Alpha, Delta Page 3

  Now it was Niall’s turn to go in and make decisions. And these would be the men he would be spending the new few weeks with. They were all big men, and he realised they all had the same look about them as Finn did. Determined, sure of themselves.

  That just made him miss Finn. Which was stupid. They were fuck buddies, nothing more serious, and the fact Finn disappeared like a thief in the night after most of their hook-ups just underlined that.

  He couldn’t talk to his companions; the blades were thunderous in the spare metal interior. He was more interested in what was out the window anyway. Rain and more rain. The wind didn’t appear to buffet the helicopter but it was enough to cause great blasts of rain against one or other of the windows. He wriggled a little to get comfortable and pulled out his cell phone, selecting a play list and hoping to hell it was loud enough to drown the noise.

  They landed in wind and rain, a dramatic moment when the helicopter had to hover away from the platform for a few seconds, but not enough to worry Niall. He’d had worse crossings.

  The leaving security team exchanged nods as they climbed into the Puma and suddenly it was just Niall, the new security team and a rather agitated man in a thick slicker waving them over to the sheltered area. The security guys went their separate ways and the guy in the slicker grabbed Niall by the hand and shook it hard.

  “Welcome,” he shouted over the noise of the driving rain on the steel. “Let’s get inside.”

  Niall followed him in, never happier than to be inside from the cold and rain, slipping off his bulky coat and shaking the other man’s hand.

  “Jeff Fjelstad, Chief” he said. His words were heavily accented Norwegian but Niall smiled at the tone of it. He’d worked for NorsDev for six years now and loved splitting his time between Edinburgh and Oslo. He spoke more than enough Norwegian to carry on a decent conversation at work if needed but the NorsDev way was English as a common denominator.

  “Niall Faulkner.”

  “Welcome to Forseti, Mr Faulkner.”

  “Niall. Call me Niall.”

  “I’ll show you to your accommodation then we have the initial planning meeting set up in the media room. Is that okay with you?”

  Niall and Jeff made small talk about the state of the oil industry, about NorsDev, about the Forseti platform itself, but nothing that took too much thought because Niall was already in engineering mode. Decommissioning a platform wasn’t just a numbers exercise, and it wasn’t about dismantling the steel structure. It started a long way before that and could take up to two years to complete. From dismantling staff accommodation to ecological impact on a wider scale, this is what Niall was here for as team leader. This platform would be his home on and off for the next six months at least. A week here, a week there, and how much time did that leave to meet up with Finn? Not much at all.

  At least he got a private room. Well, two rooms actually, given Ewan was supposed to be here. The door between the two rooms opened up and that was the first thing Niall did just to get more space. The office was another door off of his room and he opened it to have a look inside. A good, well-lit space with three flatscreens, plenty of wall area, and storage. This would be one of the last places to go before the main structural work, and this was where he would be doing all his planning.

  He slipped on his glasses and took a moment to stand at the window, the northern gales smashing into the rig, the rain so hard it sheeted down and Niall couldn’t make out individual raindrops. Because of this he could actually see the structure ahead of him, part of the platform and views of the heaving sea beyond. Behind him, out of sight, were the machines and pipes, the steel and concrete, the electrics and the decisions he had to make, but outside of this window was the very thing his job sent him to protect. Mother Nature in all her finest anger.

  He stopped in the small bathroom and washed his face; his cold skin was prickly with the heat of the water and he stared at his reflection for a moment. He often wondered what people thought of him. He wore glasses, was an engineer with all kinds of letters after his name, a nerd, but he was respected. Just, sometimes, being so small and skinny he was perhaps not seen as able to handle the sea or the oil or, hell, anything.

  Except for Finn. Finn thought Niall could handle anything he gave him. Just the thought made Niall smile. He removed his inner jacket and instead pulled on a thick cable knit sweater. Tomorrow was soon enough to go traipsing around the exterior; today was all about meeting the skeleton crew, talking to security, and learning who his team were.

