Offshore (13 page)

“
I suppose so. But it doesn’t explain where Lonny is now,”
said Lydia.

“
No, it doesn’t. Why don’t you leave it with me? I’ll inform
Mr Capstan of the situation and what we’ve found, and then we’ll
have a look see if we can’t find Lonny. It’s not like he can have
gone far is it?”

“
No. I suppose not,” said Lydia. “Thank you for your
help.”

“
My pleasure.”

Eddie
questioned the crew. No-one had seen Lonny Dick since the previous
afternoon when McDougal spotted him entering his cabin, looking a
little grouchy and out of sorts, an impression Euterich was keen to
cultivate.

He then
despatched them to make a quick search of all the obvious places
Lonny might be holed up feeling sorry for himself, while he paced
the main deck and examined every inch of the safety railing for a
fresh scratch or scuff, for a scrap of fabric or a stain that
shouldn’t be there, anything to substantiate a theory.

Feeling
rough and in need of some fresh air, Lonny had made his way to the
nearest open space.

Feeling
sick, he leaned over the safety rail to puke. A rogue wave rose up,
or a gust of wind took him, perhaps he simply overreached himself
and overbalanced. Three scenarios, one result - man
overboard.

He found
nothing.

Disillusioned, cold, soaked by sea spray, he slumped into the
tattered chair in the dog house, a general-purpose steel sided
construction adjacent to the drill floor, a combination of shelter,
tool shed, communications centre, coffee room and general meeting
place for the driller and his crew. He dragged weary hands over his
scratchy face, wiping away water running from hair plastered to his
head.

He had
never lost a man on his watch before.

People
had lost fingers and toes, such injuries were occupational hazards,
one had even lost an entire foot, sheared off at the ankle and
transported to the hospital still in his boot, and there had been
plenty of burns and broken bones and smacks on the head from loose
chains or ropes, but no one ever died while under his supervision.
In twenty years, not one fatality. He had been proud of that
statistic.

Shit!
Why did this assignment have to be the one on which to break his
duck?

“
Mr Capstan...?”

He
looked up to see Lydia Ellis. He hadn’t noticed her come in and now
she looked as if she were waiting for him to say
something.

“
Hmmmm? Sorry?”

“
I said are you okay?”

He
smiled weakly and brushed away a drip of water from his brow before
it rolled into his eyes. “Erm, yeah, thanks.” Sigh. “Actually,
no.”

“
You should come inside and get dry,” she said.

“
Doctor’s orders?”

“
Common sense. You’re as wet as an otter’s pocket and you
don’t want to get hypothermia.”

“
I will in a minute.”

She
perched one small buttock on the corner of the desk. “No
sign?”

Eddie
shook his head slowly. “No. Nothing.”

“
What happens now?”

He
stretched his arms over his head, arching his back until it
cracked. “A missing man’s got to be reported.” He hauled himself
from the chair and gave his face a final scrub with his hands.
“S’pose I’d better get it over with.”

“
I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind.”

“
Thanks,” he said. “I’d appreciate it.”

She kept
him company as far as the entrance to the habitat, where they
parted, she to find a warming cup of coffee, him to go radio the
bad news back to the company headquarters.

He took
a moment, staring out of the Control Room window overlooking the
work area, taking deep breaths as he organised his thoughts,before
he picked up the satellite telephone which would connect him
directly with Longdrift Headquarters and his line manager, William
Edgecombe. He related the details as he knew them and the actions
the crew had already taken.

Edgecombe’s voice of authority sounded tinny, brittle,
annoyed.
“You’re sure he’s gone overboard? You’ve searched
everywhere? Under every bed? In every broom cupboard? Every stall
in the heads?”

“
As best we can with just the
eight
of us,” said Eddie,
emphasising the lack of manpower. “The guys are still at it now,
but we’ve already searched high and low, twice. There’s no sign of
him.”

A serious amount of cursing came back over the
radio.
“I’ll
pass on the news to the chief, but he’s not going to like this one
bit. You’d better hang onto yer arse, Eddie.”
Pause.
“We’ll get back to you.”
Another pause
before the parting shot.
“What a fucking balls up.”

And he
was gone. Just like that. No good-bye, no over and out, just gone,
leaving Eddie hanging on the dead phone with no idea what to do
next.

He settled the handset back in its cradle,
closed his eyes and
slumped forward, letting his forehead
thunk
repeatedly against the desktop, each
little bounce off the Formica punctuated with a bitter, “Fuck –
fuck – fuck – fuck,” until he gave himself a
headache
.

He folded his arms over his head
and swore until the well of profanity
ran dry
.
He’d warned them, when they first proposed this little jolly and
dropped it on him that there were only to be twelve in the group,
he warned them it would be a disaster in the making. No
exaggeration.

When
they told him two days before they left that actually there would
only be nine instead, he should have told them where to get off,
walked away and refused to co-operate, refused to come.

They
wouldn’t have listened of course. They would simply have sent him
off to play in the quiet corner and sent some other poor bugger
instead.

Eddie
swore again, lurched to his feet and sloped off to the mess room to
find coffee, sulking every step of the way. He and this little band
of reprobates had been given the unenviable task of effectively
forensically scrutinising every inch of the platform section by
section, from the lowest point on the sea bed 120 metres down, to
the tip of the drill derrick 150 metres above sea level, four
fifths the height of the Eiffel tower in all, and once ensconced on
their concrete and metal island they would spend their days
inspecting and testing its structural integrity, both above and
below the water line, fixing faults if able, photographing and
recording it for further action by others if not.

