Assignment Black Gold (10 page)

“What? What in hell happened?”

“You’ve been raided,” Durell said. “Maybe by the Apgaks, maybe
by some competitor who wants to force you out of Lubinda."

“But what happened to the crew?”

“It looks as if they were rounded up and taken ashore.”

“It still makes no sense.”

Durell said, “Where were Hobe Tallman’s records?”

“This way.”

The inner office was finely furnished with a steel
desk and swivel chair upholstered in leather, curtained windows, a small
mahogany bar, some tribal wood carvings that stood three feet high in the
corner—perhaps purchased from Brady Cotton‘s collection. Kitty followed them
dutifully from the laboratory. There was a large carton in one corner where
some core samples had been dumped in a sludgy mess. Matt shook his head
dolefully.

“What’s in there?” Durell asked. He indicated a large metal
chart ease, the sort that well-equipped seagoing vessels maintain. Matt shook
his head again. “It’s locked, Sam. They’re Hobe‘s private analyses.”

“Don’t you have a key?”

“No. Only Hobe has access to those reports and charts. They
go back to the home office in Houston.”

Durell tried the lock handle. He was not surprised when the
topmost drawer slid out easily. He looked for Matt’s reaction, but the man
showed only surprise.

“Hell, there’s nothing in it!”

“They’ve been cleaned out,” Durell said, opening one shallow
chart drawer after the other.

“Those bastards,” Matt muttered.

“Who?”

“It could be the
Syno
-Pet GK
people. They operate up in Nigeria and off the Ivory Coast. They came down here
after we started and tried to cozy up to the Lubinda Ministry, but they didn’t
get anywhere, Sam. I hate to think a rival company would do this.”

“When was Hobe last aboard?”

“Two days ago, I think. To my knowledge, anyway. He wasn’t
here long. Stayed out here an hour, came back, didn‘t say anything was wrong.”

“Did he look worried?”

“Well, maybe, but then, he’s always worried. Between the
sabotage on the job, the Apgaks, and his wife Betty—"’

“Was he carrying anything?”

“No. His hands were empty.”

“You talked to him then?”

“No. Betty was on the dock with the Mercedes, and I didn’t
want to go near her. She—” Matt looked at Kitty. “I didn’t want another
argument with her, is all.”

There was nothing more to be learned from the shambles of
the office and the laboratory. “Did you have any labor troubles?” Durell asked.

“Absolutely not. Everybody here, from the roustabouts to the
derrickmen
, were on time and a half, with a bonus for
overseas work. Nobody had a squawk, not the lab men or the roughnecks.
Everybody was happy with their day work rates, even though there isn’t much in
Lubinda to spend money on.”

Durell paused. He could hear the muffled clanging of a loose
block that dangled from the starboard Clyde
pintle
crane. “Let’s look for Brady,” he said.

“But nobody is aboard," Kitty objected.

“I think Brady is.”

In Durell’s business, hunches were usually to be ignored as
unfounded on proper data and therefore dangerous. Yet he could not abandon his
feeling that the rig, apparently deserted, held someone, someone he had not yet
seen or heard. He climbed to the top deck, amid the carefully ordered jumble of
mud-mixing tanks, oxygen blowers, cables, and tools, and stared toward the high
spiderweb
of the drilling tower. On either hand were
the cargo derricks, the Clyde and the Caterpillar diesels, and the Link
LS-108-B crawler. The smell of the sea and oil and hot metal from the equipment
pervaded the air. The west wind was fresher, but the odor of fire still
persisted, clinging to the hot metal. He watched the gulls circling the small
operating cab at the topmost tower of the starboard derrick. They screamed
raucously, hovering in the wind, their features delicately adjusting -to each
change of pressure in the air stream—

Durell moved carefully across the hot, sun-scorched deck
toward the port side of the platform, stepping among the tubes and piping in
his way.

“What is it?” Kitty asked. Her face was pale.

“Brady,” he said.

“Where?”

“Just stand back a bit.”

He climbed up on the Clyde, swung past the main cab control
of the cargo derrick, looked up into the blazing sun at the three arms of the
crane. The block that swung loosely at the end or the long, arced cable came
from the middle arm of the hoisting derrick, where the topmost cab was located.
He could see the man’s head and arms now, dangling loosely from the tiny
window. Kitty followed him on the circular platform.