  He sent off a quick email to Ewan asking after Mel, even though he couldn’t tell when it would go. Communications would be secure and connected from the drilling deck or the media room when he finally got there. At least he’d made some effort at checking in and he’d send something else as soon as he set foot in the communications area, or as he knew it, comms.

  With a last look around the two rooms, he made sure Ewan’s door was locked, then his own before he stepped outside. Then, shoulders back, he made his way up in the direction where he recalled the media room was placed. He got lost a couple of times but finally made his way to the same deck as the media room at least.

  A loud bang had him startled from his relaxed I know my way vibe. Then a rumble and a shake that could only have meant that lightning had hit Forseti. Thank fuck we landed earlier. Niall sent a quick wish that the helicopter had landed safely back in Grane and carried on. He rounded the last corner and another explosion rocked the path he was taking. He stopped and steadied himself against the wall. That didn’t sound like lightening…

  Cautiously he stepped forward to the corner and came face to face with one of the security guards from the ride over. He didn’t know who was more startled. The security guard was armed, pointing a gun upward, not at Niall. Then the guard reacted, pointed the gun at Niall, and his demeanour screamed to Niall that he should run.

  In the split second it took for all that to take place another explosion rocked the walkway they were on and both men knocked heavily into the wall. The guard flailed and fell back, a bullet embedding itself in the wall next to Niall’s head. With years of experience on walkways that weren’t stable Niall regained his footing. Without hesitating he turned and ran. Time didn’t slow down; it was a frantic terrifying stumble to the next door in the corridor, and a desperate heave through the space, kicking the heavy metal door shut and turning the exterior lock. A bullet hit the door, and the guard, red-faced and determined, was at the handle trying the lock.

  Niall stumbled backward, hitting the wall and sliding to the side, falling to his knees and facing the other corridor. Jeff was there. Sprawled on the cold floor, his sightless eyes wide open, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead, and blood pooling around his head.

  Terror gripped Niall and shock drove him to stand and back away even more. What was happening? He could see the armed man through the tiny glass porthole in the door and for a split second Niall froze, looking into the dark eyes of the man who had shot at him. Then he turned and ran again. Left, right, along, down—the schematics of the accommodation block changed from one platform to another, but once he was into the bowels of Forseti he’d be able to stop and breathe.

  His breathing was tight but his thoughts were suddenly clear as he jumped the last flight of stairs into the drilling deck. He had to grab his glasses as he realised he was losing them and he removed them and shoved them under his sweater. He’d be blind without them.

  This is a terrorist threat. This is a hostage situation. He stopped at the base of the stairs and forced himself to focus. Whatever the fuck was going on he had to follow protocol. Information and communication. He bent at the waist and supported his arms on his knees, his breathing easing. He was fit but he wasn’t a freaking marathon runner. His long hair flopped in his eyes and, irritated, he swept it back as he stood.

  Communication meant one thing. The drilling deck, where the brains of Forseti was, or the media room, where the workers contacted families
.

  Media room is compromised, he told himself. What would Finn do?

  Decision made, he jogged through the maze of the drilling deck and stopped only at the main door out into the open air. The rain hadn’t let up; he wasn’t going to make it to the other side of the deck without being soaked through. He could go down two levels and come back up in the comms room but that would add time to this.

  What if the comms room is compromised as well?

  He stepped back away from the window and pulled out his cell phone. It was just a normal iPhone and there was no way there would be anything in the way of a connection. If he couldn’t get to the main deck to connect to NorsDev then he had to find a satellite phone and hope to hell the weather let up enough.

  What if all four security guys on the Puma were in on this? What if they were working with the crew here? What if they have guns trained on the upper production deck? What do they want? Who wanted to take over an oilrig in the middle of the damn ocean that didn’t even form part of the active pipeline for oil? It didn’t make any sense.

