Payback

3

Arnie Gifford watched the big clamps grab the next section of pipe and slowly lower it into the test well they were drilling in the edge of the Santa Barbara Channel. It was far enough offshore not to infuriate the conservationists. Still, they’d had their share of Greenpeace trouble. Arnie chewed on the unlit cigar and eyed the oil-drilling platform a quarter of a mile farther away from the coast. It was in deeper water, too deep he figured, and there had been no good reports coming from it.

He had been an oil driller most of his forty-seven years. His face and arms were burned brown by the sun, and his blue eyes these days always held sunglasses to cut the glare and the damage of the sun. He was in good shape, swam and dove a lot in the ocean. He had done weight lifting in his youth, and still had a well-developed upper body. He squinted slightly as he stared at the rig known as Wentworth Petroleum Number 4. He wondered where the others were. What puzzled Arnie was the unusual activity around the rig. For the past six months he had seen large cargo ships anchor near the platform. The next day the ships seemed to ride much higher in the water. What in hell were they doing there? They couldn’t discharge that much cargo on that small drilling platform.

He had seen a couple of the men he knew who worked on the rig in a bar just last week, and he’d asked them about the ships. They’d laughed and said he was seeing things.

“What the hell would a cargo ship be doing around our rig?” they’d said. “Maybe they were bringing out our payday cash.” The two men had laughed it off and headed for the door.

He’d seen the federal inspection boat head out to the rig, and heard that Number 4 had passed the safety and environmental tests with no problems. There was no oil on the rig or in its hole, so the test was a little premature.

As Arnie watched, another freighter flying a Panamanian flag eased to a stop forty yards off the oil rig and put out anchors. Maybe sea anchors at that depth, he figured.

He wiped one hand across his face and decided. Tonight was the night. He was going to swim out there and see what the hell they were doing. They had to be up to something fishy. Still, the inspectors had given them a go. He had his wet suit on the rig. He used it from time to time to go down and check the sea legs that extended down to solid footing on the channel seabed. A quarter of a mile wouldn’t even be a warm-up for him. Yeah, he’d go out tonight as soon as it got dark. He wouldn’t use his tanks, too damn heavy. He’d use a snorkel and stay just under the water. He’d done it a thousand times.

Arnie waited five minutes after midnight before he entered the water. It was an easy swim, and he used the snorkel. When he came up to the rig, he circled it once, then swam up to one of the steel legs and held on to it taking a rest. He could see nothing in the water that indicated anything strange going on. It had to be topside. It wasn’t one of the huge platforms, just an exploratory one, but still had a night crew and a hundred glowing lights. He could hear the machinery clanging away.

He pushed away from the steel ready to swim around to the surface platform and the ladders that extended up to the first level of the platform. For a moment he didn’t understand what he saw in front of him. Then he threw up his arms to try to protect himself.

The next morning Santa Barbara County Coroner Warren Watts shook his head as he looked at the body tangled in wire three feet underwater and against one of the legs of Oso Platform 27.

“How in hell did he get fouled up in wire like that? I didn’t think you guys were supposed to throw any solid trash into the water.” He looked at the body again. It was pinned against the steel legs of the tower with one arm sloshing back and forth with the swells.

“The damn-fool wet suit doesn’t seem to be damaged, and he’s still got the face mask around his neck,” the coroner said. The face with open eyes looked out at Watts through three feet of the clear Pacific Ocean. Two Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies stared at the body over Watts’s back.

Pete Rumford, the platform boss of 27, sat in the sheriff’s boat and shook his head as he looked at his worker. “Arnie Gifford is his name. He liked to scuba and free-dive. He was good at it. We used him to check our legs underwater. Nobody on board last night knew he was going to go diving. What would he be looking for at night? It just doesn’t make sense.”

The coroner scowled. “Probably drowned, but we can’t be sure until I do some work. Can you get a couple of men down here with bolt cutters and cut him loose so we can get him in the boat? This is the damnedest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” He looked at the older deputy sheriff. “You checked with the Coast Guard? They like to know when things like this happen. They’ll want to do a search for another body in the water if we think there might be one.”

“Didn’t even call them. Sheriff says it’s our jurisdiction on a felony. They’d just turn it over to us anyway. So why bother them? The sheriff is on another case. Said he’d come out later and talk.”

Ten minutes later they had the body in the boat. The coroner frowned. “You say he worked for you here at Platform 27?”

“Right, my best foreman. Why in hell was he diving at night? Nobody saw him get in the water.”

“I’ll let you know what the autopsy shows.”

