Assignment Black Gold (21 page)

“I want some more answers.”

“You won’t get them from her the way she is.”

He slapped Betty Tallman’s face again. The woman moaned and
mumbled something. He struck her again, still lightly, and once more, harder.
She opened her eyes.

“Huh?”

“Betty, are you sure Hobe went out to the rig?”

“Sure. Sure I’m sure.”

“Did he mention his private drilling log?"

“Don’t know what—you’re
talkin
’
about."

“You know very well what I’m saying. You’re not as drunk as
you pretend to be. Tell me exactly what Hobe said and did, after you told him
about Madragata and yourself.”

The blond woman grinned foolishly. Kitty had helped wash the
streaked makeup from her face, and now she looked older, worn and exhausted.
She said, “A cigarette?”

There were cartons of them in the forward locker. Durell
shook out a pack. When he turned, Betty was sitting up on the bench and leaning
forward, holding herself as if she had a stomach ache.

“Oh, Lord, it’s coming back to me now.”

“The things Hobe said?”

“The things I told him. About me and Madragata. I was really
crazy. I gave him all the details. Poor Hobe.”

Durell lit a cigarette and handed it to her. The woman
dragged in the smoke hungrily and pushed her straggly hair back from her
forehead with an oddly delicate gesture.

“I want to know about Hobe’s private logs.”

“I don’t know anything about that. But Hobe said he was
going to kill Madragata if he—if Madragata touched the Lady.”

“What did that mean?”

“Madragata is on the rig.”

Durell’s face was without expression. “He’s with the
.guerrillas, attacking the town.”

“Uh-uh. He wants the rig.”

“What can he do with it?”

“I don’t know. Hobe means to stop him, whatever it is. Hobe
said the rig was the whole thing, you know? It all depends on the rig. But he
was going to fix Madragata for doing—because of me and Madragata. He said
he didn’t care if he was poor for all the rest of his life, or in jail, or
whatever. It was crazy. He talked like he was out of his head.”

The cigarette fell from the woman’s loose fingers.
Durell picked it up from the desk and crushed it out. Kitty had finished
wiping down the Magnum and new was checking out the Remington. She seemed to be
quite familiar with both rifles.

Betty fell backward on her bench and closed her eyes again.
A wet streak of spittle oozed from a corner of her slack mouth.

The respite from the storm did not last long. A darkness
grew, swelling from astern, and quickly overtook them with a howl of roaring
wind and a blast of salt spray and rain that drenched the lifeboat and blotted
out everything within twenty feet of the vessel. The stern lifted high and the
lifeboat slewed down a long, seething slope of water and buried its decked bow
under the next sea. The boat trembled with the shock, seemed to shake itself,
and then the bow lifted with the pressure from the flotation cells in her
hull. They lifted slowly, streaming water. Then it was as if something hit them
amidships and spun them halfway around. A giant comber hung over them like a
white, churning cliff. When the water came down, it was with the force of tons
of pressure, a crash and a roar that made the boat shudder. Matt lost his grip
on the wheel and went sliding aft. Durell grabbed for him, caught a flailing
arm, hauled back to catch the spinning wheel with his other hand. It was
difficult to hang on to both.

Matty’s forehead looked bloody where he had banged his face
against something. His eyes were glazed. But his grip on Durell’s hand did not
slacken.

The lifeboat slewed and climbed up another sea. The wind
wanted to take her and broach her broadside. Durell spun the wheel and kept
them moving forward. He thought he heard the diesel engine falter, but then its
thudding rhythm became normal again.

Matty pulled himself upright, clung to the gunwale, and then
worked his way back to the tiny binnacle.

“Thanks, Sam."

“You pulled me out of the bayous once or twice,” Durell
reminded him.

“That was long ago.”

“How is your head?”

Matt touched the long bloody welt above his bushy brows. He
seemed surprised to see the blood on his fingers. He watched it wash
quickly away in the drenching rain.

“I'm all right. Just was took all at once, is all. Give me
the wheel again.”

“I can handle it,” Durell said.

“We ought to see the Lady’s lights soon.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t think it will be better there than right here.”

Durell said, “It’s a big platform. Safe enough.”