  Time outweighed the worries and Niall pushed open the door onto the deck, the rain finding and drenching him in seconds. He carefully shut the door behind him and edged his way around the large half-football-field sized area, crossing in and among steel and plastic, thanking God he hadn’t switched out his boots for his work shoes, and wishing to hell he’d taken a coat to the briefing.

  Why would you have even done that, idiot?

  A sound over the noise of the rain had him stopping with fright clogging his throat, but it was just a loose plastic cover snapping under the weight of rain. If this was a working platform it would be dealt with but the deterioration of care was the first thing that happened on decommissioning. The sharp edges of it tugged at his sweater and he yanked away before, in a motion of desperation, he yanked at the plastic itself and tore of a thick swathe of it. Stiff and uncompliant, it was the only weapon he could think to find. What he wouldn’t give for a steel pipe, or hell, a gun.

  He reached the comms area and crouched by the window. In there was a way to contact NorsDev, to contact Finn, anyone. He couldn’t see movement but that didn’t mean a thing. Then, just as he made to move, he caught sight of a man pacing the comms room with a wicked-looking automatic weapon in his hands. He’d been behind a pillar and out of view but now he was plainly there to see. Niall ducked down. Great. There went comms, which only left the satellite phones. Where would they be? In the comms room. Idiot.

  But wait. IT maintenance…

  Working his way back around the main deck, he approached the comms room from another direction, straight to the maintenance room, and after a considered look in through a cracked window, he cautiously moved in. When he shut the door behind him he stopped absolutely still, gauging if anything was there. No signs of movement, no sounds, just an empty room full of storage boxes and a couple smashed PC screens. He opened the nearest box, nothing but ID card holders. Another box held paper, yet another wrappers of energy bars, but no actual bars. His stomach rolled, reminding him he hadn’t even got breakfast and it must be way past lunch now.

  Finally, maybe six boxes later he found what he was looking for and pulled out three satellite phones and a couple of chargers. Pushing them back in, he lifted the box and glanced at the piles of remaining boxes. There could be more but could he chance it?

  In the end, the need to get out of the situation alive trumped everything and he was out of the security room, and scrambling down open stairs. Icy rain stung his eyes and skin as he moved to the lower production deck and into one of the main storage rooms. There he finally stopped long enough to realise he was shaking with cold and he couldn’t feel his fingers. When the door was closed against the elements it didn’t make him feel any better physically but on the safety level he felt like he could give himself a few minutes to breathe. He pulled off the sweater, which dripped with water. Then, ignoring his wet pants, laid everything inside the box on the table in the darkened corner. Using his cell flashlight, he lit the area, hoping no one was checking the random abandoned rooms on this deck. He’d deliberately chosen a room with three exits and it was enough so he could focus if he knew he had at least two alternative ways out.

  Two of the satellite phones were broken, the backs off and the electrics loose, and only one charger had a light glowing to say it worked when he plugged it in.

  “Fuck.”

  He blew on his fingers, trying to get some warmth into them, but his whole body was so cold it was impossible. Wires slid through his hold, the delicate connections a mess that he couldn’t at first make sense of.

  Frustrated, he stopped. He needed to warm up before he could concentrate. Walking from side to side in the room, over and around crates, he finally felt like he was warming. All he could do was be thankful he didn’t appear to be teetering on the edge of hypothermia.

  The wiring was easy after that. The box contained satellite phones for maintenance and he was able to cobble together enough to get one phone that might work. Finally, with the handset on charge, he hid everything under crates and crawled into a space he made, dragging his sweater with him and huddling against the interior wall, which was warmer to touch than the cold floor.

  All he could do now was wait.

  Chapter Four

  The call came in just past fourteen hundred hours, Erik beating him to ops by about two seconds, both men pulling on vests and arranging holsters.

