Hell Rig (18 page)

Jeff shook his head and pointed his finger at McAndrews. “You sent Waters back out here, a man half insane from his ordeal? I don’t know who’s more to blame for all this, you or him.”

“Whoa,” McAndrews said, raising both hands, palms out toward Jeff. “I suggested they send him back out, but I didn’t know he was crazy. I thought it was all an elaborate act, a hoax. It might still be. I see now it was the wrong thing to do, but I needed answers.”

“Do you have them?” Jeff shot at him.

He shook his head. “No. All I have is more questions.”

Ed spoke up. “I wish you had come clean from the start.”

“I couldn’t let Waters know I suspected him. Maybe I should have told you. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you. Besides, you kept a few secrets of your own.”

McAndrews’ remark stung Ed. He hung his head and nodded slowly. “That’s true.”

Jeff considered McAndrews explanation. It made sense to him. He might have done the same thing in McAndrews’ shoes. He decided to drop the subject for now.

“Okay, that’s all in the past. We need weapons. We could try to build a flame thrower,” he suggested. “We’ve got gas cylinders in the metal shop.”

McAndrews smiled; he was glad to be let off the hook. He shook his head. “Too much risk. Some of these old well pipes are nearly eaten through with rust. It’s possible that gas is trapped in them. Maybe Waters never checked them out. We could set off the entire rig like a torch. I suggest we rely on less dangerous weapons, like clubs or knives.”

Ed looked at each of them and sighed. “Maybe not.” He walked to his room, came back and laid a pistol on the table. “It’s a .9 mm Glock, a nice one. There’s a name engraved on the barrel—T. Dixon.”

“Trey Dixon,” McAndrews informed them. “He was the tool pusher. They never found his body.”

“I found this beneath a pile of garbage and cleaned it up,” Ed continued. He shrugged. “I thought it might make a good souvenir.”

McAndrews took the pistol, tested its weight and examined it closely, turning it over in his hand. “It’s a Glock 19, made of light weight polymer with a Tenifer coating on the metal parts to prevent rust. Be careful with it. The safeties are off as soon as you pull the trigger. It’s a nice weapon. Probably worth $1100-$1200.”

Ed whistled and stared at McAndrews. “You seem to know an awful lot about pistols.”

McAndrews shrugged. He handed the pistol back to Ed. “I had an older model Glock in Kuwait. That one,” he nodded at the pistol Ed held, “holds fifteen bullets.”

“Yeah, I checked. Four are missing.”

“Men and their pistols,” Lisa commented. “It didn’t help Mr. Dixon.”

“Sobering thought,” McAndrews said, “but you’re right.”

Jeff walked to the door and peered out at the fog. The day was cloudy but the fog had retreated into the shadows. It still looked menacing to him, swirling in an unnatural manner. “I’ll go first.”

Where the fog had withdrawn, it had left rusted metal and a thick layer of powdery ash that puffed up with each step. It released a stench that reminded him of charred flesh. The fog had erased all of their earlier hard work, hours of sandblasting and priming wasted. The fog had not disappeared entirely. It still laid claim to large extents of the platform. The sun was a mere suggestion of light in the grayish sky, an eerie patch diffused by the fog and clouds indicating daylight rather than releasing it. Large tendrils of gray fog lapped at the legs of the platform, wrapping around it like some behemoth trying to heave itself from the sea.

Jeff’s stomach lurched at the sight. “The supply ship will never find us in this.” He could not keep the dismay he felt from his voice. Lisa looked at him, trying to keep back her tears.

“We need lights,” Ed suggested. “To light up the rig.” When no one moved, he explained. “The ship’s got radar. They can find us in the fog; they just can’t see us.”

Jeff realized what Ed meant. Bright lights could cut through the fog. If the ship got close enough, they would see the lights. “Right. Let’s go find some lights.”

An earlier helicopter drop had left two portable work light stands. He and McAndrews found a third light stand in the warehouse with four, five hundred-watt lights.

“These should cut through this shit,” Jeff said with a grin on his face.

