most of them either expecting her to fail or wanting her to fail. They’d given her enough rope with which to hang herself, and they were sitting back now waiting for her to drop.

Upstairs at the door to her room, she hesitated for a few moments, swaying on her feet, but then she was in Don’s arms, and he was kissing her and she was kissing him back passionately, their hands all over each other. And she couldn’t stop, she didn’t want to stop, except that for a brief instant when she looked up into Don’s face she saw Kirk McGarvey’s green eyes, but it was just a fleeting feeling, like suddenly jerking awake in bed because you had the sensation of falling.

They went into her room, not bothering to lock the door, pulling their clothes off and falling into bed, their bodies intertwined tightly, and they made love. Fast and with more passion than love or any feeling of tenderness; just two people, hungry nearly to the point of starvation for a lifesaving connection, for the sexual release, with no expecations for any sort of a future.

Afterwards, Eve vaguely remembered Don leaving, getting out of bed, and until he covered her with the sheet and blanket, a sharp feeling of coldness, but she never saw him get dressed nor did she hear the door close when he left.

Don went over to the dining hall and had a couple of pieces of surprisingly good pizza and a couple of Cokes, then went up to the control room where he joked around with everyone with an easy smile that people always seemed to respond to. They worked for a couple of hours, mostly calibrating their monitoring equipment and setting up the data link between their onboard computers and the mainframe at the lab back in Princeton.

“Where’s the boss lady?” someone asked at one point.

“She was dead on her feet, so I put her to bed,” Don told them.

“She was practically asleep on her feet all afternoon,” Lisa said.

And he glanced out one of the windows. It was getting late and although the drizzle had stopped, the wind across the deck was twenty-five knots with higher gusts, yet Defloria’s crew had begun work on the second tripod, and by the looks of it they would be at it all night. Stupid bastards, he thought.

“Let’s call it a night, guys,” he said turning back. “I think we all need some R and R. Back up here at 0800.”

“Slave driver,” one of the techs said, but they laughed tiredly, switched off the equipment they’d been using, and trooped out laughing and talking, ready to party at least until midnight or later. They’d deal with 0800 at 0800. Science could be fun.

He checked his and Eve’s e-mails one last time, but nothing pressing had come in, only a couple of bon voyages from fellow faculty members, and he switched off the lights and went back to the windows to watch the work on deck and Schlagel’s flotilla still circling the rig and tug.

He’d been attracted to Eve from the moment he’d read the first paragraphs of her “Studies on the Problems of World Energy Needs in the Face of Finite Reserves of Fossil Fuels and the Predicted Lack of Commercially Viable CO₂ Capture and Sequestration Technologies.” Like a moth to an open flame, he thought, with a lot of anger and resentment. Her project was his. He’d come up with the solution first, well before she’d published her first paper in Nature and later as a less technical popular science piece for Scientific American. But his had been much broader in scope; energy from the ocean currents, in his estimation, was only the first step. Energy would have to be produced wherever possible — inland from the winds, in a large measure because even the U.S. did not have a national power grid. Electricity produced off the East Coast could not be exported much beyond the Ohio River, and certainly not as far as California. And solar power would have to be produced in the Southwest desert, and in the Gobi and Sahara and Australia’s Great Victoria, Chile’s Atacama, and Antarctica’s five and a half million miles of arid landscape — at least during the summer months when the sun was shining.

But Eve had NOAA’s backing, while despite his superior education he’d become nothing more than another of her postdocs, and when the time came to hand out grants and recognition, it was Eve who’d received the Nobel, and it was she who’d been given Vanessa Explorer and the promise of one billion dollars from the bank in Dubai.

Christ, it rankled. Right now to the soles of his feet, gnawing, pulling, dissolving his gut, making him fuzz out so badly sometimes that his default mode had become a smile so broad it crinkled his face at the corners of his eyes, when all he really wanted to do was lash out. Pull out a pistol and shoot someone, or beat the bitch to death with a baseball bat.

“Doctor Price,” someone said behind him.

Price, caught totally off guard, turned away from the window so fast he almost lost his balance and he forgot to smile. “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing up here?”

“My name is Boris Gurov, and I was sent here to become your new best friend. Can we talk?”

FIFTY-FIVE

Otto Rencke had been in a blue funk for the past four days, so totally wiped out that he’d made no progress in the search for the contractor, and so contrary because of it, that his wife Louise threatened to take Audie and go back to Wisconsin to visit her parents until he came to his senses. But a telephone call from Eric Yablonski at eight this morning just before he was about to leave for Langley had changed everything.

Afterwards he’d stared out the window for the longest time, until he became aware of his wife watching him, and he smiled and began hopping from one foot to the other. “Oh, boy,” he said. “I just talked to a genius.”

Louise was grinning, and the baby clapped her hands. “And what did he tell you?”

“How to find our contractor.”

“Who’s your genius?”

“Eric Yablonski from the NNSA,” Otto said, and he tapped his fingers against his forehead in frustration. “And it was right there in front of my big nose all the time. But I was so wrapped up in letting the programs do the work that I forgot to do my own. Machines are incapable of thinking out of the box.”

Louise was enjoying this. “Pun intended?”

And Otto looked at her for a moment until he got it. “Pun indeed,” he said, and he went to get his jacket, then came back to the kitchen and explained what Yablonski had come up with.

“I’ll make a couple of calls,” Louise told him. Until last year when she’d taken an early retirement she had been chief of imagery analysis at the National Security Agency, and she still had a lot of contacts at Fort Meade.

“Send it to the Dome,” Otto told her.

Eric was waiting for him at the visitors center around noon and they shook hands. “I’ve been wanting for a long time to meet you face-to-face. It’s a rare honor, Mr. Rencke.”

Otto was embarrassed, and he just nodded his head. “Anyway, my name is Otto, and you have a hell of a rep yourself.”

“Nothing like yours.”

“Well, I didn’t come up with the solution,” Otto practically shouted and the three security officers behind the bulletproof glass looked up.

“Everything okay, Mr. Rencke?” one of them asked.

“Nope, ’cause I just met a guy smarter than me. But I’ll survive.”

And it was Yablonski’s turn to be embarrassed.

Otto got a visitor’s pass and drove Yablonski up to the OHB where he parked in his underground slot, but instead of taking the elevator up to his third-floor office he led his guest through a couple of security checkpoints on the other side of the garage, then down a long tunnel that ran beneath the main entrance and the circular driveway.

“When did it finally hit you?” Otto asked.

“I was dreaming about the oil rig and how I would sabotage it, if that were my assignment,” Eric said. “I mean that may be a big assumption, but it’s something to start with.”

“Not such a big assumption. Mac and I looked down that path but neither of us came up with what you did.”

“I figured that our contractor was probably in some military somewhere — from what we know and guess, most likely South Africa — and standard operating procedure for those guys is planning and training. Either he got the use of an oil platform sitting out in the Persian Gulf — assuming he’s been hired by someone with connections to OPEC, or at the very least someone in the oil markets — or he got the blueprints for Vanessa Explorer and had a mock-up, or at least a partial mock-up, built out of plywood and two-by-fours.”

“That’d be a big construction project. Out in the desert somewhere.”

“Saudi Arabia?” Yablonski asked.

“One of the Royals might be funding the op, but they wouldn’t put something like that on Saudi soil. My guess was Syria or Libya. But if it’s there, it would have to stick out like a sore thumb, even if it was camouflaged.”

“Where are we going, by the way?” Yablonski asked.

“The Dome,” Rencke said. “Have you heard of it?”

Yablonski was impressed. “Jesus,” he said. “Only rumors.”

“Well, you wanted to know if we’d spotted anything interesting in the past thirty days or so, and I think we’ve come up with something in the Libyan desert about six hundred klicks southeast of Tripoli.”

Nearly a hundred yards down the bare concrete-walled tunnel they came to another security door, where Rencke had to submit to a retinal scan, and inside a small anteroom an armed security guard, who’d monitored their progress from the parking garage, looked up from where he was seated behind a small desk. Getting beyond this point required visual recognition; only people the security guard on duty personally knew could pass.

“Good morning, Mr. Rencke. Your operator arrived fifteen minutes ago.”

Otto and Eric signed an electronic reader, and the security officer buzzed them through into a long corridor and then through another security door into a large dimly lit circular room with stadium seating for two dozen people under a domed ceiling much like the ones found in planetariums. A projection device with several lenses was built into a platform in the center of the room, computer-controlled by an operator in a booth in the rear. Each seat had its own monitor and keyboard to control the presentation if the material being displayed were too sensitive to be shared by an operator.

“Good morning, Mr. Rencke,” the operator’s voice came from speakers. “Are we ready to begin?”

“Yes, please,” Otto said, and he and Yablonski sat down.

The room lights dimmed further, and overhead a 360-degree image of what appeared to be a training base of some sort in the middle of a desert appeared on the dome. The image was so startlingly clear, almost 3-D, that they felt as if they were actually there in person.

“It’s a former Libyan army desert warfare training base at Al Fuqaha’,” Otto said. “But Gadhafi rents it out from time to time to anyone whose cause he finds worthy, and whoever has the most Western currency.”

“It looks deserted.”

“You’re seeing satellite images from sixty days ago,” Otto said. “But watch.” He touched an icon on the monitor.

The static daytime image began to move, shifting from sunlight into dusk and finally full night in which the view changed to an infrared mode in which anything mechanical like a car or truck engine or an animal that emitted heat would show up. But no heat blooms appeared anywhere.

Otto sped up the progression from day to night to day until ten days later when four trucks showed up in the middle of the night, and two dozen men began erecting what looked like circus tent poles over which, just before dawn, they draped a mesh fabric.

“Camouflage netting,” Yablonski said. “But the size of it!”

Otto stopped the image just after the sun came up when nothing was visible to the satellite except what appeared to be an expanse of empty desert, fifty or sixty meters on each side.

“Plenty big to hide a mock-up,” Yablonski said. He was excited.

“That’s exactly what happens over the next thirty days,” Otto said, and he moved the image forward. A steady stream of trucks and workmen arrived by night, unloaded what appeared to be construction materials that they placed beneath the netting, and were gone each morning an hour before dawn.

The trucks and workmen stopped coming after a month, and the camp remained deserted for nearly a week until a pair of small army trucks showed up one afternoon and disappeared from view beneath the netting. Otto slowed the image at nightfall, where the heat blooms of several people showed up, at least two of them brighter than the others.

“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 dehydrated 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 thought 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.”

“What do they say?”

“They want us to turn around and go back to Biloxi, and they’re willing to send someone over to negotiate with us.”

“What do you tell them?” McGarvey asked.

“Al’s given his crew strict orders not to respond under any circumstances,” Defloria said.

“Even in an emergency?”

“They have enough boats to handle just about anything, including communications with the Coast Guard, and I was told by the company to keep out of it, no matter what. Our job is to see that Vanessa gets to Florida without delay.”

“Very good,” McGarvey said and he started to turn away but Defloria stopped him.

“Let me know if something should develop.”

“If possible. But it’ll be fast.”

“Goddamnit, what the hell are we supposed to do if the bastards start shooting at us?” Stefanato demanded angrily.

“Keep out of sight, someplace where you can abandon ship if need be,” McGarvey said.

“Christ,” the construction engineer said.

Eve Larsen’s techies generally avoided the construction crew and only four of Defloria’s people were in the dining room when McGarvey came in and got his dinner, ordering his steak rare with French fries and a small salad. The food was very good around the clock, and although there was no alcohol aboard there was plenty of iced tea and soft drinks and the coffee was outstanding.

He was just sitting down when Gail showed up and joined him. “Buy a girl dinner?” she asked. She was smiling, which McGarvey had learned was usually a cover-up when something was bothering her.

“Sure, anything on the menu,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s the waiting,” she said, almost too quickly. “And the constant noise. And the feeling that we’re overlooking something right in front of our noses.” She was strung out. “It’s like the cartoons where a ten-ton weight has been pushed over a cliff, and like a dummy you’re standing at the bottom without a clue what’s about to happen to you.”

It was the lack of knowledge that was driving both of them crazy.

“We know the name of our contractor,” he said, and she brightened.

“Jesus, you talked to Otto?”

“He’s an ex-South African Buffalo Battalion lieutenant colonel by the name of Brian DeCamp,” McGarvey said, and he told her everything that Otto and Eric had come up with, along with the likelihood that Joseph Bindle was a legitimate journalist.

“So it still leaves us with no clear description of the bastard, other than what my receptionist at Hutchinson Island gave me and what I saw in the corridor, and it’s a safe bet he was in disguise.”

“Otto’s following the money trail. Somebody somewhere must have come in physical contact with him at some point. The real him.”

“And lived,” Gail said. “And in the meantime we sit it out waiting for the ten tons to drop.”

“Five days,” McGarvey said. “Maybe six.”

“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Same old?”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said.

Gail looked away for a moment, and when she turned back she wasn’t smiling. “What about your lady scientist and her mob?”

What about them? McGarvey asked himself for the hundredth time, because something wasn’t right. Call it a gut feeling, even paranoia, but he was convinced that not all was as it seemed in her shop. He knew enough about scientists, especially of Eve Larsen’s and Don Price’s caliber, to understand that professional jealousy was the norm — the supernorm. But everyone up there absolutely loved their doc, loved her work, loved the fact she’d won the Nobel Prize, even though it wasn’t for physics.

What about them indeed.

“They’re doing their thing, and we’re going to stay out of the way for now.”

