Alpha, Delta Page 4

  The bastard had tried extortion in the name of environmental concern and had killed three oil workers in an explosion at one of the dry land containment depots. Finn would never forget Svein’s face. He didn’t even fight when Erik and Finn had him cornered, simply dropped his weapon and raised his hands.

  In the best traditions of all grandstanding bad guys he laughed then said, “I live to fight another day,” repeating this over and over as he fell to his knees. There had been madness in his words, and cunning in his silver eyes. Only when Finn had stepped forward did the madness manifest in a blur of motion, the two men grappling for the weapon and a bullet leaving Finn’s gun and carving into Svein’s neck, blood spurting. Time had slowed and Finn had watched in horror and a curious fascination as the terrorist leaped in a grotesque twist of muscles over the dam wall and down into the churning water below.

  “They never found his body,” Finn said softly. But Finn hadn’t cared then. The fucker had a bullet in his neck and had fallen over six hundred feet. He had to have been dead.

  “Until four weeks ago his file was silent, but chatter indicated there was movement and he was implicated right in the center of it all.”

  “And no one thought to brief us?” Finn demanded hotly. “Why the fuck not?”

  Several others in the team, Erik included, added their alarm.

  Cap held up a hand and quieted the room. “Wheels up in ten,” he said.

  And that was it. They knew nothing. They didn’t know why Forseti was the platform involved or why Svein Roberg had shown up. But, whatever information they received, they would be ready for action when they knew what the hell to do.

  Erik grabbed his arm as Finn made to leave. “Finn?” he asked. The question was loaded. It was, are you sure you’re okay, do you know the man you’ve been seeing is on Forseti, and can you handle this, all in one word.

  Finn nodded. Didn’t matter how he felt or what he actually said to voice any of it, he was going with the team and he wasn’t putting doubt in Erik’s head.

  “Let’s get this done.”

  The helicopter took them to Grane terminal from Urskar, and Finn stayed quiet the whole time. Intel was trickling in, definite that Svein had survived being shot and was on Forseti, with camera footage from Oslo and at a gas station near Urskar. It hadn’t escaped Finn’s attention that Svein made no effort to hide his face. He was buying at the counter in the convenience store and looking directly at the camera.

  Was he sending a message to Delta? That yes, he was back, and that they should come find him?

  Still, why Forseti? Eco terrorists chose live targets, not empty monoliths in the middle of the ocean. What kind of statement could Svein make with no pipeline to threaten? Maybe they wanted some kind of impact of the attack in the press. NorsDev had managed to avoid being caught up in any kind of hijacking so far, the bigger names were the victims, companies like Lundin Petroleum and BP. But somehow Finn knew. People were the only collateral that Svein had on Forseti.

  And people meant Niall or Ewan.

  As soon as they landed the team jumped down and gathered around Cap, Finn catching sight of someone walking toward them in the gathering rain. For a moment he thought it was Niall, then realised this person was taller. Ewan.

  Ewan hurried straight to them. “My brother is on that platform,” he said with panic in his voice. Then he saw Finn and stumbled. “Niall is on there with them.”

  Finn grabbed at Ewan and held him. The man looked white with fear and Finn had to be the responsible one who kept control of everything and didn’t let what he was feeling inside be obvious on the outside.

  “We’ll get him back,” he reassured Ewan.

  “What do they want?” Ewan asked.

  Cap made his way to Ewan and stood between him and Finn. “We don’t know anything as of yet.”

  “But we know it’s hijackers,” Ewan snapped. “What are their demands?”

  Cap raised a hand and Ewan fell silent. “We need to take this inside.”

  The men went inside, a situation board already in place, Ewan there with a couple others who all looked as worried as Finn felt.

  “This was just posted,” a man to one side said then turned the screen so Delta could see as well as everyone else. He pressed Play and a familiar voice echoed through the tinny speakers.