They placed them in position around three sides of the platform. Strangely, the fog seemed to recede before them, at times forming narrow pathways to allow them through. Jeff was leery of the fog, watching it carefully, but it made no ominous move toward them, as if unconcerned with what they were doing.

“We’ll need the lights that we strung along the deck,” Sims suggested.

Jeff looked at him. “We’ll be in the dark tonight if we do.”

“Every bulb we place out here will make it that much easier for the ship to spot us.”

“Okay,” Jeff answered, chaffing at Sims’ suggestion, but it made sense. He went to the string of lights and began pulling them down. They were lower wattage bulbs but there were twenty of them. They strung them along the fourth side of the platform along the railing. For good measure, Jeff removed the floodlight from the crane, ran extra wire and positioned it to shine down on the landing deck. They removed all but a handful of bulbs from inside the main blockhouse. It took another hour to wire all the lights and run them back to the generator’s main breaker panel.

Jeff saw Lisa had been busy also. Beads of perspiration ran down her grease-streaked face as she handed Ed a crescent wrench. The generator was down and the silence was eerie. Every sound echoed hollowly in the fog, now slowly climbing the stairs from the landing deck as if investigating the sudden silence.

“The lights are ready,” Jeff reported. He looked at Lisa and smiled. It was strange how his heart could disregard the dangers and beat so loudly when she smiled at him.

“I replaced the plugs and tightened down the valves a bit,” Ed said from beneath the generator. “With a richer fuel mixture, we should get another 80-90 rpms.” He looked up at McAndrews. “Check the breaker box before you wire in the lights. Make sure it can handle the extra amperage.”

“I’ll stick my tongue in it if it’ll make with the juice for us.”

Ed got up stiffly. Jeff noticed he looked every day of his sixty-two years if not older. Deep crow’s feet radiated from the corners of his eyes, and his eyes were sunk into his skull. Jeff offered his boss his hand but Ed ignored it.

Lisa shivered. “It’s getting colder.”

Jeff nodded. “I noticed. The fog seems to be getting thicker, too. It’s near noon but it looks like dusk. It’ll get even colder when the sun sets.”

Lisa looked at him in surprise. “We’ll be gone by that time, won’t we? The ship should be here soon.”

He looked away to avoid answering. He didn’t want his doubt to show. By all rights, the supply ship should have been there already.

As if reading his thoughts, Ed checked his watch. “Even if the ship left a day later than scheduled, it ought to be here just before dark, maybe five-thirty. We’ll wait until then to turn on the lights, less risk of blowing a circuit breaker and we can conserve the diesel. This thing’s jury rigged enough as it is.”

“It will hold,” McAndrews said, returning from hooking up the lights. “I put the lights on two separate circuits to spread out the load more evenly.”

Ed nodded his approval. “Good.” He looked at all of them. “I guess we wait.”

Jeff was a little surprised at Ed’s change in attitude. Earlier, he had been adamant about finishing the job no matter what. Now, he looked defeated. He knew five workers couldn’t get much done, no matter how hard they worked, especially with the fog destroying their handiwork. Even if they radioed the mainland and got some new men sent out, it would be too late. He felt sorry for the old man and wished there was something he could do. He and the others would only be out a job. Ed would be out a company, maybe even his home.

“Maybe we should look for Gleason while we wait,” Lisa suggested. “The fog seems benign, for now at least.”

As if in response to her words, the fog began to move more quickly. It rolled over the sides of the platform, spilling onto the deck like creeping gray flesh, undulating obscenely as gusts of air sent it spiraling into little eddies that looked obscenely human before collapsing back into the main mass of mist. It was luminescent, grayish-white, bathing everything it touched in a wan ghost light. Will ’o the wisps raced along the rails, painting them in unearthly St. Elmo’s fire.

“I don’t like this,” McAndrews said, eying the slowly advancing mass. “It’s too damn creepy.”

“It’s just fog,” Lisa said, mocking him.

McAndrews glared at her. “Have you ever seen fog like this? This shit’s as thick as the stew you made last night. Look at it. It looks oily on the surface.”