“And wait?”

“And wait,” McGarvey said.

She nodded a little grumpily. “How about that dinner you promised?”

FIFTY-EIGHT

Eve Larsen had not slept well for at least a week, even though she’d thrown herself into the work of getting the rig ready for Hutchinson Island and the impellers, and the work was going well, and everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives. Normally under circumstances like these she would have collapsed into bed at odd times for a few hours of deep sleep, then wake with a hundred new ideas bursting inside her head like shooting stars.

But instead of ideas, she’d been having the dream; not one in which monsters were chasing her down a long dark tunnel, not even the one in which she had to be someplace, and she knew where it was, but she just couldn’t seem to get there, no matter how hard she tried, and no matter the urgency of the thing. This was the one where she was called back to Oslo in disgrace to give back the Nobel Prize. It was the same room at city hall, with the king and queen and the same people in the audience, only no one was applauding her; everyone, including the king, was booing. Shouting that she was a fraud, that she wasn’t a real scientist, that she was a liar and user whose wish was fame, not discovery. Outside, the gunman’s aim had been perfect and she could almost feel the bullet plowing into her brain.

And the most frightening part of the nightmare wasn’t the shame, or the hostile reception she was getting, it was the certainty in her own mind that they were right. She was a fraud. And each night the dream got worse; she could see how the impellers in the Gulf Stream and the Humboldt Current and the Agulhas would never produce the electricity she’d predicted, and she’d developed the mathematics to prove it. She could see the partial differential equations marching in front of her mind’s eye so clearly that when she would awake in a cold sweat she would try to write them down. But as close as they were in her head, she was unable to do it. And it was all the more frustrating, because when she was awake she knew that she could prove her dream equations wrong so that her self-confidence would return.

Last night the nightmare got even worse, much more intense. This time it was Bob Krantz in the audience in Oslo and he threw the copy of Nature in which she’d proposed her World Energy Needs project up on the stage.

“You know that this thing doesn’t work!” he’d shouted. “It’s impossible to do what you want. There will be unintended consequences that you’re hiding from us. Catastrophic consequences. Change the weather indeed. Who do think you are, God?”

And in her dreams she knew that Bob was correct. She was able to see exactly why her experiment was bound to fail, and yet she knew that she could never admit it publically. The shame and humiliation would be too awful to bear. She would be alone and isolated, and just before she’d awakened this morning she’d dreamed that she was back home in England. It was winter, and no one was there at the train station to meet her, just like no one had come to see her off to America.

And when she awoke at dawn she was freezing cold, and during the day she’d had the chills so bad at times that Don had asked her if she was coming down with something and he’d put the back of his hand to her forehead.

He’d seemed nervous off and on all day, and his concern had touched her. Getting ready now to go down to the dining hall for dinner, she went over to where he was seated at one of the computer monitors working on his study of mid-Gulf eddy currents against temperature, salinity, and suspended particle gradients. It was a continuation of his own project that they all hoped might have some bearing on the placement of the impellers. Perhaps a little far-fetched, in Eve’s estimation, but she’d never suppressed independent studies by anyone on her team so long as they did their primary work.

“Anything interesting showing up?” she asked.

He was startled and he looked up at her, his eyes a little wide as if he were a kid just caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But he recovered nicely and smiled. “Still collecting data, but my programs haven’t turned up anything useful yet.” His hypothesis was that the formation of some eddy currents might depend in part on a physical event or trigger presence, like raindrops forming around particles of dust.

“I’m going to get something to eat. Do you want to come along?”

“Might as well,” he said. “Everyone else has already gone down.”

And Eve had been so absorbed in her own work that she’d actually not noticed it was just her and Don up here, and that it was beginning to get dark outside. “I thought it was too quiet without Lisa’s wisecracks,” she said a little sheepishly.

Don got out of the program he was working in and they left the control room and headed downstairs. He’d brought a GFDL windbreaker with him and he gave it to her. “You might need this, it’s a little chilly outside now that we’re at forty-two-double-oh-three.”

For just an instant she had no idea what he was talking about, and she could see that it made him nervous. But then she understood. “My God, I wasn’t keeping track,” she said.

Forty-two-double-oh-three was a navigation buoy out in the middle of the Gulf, anchored in nearly 1,800 fathoms of water, more than 10,000 feet. It essentially marked the halfway point between Biloxi and the westernmost end of the Florida Keys where they would make their turn to the east toward the Atlantic. Don and the others had planned a celebration, modeled after the kinds of initiations that sailors went through after crossing the equator.

And she also understood why he’d been on edge for the past couple of days. According to McGarvey, if trouble were coming their way it could happen any time now, something she’d practically, though not completely, forgotten in the press of her work.

“Everybody okay with this?” she asked. “I mean, considering the threat.”

Don gave her an oddly bleak look. “I don’t think we have any choice. It’s either that or hide in our cabins. Anyway the religious freaks haven’t done a thing except make noise, your gun-toting pals are keeping watch, and we need a break.” He managed a thin smile. “Lisa’s called you a slave driver from the beginning, and now everybody is starting to believe it.”

And Eve had to smile, too. Maybe a celebration was exactly what they needed to break the tension. “Even you?” she asked.

“Especially me.”

It was a little cool on deck, but the wind from the north had subsided to near zero so that their slow forward motion canceled the apparent wind to absolutely nothing. It was fully dark now, but because of the lights on the rig the stars were invisible as was the horizon, and even the lights on the flotilla were mostly hard to pick out. But the noise of the horns and boat whistles was constant as it had been for nearly one week, but now it was mostly background noise, almost below the level of notice unless you stopped to listen for it.

Eve and Don walked past two of the completed impeller tripods and a third one that was nearly finished. Everyone aboard had been given the evening off for the celebration, and when they came around the corner of one of the storage containers about the size of a semi-truck trailer, lashed to the deck, where a long table laden with drinks and food was laid out, music suddenly began. And it wasn’t a recording, because it was, if not terrible, amateuristic and Eve had heard it before. A few of her techs had a little musical ability and they’d formed what they called the Test Tube Jug Band. Two out of tune guitars, an electronic keyboard Richard played hesitantly, missing a lot of notes, a set of drums that just about drowned out everyone else, and Lisa on vocals. There she is, Miss Queen of the Seas, Come from Neptune’s Locker, Or maybe Mars, We can’t really tell.

All of it badly performed without rhymes, more or less to the tune of Bert Parks’s “Here She Is, Miss America.” And everyone was laughing, cheering, and singing, Lisa with tears in her eyes. An emotional group, tired, strung out, but they were on their way and they were one hundred and ten percent behind their doc, their Nobel Prize doc.

And when the song, which was embarrassing but wonderful in Eve’s estimation, was finally over, and after everyone had hugged her and kissed her cheek, the champagne was poured.

“To the Queen of the High Seas,” Lisa said into the microphone, her voice now louder than the drums, which caused even more laughter, and everyone raised their glasses.

Everybody drank the toast, and a couple of her techies called for a speech, but she waved them off.

“No speeches,” she told them. “We’re taking the night off, and getting drunk, and hopefully some of you are getting laid—” Everyone laughed uproariously again. They loved her. “And you’d best enjoy it, because in the morning we’re back at it, this time full tilt. So don’t fall overboard in the middle of the night.”

Then they cheered, poured more champagne, and started on the hors d’oeuvres.

Defloria was there with some of his people, and she congratulated them.

“You’re almost finished with the third tripod,” she said. “Good work, thank you.”

“We’re ahead of schedule,” Stefanato said, and he winked at her. “Nice bunch of kids. Smart.”

“They are,” Eve said.

Don went to get her more champagne and Defloria and Stefanato left, and a minute later McGarvey and Gail came over. They looked worn-out and Eve was uneasy. Cops and watchdogs were never supposed to be tired. But McGarvey was smiling. “You have a happy crew,” he said.

“Most scientists are,” Eve said. “At least most of the time. And they’ve been working pretty hard for the past eighteen months, so whenever they get the chance they like to blow off a little steam.”

Gail nodded. “Understandable. But maybe tonight should be the last of it until we get to Hutchinson Island.”

If someone was actually coming after them with the intention of sinking the platform, now or certainly in the next few days would be the time to do it. At these depths any sort of a recovery operation would be impractical. Once Vanessa was on the bottom she would stay there. At the very least, the project would be set back one year, probably longer. Funding would certainly dry up, Eve was sure of it, and depending on how many people got hurt, the entire project, concepts and all, might end up on the floor of the Gulf as well.

“So maybe now it’s time to call for some help,” she said, ignoring Gail, because lately she had felt nothing but animosity from the woman, and she didn’t understand the change. “Once they start shooting missiles at us, or dropping bombs or whatever, it’ll be too late.”

“Nothing like that’s going to happen, Doctor,” Gail said.

“Are you sure?” Eve demanded, her voice rising a notch.

“No,” McGarvey said. “We’re not even one hundred percent sure that anyone’s going to try to attack us, but if they do it’ll only be a few people — maybe a half dozen. And they don’t know that we’re aboard so the advantage would be ours.”

“Anyway it’s a lot harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one,” Gail said. “And there are a lot more people aboard than there’ll be once you’re at anchor. Defloria’s guys wouldn’t exactly be a knock over.”

Don came back with the champagne. “Who wouldn’t be a knock over and for what?” he asked, his eyes squinty.

He was angry again, and Eve understood why, he thought that he was in competition with McGarvey. The man-of-the-mind scientist versus the man-of-action warrior. And it also suddenly dawned on Eve that Gail Newby might be of the same mind, she could feel that she was in competition for McGarvey. The lady warrior versus the female egghead.

“Just speculating,” Gail said, and she and McGarvey nodded pleasantly then headed away.

“What was she talking about?” Don asked. He was on the verge of arguing.

Eve shook her head. She didn’t want to get into it with him. “I haven’t a clue,” she said. “Let’s join the party, okay?”

FIFTY-NINE

From one hundred meters out, DeCamp and the others aboard Forget It , a forty-nine-foot Gulfstar extended aft deck charter motor yacht could hear the off-key music and singing on the main deck of Vanessa Explorer even over the noise of the boat horns, theirs included.

Wyner was dressed all in black, camouflaged greasepaint on his face, the same as DeCamp. He was hanging off the stern in the four-man Avon RIB dinghy, the outboard idling. They’d painted the ten-foot rigid inflatable boat’s hull and the engine cowling black on the way to join Schlagel’s flotilla, keeping it out of sight until now, lest someone in the flotilla wonder why they’d done such a thing.

DeCamp handed him down a nylon bag with a pair of Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns in the SD6-silenced version, along with six thirty-round box magazines of 9mm x 19 Parabellum ammunition.

Helms, one of the four contractors from London, watched from just inside the bridge, and he waved when DeCamp looked up. Bob Lehr, one of the other new contractors, was at the wheel, and over the past few hours he’d slowly positioned them about twenty meters to the port of the Pascagoula Trader, which was the largest boat in the flotilla and the one with the small Bell Jet Ranger lashed to the after deck. His orders were to close the gap between the two boats as soon as DeCamp and Wyner were off.

Tony Ransom, one of Schlagel’s top aides, more or less in charge of the “operation,” as he called it, was aboard and DeCamp had been invited over for a drink a couple of nights ago. “You need anything, anything at all, Mr. Schlagel says to help you out. Says you met at the rally in Biloxi.”

DeCamp had nodded. “Great man, the reverend,” he’d said, smiling. “Maybe you can do me a favor, but later on. We’ll see.”

The seas were calm tonight, the wind relatively light, and as DeCamp hesitated at the back rail Forget It ’s automatic foghorn sounded. When Gunther Wolfhardt had shown up at his home above Nice, he’d made the decision that when this job was completed he would walk away from the business. And from Martine. Yet at this moment his blood was up, had gotten up over the past few days and especially this afternoon after they’d passed forty-two-double-oh-three, and he was having second thoughts. This thing that was going to happen tonight was the very reason he’d been born. Being deserted by his parents had been his real birth in the sense that he’d not come alive until he’d been taken in by Colonel Frazer, and eventually the SADF, where he’d learn to kill, quietly if the need arose, but above all efficiently and without remorse. “The bastard who you kill would certainly not shed a tear if it was you instead of him dead,” the tactical instructors drilled into them.

DeCamp climbed down into the dinghy, and Wyner released the painter and peeled off to the right in a straight line for the tug out ahead of Vanessa. For all practical purposes they were invisible from anyone aboard the platform or the fleet because the decks were all lit up — on the platform because work had been going on around the clock, and just now they were having a party, and aboard the boats because Schlagel wanted it that way. “He wants to make a statement, loud and clear, that we’re out here,” Ransom had explained.

The thirty-five horsepower four-stroke outboard was quiet enough to allow nearly normal conversation. DeCamp called Gurov on the sat phone. “Status?”

“They’re having a bloody party just like you expected they would.”

“Is Nikolai with you?”

“Here with me in my quarters.”

“Start with the off-duty crew in their cabins, then the delivery crew on the bridge and the communications equipment. Then the sat phones.”

“What about McGarvey and the broad?” Gurov asked, and he sounded excited; the past weeks without action had gone on too long.

“Take them if you can, but only after you disable the communications equipment,” DeCamp told him. “We’re on the way to the tug now. ETA back to the Pascagoula Trader three zero minutes. Call as soon as you’re ready for us.”

“Will do,” Gurov said. “Good luck.”

DeCamp broke the connection and smiled grimly. He’d never believed in luck.