“It ain’t safe,” Matty said. “Not with Hobe aboard. He’s
going to blow it up.”

“Blow it up?”

Matty dabbed at the bloody cut on his forehead. His square
face was grim. “That’s what he came out here for. When I figured it out,
l knew I had to stop him. So I skipped out of the hospital and came here. Too
rough to fly. No chopper available, anyway.”

“How did you hear about Hobe while you were in the
hospital?”

“Colonel Lepaka told me. He visited me, after he saw you.
Talked about Betty. Still wanted to know about me and Betty. Nothing to it, I
told him.”

“But what about Betty and Madragata?”

Matty looked at him with surprised eyes, but his mouth
tightened and he shook his head. He did not answer.

Durell said, “I‘ll take the wheel. You’d better get yourself
a drink down below.”

Chapter 19.

It was not luck or navigation. It was instinct, an oilman’s
keen sense of smell for oil. It was not yet noon before the lights and loom of
the giant ocean platform appeared out of the rain and breaking seas ahead of
the boat.

A long string of red, yellow, and green lights flickered
and flashed from the drilling tower, showing through the gray scud of
rain and spray. The lights had not been on before, when they had come out here
in Kitty’s launch. But that had been in broad daylight, before the storm.
Perhaps the switchers aboard were automated. But it looked as if someone had
gone around the platform and snapped on every light available. The windows in
the crew’s quarters, the machinery shack, and around the housing of the well pattern
were all ablaze. Without them, they might have missed the Lady by miles and
kept on going out into the storm-swept Atlantic.

“Somebody expecting us?” Matt muttered. “How come?"

“Maybe the signal went out by radio.”

“No radioman left aboard, remember?”

“Somebody could have come here last night.”

“Somebody did," Matty said. “Look.”

Lashed fore and aft to the girders that supported the
heliport was a boat. Its mast swung and swayed in the lee of the wind. It was
one of the fishing boats Durell had seen on the beach when he and Kitty
walked south to find the Saka. Or a boat just like it. It was big enough
to hold over twenty men. Durell was just as pleased he had brought the Magnum
rifle.

“We can get aboard over there,” Matty pointed to an iron
ladder that had been lowered down the rusty sides of the Lady.

“Find another place,” Durell said. “They might be waiting.
Maybe they know we’re coming. Tie up alongside the fishing boat.”

Matty turned the wheel again. “They took a hell of a Chance,
coming out here in that native hulk.”

“Desperate men take desperate chances,” Durell said.

“You really think we’re expected?”

“I think so.”

“Lepaka, maybe?"

“No,” Durell said. “I have to trust Lepaka.”

“He’d like to be a military dictator,” Matt said.

“I don’t believe that.”

The girls came up out of the small cabin. Betty Tallman
looked better. Her eyes were clearer, although her face was still pale, and she
had made an effort to brush and tie up her blond hair.

Kitty carried both rifles.

The bulk of the platform, With its six huge cylindrical
columns that supported the rig above the surface of the ocean, tended to break
the force of the wind and waves, although the lifeboat pitched and tossed
wildly as they circled to the west. Durell watched the railings on the platform
deck. Nobody appeared there, high above them, to challenge their approach. The
roar of the seas was deafening as a wave broke against the cylinders. The gray
wind whistled in varying crescendos under the platform.

Matty and Durell tied up next to the fishing boat. The
seas lifted and fell under them. The fishing boat stank, even in the
harsh, cold wind that rushed by.

“The girls should stay here,” Matty said.

“No,” said Kitty.

“Not a chance,” Betty Tallman said.

Matty said, “I thought you and Hobe were split. We could get
killed up there.”

“I feel different about Hobe now.”

Durell said, “Kitty is a good shot. We could use her, Matt.”

Matty shrugged and they crossed the rough plank deck of the fishing
boat and started up the steel stairs that
zig-zagged
back and forth up to the underside of the deck. There were spotlights fixed
here and there among the struts and girders, and all of them were ablaze. Above
the noise of the sea and the wind, Durell could hear the thumping of the two‘
Caterpillar D 398-TB diesels that ran the 520-KW AC generators aboard the rig.