  “My name is Svein Roberg. I have taken the NorsDev Forseti platform. At midday tomorrow we will be destroying the platform and taking it to the bottom of the sea where it deserves to be. Let the sea swallow it whole.” He stopped and smiled. “Come stop me,” he added. Then the video stopped.

  The threat was there, implied. He hadn’t mentioned hostages. Just that he was destroying the platform. There was no oil to leak, no fires to start, the only collateral were people.

  “Why would someone be so hell bent on sending over sixty thousand tons of steel and concrete to the bottom of the sea, uncontrolled?” Ewan asked a little desperately. “And how the hell do we get my brother off of there.”

  “We need to get on the platform,” Finn said immediately. The noise level rose as everyone put in their point of view, varying from “we’re fucked” to “let’s do this” depending which team was talking, be it the ground crew, or the Delta team.

  Delta huddled around maps. Every single one of them knew Forseti; it had been another training post only last summer. One of the remotest platforms, it was a relic to the 70s standing over a tapped well in the Heidrun oil field.

  “He’s daring us—”

  “No point in going in by Puma—”

  “Sea it is—”

  “Boat—”

  “Drop—”

  Every member had something to say, every man on the Delta team was a specialist in their own right.

  “Can we get in touch with crew? Are there comms to anyone on the platform?” Ewan asked from behind them. Finn bit his lower lip. He didn’t want to think this way, but Svein didn’t exactly give the impression he was there for money or effect. Finn didn’t have to think too hard to know that Svein was only on there to destroy with no hope of a hostage trade off. Which meant everyone could well be dead on there already.

  Cap answered for him. “No comms as yet, nothing from the crew, or from the engineer. Apart from the video we’ve got nothing.”

  “He wants us,” Finn said. He didn’t have to say it out loud but everyone in Delta knew it. This was wrong, this wasn’t delicate negotiation nor did it have a strong hope of resolution. This had to be nothing more than a trap for Delta.

  “He never got over the fact we killed him,” Erik deadpanned. Graveside humour, blacker than black, was how the team worked but something in the pit of Finn hated it.

  Niall was on there. His Niall.

  “So we’re walking into a trap,” Cap summarised. “We know that. He knows that. We may as well land a freaking Puma on the helipad and just walk out, weapons drawn.”

  “Which is what he is expecting because he’ll know we know.” Finn did his own summarising and it made sense in his head. “So we split, half in the Puma, half by sea.” He pointed at the main boat deck where they could safely dock a boat. Then he traced the side around and up and under the lower production deck. “Here, we land it here.”

  “We need a distraction.”

  “Landing a Puma is a pretty big distraction.”

  “Erik, Finn, you’re by sea, the rest of us will do the frontal assault, land the Puma, draw their fire. We go in, we take them out, try and get the crew out alive.”

  There was deadly calm in Cap’s voice and Finn nodded his agreement like everyone else did. There was one word Finn was refusing to accept. There was no trying to get the crew out, and by default Niall. He would rescue everyone or die trying.

  That is what Delta did.

  Chapter Five

  The battery light flickered red and Niall had never felt such a keen sense of relief in anything before. A red light wasn’t enough to use it but at least the phone was charging.
He just had to hope that whoever had decided to attack Forseti hadn’t somehow affected communications and he could get a clear line out.

  What would Finn do, what would Finn do…

  A sound had him shrinking back behind the crates but it was nothing more than buffeting wind and rain smashing into the thick walls. Whoever was hijacking the platform would know he was still alive and that he’d gotten away. And was it just one man with a gun, or was this more than one. Niall had only seen a single man with a gun face to face, but there was another armed in the drilling deck control room. At least two.

  If they were worried about finding him, if they thought he was of any use, or hell, if they just wanted him dead, then he wasn’t safe wherever he was hiding.

  Worst comes to worst you could jump in the sea.

  And die in seconds, slammed against the superstructure, or pulled underneath the tumultuous waves, freezing in seconds.

  No jumping into the sea unless you have to.