  Finn had been reading, spending the quiet down time before dinner trying to get his head around some of the shit that had gone down today. Time at the Urskar training facility was hard work but it wasn’t hard physical work that was bugging Finn. He knew exactly what it was.

  Niall.

  They’d talked this morning; he was working on the Forseti platform in the Heidrun oilfield for the next few weeks. They wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while, and that was fine. Finn was good with that. Of course, he didn’t like the fact Finn was flying in this weather. The storm passing through near the Forseti platform was a big one. And yes, he had to admit to himself he’d checked. And that was the problem. He’d checked the storm, he’d worried about the flight, and he was already missing the feisty, nerdy, sexy engineer enough to have it consuming his thoughts. All the what-ifs and the whens, and mostly the whys. He didn’t usually do serious, but Niall could make him change his mind. One guy with a soft voice and a wicked mouth comes along and suddenly Finn was losing control of his touch but don’t keep policy.

  Then, this morning he’d fucked up. Big time.

  He hadn’t been paying attention and he’d seriously blown things in training. He’d let his guard down and got a helmet full of pink dye with a spot-on head shot from a crowing Erik. It wasn’t so much the kill shot, it was why Finn had been distracted. He’d been thinking about Niall, and not in the I want to fuck that sideways kind of way, but in an I hope he’s okay and I’ll miss him kind of way.

  Then Erik had to go and manage to kill him. It was the first time Erik had ever gotten the drop on Finn in training. It had taken three hair washes and vigorous scrubbing to get the pink out of his hair and off his left temple.

  Fucker.

  When they reached the briefing room Erik grinned at him, that shit-eating grin that told Finn he wouldn’t be living it down that Erik’s team had taken first blood in the mini war game they were taking part in. The grin didn’t last long, subsiding as soon as Cap walked in. After all, it didn’t matter what had happened this morning; now they were all about whatever had caused them to be alerted.

  “About thirty minutes ago four bodies were found at the Grane oil terminal, identified as security assigned to the NorsDev Forseti Platform.”

  Cap stared straight at Finn and for a brief moment Finn wasn’t really understanding the words. Then one thing hit him square in the chest. Forseti. That was where Niall was.

  Rising to his feet he didn’t know what to say as fear gripped him. “Four?”

&nb
sp; “We have reason to believe these four men were replaced so that a team of hijackers could get onto Forseti.”

  “That’s being decom’d.” Erik sounded puzzled. “What kind of collateral does an empty oil platform have?”

  “Only four?” Finn interjected. “What about the engineers? Niall Faulkner and his brother Ewan?”

  Erik looked up at him and Finn could see the moment the information made sense in his head.

  “Fuck. Niall is on Forseti?”

  “Both of them… Niall and Ewan. Did they go? Does someone know if he…?” The rest of the team all stared at him, Cap included, and Finn realised he was coming off as a mad man. He subsided. No one could get information out if Finn was raving like a fucking lovesick moron.

  “The pilots are back, they took one engineer and four security replacements. So, souls on the platform are one engineer, six skeleton crew, and the four security replacements. Eleven souls in all.”

  The bottom fell out of Finn and dread stole his breath. Was it Niall or Ewan on Forseti? With who? Terrorists?

  “Intel is showing no communications, or demands, but chatter has it that this is an isolated cell connected to the Hofstad Network out of Denmark.” Cap slid his finger on the laptop and the screen changed behind him to show four faces. Three fair-haired, one dark, all in fatigues with long addendums at the bottom of the photo. Ex-Marine, one former SAS. The names a blur. Except for one.

  Svein Roberg.

  “He’s dead,” Erik said in disbelief, echoing Finn’s thoughts exactly. Roberg had a long history of fighting the good fight for whichever side paid him most. Ex-Special Forces, he had finally been taken down by the ERU two years before, just after Finn joined the team. In fact, it had been Finn who faced him down after tracking him to a small holding in Alta. They’d chased him to the Alta Dam, where the murdering fucker had died.