Gurov and Kabatov used the 9mm Ingram MAC 10 because even with its suppressor tube the submachine gun was light and compact, which would make it much easier to conceal as they worked their way through the maze of corridors and spaces aboard Vanessa. And at a cyclic rate of more than one thousand rounds per minute it was devastating in small spaces.

Gurov’s eyes were bright as he stuffed a half-dozen thirty-round magazines into his pockets and seated the seventh in the handle of the weapon. “Finally we have the green light,” he said.

Kabatov was doing the same, and he was excited though his movements were steady and precise and the expression on his face was bland, even indifferent. “How much time do we have?”

“He wants our go or no-go in thirty minutes,” Gurov said. He pulled on his dark blue Windbreaker, put the sat phone in a zippered pocket, and donned a hard hat.

“That’s cutting it close,” Kabatov said. “If they run into trouble aboard the tug our arses could be out in the wind without some additional muscle.”

“If you’re talking about McGarvey and his bitch, we’ve been given the green light to take them out if we get the chance.”

Kabatov grinned, and to Gurov at that moment his friend reminded him of a wolf, a hungry wolf.

They’d spent the past week between work shifts wandering around the platform, sightseeing, getting some exercise and fresh air, away from the welding and pipe fitting — sometimes in tight, nearly airless quarters. They came across as men who’d rather spend their off time alone, which didn’t make them much different from many of the other roustabouts and construction workers, so they’d not stuck out, nor had anyone made any real effort to engage either of them in conversation, ask them to play pool or poker or go fishing off one of the lower decks. Which is exactly the way they’d played it. But in their wanderings they’d pinpointed all the crew’s quarters, including the wing where the scientists slept and hung out, had made handwritten copies of the deck crew’s schedule, and had taken quick looks at the platform delivery captain’s station with its communications gear, and mapped out plausible routes to the pair of satellite dishes on the roof of the control room.

The plan they’d worked out from the blueprints in Tripoli was straightforward. First they were to kill anyone asleep in their quarters — the roustabouts and construction workers first because they were the muscle. Next they were to tap Captain Lapides and whoever was on duty in the delivery station and destroy the radios. Finally Kabatov was to use the ladder on the backside of the control room, out of sight from anyone down on deck, and cut the coaxial cable leads to both dishes, while Gurov maintained watch. All that would be left after that were a couple of sat phones.

Their primary orders were stealth; eliminate as many of the crew as possible and destroy the comms gear, but do it without detection. If someone pushed the panic button and sent a Mayday the mission would be scratched.

“Ready?” Gurov asked.

Kabatov nodded. “I’ll go left.”

Gurov checked to make sure that the corridor was empty, then slipped out of his room and went to the next cabin on the right, eased open the door, and went inside.

A man — one of the welders, Gurov thought — was in bed reading, and he looked up, startled at first but then angry. “What the fuck—?”

Gurov hit him with a short burst, destroying most of his chest, blood spraying against the bulkhead behind him, the noise from the weapon acceptable.

Close up the Tony Ryan was much older and more decrepit-looking than DeCamp had expected. But on second thought the Vanessa Explorer had been ready for the breaker yard, and InterOil would not have diverted a new oceangoing tug for a job like this. Which in a way was a bit of good news; crews aboard junk heaps were usually second-string, not as sharp as those aboard newer vessels.

The pilothouse, crew’s quarters, and galley were all forward, leaving three-fourths of the ship open deck. A massive hawser was connected to a bridle arrangement taut behind the tug, beyond which a thick steel cable snaked back nearly one hundred meters to another bridle arrangement connected to the platform at three points for maximum stability.

The tug was making less than two knots, so there was virtually no wake, though directly aft the wash from the twin props was dangerous, so Wyner maneuvered the dinghy to the port quarter and forward to a position just below the pilothouse. The entire hull from the gunwales to the waterline was festooned with large truck tires and frayed four inch rope hawsers used as fenders.

DeCamp gently tossed a grappling hook and line up to the deck railing ten feet above and made it fast to the dinghy’s painter, and Wyner throttled back and put the outboard in neutral.

They took out their weapons, charged them, slung them over their shoulders, and DeCamp started up first, no words between them, none needed at this point. On deck they crouched in the shadows for just a moment or two to make sure they’d not been detected. But the deck lights didn’t come on, and DeCamp headed up the portside ladder to the bridge while Wyner went through the hatch and headed below to the galley and crew’s quarters.

The Tony Ryan ’s bridge, dimly lit only by the red night-lights on the two radar sets as well as the navigation and communications equipment in the control panels and the overheads, stretched the entire width of the superstructure. Two men, both in civilian clothes, were on duty at the moment, one of them at the wheel, the other looking through a pair of binoculars at their tow. The helmsman, seated in a tall chair, his hands not actually touching the wheel, was dark, slightly built and wiry, while the other was heavyset and bald.

The helmsman looked up when DeCamp opened the door and came in, and when he spotted the weapon he reared back and said something in a language that sounded like Greek.

DeCamp fired one short burst, hitting the man in the left side of his chest, his neck, and face, driving him off the chair to the deck, blood flying everywhere.

The man with the binoculars had reacted slowly and he was just turning around when DeCamp switched aim and shot him high in the back, at least one round hitting him at the base of his skull. He flew forward, his face smashing into the rear window and his legs folding as he slumped to the deck.

DeCamp studied the nav gear, making sure that the boat was operating on autopilot, then switched off the two single sideband transceivers and two VHF radios and put a couple of rounds into the front panels of each, rendering them totally inoperative.

At the door he looked back. It had been almost too easy. So far. And although he expected no trouble from the six people back aboard the Pascagoula Trader he was pretty sure that the mission would unfold a bit differently aboard the oil platform.

Wyner met him on deck and had a wild look in his eyes. “Two of them in the galley and one in the shitter,” he said. He was enjoying himself.

“Problems?”

“No. You?”

DeCamp shook his head. “They weren’t expecting us. Let’s get back.”

Twenty minutes later Gurov was crouched in the lee of the deserted control room, the music still loud below on the main deck as Kabatov scrambled up the ladder to the roof to cut the cables to the satellite dishes — the only remaining links to the outside world except for his and McGarvey’s sat phones.

But it was only a matter of time now before someone discovered the bodies of the six crewmen in their bunks, Lapides plus two of his people on duty in the delivery station, or that of the young woman scientist who they’d caught in the transverse corridor on the way to the control room. She’d just come out of the bathroom and Kabatov had broken her neck before she could cry out, and then they had stuffed her body in an empty tool locker. Her name tag said, LISA.

Kabatov came down the ladder. “Done.”

“Let’s see if we can find McGarvey and the broad,” Gurov said. So far everything had gone exactly according to plan, which in his mind was a little worrisome. McGarvey had a dangerous rep. He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

Forget It was cruising easily just a few feet from the Pascagoula Trader ’s port side, the nearly dead idle speed they were making ensuring that the water between the hulls was just about calm without bow wakes.

Helms was outside on deck talking to someone on the larger vessel when DeCamp and Wyner pulled up unseen alongside, made the painter secure, switched off the outboard, and scrambled aboard.

Crouching low behind the coaming DeCamp rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead and Helms glanced over his shoulder. DeCamp nodded.

Helms turned back, took out his silenced 9mm Steyr GB pistol and shot the man twice in the chest.

Edwin Burt and Paul Mitchell, the other two recent hires, had been hiding in the darkness behind the bridge. An instant after Helms fired they rushed out on deck as Lehr maneuvered Forget It close enough for the three of them to jump across and head directly for the bridge.

“Get the dinghy under cover,” DeCamp told Wyner and he went up to the bridge where he got a pair of binoculars and scoped the platform first, and then the flotilla boats nearest to them.

“How does it look?” Lehr asked. He’d been a top-flight cop with the German Federal police, and he knew how to take orders even though he’d admitted he hated the bureaucracy.

A good man to have in a mission like this one in which so many things could go wrong, DeCamp thought. All of them were comrades tonight. And once again he could feel a little of the satisfaction of leading good men into harm’s way. “We’re clear so far.”

Wyner came up to the bridge at the same time Helms appeared on the Pascagoula Trader ’s deck and gave the thumbs-up.

“Prep the chopper,” DeCamp said, and Wyner went out and crossed over to the bigger vessel.

“How did it go aboard the tug?” Lehr asked. Like most mercenaries he did not like loose ends.

“As planned,” DeCamp said tersely. “Are you clear on your orders?”

“Stand by out here for pickup once the op is completed, and then get the hell out to our mother ship,” Lehr said. “May I have the coordinates?”

DeCamp gave him a latitude and longitude about eighty nautical miles to the southwest where a Liberian-registered freighter was supposed to be standing by for them, and he programmed the numbers into the ship’s GPS system.

“Danke.”

Everyone else was aboard the other ship and both vessels were on autopilot. DeCamp pulled out his pistol and fired one shot into Lehr’s forehead, driving the man off the helmsman’s chair.

He got on the sat phone and hit Send. The thirty minutes were up. “Status.”

Gurov answered on the first ring. “We’re holed up in a forward crew quarters passageway. Defloria and his construction foreman are having a powwow.”

“Take them out.”

“Not advisable. We haven’t gotten to McGarvey’s sat phone.”

“Find a way now,” DeCamp said. “Priority one. Our ETA is five minutes.”

“Will do,” Gurov replied and he broke the connection. “They’ll be here in five,” he told Kabatov. “Make sure the landing pad is secure. I’m going after McGarvey’s phone.”

“Watch yourself.”

Gurov replaced the magazine in his weapon with a fresh one. “Even Superman couldn’t stand up to this shit,” he said.

SIXTY

McGarvey sent Gail back to the party that promised to run very late. Everyone down there was having a great time, blowing off a lot of pent-up energy and tension that had been transmitted to them through Eve’s reaction to the possible threat they were facing. Some of them were likely to jump overboard if someone showed up and shouted “Boo!”

“You’ve got a hunch?” she’d asked. They were in his room away from the noise of the party and the constant din from the boat horns circling them, and she’d picked up his antsiness.

“This is the right place and the right time,” he told her.

“Has Otto come up with something?”

“Not as of this afternoon, but I asked him to do a global satellite search for anything moving anywhere in the Gulf, especially anything heading this way.”

“Foreign registry on the way to the Canal? Untouchables without clear evidence?”

“Something like that,” McGarvey’d said, and before she’d left he told her to get her pistol. “Neither of us walks around unarmed from this point.”

“One of those kids catches on that we’re packing and they could start screaming bloody murder.”

“That might be the least of our worries,” McGarvey said.

She gave him an odd look and then left.

He called Otto on the sat phone. “Have you come up with anything new?”

“Nada,” Otto said and he sounded dejected. “Rats in the attic?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Me too, but honest injun, kemo sabe, there’s nothing anywhere near you other than Schlagel’s flotilla, and I’d be just about willing to bet the farm that if and when trouble comes your way it won’t be from that direction. They’re major jerks and Jesus freaks and full of themselves but they’re not like the antiabortion crowd willing to kill for their beliefs. They’re not even as bad as Greenpeace. None of them will try to stop you. They’ll just hassle you all the way to Florida.”

“No ships coming our way to or from Tampa or Port Manatee?”

“Nothing within a hundred miles — and even that close it would take ’em more than four hours to get to you. We could have the Coast Guard to you in one-fourth that time. My guess is if they’re coming it’ll either be by chopper from Tampa or someplace like that, flying low and slow under radar, either that or a go-fast boat, something like a Cigarette or hydrofoil. The timing might be a little tight for them to make the hit, and in any event they’d have to get away clean, because I don’t think DeCamp is such a dedicated jihadist that he’s willing to give his life for the mission.”

“No,” McGarvey said. The hairs on the back of his neck were bristling. “But we’re missing something, goddamnit.”

“Has anyone from the flotilla tried to make contact either with the delivery crew or with Eve Larsen?”

“I don’t know about Eve or any of her people, but Defloria said they’ve been getting a steady stream of radio traffic on the VHF.”

“If they’re interfering with ship-to-ship channels, or tying up sixteen I can get the Coast Guard out there on a violation complaint.”

“Except for the noise they haven’t tried to interfere with operations so far,” McGarvey said.

“I could ask Coast Guard Tampa to come out and make an inspection, sewage dumps overboard or something.”

“No.”

“You’re not thinking straight. If something goes down out there and someone gets hurt you’ll take the heat even though the Bureau and everyone else says no one is going to try anything. So let’s make an end run.”

McGarvey had thought about that very thing from the start. If an attack did come someone would get hurt — possibly a lot of people. Since the Bureau or the Coast Guard were officially hands-off, the only alternatives would have been to postpone moving the platform to Florida or to cancel Eve’s project altogether. The first might have given them time to find DeCamp, now that they knew his name, though there was no telling how long that might take. The man was a professional and he’d not made many mistakes in his career. It was possible they’d never find him. And it was equally possible that whoever was behind the threat might hire someone else and they would have to start their search all over again. And canceling the project was totally out of the question. Even if NOAA tried to pull the plug Eve wouldn’t stand for it; and now as a Nobel laureate she carried a lot of weight.

Which left what?

At one point Otto had suggested smuggling a SEAL team aboard, or having a submarine trail them, but the Pentagon had declined, nor would pressuring the White House have worked either. The official stance was hands-off because the Saudis and other OPEC countries were becoming increasingly nervous with each step Eve’s program came nearer to completion and the administration couldn’t afford to antagonize its oil suppliers. If OPEC made sharp cutbacks the nation would be in serious trouble, much worse than the gas lines of the seventies because the U.S. had become ever more dependent on foreign oil.