  The red light flickered for a second from red to green but then settled back on red. What happened if he used the phone? Would the unknown attackers pick up the comms, find him? Niall was an engineer, give him sixty-three thousand tons of steel and concrete and he could imagine every inch of it and know it like it was his own, but electrics and telecoms were something he couldn’t get his head round. Hell, he could twist a few wires together in a rough approximation of fixed but the phone looked like it was going to last about three minutes.

  Maybe I should try for the accommodation block. That was self-contained and could be shut off from the rest of the platform in case of fire. It would be safe in there. Unless the hijackers were in there.

  Frustrated at the turn of his thoughts he banged his head against the wall and winced when it fucking hurt. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and huddled into an even smaller ball, shivering with cold, and waited.

  He imagined Finn next to him, holding his hand, telling him everything was going to be okay. Keeping Finn in his thoughts was a good move; the strength he admired in his lover was enough to keep him calm. At least until the light flickered to green and stayed that way.

  Niall immediately picked it up, not knowing who the hell to call. This wasn’t a two-way radio, this was a phone and the only number he remembered off the top of his head was Ewan’s, and Ewan was in hospital.

  Fumbling in his tight pocket he pulled out his cell and peered at the screen. It was soaked through, water behind the screen, but when he pressed the power it worked enough for Niall to get a number for Grane Terminal. He might have one chance to get a message through and everything counted on this one moment.

  Shakily he pressed the digits for Grane but there was silence, before a crackle, then the sound of a connection being made. The call was answered and before they said a thing Niall launched into what he wanted to say.

  “Niall Faulkner, Senior Engineer aboard NorsDev Forseti platform in the Heidrun oil field. Unknown armed assailants, two by my count. One crew dead. I’m cut off from everyone else.” He waited for a response, but could hear nothing. “Over?” he added cautiously. The phone crackled in his hand and he wondered if there was even any point to this. Was it going through to anyone who could help? “Hello, this is Niall Faulkner, Senior Engineer aboard NorsDev Forseti platform in the Heidrun oil field. Can anyone hear me? One of the crew is dead.” Nothing. “Please. Is someone there? One crew is dead. Two unknown armed hijackers.”

  He repeated the message over and over, forgetting the ice of cold, or the wet, or the fact he could be found. If someone was out there listening, if this was actually a connection, then he was damned if he was stopping.

  “Niall Faulkner, Senior Engineer aboard NorsDev Forseti platform—“

  “Niall!”

  Ewan’s voice? Was Niall going mad? That sounded like his brother’s voice.

  “Ewan.”

  “Thank God, hang on—“

  Another voice came on the line. “This is Emmet Adams at Grane Terminal. Is This Niall Faulkner?”

  “I’m on Forseti,” Niall managed. “Send help.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “I’m safe,” Niall said. He didn’t feel very safe but no one had found him yet. And he’d managed to connect to the outside world, that had to count for something, meant that the comms weren’t totally down?

  “I’m patching you in to the ERU,” Emmet said.

  Niall waited. The ERU meant Finn, but it wasn’t Finn’s voice, another man who spoke crisply and calmly.

  “Talk to me,” was all he said.

  Niall imagined talking to Finn, what he could say that might make Finn’s job easier. “Two armed men that I know of, one with intent to kill.” That much was true, the guard he’d met wasn’t exactly asking him to put his hands up, he’d gone straight for point and fire. “Guard one outside media room, guard two armed in drilling observation, I didn’t see the crew.”

  “Assume all four from flight this morning are part of hijack cell,” the voice warned.

  Niall had already come to that conclusion on his own. He didn’t need a random ERU member telling his that. His instincts told him he’d be lucky to make it out alive and that no friendly visitors would point a gun at him.

  “What do I do?”

  “Stay low. We’re on our way.”

  More crackling then a different voice was there. “This is a big ask, but could you give us a distraction?”

  “A what?” Niall startled at another bang on the wall outside, his heart racing.

  “We have Delta two at your position in thirty minutes, can you make some kind of distraction to pull the assailants to the boat deck for sixteen twenty without putting yourself in harm’s way?”

