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“We’re brothers.” The bearded American smiled. “Ironic, huh?”
Kate sighed.
“Am I boring you? Maybe if one of my men tuned you up a little, you’d be more interested in my witty observations.” Abu Nasir laughed. “Well, anyway, the president of the United States has just sent him out to negotiate with us.”
“Good,” Kate said.
“The thing about my brother, we never got along. Every time we talk, we end up in a fight. So I’m wondering if talking to him would be . . . what’s the word I’m looking for? Unproductive?”
As Abu Nasir was talking, several of his men came up on the deck and began setting up a large machine gun on a tripod near the edge of the chopper deck.
The American turned back toward Kate with a shrug. “Honestly, at this point, what would we gain by a bunch of chitchat? Once I’m done here, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to tell me how to fix that damping system.”
A cry from one of his men drew his attention to the far side of the chopper deck. Several other calls followed. The jihadis were pointing out into the sea.
Blasting toward them out of the whitecapped seas was a boat. Given the crazy size of the waves, it seemed a very small and vulnerable craft. But the boat was obviously powerful and was banging through the turbulent waves toward them at a high speed. Kate could make out two people on board. One was piloting the boat and the other was crouched in the bow. The man in the bow was waving at the rig, his hands moving deliberately, unhurried.
“I’ll be right back,” he told her as he started toward the far side of the platform where the jihadis had just finished setting up the heavy machine gun, oblivious to the driving rain.
As the boat got closer, the American leaned over the machine gu
Kate was sickened. This monster was going to murder his own brother.
The machine gu
“Not yet.” Abu Nasir yanked the gu
The noise of the machine gun was astonishing. The cartridges were the size of small bananas, and the concussion rattled her ribs.
The boat veered away from the trail of bullet splashes in the water and disappeared behind the face of a huge wave.
The noise resumed, shell casings cascading onto the deck as the mouth of the big gun spit fire at a thousand feet per second.
The boat swerved again. The burst of gunfire missed the boat, but just barely, and then the boat wheeled, heading up the face of the next wave. As powerful as it was, the vessel had to strain to make it up the wave. Its speed dropped precipitously. The big engines howled as it raced the track of bullets chasing after it.
In the end, the race was no contest. The bullets caught up to the boat, chewed through the stern, set one of its engines on fire, then hit the boat pilot. One moment he was a human being, and the next he was a scrambled mass of blood and tissue, sliding across the deck along with a wash of seawater. It was the most horrific thing Kate had ever seen. Her entire body was trembling.
The crippled boat heeled to the right and headed straight toward the rig, the bullets still smashing it to pieces. The man in the prow was still alive though, crouching like a swimmer about to dive off a cliff. To Kate’s shock, he leapt straight from the boat into the ocean. The boat disappeared from view, obscured by the bulk of the rig. She heard a terrible rending crunch, and the entire rig shook. The boat must have hit one of the massive concrete piers holding it up. A fireball appeared briefly, replaced by a cloud of inky smoke, which was immediately ripped apart by the wind.
“Shoot him!” Abu Nasir shouted.
Every jihadi on the chopper platform leaned over the edge and began firing down into the water.
Kate looked around. Her two guards had moved to the side and were blasting away with their AK-47s.
Nobody was paying her the slightest attention.
Now was her chance. Now or never.
She sat down on thu Nñ€†e wet deck and wriggled her hips until the rain-slick wrist cuffs passed under her butt. From there it was a simple matter of pulling her heels in and passing her arms in front of her.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
Then she stood and sprinted to the door, down the stairs to...
There was no one between her and the bridge leading to the other section of the rig. She glanced back, saw a man in the water, bullets splashing all around him. The remains of the shattered boat were pressed up against one of the massive concrete piers. Without flagging, she sprinted—as best she could with her arms cuffed—across the metal bridge toward the Bridge Linked Platform. Someone shouted. Bullets thudded into the metal behind her. She reached the other side, diving for cover behind a steel beam.
As she considered what to do next, her eyes fell toward the sea. She sca
The boat was gone, every shred of it. And so was Gideon Davis.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GIDEON LOVED TO SWIM. Always had. He loved water, loved the beach, loved lakes and pools and the ocean.
But this was like being in the foothills of some strange mountain range, where every hill was alive, moving.
When you were caught in surf this heavy, there was only one strategy that would keep you from getting crushed. You had to dive. Get underneath the wave, where its motion wasn’t quite so violent. So that’s what he needed to do here. He knew that he’d have one chance. The current wasn’t all that fast, but if he missed the rig, got carried past it, he’d drift on to the west . . . and that would be that. The South China Sea was fairly warm, so it would take a while to die.
Well, best not to think of it. He bobbed to the top of the wave, its ragged crest washing over his head, nearly choking him. And as the wave rolled away, he slid down the back side, where a bullet pierced the water a few inches from his face.
He took a bead on the big concrete leg of the rig and dove into the water, swimming down and down further still, until his ears popped.
The saltwater burned his eyes. But he had to force them open or he’d swim past the oil rig’s leg.
The sun had just set, but there was still some light left in the leaden sky. Once he was underwater, though, everything went dark. He stroked on and on in the direction he believed that he’d find the rig. But he couldn’t see it.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
Why had they shot at him? The man Gideon had spoken to on...
Now wasn’t the time to try to figure out what had happened.
His lungs were burning. A tiny worm of panic began to burrow up from the back of his brain.
Stay calm. Keep stroking. All around him, a murky darkness.
Where was it? Where was the rig?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TWO JIHADIS WERE RACING across the bridge from the drilling platform toward Kate on the BLP when the fireball erupted.
One of the bullets they’d fired at her as she ran across the bridge had hit a gas line. The first jihadi onto the bridge was blown off the span and into the ocean. The other backed up screaming, his hair and shirt on fire.
There were twenty-six main pipes, eight-inch and four-inch schedule 40 steel, ru