The stakes had simply become too high for them to back away, and he said as much to Otto. “There’s a real possibility that DeCamp won’t try to pull anything off until Schlagel’s flotilla is gone. Too many witnesses.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know what the hell I believe anymore,” McGarvey said, some bitterness welling up. He felt as if he were itching for a fight, wanting it to come, wanting to get it over with. “Gail and I are just along for the ride.”

“I hear you, Mac,” Otto said. He sounded subdued, as if he’d tried to talk some sense into a friend, but had failed. “But God help the bastards if they do try to hit you.”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said, and he switched off and laid the phone on the desk. He wanted to hurt someone.

Even here inside his cabin McGarvey could hear the boat whistles and horns and faintly the music and sounds of singing and laughter down on deck, and truly wondered if he had any other choice, if he’d ever had a choice from the moment he’d helped Eve get away from the power plant.

He checked the load in his pistol, holstered it at the small of his back, and pocketing a spare magazine he headed down one deck to the galley to get a cup of coffee, expecting to see at least a couple of Defloria’s people, but the place was empty. It struck him as odd. There was always someone here

“Anyone home?” McGarvey called. He went across to the pass-through and looked inside. Nothing was on the grill and the kitchen was deserted, though a pot of something was steaming on one of the stoves.

No blood, nothing out of place, no reason whatsoever to be concerned. He turned and looked toward the open door to the corridor. Defloria had given his crew the evening off, and some of them would be up in the rec room, or catching up on sleep in their cabins. Some of them liked to fish from the lower decks during their time off. It was even possible a few of them had joined the party, especially Defloria and his construction foreman.

McGarvey used the house phone next to the galley door and called the delivery control room, but there was no answer after four rings, and the hairs at the nape of his neck bristled again.

Hanging up, he stood for several moments listening not only to the sounds of the rig, the distant sounds of the party on deck, and of the boat horns, but to some inner voice that his wife Katy had called his early warning detector. He’d been born with whatever it was that sometimes gave him an almost preternatural sense when something bad was about to happen. And he’d learned over the years to really listen as if his life depended on understanding what he was hearing, because on more than one occasion it had.

But just now nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, except for the deserted galley.

“Goddamnit,” he said, frustrated.

He had the almost overwhelming feeling that whatever was going to happen had already started.

He went across to the corridor door where he held up for just a moment, and suddenly he picked out another sound from the other noises, louder now and getting louder, and he realized that he had heard it earlier. A helicopter was incoming. It’s what he’d been missing all along; it was the Jet Ranger on the aftdeck of one of boats in Schlagel’s flotilla. The bastard was involved after all.

Drawing his pistol he peered around the door frame but the corridor was still empty, and he stepped out and hurried to the companionway where he took the stairs two at a time, mindful to make as little noise as possible.

The helicopter was much closer now, just about on top of them. But the chopper only carried a pilot plus four passengers, so unless DeCamp had managed to place some of his people aboard at Biloxi the odds weren’t all that bad. But McGarvey had to consider the possibility that one or more of them were here and had already taken out some of the off-duty crew. And maybe any scientist or technician not at the party, maybe taking a break or something.

At the top McGarvey eased around the corner in time to see a stockily built man dressed in black coming down the corridor, a suppressed MAC-10 in his hand.

McGarvey ducked back behind the stairwell bulkhead, as the intruder opened fire, bullets ricocheting all over the place.

The ultracompact Ingram wasn’t very accurate at any range over a few yards, even less accurate because of the long suppressor barrel, but its major disadvantage was its high rate of fire. A thirty-round magazine on full auto lasted less than two seconds.

McGarvey had this in a split second, and keeping flat against the bulkhead he fired two rounds against the corridor wall, the 9mm bullets ricocheting away with high-pitched whines.

The shooter sprayed the corridor, but the firing suddenly stopped and McGarvey heard the empty magazine hit the deck. He stepped up around the corner as the man slammed a fresh magazine into the handle.

“Raise your weapon and you’ll die,” McGarvey said.

The helicopter had landed, the noise of the rotors fading.

Gurov stood motionless, his eyes narrowed, and McGarvey thought he recognized the man as one of the new employees who’d been taken on just before the platform had gotten underway.

“How many of you came aboard at Biloxi?” McGarvey asked. The man looked Eastern European.

Gurov made no move to raise his weapon. But it was clear he was weighing his options, and just as clear he was willing to waste time here.

“Only five of your people came over aboard the helicopter, one of them Brian DeCamp. How about the others, Russian pizdecs like you?” At this point McGarvey figured knowledge was more valuable than time.

Gurov said nothing.

McGarvey suddenly walked directly toward the Russian, who at the last moment started to raise his weapon, but Mac shot him in the right knee, knocking him down. Before he could recover Mac bent down and jammed the muzzle of his pistol into the side of his head.

“Talk to me,” McGarvey said.

“Fuck you,” Gurov grunted. He batted the pistol away from his head with his left hand and raised the MAC with his right.

McGarvey grabbed the end of the still hot suppressor tube and twisted the muzzle under Gurov’s chin as the weapon went off, completely destroying the man’s head.

McGarvey took the man’s weapon, removed the magazine, and jammed the suppresser barrel against the deck and, using his foot, bent it a few degrees rendering the submachine gun useless. He found a walkie-talkie that he pocketed as he ran down the corridor to his room. Otto could have an Air Force special ops team here from McDill in Tampa in under an hour. All McGarvey had to do was delay DeCamp and his team, and keep as many of the people aboard Vanessa alive for as long as possible.

But his sat phone lay in pieces on the floor of his room. One of the contractors had been here.

The music on deck had stopped but there’d been no shooting, no cries of alarm. It wouldn’t last for long.

McGarvey took the Franchi twelve-bore shotgun from his equipment pack, quickly loaded it, stuffing a couple dozen shells in his pockets, along with several one hundred-gram packets of Semtex plastic explosives and a number of pencil fuses.

The equation had definitely changed, and he was going to change it further.

SIXTY-ONE

Brian DeCamp and the other three contractors got out of the Bell Ranger as Wyner completed the shutdown. Burt and Mitchell used two of the tie-down points on deck to secure the machine, while Helms ran to the edge of the pad to watch for someone coming up to investigate. It was Kabatov, who’d been waiting for them on the helipad. Like the others, he was dressed all in black, his face blackened, and he was armed with the silenced MP5 SD6.

Someone laughed below on the main deck but the music had stopped.

“Where is Boris?” DeCamp asked. The platform didn’t feel right to him. Something was nagging at the back of his head. “Instinct is your best friend on the battlefield,” Colonel Frazer had drummed into his head from day one. “Feed it good intel and then trust it, boyo.”

“He went to look for McGarvey’s sat phone,” Kabatov said.

“How about the other communications equipment?”

“All of it disabled.”

“Good,” DeCamp said. Here aboard the rig they would communicate with low-powered Icom walkie-talkies. He pulled his out of his pocket and keyed the push to talk switch. “Boris, status.”

“Someone’s coming,” Helms called from the dark. “Two men. Shall I take them out?”

“Help him,” DeCamp told Mitchell. Gurov wasn’t answering. “Status,” DeCamp said again.

“What do you want me to do?” Helms called urgently.

DeCamp hesitated a moment, thinking about the situation. Either Gurov was down or he was in a situation where he couldn’t answer. Kirk McGarvey was aboard because he’d suspected this attack, but DeCamp had been assured by his contacts that the U.S. government did not share the view; not the FBI, the CIA, or Homeland Security.

“Kill one, take the other hostage,” DeCamp told him, and he turned back to the walkie-talkie. “Boris does not answer, so for the moment I have to assume that Mr. McGarvey has somehow gotten involved. Am I correct?”

Defloria came up the stairs onto the helicopter pad and Helms pointed the MP5 at him. “This way please,” he said, motioning toward Mitchell who also held his weapon pointed at the OIM.

“Jesus,” Defloria said, rearing back.

Stefanato came up right behind him, and when he saw the two men and the guns he tried to turn away but Helms tapped him twice in the side of the head at nearly point-blank range and the construction foreman pitched sideways and fell heavily ten feet to the first landing, dead before he’d hit it.

DeCamp walked over to the three men, and held out the walkie-talkie in front of their hostage. “What is your name, sir?” he asked.

Defloria had the look of a defeated man. He was large enough to have played professional football at some point in his life, but he wasn’t a fighter. “Justin Defloria,” he said.

“And your job here is?”DeCamp asked.

“I’m the Operations Installation Manager.”

“Did you get that?” DeCamp said into the walkie-talkie.

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “But I suggest that you get back in your helicopter and get out of here while you still can. Help is on the way from McDill.”

“Oh, I doubt that seriously,” DeCamp said. “If you want to avoid any further bloodshed this is what you are going to do for us, because my mission here is to destroy this platform and send it to the bottom, but not kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. Lay down your weapon and join the party on the main deck. We’ll have everyone, including you and your assistant, loaded aboard the automatic lifeboats, and once you’re all safely away we’ll go about our business.”

McGarvey didn’t answer.

Wyner was finished securing the helicopter and he came over to the edge of the helipad with the other two men. Defloria was impressed.

“In that case, here is what we will do,” DeCamp said. “We’re going to secure all the personnel aboard this platform including the scientists, especially Dr. Larsen. If you make any overt move against us we will kill them all.”

The walkie-talkie was silent, and after a couple of seconds DeCamp stuffed it in his pocket. “Mr. McGarvey prefers to make it difficult for us, so let’s keep on our toes.” He prodded Defloria with the muzzle of his MP5. “We’ll join the party on deck. Whoever bags McGarvey will receive a fifty thousand euro bonus.”

Defloria hesitated at the stairs. “The second your helicopter was spotted the delivery crew called for help.”

“The radios have been disabled,” DeCamp said. “No calls went out.”

“You’re forgetting the tug, you bastard.”

There were parts of every job he’d ever been on that were DeCamp’s favorite. Like these when the target began using up his chips to bargain for his life, never dreaming that he was facing a royal flush.

Kabatov took the lead because he knew the layout, Mitchell and Helms directly behind him, followed by Defloria, Burt, and Wyner. At the bottom DeCamp held them up behind one of the large pipe storage lockers welded to the main deck.

“Where is McGarvey’s assistant?” he asked.

“Last I saw she was at the party on deck,” Kabatov said.

“As soon as you spot her, kill her.”

“Will do,” Kabatov said.

“She and McGarvey are our primary high-priority targets,” DeCamp said. “Same bonus applies to her. Clear, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir,” Kabatov and the others replied.

“Then let’s proceed,” DeCamp said. He prodded Defloria ahead. “After you, Mr. OIM.”

They came around the corner, and DeCamp fired a sort burst into the air.

Eve Larsen, standing at one end of the long table that had been set up to hold the drinks and hors d’oeuvres, reared back, and her scientists and techs moved almost protectively around her. Even the musicians laid their instruments aside and moved toward her. It was clear by the looks on their faces, by their scared, nervous postures that they’d been expecting trouble, had probably been waiting for it ever since McGarvey and Gail Newby had shown up.

DeCamp’s people immediately spread out, taking whatever cover they could behind the various storage lockers and equipment bolted or welded to the deck, their heads on swivels keeping an eye on the science team while searching the shadows above and especially behind them for any sign of McGarvey.

Eve stepped forward arrogantly, her lip out. “Who are you and what the fuck are you doing on my platform?” she demanded, her voice rock steady.

DeCamp had to admire her courage, at least a little, and he gave her a pleasant smile. “Oh, I think you know. I think Mr. McGarvey briefed you either before or after Oslo. And, congratulations on your prize, it must be a great vindication for your work.”

“You’d know nothing about it,” Eve said, her voice rising in anger. “We create, while you do nothing but destroy. And not even for principle, only for pay.”

Kabatov came to DeCamp’s side. “She’s not here,” he said, his voice low enough that Eve or the others could not have heard him.

“She’s around someplace, unless she abandoned ship,” DeCamp said. “We’ll find her.”

“She may be with McGarvey.”

DeCamp nodded. “Ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention. Contrary to what you may have been told we mean you no personal harm. We have come here this evening merely to destroy the project.”

“You son of a bitch,” Eve said stepping past her people. She pulled up short when Kabatov pointed his MAC-10 directly at her. “You’re one of the construction crew,” she said, recognizing him. And she turned to Defloria. “He’s one of yours?”

“I didn’t know until now,” Defloria said. “I’m sorry.”

“We need to make certain preparations, during which you will have to be secured from causing any interference,” DeCamp said. “Your experience will not be particularly pleasant, but it will last for less than an hour, after which you will be released and we will leave. From that moment you will have an additional thirty minutes to get aboard the lifeboats and abandon ship.”

“You’re going to kill us!” one of the young women shrieked.

“I assure you that is not my intention. No one who cooperates will be harmed.”

Helms had opened one of the larger pipe lockers welded to the deck. About the size of a trailer for a semi; long and narrow, the storage bin was empty, and dark almost like a coffin.

“I’m not going in there,” one of the techs said, shrinking back.

Don stepped forward, and before Eve could do or say anything to stop him he walked up to the blond man who obviously was the leader. The terrorists trained their weapons on him.

“No need for that,” Don said. “I’m the man you know as William Bell, your contact here.”