The deputy sheriff at the tiller moved the boat up to the small water-level dock so the platform boss could step off; then he pushed the throttles forward and the twenty-two-footer raced toward the Santa Barbara harbor and the Sheriff and Lifeguard Dock.

An hour later Santa Barbara County Sheriff Hal Kirkendol leaned on the first level rail of Platform 27 and stared out where the platform boss pointed.

“Hell, Hal, you’ve known me for ten years. All I can say is the last thing Arnie told me last night before I went ashore was that he didn’t like what was going on out on Rig Number 4, right out there. We’ve all seen the big ships that anchor just off the platform. Nobody can figure out why freighters would stop there. The platform has its own resupply ship that makes daily runs. Why in hell those big freighters? Arnie was getting worked up about it, but I said not our business, nothing we can do about it anyway.”

“You telling me that Arnie’s drowning has something to do with that other platform?”

“Not saying that, Hal. That just the only thing I can think of that might be connected to Arnie dying. Hell, the men liked to work for him. He was good at his job. Got a good day’s work out of everyone including himself, and I can guarantee not a man on board would try to kill him.”

“Hey, nobody said anything about Arnie getting killed. He was diving, he got tangled up in that wire, and couldn’t get any air. I’ve seen a hundred reasons why people drown.”

“True, Sheriff. But I know Arnie. He was on a championship college swim team, almost went to the Olympics in the freestyle. He teaches scuba at the Y here in town. He takes a herd of kids free-diving every Saturday. Arnie is the last guy in the world who would drown, especially caught in a bunch of wire right around one of our platform legs. Part of his job was to dive down those legs once a week, all the way to the bottom, and remove any debris that might have hung up there. I can assure you that yesterday there was no mess of wire on the leg that held Arnie underwater. If he drowned, it’s because somebody surprised him and killed him. There’s no other way to look at his death. Arnie was murdered. That I’m sure of. Now I’m trying to figure out why.”

Sheriff Kirkendol rubbed his chin the way he had been doing lately when he had a case he couldn’t figure out. At last he nodded at the oil driller. “Okay, Pete. I’ve known you long enough to believe what you say. I didn’t know the swimming background on the dead man. You say he was murdered. That puts a whole new spin on the case. Why? Why was he killed? That’s the next thing we have to find out.”

“Maybe the answer is out there on Number 4.”

“Now you’re making a lot of assumptions, Hal. First you’re saying Platform Number 4 out there has something to hide. Next you indicate that it’s so secret that they will kill anyone who tries to find out about it, even a late-night swimmer around their platform. They would also have to use some kind of a security system that would warn them when any unauthorized boat or swimmer entered the protected zone around their tower. In the water that would have to be highly sophisticated. Then you’re saying that they have the killer or killers on the platform who could do the job. Those are a whole shitpot full of assumptions. Proving any or all of them is going to be one hell of a tough job.”

“Right, Sheriff, and that’s why you get the big bucks to do that work.”

Sheriff Kirkendol rubbed his chin a moment, then the back of his neck with his right hand. As soon as he realized he was doing it, he stopped. One of his women detectives had told him that the repeated gesture was a dead giveaway that he was worried, troubled, or stumped.

“So I take two men and go visit Platform Number 4.”

“You have jurisdiction?”

“Damn right. It’s in my front yard. So it’s wet. It’s still my own front yard. I’ve got a murder to solve and I’ll do what I have to and let the lawyers yell about it later. You want to come along?”

“Not a chance. I’ve got a rig to run. Besides, I don’t even want to talk to those guys. I might shoot off my mouth about my suspicions. You can do it with a much cooler touch.”

“Flattery…”

“Yeah, still works.”

Two hours later, Sheriff Kirkendol headed for Platform Number 4. He’d had a talk with the coroner, who’d put a rush on his cutting. He’d found two serious head wounds made by a blunt instrument. Neither severe enough to cause death. There was plenty of seawater in the dead man’s lungs, so technically he had drowned. But the man had had a lot of help.

“He must have been clubbed, then held underwater until he drowned. How he got back to his own drill rig is your job, Sheriff. I’m putting the death as a murder by person or persons unknown.”

“Don’t release that information yet,” the sheriff had said. “I have a courtesy call to make first.”

The sheriff had brought with him Nevin Irwin, a former SEAL who had been with him for almost two years handling all of the water-related problems including crimes on boats, drownings, and even one case of piracy. Irwin had blown out a knee on a heavily laden parachute jump somewhere over Europe, and had been eased out of the SEALs. If he couldn’t be in an action platoon, he didn’t want to stay in the service. He did another year on his enlistment in the support units at Coronado, then found his spot with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department.

