Black Horizon (2 page)

“Any chance we’ll shut down tonight?” he shouted.

The supervisor chuckled and shook his head, as if to remind Rafael that the Norwegian engineers on the Scarborough 8 had all earned their drilling stripes in winters on the North Sea.

“It costs a half million euros a day to lease this rig from the Chinese. A little wind and rain are not going to shut us down.”

It was more than “a little,” even if the storm had weakened considerably since making landfall on a northwesterly path of destruction across Cuba. Management had counted on the island as a storm barrier that would keep the system from becoming a hurricane, making evacuation of the rig unnecessary. Rafael could only wonder if his tiny apartment in Havana had survived.

“Hi-ho, hi-ho,” said the supervisor. “Off to work.”

Rafael wiped his goggles clean and started up the ladder. The rungs were slippery, so he gripped extra tight. Forty pounds of wet gear—raincoat, boots, flashlight, radio, helmet, and more—didn’t make it any easier. Below him, the day-shift workers disappeared into the dormitories, glad to take shelter. They’d return in twelve hours; the Scarborough 8 never slept.

Wind gusts intensified as Rafael climbed higher on the derrick. It was best not to think too much about the danger, but he’d checked the status board at dinnertime, and he couldn’t erase the most current drilling data from his mind. The Scarborough 8 was in 5,600 feet of seawater, and the titanium drills had cut through 14,614 feet of layered rock beneath the ocean floor. Also on his mind—it was posted all over the rig, from the cafeteria to the cinema—was the fast-approaching deadline to find petroleum and gas in quantities that qualified as a “commercial discovery.” Just five days remained on the consortium’s forty-five-day lease of the only rig in the world that was both 90 percent free of American parts and big enough to tap Cuba’s North Basin. Rumor had it that next in line was a Brazilian-Angolan-Vietnamese consortium, with a Spanish-Indian-Malaysian group behind them. A strike by any of them on the Scarborough 8 would earn the Cuban government half the profit.

A blast of wind rattled the derrick. Rafael stopped climbing, hitched his safety strap to the rail, and held tight. He was on his way to the monkey board, some twenty-five feet above the platform, more than a hundred feet above the raging ocean. His supervisor’s voice crackled on his radio.

“You okay up there?”

Rafael turned his face away from the wind and rain to speak. “Couldn’t be better.”

The derrick rattled again, a deep vibration that started in his feet on the bottom rung of the ladder and coursed all the way up through his body. The radio crackled again with the voice of his supervisor.

“Stand by, Rafael.”

It was hard for Rafael to tell in a raging storm, but something about that last jolt didn’t feel like the wind. The follow-up from his supervisor only heightened his concerns.

“Rafael, come down!”

The lights on the derrick blinked off, then back on.

“What is going on?”

“Get down—
now
!”

Red-flashing emergency lights were activated, and an alarm sounded. The workers below were suddenly in “all hands” mode. Day-shift workers rushed from the dormitories, pulling on their gear as they raced through the rain toward the derrick. Rafael unhitched his safety harness and started down the ladder quickly, then stopped. Again he felt that strange rumble in the metal rungs.

Suddenly the rain seemed to reverse course and spray up from the platform, but Rafael knew it wasn’t rain. It was the industrial “mud”—a mixture of clays, additives, and water—that in the normal course circulated through the drill pipe to clear away the cuttings and cool the equipment. Another alarm sounded. More lights flashed. Rafael held tight.

“Rafael, you—”

His earpiece crackled, and the voice of his supervisor broke off. Rafael pressed the receiver more firmly into his ear, but he couldn’t hear anything but the driving wind, pounding rain, and pulsating alarms.

The sound that followed was like a sonic boom. It rocked the derrick and nearly knocked Rafael from the ladder. Fighting to keep his balance, he glanced down toward the platform. From his vantage point, high on the derrick and in the blurring rain, the chaos below was like a swift kick to an ant mound. Men were literally running for their lives, pulling on inflatable vests and scrambling toward the lifeboats at the platform’s edge. The crew had trained for disaster at sea, but no amount of preparation could erase the sense of panic that attended a bona fide emergency.

