“Going to see exactly how far we can use the EAR weapon,” Murdock said. “Bradford, try one shot at the box at four hundred yards.”
Bradford went prone, sighted in on the box, and fired. There was the usual whooshing sound as the Enhanced Audio Rifle fired and the blast of air out the back kicked up a dust devil.
The box at four hundred yards slammed backward, collapsed, and rolled thirty yards along the side of the hill.
“Works at four,” Murdock said. “Sadler, try the five-hundred-yard target.”
He did, and the box flattened and jolted backward ten yards.
“Acceptable,” Murdock said. “Ching, take a shot with the EAR at the six-hundred-yard box.”
He did, and there was no movement of the box or the ground on either side of it. Fifty yards this side of the box, there was a minor disturbance and some dust kicked up.
“So, we have a working range of five hundred for the EAR. Who hasn’t fired one of the twenties in a while?”
Three men lifted hands, and Sadler, Howard, and Jaybird each put three rounds through the twenty at a huge rock out about a thousand yards.
When they finished, Murdock told the men to load up, then police the area. He thought about the brass they had left on the assault fire going up the hill. Tough. They’d done enough today. They would police up that part next time out.
On the bus ride back to Coronado, Murdock could think only of a nice hot shower and a good dinner out somewhere. The men had voted not to stop in Alpine for a store-bought meal. Murdock wondered if he could figure out how to set up a chat room with Ardith so they could talk back and forth on the Internet. It could be done. He’d just have to work it out.
Lam had made the hike and workout with no problem. Bradford was still a little weak, but if they had two or three weeks before any serious assignment, he should round into shape with no problem. Now the only question was, would the CNO, Don Stroh of the CIA, and the President give them the three weeks they needed?
3
Arnie Gifford watched the big clamps grab the next section of pipe and slowly lower it into the test well they were drilling in the edge of the Santa Barbara Channel. It was far enough offshore not to infuriate the conservationists. Still, they’d had their share of Greenpeace trouble. Arnie chewed on the unlit cigar and eyed the oil-drilling platform a quarter of a mile farther away from the coast. It was in deeper water, too deep he figured, and there had been no good reports coming from it.
He had been an oil driller most of his forty-seven years. His face and arms were burned brown by the sun, and his blue eyes these days always held sunglasses to cut the glare and the damage of the sun. He was in good shape, swam and dove a lot in the ocean. He had done weight lifting in his youth, and still had a well-developed upper body. He squinted slightly as he stared at the rig known as Wentworth Petroleum Number 4. He wondered where the others were. What puzzled Arnie was the unusual activity around the rig. For the past six months he had seen large cargo ships anchor near the platform. The next day the ships seemed to ride much higher in the water. What in hell were they doing there? They couldn’t discharge that much cargo on that small drilling platform.
He had seen a couple of the men he knew who worked on the rig in a bar just last week, and he’d asked them about the ships. They’d laughed and said he was seeing things.
“What the hell would a cargo ship be doing around our rig?” they’d said. “Maybe they were bringing out our payday cash.” The two men had laughed it off and headed for the door.
He’d seen the federal inspection boat head out to the rig, and heard that Number 4 had passed the safety and environmental tests with no problems. There was no oil on the rig or in its hole, so the test was a little premature.
As Arnie watched, another freighter flying a Panamanian flag eased to a stop forty yards off the oil rig and put out anchors. Maybe sea anchors at that depth, he figured.
He wiped one hand across his face and decided. Tonight was the night. He was going to swim out there and see what the hell they were doing. They had to be up to something fishy. Still, the inspectors had given them a go. He had his wet suit on the rig. He used it from time to time to go down and check the sea legs that extended down to solid footing on the channel seabed. A quarter of a mile wouldn’t even be a warm-up for him. Yeah, he’d go out tonight as soon as it got dark. He wouldn’t use his tanks, too damn heavy. He’d use a snorkel and stay just under the water. He’d done it a thousand times.
Arnie waited five minutes after midnight before he entered the water. It was an easy swim, and he used the snorkel. When he came up to the rig, he circled it once, then swam up to one of the steel legs and held on to it taking a rest. He could see nothing in the water that indicated anything strange going on. It had to be topside. It wasn’t one of the huge platforms, just an exploratory one, but still had a night crew and a hundred glowing lights. He could hear the machinery clanging away.
He pushed away from the steel ready to swim around to the surface platform and the ladders that extended up to the first level of the platform. For a moment he didn’t understand what he saw in front of him. Then he threw up his arms to try to protect himself.
The next morning Santa Barbara County Coroner Warren Watts shook his head as he looked at the body tangled in wire three feet underwater and against one of the legs of Oso Platform 27.
“How in hell did he get fouled up in wire like that? I didn’t think you guys were supposed to throw any solid trash into the water.” He looked at the body again. It was pinned against the steel legs of the tower with one arm sloshing back and forth with the swells.
“The damn-fool wet suit doesn’t seem to be damaged, and he’s still got the face mask around his neck,” the coroner said. The face with open eyes looked out at Watts through three feet of the clear Pacific Ocean. Two Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies stared at the body over Watts’s back.
Pete Rumford, the platform boss of 27, sat in the sheriff’s boat and shook his head as he looked at his worker. “Arnie Gifford is his name. He liked to scuba and free-dive. He was good at it. We used him to check our legs underwater. Nobody on board last night knew he was going to go diving. What would he be looking for at night? It just doesn’t make sense.”
The coroner scowled. “Probably drowned, but we can’t be sure until I do some work. Can you get a couple of men down here with bolt cutters and cut him loose so we can get him in the boat? This is the damnedest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” He looked at the older deputy sheriff. “You checked with the Coast Guard? They like to know when things like this happen. They’ll want to do a search for another body in the water if we think there might be one.”
“Didn’t even call them. Sheriff says it’s our jurisdiction on a felony. They’d just turn it over to us anyway. So why bother them? The sheriff is on another case. Said he’d come out later and talk.”
Ten minutes later they had the body in the boat. The coroner frowned. “You say he worked for you here at Platform 27?”
“Right, my best foreman. Why in hell was he diving at night? Nobody saw him get in the water.”
“I’ll let you know what the autopsy shows.”
The deputy sheriff at the tiller moved the boat up to the small water-level dock so the platform boss could step off; then he pushed the throttles forward and the twenty-two-footer raced toward the Santa Barbara harbor and the Sheriff and Lifeguard Dock.