They
were to inspect every item of electrical and mechanical equipment
and pipework for faults, leaks and any potential deficiencies, from
the mighty mud pump right down to the last light bulb and door
knob. And why, because Falcon Bravo was a costly failure for
Longdrift and it was their job to make sure it wasn’t in danger of
collapsing into the sea before it could be sold.

A
hundred and eighty million pounds in the commissioning, it wasn’t a
particularly large platform but it started off full of promise, its
main bore and five satellite wells pumping out a steady 700 to 1100
barrels a day, for six years straight.

But the
reservoir did not turn out to be the bottomless pit the
petrologists and geologists at first suggested. Despite the best
efforts of the engineers and every new innovation they threw at it,
within six short months production tailed off to no more than an
embarrassing trickle.

And then
almost overnight, it fell as dry as a mummy’s armpit, quickly doing
an about turn to become a well in reverse - sucking in money at one
end while throwing out nothing more substantial than tension
headaches, stomach ulcers and falling share prices at the
other.

Those
who knew about these things put their heads together and decided it
would be more cost effective to shut the whole operation down
completely and move production to another more profitable
field.

Bore
holes were flooded with cement and sealed, wellheads were capped
and made safe, and the drilling equipment withdrawn and
dismantled.

Anything
that wasn’t nailed down, welded to, or an integral part of the
structure was packed up and shipped off, lock, stock and tungsten
carbide bit. Up went the metaphorical ‘For Sale with Vacant
Possession’ sign, and Bravo waited in the cold and the wet and the
fog for someone to save her, and spare her the most likely end to
her short career - to be ignominiously towed back to the rig
graveyard, to be picked over, picked apart and selectively
dissected, for her choicest parts to be carefully carved out and
sold for so much scrap to be recycled into something more useful,
and for the valueless remnants to be sent to the bottom and left to
rot.

Longdrift allowed another year for a reasonable offer to come
forward. In the meantime, Bravo could not just be left to fall
apart. A minimal amount of periodic safeguarding still had to be
carried out to maintain what little value it managed to hang on
to.

Every
new spot of rust, fresh crop of barnacles, and coating of guano ate
not only into the structure itself, but its final valuation, and it
would not be worth the bedrock it stood on if it should happen to
collapse to the seabed or be blown to smithereens for simple lack
of maintenance.

And this
was where Eddie Capstan and his little team came in. They were
supposed to spend the 99 days of their assignment surveying the
structure from derrick tip to sea bed, taking samples and
photographs, cleaning off rust and bird muck. They were also
expected to grab a brush and give the place a touch up paint job
wherever it needed it, generally sprucing the place up. What an
estate agent might refer to as improving Bravo’s ‘kerb
appeal’.

Eddie
would file periodic status reports on their progress, and
Longdrift, after holding long and interesting meetings around shiny
tables with doughnuts and coffee, would decide what to do
next.

With
only nine pairs of hands it was proving to be hard work, both
tedious and dangerous in equal measure, but they were all well
trained in their fields and had a decent mix for best efficiency -
brains and brawn, specialism and non-specific, female delicacy and
downright physical brutality.

They had
every tool, device and hi-tech toy at their disposal to make the
job as safe as possible, but were not so complacent as to rely on
these alone. Some low tech grunt stuff would be kept in reserve,
because no matter how sophisticated an operation, Sod’s law
dictated that if they didn’t, a case would always arise when there
would be no substitute for brute force and ignorance – a guy like
Lonny Dick fitted that role to perfection.

All they
had to do was get the job done, get back to shore, draw their
vastly inflated financial incentive and go their separate
ways.

They
were doing okay, until yesterday, when it turned into a scene of
tragedy and Eddie knew without a shadow of doubt that those back in
their comfy onshore offices would be cooking up ways to ensure he
would be the one to get all the blame.

He was a
man set adrift in shark infested waters in a leaking dinghy made of
meat.

The crew
sat, or slouched, around the lounge under a heavy blanket of sullen
silence, broken only by the clunk of the wall clock marking out the
passing seconds as each them contemplated their own
mortality.

Brewer
stared at the ceiling, McDougal picked at his nails, McAllister sat
with his chin cupped in his hands, staring at the blank black
rectangle of the dead TV. Reynolds flicked through a magazine and
Cameron cradled a mug, studying its contents.

Eddie
returned from the galley, cup of coffee in hand, and under
Reynolds/Euterich’s oddly cold and detached gaze joined Lydia where
she stood apart from the rest, staring out of the picture window at
the expanse of sea beyond, to where the grey of the sky mingled
with the darker grey of an oncoming cloudbank out on the
horizon.

“
Have you done it?” she said.

He
scrubbed at his brow. “Yeah.”

“
What did they say?”

“
Not a lot, but I can read between the lines. I’m in charge,
it’s my fault.”

“
Bollocks. If anyone is responsible it’s me,” she said. “I
should have checked on him earlier. As soon as he reported sick he
became my patient. I was responsible for his welfare from then on
in, and I let him down.”

Eddie
laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You weren’t to know he’d
go wandering off.”

“
I should have kept a closer eye on him. I should have made
him stay in sickbay. I should have –” Pause. “If you’ll excuse me.
I have to file a report too.”

She
walked out from under his hand, and away, and right at that moment
Eddie wished he too could be anywhere in the world but in that
room.

He felt
the walls begin to close in on him, a kind of creeping
claustrophobia, and he turned back to the window and the openness
beyond.