The Ark: A Novel (8 page)

"They're waiting for my orders."

"What are our options?" Cutter always had a backup plan, and he didn't disappoint.

"We already have a plan in place. My men are prepared to take out the entire rig."

"It has to look like an accident," Garrett said. "Locke's murder would open up even more questions."

"It'll look like negligence on the part of the oil company. With over 200 deaths, a billion dollar oil platform destroyed, and oil flowing into the north Atlantic, they'll have their hands full. A full-scale investigation will take weeks."

Garrett smiled and looked out at the smog that would soon be a distant memory.

"Excellent," he said. "By the time they find out what really happened, it will be far too late to stop us."

While they waited for their food, Locke listened intently to Dilara's story about Sam Watson's death and her subsequent car crash, only stopping her to clarify. She wasn't lying, that much he was sure of. Which left him with what? That either she was the victim of a bizarre set of coincidences or that he was somehow connected to some vast conspiracy bent on killing this lone woman. Neither option seemed likely, so he withheld his opinion.

The cheeseburgers arrived still steaming hot from the mess grill. Dilara and Locke interrupted their discussion to dig into them.

"This is amazing," Dilara said after one bite. "Am I delusional from the cold, or is this the best burger I've ever had?"

"Gotta keep the workers out here happy, so the ingredients are top-notch. They're out here three weeks at a time. The company would have a riot on their hands if they served crummy food."

Dilara chewed in silence. The food and coffee brought a brightness back to her eyes.

"You didn't take the bait about me being delusional," she said. "You think I am, don't you?"

"Honestly, I don't know what to think" Locke said. "You don't seem delusional to me, but then again, I haven't known you that long."

"Are you going to help me?"

"I'm not sure what you're asking me to do."

"I'm not either, but I know people are trying to kill me and that the secret to this whole thing will be revealed if we can find Noah's Ark. You're involved somehow. Sam was sure of it."

Locke put up his right hand. "I swear I don't know where Noah's Ark is. Scout's honor." He couldn't help but be slightly sarcastic. Or maybe excessively sarcastic. He wasn't a good judge of his own level of sarcasm.

"Believe me, I get that. But whoever tried to kill me doesn't want me to talk to you. There must be a reason."

Locke sighed. She wouldn't give up until he gave her something. "I'll have my guys look into Coleman Consulting, but I have a job to finish here, and then I have to be in Europe in two days for another job."

"You have to cancel it."

"Listen, I'd like to help you..."

"What about the helicopter? You said yourself that the crash seemed odd."

Locke shrugged. "It could have been some kind of explosive device, but it also could have been a fractured turbine blade or some other mechanical problem. The water here is over 1000 feet deep. It'll take weeks, if not months, to recover the helicopter."

"We don't have that kind of time! It's already Saturday night. Whatever is going to kill billions will be set in motion this coming Friday."

"Look, you're welcome to stay on board as long as you need. I've already okayed it with the rig manager. But if there's no connection with Coleman, there's nothing else I can do. You'll have to take it up with the police."

For this first time, discouragement crept into Dilara's voice. "I already tried that in LA. They said Sam died of a heart attack, and they said the SUV that slammed into me was probably just a drunk driver."

"Maybe he was."

It was her turn to be sarcastic. About medium level. "So I see a man die in front of me, I get into a car accident that could have killed me, and then I barely escape a helicopter crash with my life, all in the span of three days? Come on. I can see you don't believe that."

Locke had to admit: this woman was tenacious. "I've never been a fan of coincidences, but I've seen them before. Still, that's a nasty run of bad luck."

"I'm not planning to play blackjack any time soon. I just need some help."

Locke popped the last bite of his burger into his mouth and waited to speak until he finished it.

"Okay, I'll check it out myself, but I can't promise anything," he said. "I'll talk to John Coleman myself tomorrow. Maybe he knows something about this."

"Thank you," Dilara said, obviously relieved to have someone else on her side. Locke was interested to hear what Coleman had to say, but he didn't expect much. His guess was that Sam Watson had been wrong about Locke. Perhaps it was John Coleman that was involved in all of this.