The scientists were shocked, and DeCamp suppressed a smile. None of them had suspected they’d had a traitor in their midst, especially not Eve Larsen who, this man had said, was in love with him. “She’ll do anything I tell her to do,” he had promised.

“Including not demanding a military escort?” DeCamp had asked several weeks ago.

“Especially not that. She thinks having that son of a bitch McGarvey aboard is all the protection she’ll need.”

DeCamp motioned for his men to train their weapons elsewhere, and he lowered his MP5. “You have been of some help, Mr.… Bell.”

“Dr. Don Price, actually, and I’m glad you’re finally here.”

“Why?” Eve asked, her voice strangled.

DeCamp almost laughed out loud. Price was a pompous ass, and the woman was naïve. Smart people with no common sense, and in the case of Price, no moral purpose.

“This is nothing but a stupid pipe dream with zero chance of success,” Price said, turning to her and the others. “If you’d listened to me in the first place, if you had actually read my papers, studied my mathematics, you’d know that your experiments are dead ends. Failures. You won’t be able to control the climate and you’ll be the laughingstock of the scientific community — a position you’ve already just about hit. They handed you proof of that in Oslo by giving you the stupid Peace Prize, and not physics. Carbon capture is the future. The only future. My methods, my studies, my papers. My Nobel Prize in Physics.”

“Christ, Don, is this what it’s all about?” Eve asked. “Being famous? Professional jealousy, you dumb bastard?”

Price turned back to DeCamp. “That’s the arrogant bullshit I’ve had to swallow all this time,” he said.

“You could have come to me,” Eve said plaintively.

“So now what can I do to help with the mission?” Don said.

“Why, die, of course,” DeCamp said, and he raised his MP5 and shot the scientist in the face at point-blank range, driving the man backwards off his feet, and sending a spray of blood across the deck.

Some of the women techs screamed, but Eve stood her ground — her mouth open, her eyes wide.

Defloria shoved Mitchell away and bolted, but before he got five feet Wyner raised his weapon and fired two silenced shots, blowing the back of the InterOil manager’s skull apart and sending him to the deck.

“All right!” DeCamp shouted. “Calm down! No one else needs to be hurt.”

“You mean to kill us all,” Eve said when her people finally quieted down.

“Not necessary,” DeCamp said, and he motioned toward the open pipe locker. “If you will be so kind as to step inside, we’ll lock you away for a bit, and you’ll be out of the way and absolutely safe.”

SIXTY-TWO

Gail reached the shadows behind one of the massive impeller cable tripods just as Eve and her postdocs and techs were herded into one of the pipe lockers about fifty feet away and the doors secured with a pry bar.

She’d been gone not much more than five minutes from the time she’d heard the incoming helicopter and slipped away from the party until now, and Defloria and Don Price both were lying dead on the deck, obviously shot in the head with powerful weapons. Silenced weapons, because up in the delivery control room where she’d gone to send the Mayday, she hadn’t heard a thing. All she’d been concentrating on at that moment were the facts that Lapides and one of his crew were dead and the radios destroyed.

Mac had been right again, just as he had been right about an imminent attack. They’d apparently taken on one or more ringers from Biloxi. And when DeCamp’s signal came they’d swept through the rig killing people. Maybe even Mac.

The slightly built man giving orders was DeCamp, the same man she’d seen in the second-floor corridor at Hutchinson Island. Although she couldn’t hear his voice or see his eyes this time, she could tell he was the same man from the way he held himself, his self-assured manner, his apparent indifference. Nor could she clearly hear what he was saying, but she knew that he was issuing orders.

Watching them she felt more alone than she had ever felt, except the night she’d learned that her father had been shot to death. She had to assume the worst-case scenario now, that Mac was down and she was on her own. There were six of them, including DeCamp and possibly an additional one or more somewhere aboard, killing the rest of the construction and delivery crew, including Herb Stefanato who’d been at the party with Defloria.

She didn’t think it was likely for her to take all of them out or even save the rig from destruction, but she figured they would be elsewhere engaged setting their explosives so that she would have a shot at getting Eve Larsen and her people out of the storage locker and into one of the automatic lifeboats and launch them into the sea.

DeCamp said something to his operators, two of whom immediately headed over to the outside stairs that led up to the helipad, while the others went with him to the main corridor hatch that led in one direction to the science control room and in the other across to the living quarters.

All that was left were the two bodies, the party table, the constant noise of the boat whistles and horns, and the pipe locker. Since her father’s death and especially since what she considered were her failures at Hutchinson Island, Gail had come out here with the selfish motive of proving herself to Mac. It was important because the only other man she’d ever loved had been shot to death in downtown Minneapolis by a street bum, and she didn’t want to lose Mac or disappoint him.

She waited a full two minutes after DeCamp and his operators were gone, then cocked the hammer of her SIG and stepped out of the shadows, hesitated just a moment longer to make sure no one had been left behind, then hurried across to the pipe locker. She could hear murmurs from inside, like pigeons in a hutch, and she leaned in close.

“Dr. Larsen, it’s me.”

The murmurs stopped and Eve was right there on the other side of the door. “Can you get us out of here?”

The broad muzzle of a suppressor tube touched the side of Gail’s face and she started to bring her pistol up.

“No need to die here, Ms. Newby,” Kabatov said. “Not now, not like this.”

She was seething with anger. She’d let this happen. She’d walked right into it as if she’d been wearing a blindfold. Again she hadn’t trusted her instincts that had been singing the tune loud and clear: DeCamp was a professional who hardly ever made mistakes. Price had been a traitor, so he would have informed DeCamp about Mac and about her. And setting the trap, which she’d walked into, had been child’s play.

“Decock your weapon and raise it over your shoulder, handle first.”

She’d been trained to suddenly move her head a couple of inches to the right, bat the muzzle of Kabatov’s weapon to the left while firing her pistol over her shoulder into the man’s face. But he was a pro and she didn’t know if she had the luck.

So she did as she was told, her disappointment in herself raging as deeply and strongly as the grindingly heavy chip she’d been carrying on her shoulder for as long as she could remember.

“Bastard,” she said.

Kabatov laughed and stepped back. “Pull the pry bar out and step inside, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about.”

Gail turned to look at him, his face flat, his lips thick, a five o’clock shadow darkening his already swarthy features. He was a pit bull ready and willing to tear her throat out with the slightest provocation, and she shuddered inwardly.

She pulled the pry bar out of the latch, a momentary urge to hit him in the face with it, instead she handed it to him, opened the door, and stepped inside.

Eve and the others had backed away, and for just a moment seeing who it was they lit up, but then they spotted Kabatov and the door was closed, plunging them into near-total darkness, the only light coming through the seams at the corners.

“Where’s McGarvey?” Eve demanded.

Gail was certain that Kabatov was still listening. “I think he’s dead,” she said for his benefit.

“Christ,” Eve said.

And in that one word Gail found that she had genuine pity for the woman because she knew for certain that Eve was in love with Mac. Probably head over heels, judging by her despair. An even if they got out of this, both of them would end up disappointed.

They heard something rattle into the latch, and Gail knew that it wasn’t the pry bar. It was a padlock. She put her ear to the door in time to hear footfalls moving away, and then nothing except the boat horns and the normal machinery sounds of the platform’s various systems.

“Anyone got a flashlight?” she asked.

“On my key ring,” someone said.

“Won’t he see it through the cracks?” Eve asked.

“He’s gone,” Gail said.

A thin beam of light suddenly came on, enough so they at least could see each other. Eve and her techs and postdocs were frightened half out of their skulls.

“Is it true that Kirk is dead?” Eve asked. “Or did you just tell us that for his benefit in case he was listening?”

“I don’t know,” Gail said. “At least I hope he isn’t. But in the meantime we’re on our own. Everyone look around see if we can find something to use to get us out of here, and maybe a weapon of some sort.”

“What good will that do?” one of the techs asked. “Someone on the bridge must have sent a Mayday by now.”

“That’s where I went when I heard the helicopter. But they’re all dead and the radio gear has been destroyed.”

“I say we don’t antagonize them,” the same young man said. “My God, look what they did to Don and Mr. Defloria. Let them do what they came to do, and when they’re gone we’ll take to the lifeboats. We can always come up with another oil platform.”

“They’re not going to let us out of here,” Gail told them.

“But they said they’re going to blow up the rig or something.”

“Yes, and we’ll ride it to the bottom of the Gulf,” Eve said. “They have to make sure no one aboard survives.”

“But why?” a young woman asked.

“There’s no reason,” someone else said.

“They can’t let us live, we saw their faces,” Eve said. She turned and looked at the others. “Where’s Lisa?”

SIXTY-THREE

McGarvey’s hands had been tied until this moment. Lying in the darkness on the platform that had once accommodated the workspace for the base of the exploration drilling rig about thirty feet above the main deck, he was in a position to see everything that had gone on below, plus the helipad one hundred feet to the left and ten feet above him.

His pistol and Franchi shotgun were all but useless at those distances, so he couldn’t have risked trying to take his shot.

DeCamp and his people were all gone, two up to the helicopter where they’d retrieved two satchels and disappeared belowdecks, and the others into the main lateral corridor below and to McGarvey’s right that ran the width of the platform with access not only to the living and recreation decks, but in one direction to the science control room and the other to the delivery bridge.

The contractor who’d locked Gail and the others inside the pipe locker had walked away and McGarvey was about to go down to the main deck when the man came back, obviously taking pains to conceal his return, and McGarvey eased back into the shadows.

But now the main deck was deserted, and so far as McGarvey could tell no sentries had been posted, though he was fairly sure that at least one or two of DeCamp’s people were looking for him, while the two who’d carried the satchels from the helicopter were setting the explosives to sink the rig. Which made them priority one.

McGarvey crawled to the edge of the platform and took the ladder down to the main deck, where keeping to the deeper shadows as much as possible he made his way to the pipe locker that was secured with a heavy-duty padlock.

“Gail,” he called softly.

“My God, Kirk, I didn’t know what happened to you,” Gail said. “Can you get us out of here?”

“Not without making a lot of noise. Is everyone okay?”

“No one’s been hurt,” Gail said. “Lapides and one of his people are dead up in the control room and the radios destroyed. I think they’re going to try to sink us.”

“That’s exactly what they’re going to do,” McGarvey said. “They brought two satchels down from the helicopter, almost certainly explosives. They’re going to take out two of the legs and capsize the rig. I’m going to take them out.”

“What if you don’t make it?” Eve asked. “We’ll be stuck in here.”

“It won’t happen,” Gail said, trying to override her.

“Goddamnit, there’s six of them, all heavily armed, and it looked like they knew what they were doing.”

“She’s right,” McGarvey said, taking one of the pencil fuses from his pocket. It just fit through the gap between the two halves of the door. “Here.”

“Got it,” Gail said.

He tore a lump about the size of book of matches from one of the blocks of Semtex and molded it around the body of the combination lock, making sure it was secure enough so that when Gail inserted the fuse through the gap it wouldn’t get dislodged.

“Stay put until you hear the helicopter take off,” he told them. “If I’m not back by then, blow the lock and get to the lifeboats.”

“I’m sorry, Kirk,” Gail said.

“You had lousy odds,” McGarvey said. “Don’t do anything to attract their attention. I don’t want them to come back for some reason and spot the Semtex.”

“I don’t want to die,” one of the young women cried softly.

“You’re not going to die,” Gail told her.

“Keep them quiet,” McGarvey said, and he turned and headed for the hatch to the main corridor.

SIXTY-FOUR

In the delivery control room DeCamp was monitoring the VHF noncommercial channels sixty-eight and sixty-nine that the flotilla had used to communicate with one another to make sure that no one had noticed the activity aboard the oil platform. But the chatter was normal, mostly small talk heavily laced with religious mumbojumbo, the same as it had been all the way across from Biloxi.

To this point the operation was going according to plan with the exception of Gurov and his walkie-talkie now in McGarvey’s hands, which made issuing orders to his people problematic. But not impossible. The odds were still definitely in their favor.

“He just went through the hatch into the main corridor,” Wyner said from one of windows looking down on the deck.

Like clockwork, DeCamp thought, suppressing a slight smile. The trouble with professionals was their professionalism. By the training manual. Thinking out of the box was generally frowned on, especially by some of the unimaginative bastards who wrote those manuals. It was the same in just about every army or security service in the world. The good field officers remained in the field, while the failures were often the ones who made up rules. Hidebound government bureaucrats who couldn’t see beyond their cubicles. Certainly in America no one had wanted to believe in a scenario in which al-Quaeda could mount such a devastating attack as 9/11. Most of them had been looking in the wrong direction — were still looking in the wrong direction — which made his work all the more easier.

DeCamp keyed his walkie-talkie. “Shall we make it one hundred thousand euros?” he said, effectively alerting his people that McGarvey was on the way.

The trap had been almost too easy. Locking Dr. Larsen and her scientists in the container and deserting the main deck had simply been too tempting a target for either McGarvey himself or the woman he’d brought with him — who turned out to be Gail Newby, the security officer from Hutchinson Island. He’d been only slightly disappointed that it had been Ms. Newby and not McGarvey but that didn’t matter, because now he held the high ground. McGarvey was a dead man marching.

Wyner had been studying the pipe locker through a set of binoculars. “Looks like plastique around the lock,” he said.

“About what I suspected,” DeCamp said. “No doubt he managed to pass a fuse through to Ms. Newby.”

“There’s enough room for it between the doors.”

“What’s he carrying?”

