The Ghost Pattern

…1

Chief Ramsay paced the room impatiently, muttering curses under his breath and looking out the same window every two seconds, although the view stayed eerily the same. A cold and foggy Aberdeen morning, engulfed in fog so thick it condensed water droplets on everything it touched, including his office window.

He picked up the radio and tried again.

“Nancy Belle, Nancy Belle, this is Shore Base, come in, over?”

He released the radio button, listening intently and hearing nothing. “C’mon, c’mon, where the hell are you?” he whispered impatiently.

His typical mornings were a lot different from that particular one. He’d come in the office a few minutes before 8:00AM, shaking off the humid chills brought by the thick Aberdeen fog, and heading straight for the coffee machine. He’d brew a fresh cup, then enjoy it while making his morning rounds. That was a figure of speech, of course. He rarely left the shore base. Once a rig was in production, barring some unforeseen event, the head of shore base operations had no reason to visit in person. His morning rounds consisted of radio calls with each of the drilling platforms under his purview, making sure everything was running well. He’d check the status of operations for each rig, and receive reports for everything from staff health to outstanding work orders for parts and repairs.

That would have been a routine morning. This time, things were different.

Nancy Belle, or NB64, was one of the three offshore oilrigs he was responsible for, and it was not reading on any comm. The night before NB64 had signed off with a “status normal, nothing to report” code, and now there was nothing, not a single sound coming from the platform on any channel. It was as if the milky fog had swallowed it whole.

A quick rap on the door, and the shift supervisor came in uninvited.

“Boss?” he said, rubbing his forehead hesitantly.

“Yeah, what do you have?”

“Nothing, dead silent on radio, on sat, all of it is dead. I tried a few personal cell phones, none pick up. Even video is down, all of it.”

“What?” Ramsay stopped and turned on his heels to face his shift lead.

“Yeah, boss, all video feed is down for 64.”

“Damn… bloody hell, what happened to those boys? Have any of the other rigs reported anything?”

“No, nothing,” the man replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, while the frown on his forehead became more pronounced under the rim of his hard hat. “But they don’t have eyes on them either… fog’s too thick.”

Ramsay went to the window and pressed his binoculars against it, squinting hard against the eyecups, trying to make something out in the milky haze that had swallowed everything like a shroud. His other rigs weren’t visible yet either, but NB64 was the farthest one out; it would be a while.

“There’s one,” he said, pointing in the direction of a familiar shape almost completely hidden in the fog.

“That’s 27,” the other man confirmed. “If we can see 27, it shouldn’t be that long before we put eyes on 64.”

“Nancy Belle, Nancy Belle, come in, goddamnit,” Ramsay tried again and got no response. “Go try video again, will ya’?”

The man left quietly. He returned within minutes. “Nothing, boss.”

Ramsay stuck his face against the cold window and squinted some more.

“There she is,” he said, as the fog lifted a little more, enough for him to discern the familiar silhouette of NB64 against the gray mist. “She’s still there!”

Ramsay grabbed his binoculars and looked at 64 again. “Yeah, seems to be in one piece, no flames, no smoke.”

He made another attempt to raise the rig by radio, then turned to his lead and said, “You know the procedure. We can’t wait any longer; it’s been almost an hour. We have to assume the worst. Get SAS and emergency response ready, and meet me on the helipad.”

Minutes later, the rotor blades of a SA 330E Puma helicopter ripped through the lifting fog as it headed toward the eerily silent NB64.