Dilara finished her burger, and the fatigue finally overtook her. Locke escorted her back to her cabin and told her he'd let her know the minute he heard anything, but since it was a Saturday, he didn't expect any information until at least the next morning. Then he retired to his own cabin. Locke wanted to get some information about Coleman before he contacted him, so he sent an email back to Aiden MacKenna at Gordian's Seattle headquarters, which was four and a half hours behind Newfoundland Time. After it went out over the rig's wi-fi system, Locke passed out on his bunk, exhausted from the day's events.

At 1:15 in the morning, a chime from his laptop woke him. Feeling rested from a few hours of sleep, he turned the computer towards him and saw that he had an instant message. It was from Aiden, Gordian's top expert in information retrieval. Locke often used his services to salvage electronic data from disaster sites, but Aiden was a renaissance computer whiz and could tackle almost anything Locke threw his way. Locke wasn't surprised to see that he was checking his email at 8:45 on a Saturday night.

Tyler, my man, I've got your answer. You awake?
the message said.

I am now. Where are you?
Locke replied.

At home, playing Halo and shooting Red Bull with some nerds from the office. I'm kicking ass, BTW. I would have answered you sooner, but I just saw your message.

What did you find out?

You haven't heard from John Coleman in a while, have you?

Not for six months. Why?

He's dead. Freak accident.

Dead? John Coleman was only in his fifties and seemed to be in perfect health.

What happened to him?
Locke typed.

Instead of a reply, the computer window said,
Connection lost
. Great timing. Just when they were getting to the good part.

Locke checked his connection to Scotia One's wi-fi network, but it was showing 100%. He tried to pull up Google, but all he got was an error page. That meant the rig's connection to the Internet was down.

Scotia One was equipped with a satellite antenna that served as its connection to the outside world. The workers on board could use it to surf the web and send emails when they weren't working. It also served as a backup to the platform's radio. There could be only two explanations for the connection to be down. Either there was some kind of internal glitch, or the antenna itself was disabled.

Locke looked out the window. The fog was still heavy, and the sea was relatively calm. The conditions made a mechanical failure unlikely. With no storm to damage the equipment, the antenna should be intact. It must have been some kind of electrical or software problem.

He picked up the phone and called the control room. It was answered by Frank Hobson. Locke remembered him as timid man with black horn-rimmed glasses who always worked the graveyard shift alone.

"Hi, Tyler," he said in a reedy voice. "What can I do for you?"

"Frank, I'm having some trouble with the Internet. When will it be back up?"

"I didn't even know it was down. You're probably the only one up at this hour using it. Let me check." Locke heard tapping on a keyboard. "Yup, it's out here, too."

"Can you isolate the problem? I was messaging someone and got cut off."

Hobson paused. More tapping. "The software checks out. Maybe it's a mechanical problem. Might be the satellite dish. I'll have to call someone to look at it."

"I can do that for you." Locke was awake now and eager to get the rest of the story from Aiden, so he thought he might as well get some air.

"You know where it is?"

"Yeah, Grant and I were working on it a couple of days ago when we were trying to diagnose that electrical problem. If it looks like an electrical glitch, I'll haul Grant out of bed."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Locke hung up, stood, and stretched. He threw on his jeans and jacket and headed outside.

The night air was crisp, and the ever-present smell of oil flowed over him with the breeze. Even this late, workers roamed the rig, oil production being a 24-hour job. Visibility was limited to 30 feet. The screech of some sort of grinding tool pierced his ears every few seconds.

Locke stepped onto the catwalk that led to the top of the habitat module, where the satellite dish was located. Ahead of him, barely visible through the haze, Locke could make out the figure of a man dressed in a black jumpsuit disappearing into the mist toward the lifeboat evacuation stairs. He had something slung over his shoulder, but Locke couldn't make out what it was before he was gone. Maybe he had already fixed the dish. Locke called out twice, but the man didn't respond. Must not have heard him over the grinding noise.