“I’m sure he has a pistol, but he’s got what looks like a Franchi slung over his shoulder,” Wyner said.

It was a nasty weapon. DeCamp had seen firsthand what it was capable of doing in a confined space when he’d sent six of his men into the home of an Angolan army general outside Luanda, the capital city. All six had been cut down, but in the heat of battle the general had used all of his ammunition in one short firefight, leaving himself defenseless. In the end DeCamp had fired his American-made Colt Commando six times into the general’s face — one round for each of his Buffalo Battalion troop — destroying the man’s skull.

“Bring the two women up here,” DeCamp said. “It’s time we provided a little distraction for McGarvey. Perhaps give him pause.”

SIXTY-FIVE

McGarvey held up at the corner before the mess hall one level down from his and Gail’s rooms. The bodies of two construction crewmen lay sprawled on the deck, their blood smeared on the bulkhead. A third man lay in an open doorway, blood still pooling beneath his body. This had happened within the last few minutes.

“Goddamnit,” he said under his breath. It was senseless. Had the Coast Guard been sent out to escort Vanessa to Florida where security might have been tediously long, none of this would have happened. Some good people had died here, and more would probably lose their lives before it was over. And he was a part of it.

But he’d seen this same kind of shit before; over and over again in his career. Timid bureaucrats, unwilling to stick their necks out. In this case because of someone with a vested interest in oil; someone whose back was against the wall, someone who could not allow an experiment like this to succeed.

Follow the money, he’d told Otto.

Someone shouted something farther down the corridor, and McGarvey heard what sounded like rounds richochetting off a steel bulkhead.

He had counted five operators in addition to DeCamp. Two had fetched the satchels from the helicopter and were somewhere below setting the charges. Which left two, possibly three, men working their way through the rig trying to find him and killing everyone they came across. No one was to be left alive, shot to death or locked away someplace to drown when the platform went to the bottom.

They were professionals. Almost certainly ex-military special services who for one reason or another became independent mercenaries, rather than go to work for a contracting service. It meant that by their very nature they were men who did not take orders very well.

They were in the business purely for the money. Their loyalty went to whoever had the biggest bank account, and only for however long they could see a clear escape route. These were not Islamic extremists willing to die for the cause. It was a weakness.

He keyed the walkie-talkie. “You’ve forgotten the helicopter, Colonel DeCamp,” he said, as he started down the corridor toward the sounds of the gunfire. “I have something you may need.”

Turning the receive volume way down so that he had to bring the handheld to his ear to hear if DeCamp answered, he hurried down the corridor, holding up at the open door to the galley. But the mess hall appeared to be deserted.

At the far corner he held up again, and keyed his walkie-talkie, but didn’t speak.

From somewhere down the corridor, very close, he heard the distinct click of a handheld receiving his signal, and raising his shotgun he peered around the corner, when DeCamp’s voice came over his walkie-talkie.

“Don’t kill him yet.”

Someone in one of the rooms a few feet farther down the corridor reached around the door frame with a silenced MAC-10 and fired a short burst. McGarvey snapped off three shots and ducked back, directly into the warm muzzle of a suppressor.

“You killed a friend of ours,” Burt said, his British accent heavy.

“You have me,” McGarvey said, dropping the walkie-talkie. He raised the shotgun up above his head, the muzzle pointed toward the overhead.

“Prick,” Burt said, and he grabbed the Franchi, his pressure with the MP5 SDG against the back of McGarvey’s head momentarily eased.

McGarvey ducked to the right, the Heckler & Koch firing an inch from the side of his head, and he slammed the Franchi’s receiver into the man’s face, breaking his nose and smashing out two teeth.

Burt grunted in pain as he stepped back and tried to bring the MP5 to bear, but McGarvey kept on him, batting his gun hand away, and yanking the shotgun out of his grasp.

“You should have turned down this job,” McGarvey said, jamming the Franchi under Burt’s chin. He pulled off one round, the twelve-bore taking off the back of the merc’s skull and violently slamming his body against the bulkhead.

As Burt crumpled to the deck, McGarvey grabbed the submachine gun, pointed it around the corner and, one-handed, sprayed the corridor, emptying the magazine.

There was no return fire.

“Get off this rig or I’ll kill you,” McGarvey called out, laying the weapon on the deck softly enough to make no noise. Picking up the walkie-talkie he hurried to the opposite end of the corridor where he ducked down the companionway, holding up on the first stair, and peering around the corner.

But no one was coming, or if they were they were being cautious about it.

McGarvey continued down five levels, taking the stairs two at a time, and making as little noise as possible. By now the explosive charges would have been set on two of the four legs, somewhere as close to the waterline as possible. But he didn’t think DeCamp would push the button until the helicopter was secured. For the moment their primary concern was taking him down and finding out if he’d been telling the truth that he had something they needed.

At the bottom, below the main deck, but still forty feet above the surface of the Gulf, the platform’s four massive legs, each thirty feet in diameter, were interconnected by a latticework of steel beams and girders and a catwalk with high railings.

Still no one had come after him, nor could he see anyone at or near the legs, which had to mean that the charges had already been set and the two men had gone topsides. But they had to know that he was down there. It was possible that DeCamp had sent someone to check out the helicopter and was at this moment getting set to fly off and push the button, but there was something else, McGarvey was certain of it.

DeCamp’s escape. Once the rig went to the bottom he’d be stuck with the flotilla. His only way out was the Bell Ranger, but with a full load its range was limited. They’d never get out of the Gulf.

But DeCamp knew what he was doing. He had a plan, and he was confident in it. McGarvey had heard that much in the man’s voice. There’d been no frustration, no fear, and especially no anger. He was a commander in control of the battlefield, and he had an escape route which he thought was foolproof.

But confident men made mistakes.

McGarvey turned up the walkie-talkie’s volume to counteract the noise of the boat horns, the tug’s massive engines out in front of them, and the wind tunneling through the substructure and the motion-induced waves sloshing against the legs, and pocketed it.

Keeping low, he headed to the leg on the front right corner of the rig relative to the direction it was being towed. He had a fifty-fifty chance at picking one of the two legs that had been sabotaged, but correct leg or not, he still had to find the explosives, while at the same time keep an eye over his shoulder for an attack he expected to come at any moment.

DeCamp knew where he was headed.

McGarvey hurried down the short ramp that led across from the main catwalk to another much narrower-railed walkway that circled the leg. An olive drab satchel, more like a small duffle bag, was shaped in an arc and jammed between the walkway and the curved steel plates of the leg.

Glancing over his shoulder to make sure one of DeCamp’s shooters wasn’t right behind him, McGarvey knelt down in front of the satchel. No wires came out of the thing, which meant its detonator was already in countdown mode, or the explosion would be radio-controlled once DeCamp and his people abandoned the rig. McGarvey gingerly released the snap catch and eased open the top flap. The duffle was half filled with a gray material that smelled faintly sour, like plumber’s putty. It was Semtex, the same explosive he and Gail had brought with them. Exceedingly stable — only an electrical charge would set it off — and extremely powerful. He figured the bag had to contain at least twenty kilos of the stuff, more than enough to take out a large section of the leg.

A radio-controlled detonator probe was stuck in the side of the mass, the light on a cell phone-sized unit green.

He glanced over his shoulder again, but if anyone was back there they were in the deeper shadows. Taking care not to disturb the detonator unit, which was possibly motion sensitive — too big a force or sudden movement would set it off — McGarvey prised the package out of the space between the narrow catwalk and the leg and set it down.

“Don’t kill him just yet,” DeCamp’s voice came from McGarvey’s walkie-talkie.

Kabatov unexpectedly came from around the curve of the leg, where he’d been waiting, and slammed the back plate of the MAC 10 into McGarvey’s temple.

A shower of stars burst inside of McGarvey’s head, and he went down heavily, banging his face on the steel grate.

These guys are good, the thought crystallized as he came around and could understand what he was hearing.

“He’s down,” Kabatov said.

“See if he’s carrying anything,” DeCamp’s voice came from the walkie-talkie. “Joseph says the bird appears to be okay, but I want to be sure the bastard didn’t take something we missed.”

“Standby,” Kabatov said.

McGarvey willed himself to remain loose, as if he were still unconscious, as Kabatov turned him over on his back, and began searching his pockets, finding and tossing the Semtex packets and fuses overboard.

“Semtex and acid fuses,” Kabatov radioed.

“Nothing from the helicopter?”

“Nothing yet, but maybe he hid whatever it is,” Kabatov said, and he laid the walkie-talkie and MAC-10 on the deck and grabbed the front of McGarvey’s jacket so that he could pull him away from the duffle bag to make a more thorough search. It was a mistake.

McGarvey suddenly reared up, headbutting the Russian, driving the man backwards and off balance.

But Kabatov was quick and he slammed his left elbow into the side of McGarvey’s neck, pushing him back, and he dropped to one knee and reached for his weapon, grunting something in Russian.

As he fell back McGarvey managed to kick the submachine gun away, and Kabatov lunged for it as it went over the side of the catwalk into the Gulf forty feet below.

“Oops,” McGarvey said, regaining his feet and charging before Kabatov could get out of the way. He wrapped his left arm around the Russian’s neck from behind to stabilize it in one position, and using his right hand pulled Kabatov’s head sharply to the right, the top of the man’s spinal column snapping.

McGarvey let the man’s body collapse onto the catwalk, and went back to the duffle bag, picked it up with great care, walked back up onto the main catwalk and well away from the leg and gingerly lifted the thing over the rail and let it fall into the sea. With a splash, not an explosion.

He turned as his walkie-talkie and Kabatov’s lying near the leg came to life. It was DeCamp.

“Nikolai.”

McGarvey keyed his walkie-talkie. “He’s dead.”

“How unfortunate,” DeCamp said. “But I have someone with me who would like to speak to you.”

SIXTY-SIX

Gail stood with Eve facing DeCamp, the man who’d fetched them from the pipe locker, and two others in the delivery control room whose windows gave a 360-degree view of the main deck below and the sea around them. Kirk was alive and that’s all that mattered right now. They had a chance.

“Your numbers are dwindling,” Gail said pleasantly. “Maybe you should think about gathering what’s left of your merry mob and getting back into the helicopter.”

DeCamp was on her in two strides and before she could lift a hand to defend herself, he casually punched her in the mouth, and she went backwards on her butt, a ringing in her ears. “Speak only when I ask you to speak, Ms. Newby. I have Dr. Larsen as a hostage, so there is almost no reason to stop me from putting a bullet in your head. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Gail said, and Eve helped her to her feet.

“Don’t antagonize them for God’s sake,” Eve said.

Gail winked at her, and for just an instant Eve seemed nonplussed, but then she nodded almost imperceptibly. A smart woman, Gail thought, and a little bit wise, too.

“Mr. McGarvey,” DeCamp radioed.

“I’m waiting,” McGarvey replied.

“Where are you just now?”

McGarvey keyed the walkie-talkie, and he laughed. “Coming to kill you,” he said.

DeCamp’s neutral stance and expression did not change, but he motioned for two of his operators to head out, and they left immediately.

He took a Steyr 9mm pistol out of his chest holster and pointed it at Eve, who flinched. Holding up his walkie-talkie he keyed the push-to-talk button. “Dr. Larsen would like to have a word with you. I have a gun pointed at her head.”

“Get off the rig while you can!” Eve shouted.

DeCamp smiled. “Noble,” he said, and he released the transmit button.

Mac was on his way up there and nothing that Eve could possibly say was going to stop him. She just hoped that he’d managed to find and disarm the explosives on the legs because otherwise his actions were nothing more than an exercise in futility.

McGarvey did not reply.

DeCamp keyed the walkie-talkie. “Give me a reason not to shoot her.”

“You won’t like the outcome,” McGarvey said. “Yours, personally. Anyway, she would no longer be a hostage.”

DeCamp showed the first signs of anger. He keyed the walkie-talkie again, but before he could speak, Gail grabbed Wyner, pulled his pistol from a holster high on his right hip, jammed the muzzle in the side of his head, and using him as a shield dragged him to the doorway.

“Two bad guys here in the control room, two headed your way!” she shouted.

DeCamp released the transmit switch and cocked his pistol, still pointed at Eve, which was an empty gesture as far as Gail was concerned. The pistol had no conventional safety and could be fired in the uncocked position. “I will kill her.”

“Kirk was right, you need a hostage if you expect to get off this rig alive.”

DeCamp seemed to consider her comment, and he nodded. “You won’t get far.”

Wyner tried to break free, but Gail jammed the pistol harder into his temple. “Behave or I’ll blow your goddamned head off,” she told him.

Eve was not moving a muscle, her eyes locked on Gail’s. It was exactly the right thing for her to do.

“You won’t get far,” DeCamp repeated.

“Maybe not, Brian, but the odds are getting better by the minute,” Gail said. She glanced over her shoulder out into the corridor, but the two DeCamp had sent to find McGarvey were gone.

“Don’t leave me,” Eve said, and she sounded frightened out of her mind, but the look in her eyes was steady.

“Do what he says, Dr. Larsen. He needs you alive, unless you make yourself a liability.”

Gail stepped around the corner, pulling Wyner out of sight, but then she shouted, “Fuck it,” fired one shot into the overhead and shoved him forward back into the doorway.

DeCamp fired in reaction, hitting Wyner, shoving him back out into the corridor before Gail got more than two steps toward the companionway. She fired three times over her shoulder, reaching the steps and ducking around the corner, taking the stairs down two at a time.