“It can’t be Brady."

“We’ll see. Stay with Matt.”

He quickly climbed up the narrow ladder on the derrick arm.
The metal was hot under his touch. The sea seemed to rotate around the horizon
as he climbed higher and higher. It was a dizzying perch above the level of the
ocean, but the climb did not take more than twenty seconds. The man in the cab
had been shot in the face, and the blood had coagulated some time ago, leaving
a mask of blackness over the upper part of his features. Durell reached up for
the tiny cab door and pulled it open, clinging to the iron rungs with one hand.
Looking down, he saw Matt and Kitty, their figures foreshortened, staring
up at him, shading their eyes against the sun. They looked small on the
deserted platform.

The dead man was Brady Cotton.

.It was a tight squeeze to get into the cabin because of the
way he had crumpled forward when death came. The body had already stiffened and
then relaxed. Durell struggled to get the arms and head free of the tiny
window; he couldn’t do it, and gave up. Nothing would help Brady Cotton now.
His main purpose was to discover whatever it was Brady had learned that had
caused his death. There had to be a reason for it. All the men who had been
left to maintain the rig had been taken off, somehow, alive or dead. But Brady
had been abandoned in his lonely perch between sea and sky. Whoever had killed
him either had not thought it worthwhile to remove him, or had deliberately
left him for later discovery.

“Sam!”

He ignored Kitty’s call while he searched awkwardly through
the dead man’s pockets. He found nothing except a crumpled pack of American
cigarettes. The khaki slacks provided a wallet with some Lubindan currency, the
names of several art agents, a folded cable from an importer in New York
detailing his needs. He found no weapons on the dead man.

“Sam!”

He looked down at the girl’s small figure.

“Sam, is it Brady?”

"Yes."

“Is he—?”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“I want to see him!”

He shook his head. Brady had been dead two days. He had not
been killed up here, but somewhere else aboard the rig, and then, perhaps only
hours ago, the body had been taken from its hiding place and hauled up to the
cab, perhaps as a symbolic gesture or warning to him, Durell. He saw the brief
slumping of the girl’s shoulders. Whatever their marital differences, Durell
thought, she had been a loyal wife. He gave up trying to free Brady’s body from
the tiny cab and started down the narrow iron rungs on the derrick arm.

The rifle bullet missed him by a hair.

Then he understood why Brady’s body had been propped up
here.

Chapter 9.

The slug ricocheted off the steel boom of the derrick with a
sharp scream. The rifle made a sudden sharp report. Durell was not sure where
the shot had come from; nor did he take the time to find out. He dropped
down the ladder fast, heard Matt shouting and ta brief yelp from Kitty. Another
shot cracked toward his silhouette against the hot, pale sky. Then came the
stutter of automatic rifle fire. Durell let go of the rungs and
dropped the last ten feet to the greasy rotary table, slipped, dropped again to
the deck. His gun came into his hand.

Matt the Fork held his big Colt up.

“Did you see them?” Matt asked hoarsely.

“They’re at the drilling tower.”

“How many?”

“Two, maybe three. So we’re not alone here.” Durell looked
at the girl. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so.” Her face was pale. “I guess I knew
something had happened to Brady, somehow. Was it bad?”

“He never knew what hit him.”

“When did it happen?"

“A day or two ago. He was put up there so that anyone who
climbed up for him would make a target."

Matt said slowly, “He wasn’t supposed to be aboard. There’s
no record that he came out here. So he was hiding out, doing God knows what on
the Lady, and somebody killed him?”

“What's more to the point right now,” Durell said grimly,
“is who those men are and what they’re doing here.”