Locke reached the stairs and climbed up to the antenna cluster that formed Scotia One's communications link. The satellite dish was about six-feet across, pointed at a geosynchronous satellite, and the radio antenna was 30-feet tall, with plenty of power to reach St. John's 200 miles away. Neither was damaged.

He trailed the wires leading from the dish, and an iciness knotted his stomach when he saw the problem. The wires had been cut and a section removed. Whoever had done it was skilled. Locke followed the wires from the radio mast and found the same thing. The wires ended in a control box, which had been smashed. Someone didn't want them in touch with the outside world.

Locke could think of a few reasons why someone would go to that trouble, and none of them had a happy ending. He rushed down to the control room and burst through the door, startling Hobson, the only man inside it. His thick glasses magnified his eyes to a cartoonish size.

"We have an emergency," Locke said curtly. "Someone cut the wires to the antennas and destroyed the control junction."

Hobson leaped out of his chair. "What? Who would do that?"

"Get Finn and tell him there's an intruder on the platform."

"An intruder?" Hobson said, recoiling at the thought.

"I saw him a few minutes ago. At the time I just thought he was just a rig worker wearing an outfit I hadn't seen before, a black jumpsuit." The intruder must have known it wouldn't take much time for the crew to discover the destroyed equipment, which meant he wasn't going to be on board much longer. Locke had to catch him before he got away, and for that he needed Grant's help. For all Locke knew, there were multiple intruders, and they were heavily armed. That notion disturbed Locke, but it would terrify Hobson, so he didn't mention it.

"How could anyone get on board?" Hobson asked.

"Maybe he climbed up. Doesn't matter. Before you call Finn, get Grant Westfield and tell him to meet me at the lifeboats. Quietly. You know his cabin number?"

Hobson nodded. "Should I activate the alarm?"

"No. That'll tip off the intruder that we know he's here." Locke needed to find out why this guy would want to cut off their communications. He wished he could get his hands on a gun, but an oil platform was the last place that they would let him bring his trusty 9mm Glock, and they certainly didn't stock shotguns on board.

He had to hope he and Grant would be able to handle the situation. In a battle, Locke preferred staggering force against an overmatched opponent. If there were two armed intruders, he and Grant could handle it. They had been up against worse odds than that before. But if there were three or more, they could have real problems, so some kind of weapon might make a difference.

Hobson snatched up the phone and dialed. Locke went to the door, but before leaving, he said, "Frank, tell Grant to stop at the tool room and pick up two big, fat wrenches."

Locke crept down the stairs until the lifeboats were in view. He felt naked. No gun. No situational intelligence. No plan. Although he could improvise with the best of them, he'd rather put together a well-thought-out plan of attack that--like all Army operations--went to hell
after
the mission started. Instead, he'd already skipped to the second part, which made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.

Through the fog, he saw the man in the black jumpsuit hunched over the hatch of the rightmost lifeboat, attaching to something to it. He was in his thirties, dirty blond, medium build, no visible tattoos. A silenced Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hung from his shoulder by a strap. He seemed to be alone. Visibility was now over 30 feet, and lot of open space separated him from Locke. It would be almost impossible to sneak up on him.

Locke felt a tap on his shoulder. Fists up, he whirled around to find Grant crouching behind him. For a big man, he was as light on his feet as Fred Astaire. Locke was glad Grant was on his side.

Grant was carrying two heavy pipe wrenches, both two feet long. Big enough to be good weapons, but not so large that they'd be unwieldy. Good man. Grant handed one to Locke, who rested it on his shoulder.

Bad guy
, Locke signed to Grant using American Sign Language.
We need a distraction.

What did you have in mind?
Grant signed back.

Locke's grandmother was deaf and had taught him ASL soon after he learned to talk. When he joined his combat engineering unit, Locke saw how useful it could be in situations requiring stealth and added it to their normal repertoire of tactical hand gestures. Grant had picked it up quickly.