  “I can…can do that.”

  Could he? He could think of a million ways to cause a distraction, from steel to fire, but could he actually move from here?

  “Stay safe. If you can’t manage this then get yourself somewhere isolated and stay put. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  The phone went dead and at first he thought it was just the end of the call, then he saw the red light and the sparks from the wires. The whole thing was fucked and there wasn’t anything else in the box that was halfway salvageable.

  Sixteen twenty. Niall checked his phone, wondering if that was even keeping time with the wet. The screen showed just before sixteen hundred and he just had to trust he was going to be doing the right thing. Fear curled in his belly as he carefully pushed all signs he had been there, boxes and wires, into the very farthest-most point in the dark corner. He wasn’t the hero hanging from a rope setting explosions as a distraction, hell he doubted there was anything to cause an explosion. All the power around here was in water.

  And why the boat deck? Wouldn’t the ERU use the boat deck? What about a helicopter? What if they couldn’t get here at all?

  Closing his eyes, he focused on what he could do. Then it hit him. Water. He could use the valve for the…

  Decision made, he still couldn’t bring himself to leave his dark space. He was scared. The memory of Jeff dead on the floor with a bullet between his eyes was enough to have him not moving.

  “What would Finn do?” he asked himself out loud.

  Sucking up every ounce of courage he possessed, he crawled out from the space and cautiously made his way to the main door from the production deck outside. His hiding place was damn near all the way over the other side of the vast platform, and the rain hadn’t let up. Carefully, he removed his glasses, blinking as everything blurred a little. He thought about what he needed to do. Section seventy-nine was his first stop, if he could make it there then he could loosen the valve, move around the edge, under the walkway, to the main boat deck. Follow the pipes to section forty-seven, locate the outlet, loosen it, wait for the pressure to build between the two.

  He could do this.

  He straightened and pushed back his shoulders, then opened the main door. He had to keep close to the sides as much ou
t of the rain as he could for fear of being blown off the platform. Cautiously, he made his way to the edge of the connections for the main rig right to the steel jacket that kept Forseti secure in three hundred and fifty metre depths. The going was treacherous, the howling wind making him wish for the safety rope he may well have thought to use in this situation. He wasn’t the kind to take chances like this. He was the solid, safe one, the one who looked out for everyone else. Rain sliced into his face, blurring his vision even more and he stumbled to a stop.

  He guessed the only good thing about this was that the bad guys had as limited visibility as he did. And he had one thing they didn’t—he knew his way around these rigs with his eyes closed.

  He didn’t stop to check the time, couldn’t stop, couldn’t even take his hands off of every handhold he could find. He felt like he was walking against a brick wall one minute, then sagging to the ground in the next when the wind shifted, pressing him down to the metal floor. He just hoped to hell that he was close enough to the first valve now to at least make it to the second. He’d need leverage to turn the valve and he doubted there was anything official to handle like a wrench. Inspired, he grabbed at one of the small water outlet draining pipes and levered the item until it came apart. Armed with a foot of hard metal he continued onward.

  Feeling his way along the pipes, picturing the layout in his mind, he couldn’t help but think of Finn. Was Finn landing by boat? Was he even part of the ERU Delta team, did he know it was Niall on the platform?

  Last week they’d spent a whole night together, Finn on his way north for training, Niall in seclusion working on project deadlines. They’d eaten out, made a whole date of it, hell, most of it even seemed normal. Finn was stealing a small piece of Niall’s heart every time they were together and Niall bet Finn didn’t even realise what he was doing.

  And the sex? Niall slumped to the nearest pipe and gripped hard, knowing he was only maybe six feet from the first valve. He could think about the sex, about the way Finn made him feel, about the way Finn could hold him and make everything outside what they were doing seem unreal. Then he could focus on what he felt like when he stared into Finn’s beautiful green eyes, or when he dug his fingers into Finn’s dark hair like he never wanted to let go.