Rafael felt another vibration beneath his feet, more powerful than the previous one. A wave of heat rose up from directly below him, a rush so intense that he could feel it through the soles of his work boots. Again the deck lights blinked on and off. The red and yellow flash of emergency beacons seemed to highlight the swirl of confusion below him. One man went overboard, and another followed. It wasn’t clear if they had jumped or if they had been swept from the platform. Either way, Rafael knew they were caught up in a force more powerful than the storm. Another vibration, another intense wave of heat, and a blinding flash of light told him so.

Rafael closed his eyes and gripped the ladder with all his strength.

“Mother Mary,” he said softly, “I’m a dead man.”

Chapter 3

T
echnically, it would be
lunch
in bed,” said Jack.

Andie had room service on the line. She rolled over, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and checked the clock on the nightstand. It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

“Never mind,” she said into the phone, then hung up. Jack pulled her close beneath the sheets.

“Let’s eat by the pool,” she said.

“Let’s stay in bed,” said Jack.

“Don’t you want to see me in my new Brazilian bikini?”

Seeing as how they were naked, it was hard to know the right answer. “Uh . . . yes?”

“Good one, Jack. You’ve got this husband thing down pat.”

Andie popped out of bed first, and Jack followed.

The honeymoon was at the Big Palm Island Resort in the lower Keys, about twenty-five miles up the chain of islands from Key West. Thatched-roof bungalows in a secluded tropical setting made it a favorite destination for newlyweds and couples who didn’t care how much it cost to reexperience Life
B.C.
(before children, that is). Jack and Andie followed the sandy footpath through the scrub of sea grapes and hibiscus to the pool area. The tiki bar was open, but it was as quiet as the warm ocean breeze, until a shirtless baby boomer arrived with his much younger woman. The boomer pulled up a couple of bar stools and flagged the bartender, his accent pure Texas.

“Could you turn that up, pardner?”

He was pointing at the television. The bartender obliged.

It had been Jack’s intention to spend his honeymoon on a news blackout, but the soothing sounds of the ocean were suddenly mere background for CNN. He tugged at Andie to join him for a walk on the beach, leaving the real world behind, but the story caught her attention:

“For many Americans, memories of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the biggest man-made environmental disaster in history, have not even begun to fade. Once again, millions of gallons of oil are spewing from a hole in the ocean floor, this time in some of the most pristine waters in the world. In a matter of just days, huge black slicks may be headed straight toward Florida’s coastline.”

Jack stepped closer to the bar, staring in disbelief at the ominous satellite images of the spill area on television. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Andie shooshed him. The newscast continued:

“Critics point to lessons that should have been learned from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that devastated the Gulf Coast. But last night’s deadly explosion of a massive oil rig in the Florida Straits presents an even bigger challenge. The oil company in charge of drilling, Petróleos de Venezuela, is owned by the Venezuelan government, which has done little to improve relations with the United States since the death of its very anti-American president, Hugo Chávez. The manufacturer of the $750 million, semi-submersible rig is Sinopec, the state-owned petroleum giant from China. The owner of the rig and the company in charge of cementing the well for periodic pressure tests is Gazprom Neft, the oil-producing arm of Russia’s largest natural gas exporter. And even though the rig exploded just sixty-five miles from Key West, Florida, it was in Cuban waters northwest of Havana, and the entire operation is controlled by a mineral lease from the Cuban government under a production-sharing agreement with Cuba’s state-owned oil company, Cubapetróleo, or ‘Cupet,’ as it is called.”

“Well, ain’t that just fine and dandy,” said the Texan. He was on the opposite leg of the tiki hut’s four-sided bar, but his voice carried clear across the bartender’s work area to where Jack and Andie were seated.

“Why don’t you shoosh
him
?” Jack whispered.

“He’s not married to me,” said Andie. “He’s married to Miss Teenage U.S.A. over there.”

Andie turned her attention back to CNN, but Jack noticed another couple approaching the tiki hut from the beach. The man’s skin radiated the atomic glow of too much sun on the first day of vacation, but it was the woman who seemed angry. She split the pair of empty barstools beside Jack and slapped a rolled-up beach towel on the bar top.

“Excuse me,” she said in a tone so sharp that the bartender dropped his pineapple. “Does your manager know about this?”