She hoped to Christ she’d done the right thing, leaving Eve back there, but she’d seen no other choice. And with one more of DeCamp’s men down the odds had definitely improved.

SIXTY-SEVEN

McGarvey stopped at the bottom of the outside stairs that led up to the transverse corridor that crossed the back edge of the main deck. It was the logical route to and from the delivery control room and the helipad, and the quickest way down to the legs. To his left was the rig’s workshop, though a lot of the tools and equipment had been removed at Biloxi, and directly above that, just below the main deck, was a maze of tanking and piping.

He’d debated finding the second shaped charge, removing it and tossing it overboard which was exactly what DeCamp wanted to prevent. But the man would not leave the rig until he’d killed or locked up everyone who’d seen his face. And he wouldn’t send the detonate signal until he was aboard the helicopter and well away.

Eve was DeCamp’s ticket out of there. And the two operators Gail had radioed were on their way down as a reception committee, knowing that McGarvey was on the way up.

But it still didn’t make any sense. He was missing something, which all of a sudden came to him when he heard the sounds of the helicopter’s engines grinding to life.

In all likelihood Gail was dead, and DeCamp had taken Eve to the helicopter and was about to abandon the remainder of his operators, plus the scientists and techs trapped in the pipe locker on deck and whoever else might still be alive or wounded aboard the rig.

DeCamp no longer cared if someone who knew his face — even his own men — survived this night, because he was going to ground. It was his ace in the hole. The only question was how he intended to get out of the Gulf.

McGarvey started up. His only hope was to reach the helicopter and disable it before it was fully warmed up and lifted off, when one of the mercs appeared at the head of the stairs, armed with an MP5.

“Here he is then,” Helms said.

McGarvey stopped, absolutely no way of bringing his shotgun to bear before the merc pulled the trigger. “Sounds like your boss is deserting you.”

“Just waiting for us to confirm we’ve bagged you, and then we’re all getting out of here.”

“Not enough room for all of you.”

“Only the colonel, the broad, and three of us. Plenty of room.”

The pitch of the helicopter rotors deepened.

“Are you sure?” McGarvey asked.

Helms pulled out his walkie-talkie and keyed it. “We’ve got him!”

DeCamp did not reply.

Helms turned to look over toward the helipad, which was blocked from view by the edge of the superstructure containing the project control room. “Goddamnit, wait!” he radioed.

McGarvey raised the Franchi and pulled off two shots, destroying the front of the operator’s face and torso and shoving him backwards, the MP5 briefly firing overhead before it was flung away.

The helicopter sounded as if it were taking off, and McGarvey started up the stairs when five pistol shots, pulled off in rapid succession, came from inside the workshop. He spun around, bringing the Franchi to bear, prepared to fire from the hip, when the body of one of DeCamp’s mercs slumped out of the doorway, blood immediately spreading from his head and the back of his neck.

“Clear!” Gail shouted from inside.

“Clear!” McGarvey shouted back.

Gail appeared in the doorway, a pistol, but not her SIG-Sauer, in hand. Even in the harsh light from the overheads McGarvey could see that she was out of breath and flushed.

“They separated,” she said. “I figured you could handle one and I’d cover the other guy on your back.”

“Good job,” McGarvey told her. “But we need to get to the helipad right now before DeCamp lifts off.” He turned and raced up the stairs.

In the corridor he could hear the helicopter, and he knew damned well it was already away and accelerating, but he redoubled his efforts, emerging from the hatch just below the pad in time to see the Bell Ranger dip down out of sight to the west.

Gail was right behind him as he dashed across the lower landing, took the stairs up to the helipad two at a time and ran immediately to the edge, but the helicopter was already out of range for his Walther and certainly for the shotgun.

“Christ,” he said, a rage building. He’d failed. Again.

“Eve’s aboard with him,” Gail said. “Did you get to the explosives?”

“Just one of them, and he’s going to pull the trigger on the other any second now.”

Gail turned to look down at the main deck. “The techs are still locked in down there.”

“Get them out, and down to the lifeboats.”

“I’ll need Semtex to blow the lock.”

“Mine’s gone,” McGarvey said. He was watching to see if the helicopter would turn to the east, toward Florida, when he spotted something drop out of the hatch and fall to the Gulf sixty feet below.

And he got the momentary impression of flailing arms and legs at the same instant a tremendous explosion rocked the entire platform, and Vanessa began to slowly list to port.

SIXTY-EIGHT

McGarvey sent Gail below to get the Semtex and fuses from her room so that she could blow the lock on the pipe storage container and release Eve’s people, promising to be with her in five minutes. Standing now just down the slanting corridor from the delivery control room, Franchi in hand, he stopped to listen.

Blood had pooled in the doorway, but there was no body. Two pairs of footprints, one set larger than the other, led down the corridor to the hatch. DeCamp’s and Eve’s.

Gail had told him how she’d managed to escape. “DeCamp shot him and the last I saw the guy was on the deck. Looked dead to me.”

All the boat horns and whistles were shrieking loudly now. Schlagel’s followers had finally gotten what they wanted and the hell with the loss of lives they had to know was inevitable. They had to have seen and heard the explosion, and he could only hope that someone had the decency to send a Mayday.

But there were no other sounds, and McGarvey approached the doorway with caution, careful not to step in the blood, and he looked inside. The control room was deserted, the SSB radios had been destroyed, leaving only a short-range VHF unit intact, exactly what he’d hoped to find.

He stepped inside, sweeping the Franchi left to right, when Wyner stepped out from a dark corner. The merc was badly wounded, and barely able to stand, blood frothing from a hole in his chest. He held a small pistol, what McGarvey recognized as a 5 .45 mm Soviet-made PSM semiautomatic, but his aim kept wavering, as if simply holding the weapon was at the extreme limit of his strength.

“The son of a bitch left me,” he croaked.

“He left all of you,” McGarvey said. “It was his plan from the beginning.”

“We’re sinking. Why the hell did you come back? You can’t call for help, we shot the radios all to hell.”

“Not the VHF,” McGarvey said, his shotgun steady. “I need to call the tug, tell them to back off.”

Wyner shook his head. “They’re all dead. Tug’s on autopilot.”

It was a possibility McGarvey had considered. If this had been his operation it’s exactly what he would have done.

A small, sharp explosion went off below on the main deck, and Wyner looked toward the window. “She made it,” he said, a touch of admiration in his ragged voice, and he had to hold on to the port radar cabinet to remain standing. “Tough broad. Knows what she’s doing.” He turned to look at McGarvey and he let the pistol drop to the deck. “Get the fuck out of here before it’s too late.”

“I’ll take you out of here, maybe you can make a plea bargain,” McGarvey said. “We’ll want to find DeCamp and you can help.”

Wyner shook his head again. “Even if I survived, which you and I both know is impossible without medical help right now, there’s no way in hell I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

“Why?” McGarvey asked, even though he knew the answer.

“I’m a merc because it’s what I do. How about you? You’ve killed a fair share this evening.”

“It’s what I do,” McGarvey said.

Wyner smiled. “Too bad you’re on the wrong side,” he said. “We could have used you.” He crumpled to the deck, and before McGarvey could reach him his breathing stopped.

The rig slipped a few feet to the right, as if it were an airliner suddenly hitting a downdraft, but then it stabilized, but at a greater angle of list.

McGarvey first made sure that Gail had gotten Eve’s people out of the pipe locker and was hustling them below to the lifeboats, then he switched the VHF radio to channel sixteen, the calling and emergency frequency. “Any vessel hearing my voice, I’m aboard the Vanessa Explorer. We’ve have casualties and we are abandoning the rig. Please relay a Mayday for us.”

“Vanessa Explorer, this is Holy Girl , we copy. The Mayday has been sent. Coast Guard Tampa has advised they are sending the helo out along with a cutter. We’re standing by to take on your survivors.”

“Thank you,” McGarvey said. “You’ve won. Shut off your horns and whistles.”

Another voice came on. “Not until that godless abomination is on the bottom, Mr. McGarvey.”

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Oh, yes, we know you. And your harlot. We pulled her out of the water, like a dead fish.”

“Mr. McGarvey, this is the Holy Girl. No harm will come to Dr. Larsen, or any of your people. We’ll take you aboard from your lifeboats. But I suggest you get clear as quickly as possible.”

“Have Dr. Larsen ready to be transferred to our lifeboats,” McGarvey said. “We don’t want to interfere with your celebration because of the people who lost their lives tonight. We’ll wait for the Coast Guard.”

“You don’t understand,” the man said, but McGarvey had already turned and was out in the corridor, racing for the lifeboat deck.

SIXTY-NINE

As the lifeboat approached the fifty-foot twin flybridge cruiser Holy Girl out of Mobile, Alabama, McGarvey stood up above the open hatch and waved at Eve who was at the stern, a blanket over her shoulders. She waved back.

All eleven of the survivors from Eve’s team were aboard one of the motorized lifeboats. They were frightened and elated and sad and subdued all at the same time, some of them looking back at the spectacle of the badly listing oil exploration platform.

“You’re all welcome aboard,” a short, squat man in jeans, a polo shirt, and a captain’s cap called across. “Plenty of room.”

“Thanks for pulling me out of the water,” Eve told him. “But I’d prefer to be with my friends.”

One of the young techs heard her voice and she jumped up. “My God, it’s Eve!” she shrieked

The Holy Girl ’s skipper gave her a sad look and shook his head ruefully. He glanced up at the bridge where some of his people were watching. “Frankly we’d just as soon not have you aboard. You’re a godless woman who has no conception of the terror your science is about to unleash on the world. And we’re dedicated — I’m dedicated — to seeing you fail.”

Eve pointed toward Vanessa Explorer. “Including damaging property that’s not yours? Including killing innocent people? Is that what your god tells you to do?”

The skipper was stricken. “No, we did no harm. We hurt no one.”

“But you stood by and let it happen!”

“We didn’t know!”

“The helicopter that brought over our attackers, the one from which I had to jump to save my life, was off one of your boats!”

“We didn’t know what was going on. I swear—”

“You swear to whom?” Eve spat. “Your kind, loving god? Because if that’s the case, you’ve got to be talking to a different god than the one I was raised with in Birmingham.”

She took off the blanket, tossed it in the skipper’s face, and jumped down into the lifeboat.

“You’ll rot in hell,” the skipper said.

“That’s funny, because from my perspective that’s where all of you and your reverend Schlagel already are! Hanging right over the abyss.”

Gail was operating the lifeboat, and as the techs swarmed around Eve, McGarvey motioned for her to head out to the tug. The engines needed to be shut down before the deeply listing platform was pulled apart because of the stress.

At one point all of them stopped and stared with Eve at Vanessa, and she glanced at McGarvey and Gail and then back at the rig. “What a terrible waste.”

“Maybe it can still be salvaged,” McGarvey said.

Eve shook her head. “I meant all the people, Defloria and Lapides and the men who worked for them. For us.”

“And Lisa,” one of the techs said. “She never came back.”

“And Don,” someone else said, sobbing. “He was helping them.”

An infinite weariness seemed to come over Eve, as if she were on the verge of collapse, as if she could not go on, as if she could no longer see the necessity of going on. “From the start,” she said. “Maybe aboard the Big G. ” And she began to cry.

McGarvey put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not going to leave you,” he promised. “Not until you’re set up and in business in the Gulf Stream.”

SEVENTY

DeCamp had been flying for a little more than an hour at full throttle less than fifty feet from the surface when he spotted the Cuban gunboat stopped in the water off to the starboard where he expected it to be. He’d been running without lights, but he flashed them twice, and when the Cubans responded in kind he throttled back and made a wide, lazy circle around the ship.

They were in international waters here, about sixty miles northeast of the western tip of Cuba, just far enough away from the Yucatán Channel busy with ships coming from or heading to the Panama Canal to be relatively safe from detection. And the fact that the Cubans had shown up as promised, meant they’d not been illuminated by the radar of any American warship.

As he came to within one hundred yards of the gunboat a small launch headed out to meet him. He unlatched the door, shut down the engines, and released the blades so that they would autorotate. The helicopter immediately lost most of its lift and settled toward the surface of the water, DeCamp carefully maneuvering the collective and cyclic pitch to keep the machine on an even keel so that the tips of its rotors would not hit first and tear the machine apart. It was one of the hardest skills he’d had to learn in the Buffalo Battalion.

The landing gear touched and the machine settled, water pouring through the hatch, when the rotors hit the surface and came to a stop after only another half turn.

DeCamp climbed out and swam directly away until he was well out of range as the helicopter settled onto its port side and submerged within a few seconds.

Five minutes later he was scrambling up the gunboat’s boarding ladder to the deck where a smiling Captain Rodriguez was waiting for him, and they shook hands. “A skillful landing, señor.”

“Anything on radar?”

“Nothing of any importance within one hundred and fifty kilometers,” the Cuban said. “But come to my quarters where I have dry clothing and a good cognac, and I can tell you what news we have been picking up on the radio.”

“Did it sink?” DeCamp asked.

“Not yet, but it is heavily damaged and in immediate danger of capsizing,” Rodriguez said, no need to ask if that was DeCamp’s mission. “So let’s celebrate at least a partial success, shall we?”

McGarvey, the single name crystallized in DeCamp’s mind, as he followed the Cuban below decks, and he began to turn over the mechanics of three possibilities open to him: revenge, disappearance, or both.