He went up first. Matty followed, and then the girls.
Matty had a Colt .45 that he had pulled from under his belt. Durell wondered
where he had gotten it since he left the hospital. He kept the Magnum for
himself. Kitty carried the Remington. Betty did not have any weapons, but Kitty
thrust a flare pistol into her unwilling hand.

Nobody was on guard at the upper hatch. It was a relief to
feel the stability of the platform deck under their feet, after the pitching of
the lifeboat for so long.

Matt cupped his mouth to Durell’s ear. “How many Apgaks came
aboard from the fishing boat, do you think?”

“Maybe a dozen. Maybe twenty.”

“They must’ve got Hobe already.”

“Perhaps. Where would Hobe hide out?”

“Forward, near the drilling tower.”

“Why not his office in the laboratory quarters?”

“Not if he saw them coming,” Matt said.

The crew’s quarters were deserted, although bright with
lights. Durell saw pools of water on the deck, leading toward the doorway that
led to the area where the drilling pipe was stacked. The Apgaks from the fishing
boat hadn’t arrived here much sooner than themselves, obviously.

He pushed carefully on the door that led out to the
platform’s main deck. His gun was up and ready. The door opened outward, and there
was weight against it, holding the panel shut. He shoved harder. Something
rolled aside, and he saw the body of a dead man, red headband around the head,
a rifle spilled to the wet steel deck nearby. An Apgak. The man had been shot
in the chest.

The
rainswept
deck, with its
clutter of machinery, mud-mixing tanks, piping, and crates, seemed to be empty.
The wind-force lessened for a few moments. He stepped outside, into the rain.
As the screaming of the wind dropped to a lower pitch for a moment, he heard
the shooting.

The Link LS-108-B crawler crane, its boom swinging down, was
moving across the cluttered deck amidships.

Durell could not see who was in the control cab. The boom
came down farther, swung viciously across the deck, and knocked over a pile of
wooden crates. Machinery parts spilled from the crates, which shattered and
burst with the impact.

“What the hell?” Matty muttered behind him.

“Would that be Hobe in there?”

‘“Can’t tell. They’re
shootin
’ at
him, though.” Matt hefted his heavy Colt. “Maybe we ought to help him.”

“He doesn‘t need help right now.”

The firing seemed to ring the massive, clattering
cargo derrick that moved slowly over the steel plates of the platform. There
was another swipe of the lowered boom, and a pile of stacked well piping went
askew, the tubes rolling with loud
bangings
and
clatterings
toward the rail. Two men in red headbands
scattered from behind their masked concealment and ran for new cover.

Betty said, “It’s got to be Hobe, running that thing.”

A sputter of automatic rifle fire sent a hail of
bullets toward the crawler derrick. The slugs bounced off the heavy steel
plates with effect. One of the small windows in the Link’s cab suddenly
shattered.

“Come on," Durell decided. “Kitty. keep Betty here. You
can cover us with your rifle. Matt, come with me.”

The force of the wind made his shirt flap and flutter
at his back. The rain came down in long, wavering patterns. Spray from a comber
burst as high as the lowest railing of the platform. From up here, they could
see the turmoil of the tortured ocean, the steady march of twenty-foot waves,
the blasts of spray where the wind took the tops off the combers. The deck
trembled. It should have been solid, even in this weather, but Durell felt the
trembling through the soles of his boots.

Matt said, “If that‘s Hobe, what the hell does he think he’s
doing?”

Betty spoke behind them. “I see Madragata. He’s over there.”
She pointed forward.

“Madragata," Matty said, “has to be back in the city,
leading his goddamn Red coup."

“I tell you, it’s him! I see him!” She paused when Durell
looked back at her. “He’s gone now.”

Durell could see the Apgaks moving from cover to cover as
the Link crawler crane moved about the main deck like some agonized,
prehistoric monster. The Apgaks kept firing at it. The sounds of their
guns were small
poppings
and cracklings against the
noise of the wind and sea. Durell spotted six, then ten, then over a dozen of
the men with the red headbands. There was no doubt that they meant to get the
operator of the crawler derrick. There was not too much room for the Link to
maneuver, and then it came up against the heavy base of the Clyde stiff-legged
boom, where Durell had found Brady Cotton’s body on his first visit to
the Lady.