Her face creased with concern. “I need the latest weather report.”

“Forecast says the typhoon’s heading north. The chance of it hitting us is less than five percent, so we should be okay.”

Al’s assurance left her om" t‡ddly unsatisfied. Underscoring this was her creeping realization that something else was wrong. Once the chopper was gone, she realized what it was.

The noise. Rather, the absence of it. There was never a time when an oil rig didn’t have noise, the relentless cacophony of generators and compressors, flame-offs and crane motors. She surveyed the drill deck. One forty-foot string of pipe hung listlessly from a chain, swaying in the wind. The drill deck was deserted.

This was a billion-dollar oil rig with a complement of nearly a hundred personnel. Labor and interest on investment ran forty thousand bucks an hour. Every minute you weren’t drilling, you were hemorrhaging money into the ocean.

“What the hell’s going on?” she said sharply.

“You didn’t get any of my messages?”

She shook her head.

Big Al shifted uneasily. “Visitors,” he said. “Some bureaucrat from the White House is hitting the deck in an hour with an official delegation.”

“They’re coming here?”

“Yeah. For some kind of press conference.”

“I didn’t authorize this.”

“It came straight from the top. From Mr. MacLesh himself.”

Kate winced. Gil MacLesh was the CEO of Trojan Energy. “This rig’s been operating for over a year,” she protested. “We’re already pumping twenty-five thousand gallons a day. Why do they need a media event now?”

“Because of what’s happening on the mainland. Since you’ve been away, the situation’s gotten worse. They’re afraid it could turn into a fullblown civil war. Mr. MacLesh says the president wants to demonstrate his support for the Sultan.”

“By staging a PR stunt on our rig.”

“Something like that.”

Kate made a face of disgust. She’d had her fill of politicians and their reckless manipulation.

Big Al spread his hands apologetically. “I sent you a dozen e-mails.”

She exhaled, resigning herself to the fact that she had no choice in the matter. She ran her hands through her hair and realized how desperately she needed a shower. “Follow me,” she said. “I want you to brief me about this media event while I’m in the shower.”

Big Al smiled. “Let me shower with you, chérie. You’ll be able to hear me better.”

“If I catch you even trying to peek, I’m gonna smite you with great vengeance.”

“You and whose army?”

She punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, massaging his bruised muscle.

All the tension Kate had been carrying drained from her as the scalding water cascaded over her head and down her naked boIf �€dy.

“First things first,” she said. “How’s the damper housing holding up?”

Where most oil rigs operated in fairly shallow water, the Obelisk towered eight hundred feet above the ocean floor. Stabilizing a structure as tall as a skyscraper had been a major challenge for the engineering team behind the Obelisk. They’d come up with a novel and ingenious solution—a semicompliant tower designed to sway like a reed in a river, but which also contained active and passive damping systems designed to counteract that sway when currents and waves reached a certain magnitude. Which was great in theory. Except somewhere along the way from theory to practice, something had gone wrong.

“The passive damping system is shit,” Big Al said. “Every time I send a diver down there, they come back with more bad news.”

“I’m tired of hearing thirdhand reports on this thing,” Kate said. “As soon as these VIPs leave, I’m going down there to inspect it myself.”

“Can you spell delegation, chérie? Let the pros dive.”

After her father went bankrupt for the fourth time, Kate had spent two years working as a diver and welder in the Gulf, until she’d saved enough money to pay her way through Stanford. “I am a pro, Al.”

“Not anymore you’re not. You’re the company man on this rig. You need to start acting like one. Stand in the control room and shout obscenities at people.”

She laughed until she suddenly remembered what Big Al had told her. “You said there’s a five percent chance this typhoon comes our way—”

“It won’t,” Big Al interrupted.

“What happens if it does?”

Big Al took a moment to answer. “If these seas get much higher before we reinforce the housing, the whole goddamn thing’s gonna crater.”

As if on cue, another tremor shook the rig. She felt it through the steel bottom of the shower. A year into operation, and the rig was in danger of shaking itself apart.

“One piece of good news is that Cole Ransom is coming out on the same chopper as the media suits.”

Kate had corresponded extensively with the engineer, who was confident that he could come up with a retrofit to fix the passive damper. Ransom told her he had a rough plan, but he needed to scout the location first and run some tests before nailing down the final details. In the meantime, he would direct the welders to make some temporary fixes that would shore up the system until the full retrofit was complete.

Kate lathered her hair and tried to focus. But in her fatigued state, her mind wandered, and she laughed, realizing this was the closest her naked body had been to a man in nearly two years.

“What’s so funny about a retrofit?” Big Al asked innocently.

“Nothing,” she lied, before quickly covering, “I’m just thinking about how ridiculous my time was in Washington.”

“Did you watch the news while you weto �€re there?”

“You know me, Al. I never watch the news.”

“Your hearing got a lot of play. Trojan got bashed. Some guy on CNN basically called Mr. MacLesh a liar. Maybe MacLesh thinks we’ll get some good publicity from this visit.”

“It’s a waste of time and money.” She turned off the water. “Hand me my towel, would you?”

A hairy arm appeared through the gap in the shower curtain, holding her towel. She wrapped herself, then stepped out.

“On a more positive note, though, Bill O’Reilly said you were hot. Although personally, I don’t approve of that kind of sexist remark.”

“Who’s Bill O’Reilly?”

“You really don’t watch the news, do you?”

She smiled at Big Al in the mirror, then started combing her wet hair. “So who’s coming from the White House?”

“Some old boy by the name of Earl Parker. He’s the national security advisor, or something like that.”

“This is an oil rig, not a freaking battleship. Why is the president sending some national security guy here?”

“I told you why. Because of what’s happening on the mainland.”

“Who else is he coming with?”

“You’ve met the ambassador. The Honorable J. Randall Stearns. Didn’t he ask you out a few months ago?”

“Yes.”

“And you said ‘no.’”

“He’s not my type.”

“No one is ever your type.”

“Let’s not talk about this now, all right? I’ll meet you in the control room in a few minutes.”

“You can’t be alone forever, chérie.”

“Out.”

Big Al grinned, then closed the door behind him.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Kate wrapped herself with a fresh towel. Al was right. She...

CHAPTER EIGHT

The few people who were on the street looked at him strangely and gave him a wide berth. He supposed that was natural when you saw a muddy, tuxedoed white guy who smelled like a cesspool.

He spotted the broad expanse of the river from a low hill at the edge of town. Getting there was just a matter of following the main road straight through town.

The closer he got, though, the stranger everything seemed. The sun was well above the horizon now. And there were still only a few furtive people on the street. No cars, no buses, no trucks.

He was close enough now to the river that he could see boats moored along a quay. As he passed before a storefront, a voice hissed at him from somewhere in its dark recesses.