They had been standing off from the flotilla waiting for Vanessa to capsize, expecting it to, not quite believing that its list had stopped increasing and there was just an off chance that it might be saved, when the Coast Guard showed up. First one of the helos out of Saint Petersburg and then the 110-foot cutter Ocracoke. McGarvey had gone aboard, leaving Eve terrified that he had lied to her. But Gail had remained and she had been a comfort to them all, her hand steady, her words kind, her confidence infectious. “We’ve survived the worst of it,” she’d said. “We’re safe now.”

This was a major crime scene, and the Coast Guard had taken over, ordering the flotilla to stand well off, and most of the boats had simply turned around and headed home, but the horns and whistles kept up in a sort of angry triumph, because the bodies aboard the Pascagoula Trader had been found. People aboard the oil rig had died, but God’s flotilla had suffered its own casualties for a righteous cause, which in a lot of minds evened the score.

A couple of hours before dawn the Carnival Cruise Line ship Inspiration on its way back to Tampa from Cozumel had stopped at the Coast Guard’s request to take on survivors. One of her motorized launches had been dispatched and Eve, Gail, and the others had been transferred from the lifeboat to a boarding hatch just above the cruise ship’s waterline. Passengers had gotten up from bed, and in their pajamas lined the rail to stare at the unfolding drama, flash cameras pointed at Vanessa like so many fireflies on a warm summer evening. Under ordinary circumstances Eve would have been irritated by the lack of sensitivity, but she was tired and strung out, and anyway the passengers taking the pictures had no idea of the carnage. They had never met Lisa, and they hadn’t known Don, like she thought she had.

The crew gave her a pair of white coveralls and sneakers that fit reasonably well, and when they found out who she was, the captain had come down to the ship’s clinic to personally welcome her and the others aboard. They were only a few hours out of Tampa, but they were put up in some nice cabins, Eve and Gail in one of the first-class suites and urged by the doctor to at least try to get some rest.

He’d offered them a sedative, but Eve had refused, and lying in bed alone with her thoughts, listening to one side of Gail’s sat phone conversation in the sitting room with McGarvey, still working with the Coast Guard on scene, she wondered if her refusal had been such a good idea after all.

She was having a lot of trouble, for some reason, seeing an image of Don’s face in her head, or to remember what his voice sounded like or feel his arms around her. But she could remember the times he’d been there for her, his steady presence, his precise work; he was a better mathematician than her, and she thought he’d been proud to check her calculations, especially so when he told her that she’d been spot-on, no errors.

But it had all been a horrible mistake on her part, and she felt like a complete fool. She had failed as completely, probably even more so, with Don than she had with her husband, father, and brothers.

And with Kirk, she thought, hearing Gail say his name.

But her science was sound, despite what Don had said to her on Vanessa. And if the rig could be salvaged, which McGarvey had told her was a real possibility, and if she could somehow come up with the money for the salvage operation, and if she could stay out of Schlagel’s sights long enough to get back on track, the damn thing might work.

Nor could she dredge up Lisa’s face or hear her voice, though she could remember some of the kid’s quips, calling Eve the boss lady, slave driver, or taskmaster, and it bothered her tremendously. It was as if all the lights that had brightened her work had gone out of her head, leaving her with nothing but the cold, hard calculations of her theories, and she was more afraid that she was losing, not her mind, but her interest, her enthusiasm. Which after all, she reminded herself, was all she’d ever really had since she’d fully understood that her family in Birmingham genuinely did not like her. In fact they had been afraid of her, as had the kids and the teachers in school.

She thought about Krantz and what he would say to her when she got back to Washington. NOAA was just another governmental agency that could be and often had been swayed by public opinion. It was more than possible that Schlagel’s followers could do just that, especially after their partial triumph in the Gulf. They would be calling the incident God’s will, and it made her skin crawl.

But it hadn’t been the hand of some God-directed group of terrorists or whatever they were, that had come aboard Vanessa, killed her crew and attempted to destroy the platform and send it to the bottom. They were men, according to Kirk, who did such things for a fee; it’s what they did for a living. Someone had paid them to destroy Vanessa and stop work on the project. Not Schlagel, but someone with a strong financial purpose, for whom Eve’s work was a threat.

Gail came to the partially open door and knocked softly. “Eve?”

“I’m awake,” Eve said, sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp.

“Kirk wants to talk to you,” Gail said, coming and handing the sat phone she’d borrowed from one of the officers to Eve. She smiled and went back out.

“Hello?”

“How are you doing?” McGarvey asked.

“I’ve been better,” Eve said. “I don’t have any idea what comes next, though.”

“InterOil is sending out a salvage crew, and the Coast Guard people say that it looks like the rig can be repaired.”

“Back to fund-raising,” Eve said with a little measure of bitterness, though she knew that she should be grateful.

“The company is picking up the tab,” McGarvey said. “It may take a little longer than you wanted, but your rig will make it to Hutchinson Island.”

“How?” was all Eve could think to ask.

“Something about towing a spare leg structure out here, filling it with water so that it can be positioned under the rig and then slowly pumping the water out so that it’ll rise up into the correct position.”

“They’re smarter than me,” Eve said, and she could hear Stefanato holding his own against Don and the other eggheads.

“Me, too,” McGarvey said.

“When will I see you?”

“Not for a bit, but I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.”

Eve suddenly panicked. “What if he comes after us again?”

“That’s what I’m going to try to prevent. But Gail will hang around to see that you’re okay. She’s good at what she does.”

“Yes, I think that you’re right,” Eve said. “I’ll miss you.”

“Not a chance, Doc, you’ve got work to do,” McGarvey told her. “And besides, the media is already all over this thing. The Nobel laureate versus the preacher’s flock. You’ll have a reception committee when you get to Tampa, so I suggest you try to get a couple hours of sleep.”

“It doesn’t seem real to me. None of it.”

Anne Marie’s hand shook as she set down her teacup, Parkinson’s the first thought in her head, absolutely terrifying her, all the more because she’d been expecting the first symptoms for years. It was a fear she’d harbored in secret — in secret most of the time even from herself — since a couple of months after she’d buried her father and had lunch with Bob Calhoun, the old man’s longtime personal physician and friend.

They’d met at the downtown Boston Harvard Club on his suggestion, a bright sunny fall day, Anne Marie’s hedge fund roaring along at the start of the dot-com buildup, the world completely her oyster, and she’d simply not been prepared for what he’d had to say to her.

“You’ll need to watch for the symptoms, of course,” he’d told her after their second martini and after they’d ordered the boeuf bourguignon.

“I don’t understand.”

Calhoun was an old man on the verge of retirement from his GP practice and he gave Anne Marie a patient smile. “Do you know why your father chose to end his own life?”

“Business reverses.”

“He was losing his shirt, he and I talked about it. But it wasn’t the real reason he decided to go out that way. He had developed Parkinson’s and he was damned if he was going to end up some doddering old son of a bitch strapped to a wheelchair and drooling. ‘I’m not going to spend my last days with a bedpan strapped to my ass so I won’t shit in my pants,’ his exact words.”

Anne Marie could hear the old man’s voice as if he’d been sitting right there with them at the window table looking out across the city’s financial district. “Do you think that the disease affected his judgment?”

“Not directly. But I suspect he was distracted by it.”

“Enough to make mistakes?”

“Possibly,” Dr. Calhoun had told her.

“And realize that he was making mistakes?” Anne Marie had wanted to know, but the doctor had been unable to answer that question exactly except to say that the disease had probably disgusted him.

“Your father never accepted failures in others, and I expect that he thought his body was failing him, so he would have been upset.” Dr. Calhoun spread his hands. “It had been three months since I’d seen him before he killed himself, so I don’t know his state of mind. But you need to start keeping track of your own health.”

Her own doctor had told her what she had was nothing more than benign essential tremors, a common condition. But she hadn’t believed him six months ago when she’d first noticed she was developing the shakes, or now this afternoon in her penthouse apartment waiting for Wolfhardt to show up.

She was convinced that rather than face an uncertain future with the disease her father had put the pistol to his head and blew his brains out, an option she would never consider. Anyway if she had Parkinson’s, it was in the early stages, which left her plenty of time to plan her next move, stay and fight or run. But it was fast becoming crunch time now; she could feel it viscerally just as she had felt when it was time to bail out of the dot-com bubble and a few years later the real estate boom and get out of Dodge.

The television behind her, tuned to Fox, had been covering two stories all morning, one they called “the Tragedy in the Gulf,” and the other the Reverend Schlagel’s take from his headquarters in McPherson, Kansas, in his sermon, “God Has Spoken, Are We Ready to Listen?”

DeCamp had failed again. For the third time. The oil platform had been crippled, but not sunk, and Dr. Larsen and most of her technicians and postdocs had survived, rescued by Kirk McGarvey, a former director of the CIA. Drama at sea in the high-stakes contest of big oil’s interest in the status quo versus the green revolutionaries who warned that the planet was at the tipping point and the only way for humankind’s salvation was to stop all carbon dioxide emissions immediately. Alternative sources of clean power from nuclear energy for the time being and then from the wind, the sun, and Nobel laureate Dr. Larsen’s World Energy Needs project. The World Energy Needs project in Eve Larsen’s words; the God Project in Schagel’s.

Wolfhardt had telephoned an hour ago. “Turn on the television. There’s been a development.”

She’d done so while he was still on the line, and she’d immediately realized that her decision not to follow al-Naimi’s warning about her security chief until after the oil platform had been destroyed had been the correct one. Insurance, her father had once told her, is not necessarily a waste of money in itself. And thus had been born, at least in his mind and in the minds of others, exotics and semi-exotic financial instruments, among them credit default swaps, a sort of insurance in a negative sense. Cashing in on failure.

Rightfully she’d made the decision to keep Wolfhardt in play as a credit default swap against DeCamp’s failure, because something would have to be done about the mercenary before he was caught. She could not afford for him to be arrested because the leads would come back to Schlagel and very possibly to her. And whatever else he was, whatever his other agendas might be, Wolfhardt knew what he was about.

“Come here,” she’d told Wolfhardt. “I have another job for you.”

“I expect you do,” he’d said. “I’ll be there within the hour.”

And Octavio had seen the same news stories and had telephoned her from Caracas twenty minutes after Wolfhardt’s call. They spoke via encrypted sat phone and so could be totally open with each other.

“The president has agreed to extend his invitation for you to transfer your MG operation here as soon as you desire,” he told her.

“The CIA has a strong presence in Venezuela.”

“Not so strong as you’d think these days,” he said. “More bluster, perhaps, than actual effectiveness.”

Anne Marie chuckled. Money bought strange bedfellows, usually for the most transparent of reasons. But Chávez was in trouble, and the country was on the verge of becoming unstable and possibly even collapsing. China, on the other hand, was growing exponentially and desperately needed two things that she could supply: oil for that growth and money management services for the more than one trillion U.S. dollars of foreign debt it owned. And Hong Kong, with immunity, was much more to her liking than Caracas with the CIA breathing down her neck.

“The offer is kind,” she said pleasantly. “Please thank the president for me, and tell him that I’m sincerely considering his generosity.”

“My pleasure,” Octavio said, and he dropped his voice. “Be careful, Anne.”

“Langley is no threat to me here.”

“I’m talking about the Saudis. Al-Naimi has a long reach in the region. Longer than yours.”

“I understand,” she said, suddenly feeling chilly. At her level of play she could not defend herself on her own, for that she needed the backing of a government. And Octavio had just offered it in the form of protection from Saudi Arabia. “First I have a few loose ends to clear up.”

“Quickly,” Octavio said and he was gone.

She looked at her hand, it had stopped shaking, and she felt as if she were settling down. Really settling down now for a fight, and she felt the first glimmerings of interest, not dread, about what might be coming next. She wasn’t exactly as rich as Bill Gates, but she was wasn’t all that far away, and at least in her mind that kind of money carried a certain clout. She didn’t know where the threshold of importance started, but it was certainly more than a couple hundred million, or even a few billion, and it had something to do with influence. So since she’d left Florida she’d worked on that principle, easing her way — sometimes bullying her way — into the bank accounts of a diverse group of individuals, corporations, local as well as international, and even a few governments — or at least governmental agencies. It was why she’d felt reasonably safe cruising the Med for the first time, and why she wasn’t convinced that she should head for the hills just yet. Perhaps staying to fight might be the better course after all.

Ramirez buzzed her. “Mr. Wolfhardt is here.”

“Send him up,” she told her bodyguard. Her chief of security hadn’t been pleased about the extra layer of personal protection she’d put in place after her talk with al-Naimi, and she expected that he’d simply put it down to female paranoia. But he’d accepted the change without protest, though a distance had been created between them.

Wolfhardt, dressed in a white linen suit, no tie, stepped off the elevator, came across the hall, and walked directly out to where Anne Marie was seated on the balcony. “Good morning,” he said, not sitting down.

“Would you care for coffee or tea?”

“I don’t believe there’s time.”

“Mr. DeCamp has failed for the last time. I want him eliminated.”

“That may not be easy,” Wolfhardt said. “Most likely he’s gone to ground somewhere to wait and see which way the wind blows.”

“Are you telling me that you cannot find him?”

“No, madam, I’m telling you there will be no need because within the next twenty-four hours he’ll come to me and I’ll kill him.”

For just a moment Anne Marie was vexed. She did not enjoy riddles when it was straight answers she was looking for, but then she understood, and she smiled despite herself. “I see,” she said. “If something were to happen to his woman in Nice he would have the motivation to find you.”

“Exactly.”

Stay and fight indeed, Anne Marie thought. It was her nature after all.