Jeff had noticed that too, a sheen on the fog. That bothered him. He knew that something as insubstantial as fog should not be able to support drops of oil on its surface. “We had better get back inside. Mac, maybe we had better turn on those lights now. Ed, let’s crank the generator.”

McAndrews nodded his head vigorously. “I read you.”

He ran to the breaker panel and pulled the two circuits. Ed primed the generator and hit the starter button. Instead of the high-pitched hum of the generator starting up, there was silence. He tried again with the same results.

“What the hell, Ed?” McAndrews shouted. “Fix it.”

Ed scratched his head. “I didn’t do anything. It should run.”

They were all growing apprehensive as the fog rolled closer. Shapes, dark and sinister moved in the fog. Muffled sounds, not quite human, echoed around them.

“Ed,” Lisa pleaded. She took Jeff’s arm and clung to it.

“Ah, here it is,” Ed announced holding up a wire that had come loose from the starter. “How did that happen?” He wrapped it around the contact, tightened it with his screwdriver and hit the button.

Sparks flew and Ed sprawled backwards on his ass, but the diesel generator coughed and wheezed before sputtering to life. The lights flickered several times as the generator revved up. The fog reacted immediately, peeling away from the light stands as if hurt by the bright illumination and retreated across the deck into the shadows.

“Come on,” Jeff shouted. “Let’s go. Now.”

Sims was already waiting for them, holding the door open as they rushed in.

“What the hell was that?” he asked. “The fog…” He shook his head in confusion.

“Shut the door,” Jeff told Sims, “and lock it.”

Sims looked puzzled but Ed nodded his agreement, and locked the door. The fog blocked out the sun bringing an early darkness to the platform. Just a few bulbs burned in the hall, casting deep shadows. The others watched the fog while Lisa went to her room. She passed Tolson’s room.

“Where is he?” she asked, pointing to Tolson’s empty cot.

Sims looked around dumbfounded. “I don’t know. He was out cold just a minute ago.”

Ed took charge. “Look for him. He couldn’t get far in his condition.”

Jeff and Lisa took the recreation room and dining hall. The rest took other parts of the building. We are beginning to get good at looking for missing people, Jeff thought wearily.

“I don’t understand,” he confided in Lisa. “If he’s hurt that badly, how can he be up walking around?”

“He shouldn’t be.”

They searched the dining room, kitchen, and the recreation room but saw no sign of Tolson.

“I’ll check the cooler,” Jeff told her.

He noticed she did not look inside as he opened the door. Both Bale and Easton lay as they had placed them, wrapped in plastic.

“Not in here,” he said.

They looked in the utility room where they had imprisoned Waters. Jeff saw the still tied ropes that had bound his hands.

“Neat trick,” he commented on Waters’ ability to get free. He noticed something lying on the floor. “What’s this?”

“It’s a
gris-gris
,” Lisa said as Jeff picked it up. “It must have belonged to Waters.”

“He didn’t look the voodoo type to me.”

“And I do?” Lisa said, hands on her hips.

“I meant…oh, hell,” he said, giving up. He shoved the
gris-gris
in his pocket. He checked the back door. His amulet was still there but the door was slightly ajar. “It’s unlocked.” They both stood looking at the door. Neither wanted to open it and go back out there with the fog.

The lights along the perimeter of the platform were barely visible through the dense fog. It had advanced to within a few yards of the door and stopped as if repelled by the single bulb shining there, or the amulet; Jeff wasn’t sure which. He peered into the fog but saw nothing but vague shapes. As he turned away, a shadow moved near the warehouse but quickly vanished.

“See anything?” Lisa asked.

He shook his head. “I guess not.”

Locking the door, he said, “Let’s see if the others had better luck.”

* * * *

“How the hell could you lose him?” Jeff snapped at Sims.

“I didn’t lose him.” Sims scowled at Jeff a few seconds before adding, “He was out cold when we went to work on the lights. He had enough codeine in him to keep him asleep for hours, and he was still down when I looked in on him after we finished. He must have regained consciousness and slipped out when I came up front and waited for you.”