The third man was a longtime deputy who handled the boats for the department. The sheriff had radioed the tower indicating he needed to visit the platform for a routine safety inspection. He asked for the safety engineer to be on hand, and was invited to come out at his convenience.

That turned out to be slightly after eleven o’clock that morning. The twenty-four-footer eased up to the water-level dock at Rig Number 4 where a man in a white shirt and tie met it.

“Preston,” the man said, holding out his hand to the sheriff. “Good to see you. Safety around here is one of our primary concerns. So far we have a hundred and eighty-two days without a lost-time accident. We want to keep that record going. Any suggestions you can make will help.”

“Just routine, Preston. We’ll try not to trip over anything. This is Deputy Irwin, who will go with us.” He waved for the boat driver to stay on the boat, and the three men climbed the steel steps that took them to the first level.

“As you can see, we’re a small platform,” said Preston. “None of those giants you may have seen. We have five levels, with the driller’s cabin in the top level. We have basic steel-pipe tendons with direct tendon-pile connections on the bed of the strait. We do work twenty-four hours a day, and we are so far a test hole that we hope will produce. Many of our crewmen are foreigners. We try to get the best men we can regardless of their country of origin. Do you have any questions?”

The noise of the drilling and the various motors running on the level above them set up a clatter and roar that made talking a little hard.

“Do you ever have any security problems? Like boats stopping by, fishermen, paddleboard guys, maybe sea lions crawling up on your little water-level dock down there?” Irwin asked.

“Not a problem. The sea lions get frightened off by the motors and the vibrations before they get anywhere near the platform. Then we do have a fisherman stopping by now and then just out of curiosity. Usually they just want to stare up at the platform and ask a few questions. We don’t exactly give them a guided tour, if you know what I mean.”

Sheriff Kirkendol listened to the reply critically. He couldn’t detect any reluctance or any hint that it wasn’t the truth. The man didn’t seem to be hiding anything.

They took a quick look at levels two and three, and twenty minutes later they were back in the boat heading for shore.

Deputy Irwin looked at his boss and shook his head. “Didn’t play right for me, Chief. Sounded like the guy was trying to hide something. And why is he wearing a white shirt and a tie on a greasy, oily, smelly place like a drilling platform? I just don’t trust the guy.”

Sheriff Kirkendol frowned. “I didn’t get that feeling, Nevin. He was smooth, maybe like he had worked over what he was going to tell us. But he answered your question off the top of his head and I bought it.”

“Maybe I’m just suspicious. I have a hard time accepting that a scuba man, snorkeling instructor, and college swimmer is going to drown in an accident like that. What bugs me is that somebody went to a lot of work with that wire to make it look natural. Still, it held the man three feet underwater. Besides, the dead man complained to his boss about that other platform. He may have been the kind of guy who decided he’d swim out there and take a look for himself. Do it at night when they wouldn’t see him. Can’t be more than five hundred yards, a warm-up for him.”

The head man in the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department lifted his brows and shook his head. “Hell, right now your doubts are the only thing we have to go on. We’ve got a murdered man on our hands, and so far not a hope of finding out who did it. How many men on the 27 platform where the man worked?”

“I saw a report that said it had about thirty men,” Irwin said.

“Okay, tomorrow we’ll send out three of our detectives and they will interview every man. We might turn up somebody who had a grudge against Gifford strong enough to kill him. Whoever murdered Gifford must also have been a diver, or at least a good swimmer. Something to watch for.”

“I’d like to go along.”

“Negative, Irwin. Interviewing is not your strong suit. I have three men who are experts at it. They’ll go out tomorrow and do a good job.”

“So that leaves me to do what?”

“You watch for any signs of activity or problems in the water around that tower. Large boats coming there and anchoring. Next time one does that, we get the Coast Guard and we go out and inspect the ship on some pretext. You keep in touch with Pete Rumford, that platform boss on 27. Whenever he spots a freighter dropping anchor near that Platform 4, have him give you a ring.”

“Yes, sir,” Irwin said, reverting to his SEAL training. He could take orders even if he didn’t like them. He spent the rest of the day on routine calls, and just after dark, drove his two-year-old SUV to his favorite parking spot when he went diving. He put on his wet suit, cap, and boots and took out the new Draegr III. It was the latest underwater rebreathing device, and didn’t leave a string of bubbles. This one was programmed to mix the right amount of chemicals with the oxygen so a diver could go as deep as he wanted to and still get the right mix of air. It was the same type he had used in the SEALs. He locked the SUV, put the key in the small flap pocket on the wet suit, and walked into the water off Goleta Point.