There were no more shots. The sun blazed down on them
without mercy. The seagulls had gone away, sloping downwind. The sea sloshed
and thudded against the platform piers below. Durell moved off to the right,
taking Kitty with him behind the protection of the bulky cargo rig. The
intricate pattern of guy wires, lock and tackle, and the main cabin of the
Clyde offered them some protection. When he looked out beyond the bulky
mechanism, he could see around the base of the drilling mast and the cluttered
deck that formed the well pattern; but he spotted no movement except the faint
swaying of a long cable from the head of the tower. A ladder led down the side
of the Clyde to the main deck. On the other side of the rig platform was the
other cargo derrick, the Link crawler. it was oil to starboard over 130 feet
away. The shots had come from the drilling mast, he was sure. There was a
pattern of linear shadows there, cast by the girders of the tower that rose 150
feet into the hot sky. The smells of the sea mingled with the odor of
sun-scorched steel and oil.

“Stay with Matt, Kitty.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll try to flush them out.”

“Sam, don’t be foolish—”

He spoke quietly. “We’re alone on the Lady with them.
Whoever they are, they mean to get rid of us so they can finish the work
they were left here to do.”

“What could that be?”

“Possibly sabotage to the Lady,” he suggested.

“But it’s so big—”

“There’s no way oil the Lady,” he said. “We’re stuck here
with them. unless we can get hack to your boat. I doubt that they’ll just let
us walk aft and climb down and go away.” He turned. “Matt?”

“
Yo
.”

“Come around the other side of the Clyde. Don’t expose
yourself. When you’re ready, whistle. Then wait a few seconds. Check your
watch. Make it ten seconds, and then we’ll both show ourselves and try to flush
them out.”

Matt’s jaw muscles knotted. “Right. Ten seconds.”

The housing atop the well deck was two stories above the
main deck. The heavy
blocklike
structures at each
corner of the platform and on each side amidships, that held the tops of the
cylinder platform legs. cut off Durell’s view from down here. The railing ended
outboard with the flush steel sides of the platform corners. He would
have to go inboard and around the housing and try to make it under the overhang
of the well-pattern structure astern. The enemy was on top of that deck, at the
base of the tower. There was a maze of winches and guy wires from the Clyde, a
pattern of V-shaped girders supporting the well house. Above was a railed deck,
then the well deck itself. Two square windows were positioned on this corner of
the well housing, above the railed deck. If he could cross the area between the
stiff-legged derrick and get under the central overhang, he would reach
shelter. Durell calculated his chances and saw Matt move away from around the
Clyde; he whistled softly, looked at his watch.

Ten seconds crawled by.

Then he started his run.

Immediately, the rattle of two automatic rifles came
at him. The bullets whined and whistled overhead, screamed off the decking, hit
the big power winch aft of the Clyde. Durell ducked, changed direction, flung
himself forward into hot shadows. The shots had come from the windows above.
The enemy had gone down from the tower platform into the housing. He still
could not see them. He still did not know how many they were.

“Matt?”

“
Yo
.”

“Come on.”

“I can’t. I’m hit.”

“Where?”

“My leg: Son of a bitch.”

“Bad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stay where you are. Cover me. I’m going in.”

Durell did not wait for an answer. He moved sideways toward
an open bulkhead door, saw Matt now, lying in the sun, his body cramped, one
arm holding one thigh drawn up against his stomach. His eyes looked blind.
There was no time to help him. Durell ducked into the oval doorway, came up
against a steel ladder in the shadowed gloom, grabbed the rungs, and pulled
himself up fast, taking the steel treads two and three at a time.

The black figure of a man suddenly appeared above him.

Durell held his gun in both hands, fired three times,
carefully, saw the man lurch backward; he dropped the rifle toward him,
then followed, tumbling loosely in the familiar, disjointed pattern of death.
He squeezed aside and lot the black man tumble to the foot of the narrow
stairs, and caught up the rifle. It was a Russian-made AK-47. The clip
was almost full. He was familiar enough with it.

There was shouting now, echoes in the well housing, a gabble
of dialect he did not understand. Two more of them. Maybe three. He went on up
the steel stairway, slowly now, making no sound, although they knew he was in
here. The interior gloom, after the blinding sunlight on the platform deck, made
his vision hazy for a moment. He paused two treads below the top of the stairs
and thrust his S&W revolver into his belt, deciding to rely on the
automatic rifle. Feet scuffed on a steel deck plate, out of sight and
down the narrow corridor to his right. There was whispering again in the
unknown dialect.