She stared at him, feeling a sense of disquiet. “Are you that good?”
“We both are,” he said with a smile. “Remember. You called us for help. We’re not here to make your life more difficult. We’re here to make sure you get off this rig safely and that this doesn’t happen again.”
“I hear you,” she said, looking worried. “I was planning on disabling the cameras, but you’re telling me that I shouldn’t?”
“It will make things a whole lot more suspicious if you did it,” he said.
“Maybe not,” she said. “We’ve got so many electrical issues now, stuff is going offline all the time.”
“They should be coming back online, if you’ve got a repair crew.”
“I’m not sure how much of a repair crew these guys are,” she said. “Honestly I think they’re just sitting around, eating and drinking, watching what’s going on.”
“Interesting,” Axel said. “A full analysis should be going on here. Tell us who is doing what roles here so that, when we get hooked up with the company men, we’ll know more of what’s going on.”
At that, she cracked a smile. “Mason looks good in the suit.”
Axel gave a tilt of his head. “So, who is what?”
“Chucky and Winslow are drillers. Between them, they’ve got at least a century of experience,” she said with an eye roll. “They were supposed to see what work was needed for the repairs. Jonesy is part IT, but he’s one of the machinists. So he’s supposed to be reporting on what machinery needs to be fixed and what’s involved. And then there’s Idiot—Phil. He’s, … well, he’s one of the engineers,” she said with a shrug, “but, along with the foreman, they were supposed to be doing studies to check the status on the other drills’ pressure and do an overall security system analysis.”
“And Denny is just the cook?”
“Cook and first aid,” she said, with a nod.
“Okay, so we need to find out where these supposed reports are.”
“I can tell you that I haven’t seen any one of them typing a report yet.”
“Do they not care?”
“I think they expect the new management will come in and will put their asses out anyway, so why bother.”
“Why bother? Because they need to,” Troy said. “They were told to do a job, and they damn well better do it. That right there tells us a lot about them.”
*
As soon as they slipped away from Berkley, they headed to the lower levels. Troy wanted to see the accident site for himself. The weather was building up to an ugly nightmare outside. As soon as they went outside—which they had to do each time they went from one level to the next—they lost the ability to speak to each other.
By hanging on to the railings of the rig, they made their way through to where the damage was. The fact that the two other drills were compromised, but one was still operational but shut down, was an interesting tactic, if it was intentional. Now the company had to decide if they would pour millions into fixing this or if they would completely walk away from it. But that would be almost impossible. These weren’t million-dollar rigs; billions were involved.
Would somebody do that just to avoid a rape charge? Mind you, anybody who was up for rape wasn’t too worried about anybody else’s feelings or actions. It was all about the violence of the sex act or for the sense of power. Bullies of the worst sort. So, in a situation like this? Then, hell yeah, the criminals were protecting themselves.
As Troy and Axel walked through the rig, it was sobering to see that the entire side of the station listed to one side. The anchors in some of the steel had been jolted apart, making walking treacherous on this damaged side.
Axel grabbed one of Troy’s shoulders to get his attention. The winds had picked up, splashing sea spray over them. Waves pounded up against the steel girders of the rig. Troy twisted around to look and saw his partner pointing. On the side of the drilling rig itself were signs of buckling from the inside. He didn’t understand what that was all about.
Axel bent forward and yelled, “Looks like the C-4 went inside the casing.”
“The housing around the anchors?”
He nodded. “Part of the support structures. Just enough to cause some damage.”
“But this here,” Troy yelled back, motioning at the whole area where the walkways were damaged, “was a separate blow.”
Axel nodded, his face grim. “This was definitely sabotage,” he hollered. “How anybody could say it isn’t is beyond me.”
“And that’s another consideration,” Troy called out. “Why would anybody try to make this look like anything other than what it was?”
“It’s a question of who they’ll blame.” After taking a good look and managing to get as many photos as they could, they made their way back inside.
As soon as the door shut, the pounding from their eardrums came to a complete stop. Troy took several deep breaths, letting his ears adapt to the relative silence of being inside again. “Pretty ugly out there,” he commented. He opened his coat, shaking off some of the ocean spray.
“Yeah,” Axel said. “I want to do a full search down here.”
“What are we looking for?” he asked. “Do we care about the cameras?”
Axel hesitated at that. He looked down at him and asked, “Can you shut them off?”
“Yeah, I can.” He pulled out his phone and accessed the system. As soon as he got into the spot he wanted, he immediately shut them down. “Okay,” he said, “we’ve got about eight minutes before the emergency override kicks it back up again.”
“Let’s go.”
They quickly raced through the lower section but found absolutely nothing to see. Rooms for equipment, yes. Rooms for storage of food and parts and basic medical supplies, yes. And a whole lot of industrial storage rooms, but not a whole lot else. And yet no signs of damage here or any equipment here that might have led to some damage like this.
At that point Troy said, “Okay, the cameras are back on.”
“Let’s grab a coffee,” Axel said, “and then check the other side at this level.”
Making their way back to the dining area, Denny still muttered over his stoves. He shot Troy and Axel an absentminded look and then glared when he realized who they were.
“Just after a hot coffee,” Troy said. “We made the mistake of venturing outside.”
“That’s your fault,” Denny said.
They grabbed coffee and immediately disappeared.
“Friendly sort, isn’t he?” Axel said.
“Not very often, I don’t think,” he said. “Typical. Nobody works on these rigs if they have a preference to work anywhere else.” And that was so true about a lot of it. But they paid well, so guys were usually here for the short term not the long term. Except for … “So what’s the story on Chucky and Winslow?”
Axel shrugged.
“Probably two bros who never could make it in the real world,” Troy said, having seen guys like that before too. They didn’t fit the norms; they didn’t deal with the modern digital world. This place here had completely stepped out of whatever the universe was like around the big cities. Those two old-timers would be stuck here until they died.