Nevin swam toward the lighted oil-drilling rig. He figured it was about two miles, not even a warm-up. He went down ten feet and stroked toward the tower the way he used to in the SEALs. His blown-out knee had been replaced and worked fine in the water. It was the parachute drops hitting the ground at twenty-one feet per second with two hundred pounds of equipment and ammo that his new knee couldn’t take. He loved the water. Sometimes he felt more at home in the ocean than he did on land. He surfaced with just his face out of the water. He was dead on course. A small moon gave off its feeble light, but he didn’t need it. The required marine lights were on the tower, plus a few hundred more bulbs to make sure no wandering tanker or freighter crashed into the rig.

Nevin went back down to ten feet and stroked toward the tower. He had no idea what he would find once he got there. He had looked at the steel pipes that extended downward into the depths when he had been there that morning. He could see about ten feet, and nothing had looked unusual.

At least he could do a good scouting job, and if he did find anything out of the ordinary, he’d go back out with the sheriff and make a thorough inspection. What could you hide around an oil-drilling rig? It didn’t make a lot of sense. But then neither did the murder of a man who the platform boss on 27 thought had had suspicions about Oil Rig 4.

The next time Nevin surfaced, he was fifty feet from the tower. He dove then, working down to fifty feet and sensing change in the air/chemical mix that would keep his body functioning despite the added depth pressure. He came on the first tendon and touched it. He circled it and looked upward. No huge mass obstructed his view of the surface where the half-moon and the rig’s lightbulbs gave off a faint glow. He dove down, checking the pipe all the way to the bottom. Nevin had no idea how deep the water was here, but well beyond what the old Draegr would tolerate.

Nothing. He found nothing. That troubled him. There had to be something here or nearby. What in the hell was going on? He worked his way back up. At forty feet he saw a swimmer above him, moving slowly back and forth from one steel tendon to the next. Hunting him, or patrolling? Either way it was bad news and good news. It could mean they knew he was there. The good news was if they had a swimmer out at night, they did have something to hide.

He worked up cautiously, trying to stay away from the swimmer above, confident that the one on top could not see him in the gloom of the deeper water. Then the swimmer above turned and came directly toward him. Nevin’s hand flashed to the KA-BAR knife in its leg scabbard. He had it out and ready when some sixth sense made him turn his head and look behind him. Another swimmer was there within arm’s reach and Nevin saw the blade in his hand. Nevin tried to power away, but he was too late. He hadn’t watched his back the way every good SEAL always did. The thrust of the blade missed his back, but cut a slit across the wet suit’s side, letting in a surge of cold water.

Nevin spun around to face the fighter just as the second diver above reached him and drove his own knife into the Draegr, disabling it and ripping off the mouthpiece. Nevin kicked and powered for the surface. He figured he had about ninety seconds. That was as long as he could hold his breath, and he was getting no air from the torn-apart Draegr. The second diver followed him, slashing at his kicking feet. Then he was closer to Nevin and the knife went into his side, daggering through the tough wet suit and bringing a gush of water into his screaming mouth.

His beating legs slowed and then stopped. Nevin had never felt pain like that. It overwhelmed him. It burned in his side; it exploded in his brain. He mouth refused to close and more water surged in. He tried to find the attackers. They had pulled back and he could barely make them out. They had attacked. Now they rested and let the sea claim one of her own. His arms went limp. He had no control over them or his legs. The lights from above fuzzed out, came back, then went almost black. He didn’t know if he was floating upward or sinking. He hadn’t thought about dying since leaving the SEALs. Now the idea came into his fogged brain and he rejected it. Spewed it out with the water in his mouth and held his breath. Another few strokes and he would be on the surface and find plenty of air. But his arms wouldn’t work. His side hurt like fire. For a moment his whole body shook, and then a strange calm settled over him. He looked up at the lights, but they faded more and more to a dusty gray, and then to full black. He let out the last breath in his burning lungs and let the Pacific Ocean stream into his mouth and nose. He couldn’t fight it anymore. He felt his whole body relax, and he knew then that he was sinking. There was no light or dark, there was only the cool, serene waters of the ocean. Now at last he had returned to the ocean from which life had begun so many millions of years ago. He was one with the sea. Then a total, inescapable, deadly deep darkness engulfed him and he sank deeper and deeper into the Santa Barbara Channel.