He gathered the fruit off the floor and went to her. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Know about what?”

She unrolled the beach towel. Inside was a black blob that, from Jack’s angle, looked like a lump of wet coal.

“This
,” she said as she pushed the towel toward the bartender. “It’s a tar ball. I found it on your beach.”

The Texan walked over and took a look. “That’s a tar ball, all right.”

“See, I told you,” she said to her sunburned mate.

“Marsha, I never said it wasn’t a tar ball.”

Marsha ignored him, turning her glare back to the bartender. “I want to see your manager.”

“Right away, ma’am.” The bartender went to the phone, no argument.

Jack and Andie exchanged glances, each wondering if the other wanted to hang around for the imminent bloodbath. The Texan dove right in.

“You know, ma’am, it’s not unusual to find tar balls on Florida beaches. They fall off barges, ships, what have you, all the time.”

“This didn’t fall off a ship. Have you been watching the news?”

“Sure have,” said the Texan. “But that Cuban spill just happened last night. Sixty-five miles from Key West means ninety-five miles from here. We wouldn’t be getting tar balls already.”

“Oh, really?” she said. “And who are you, some kind of tar ball expert?”

“Buddy Davis,” he said with a tip of his baseball cap. “Worked in the oil industry for thirty-seven years. If you call countin’ your money ‘work,’” he added with a wink.

“No disrespect, Buddy,” said Marsha. “This is my honeymoon, and it took us ten months to save up the fifty-percent deposit on a suite here. I am not staying if there’s an oil slick on the way.”

The point registered with Jack, even if Marsha’s attitude left something to be desired. Andie, too, had been listening. “I feel the same way, Jack.”

“Y’all on your honeymoon, too?” asked the Texan.

Andie was scheduled to start a new undercover assignment in two weeks, so Jack knew well enough to keep his mouth shut and let her respond in a way that was sure to shut down the personal questions from a total stranger.

“No, I work for an escort service,” Andie said as she pressed herself against Jack, winking at the Texan, “if you call a week in paradise with a stud like this ‘work.’”

Miss Teenage U.S.A. looked up from her iPhone. “Like, that’s so random! I work for a service, too! Who are you with?”

“Babes R Us.”

“Hmm. Don’t know them.”

“We really need to get out of this place,” Marsha said to her husband.

The bartender returned with the resort manager, a smiling and cheerful man whose accent Jack pegged as Jamaican. The oil spill was obviously a resort-wide concern, so he addressed all three couples at the tiki bar as a group.

“I want to assure each and every one of our guests that—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Marsha. “There’s an oil slick on its way, my husband and I are checking out of this resort before it gets here, and we want our deposit back. Period.”

Jack cringed. It was entirely possible that he and Andie would be asking for their deposit back, too, but Marsha’s abrasive style made him reluctant to cast his lot with her.

The manager maintained his smile. “Let’s all relax a moment, shall we? First of all, the oil slick is not on its way to Big Palm Island.”

The Texan popped a gin-soaked olive into his mouth, chewing roundly. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, as you might expect, our number-one objective is to make sure that both our guests and our beautiful resort are protected. Our New York office has been in direct contact with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and I am happy to tell you that they have assured us that geography is completely in our favor.”

“Do you mean geology?” asked Jack.

“No, geography,” said the manager. “The Gulf Stream flows right between northern Cuba and the Keys. Those currents are like a conveyor belt and will carry everything north, away from land and into the Atlantic. The only thing that could get the oil off that track is a minimum thirty-knot wind out of the southeast that blows continuously for days and days and days. And even with that kind of wind, it would still take the oil a week or more to reach land, which means that most of the oil would wither away before it got to the Keys. So even in the worst-case scenario, we wouldn’t have a lot of black oil coming ashore. What we will have are tar balls, which are much less of a threat.”

Marsha poked at the blackened beach towel. “Tar balls like this one, you mean?”

“Yes, but that one has nothing to do with the spill. We had the same situation after Deepwater Horizon in 2010. People all over the Florida Keys were freaking out, but a few tar balls on the beaches are an everyday occurrence on an island this close to a shipping lane. It doesn’t mean we are feeling the effects of an environmental disaster.”