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That didn’t happen often, but it did happen. Rig crews hailed from just about every country on the planet. That made communication a distinct challenge. Their staggered rotations also presented opportunities for high-dollar tools and unsecured personal items to disappear.
Still suspicious, Moore tapped a booted toe. “So who fired the shots? This light-fingered entrepreneur?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the man he stole from. The shooter had departed the scene when I reached his victim.”
“This victim. Was he dead when you got to him?”
“He took a bullet between the eyes. You don’t get much deader than that.”
Her foot tapped the floor again. Once. Twice.
“You didn’t kill him,” she said, scowling. “I could have vouched for that. So why did you disappear?”
“I only arrived in Mexico with the replacement crew yesterday.” Another lie, followed by another truth. “But I’ve been around enough to know you don’t get mixed up in an incident like this unless you want to spend some not-so-quality time with the federales.”
“So you left me to do the explaining?”
The disdain in her eyes stung. Devlin deflected it with a shrug. “I went back to look for you. You had departed the scene, too.”
“Wrong! I ran up to my car to get my cell phone and call the police.”
He hooked an incredulous brow. “And you hung around to wait for them?”
“Someone had to.”
He let that pointed barb hang on the air for a moment before giving her a smile of genuine regret. “I have to admit, I had to think twice about leaving. If I’d stuck around, I might have gotten real lucky.”
The ploy worked. The reminder of her rash vow brought her chin up and a flush to her cheeks.
“Not hardly, Devlin. You’re not my type.”
“Best I recall, you didn’t specify a type last night.”
The pink in her cheeks deepened to brick. “Yeah, well, that was last night.”
He pushed off the desk and moved closer. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup that he could see, but her gold-flecked brown eyes didn’t need any goopy mascara to emphasize either their depth or their intelligence. And he had to admit the light dusting of freckles across her nose turned him on. That, and her unique scent. It drifted on an air-conditioned breeze, a tantalizing combination of soap and perspiration and aviation fuel.
He needed to keep her off balance, he reminded himself. Prevent her from probing too deeply. Throwing himself into the task, he gave her a wicked grin.
“How about this morning? Nothing says we can’t take up where we left off.”
“Oh, sure! With a rotation crew waiting outside in the heat?”
“I’m game if you are.”
Liz shook her head, suspended between suspicion and disbelief. “You’re something else, cowboy.”
“Yes, ma’am. I do believe I’ve been told that once or twice.”
She was damned if she could figure this guy out. He certainly looked like the roustabout he claimed to be. The sun had bleached his close-cut hair to golden brown. The white squint lines she’d noticed last night cut into skin tanned to dark oak by wind and sun. A couple days’ stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, as if he was getting a head start on the bushy beard most of the crews sprouted while on the rig. Then there was the palm he slid under her hair to circle her nape. It was callused and leather tough.
Liz stiffened at the touch of his skin against hers. Her eyes met his and telegraphed an unmistakable warning, which he ignored.
“If we can’t finish what we started,” he murmured, his gaze sliding downward to fix on her mouth, “how about we just settle for a kiss?”
Holding her in place with that thorny palm, he bent and brushed her lips with his.
Liz stood stiff, debating whether to whip up a knee or ream out his gut with her elbow. Devlin took full advantage of the hesitation, as brief as it was. Shifting his stance, he brought his mouth came down on hers with a hunger Liz hadn’t tasted in seven months.
Or longer, she realized with a jolt as his lips molded hers. To her chagrin, she couldn’t remember the last time a man had kissed her as if he meant it. Donny’s affectionate pecks hadn’t come close to packing this powerful a charge.
She savored the sizzle for a moment, maybe two, before breaking the contact. Feeling the loss of warmth immediately, she buried it in biting sarcasm.
“Finished flexing your masculinity, cowboy?”
“Guess so.”
“Then I’ll chalk this little interlude up to my stupid remark last night and let you walk out of here.” She looked him square in the eye. “Touch me again without my permission, however, and you’ll be drilling for something besides Mexican crude.”
Spinning on her heel, she strode out into the smothering heat. Jorge was waiting beside the pad with a question in his eyes. Liz answered it with a small shake of her head and brisk order tossed over her shoulder to the man who’d followed her from the operations shack.
“Get aboard and buckle up.”
Devlin joined his companions in the passenger compartment. Only after Liz had climbed into the cockpit and buckled her seat harness did she realize she’d bought his story about the supposed thief he’d gone to meet last night.
Frowning, she strapped on her kneeboard and forced herself to concentrate on the power-up sequence checklist. The engines whined. The forty-four feet of main rotor blades churned up dust, slowly at first, then in a reddish whirlwind. The aircraft began to shimmy as Liz radioed the tower.
Once she received clearance to taxi, her years of training and experience kicked in. Flying an aircraft that operated in both horizontal and vertical planes required a level of coordination not all pilots possessed. As always, getting her bird in the air and shifting smoothly from one plane to the other produced an adrenaline rush.
Her second in less than twenty minutes, Liz thought as she banked and aimed for the blue, sparkling Pacific. Her mouth still tingled from the kiss Devlin had laid on her.
Scowling behind her mirrored sunglasses, she set a course for floating the platform designated American-Mexican Petroleum Company Drill Site 237.
She must have made the run to AM-237 forty or fifty times in the past seven months. Every time, the sheer immensity of the ultradeepwater semisubmersible rig inspired awe. It was as big as a city block—a floating platform spiked by two giant cranes and a derrick that rose to impossible heights.
Anchored to the ocean floor by chains and 45,000-pound anchors, the superstructure sat on massive pontoons and four corner columns. Once the platform was positioned over a drill site, the columns were flooded with seawater. This caused the pontoons to sink to a predetermined depth and lessened the platform’s surface movement, making it relatively stable.
Relative being the key word. To a pilot aiming for the helideck that jutted out over the rig’s bow some seven stories above the water, even slight up and down movement had to be taken into consideration. The trick was to contact the helideck at its highest point and ride it down. Slamming into it on the way up stressed the landing gear and made the passengers just a tad nervous.
Liz chose a leeward approach and put the helo into a descending spiral a quarter of a mile out. The fat orange flanges for pumping the crude into tankers stood out like beacons on the east side. She lined up on the flanges to begin her final approach.
“AM-237, this is Aero Baja 214 on final.”
“Roger, 214. We have you on the scope. We’re putting out the welcome mat.”
While the rig’s two crane operators lowered the booms to clear the airspace, a support ship maneuvered into position at the pontoon closest to the helideck. The ship’s mission was to pick up survivors if the incoming aircraft hit the drink instead of the deck.
“The LO is standing by.”
The rig’s landing officer climbed onto the pad, clearly visible in his bright yellow vest.
“I see him,” Liz acknowledged.
Although this was only a secondary duty for him, she knew he’d been doing it a long time and trusted him to guide her in. Keeping one eye on his arm signals and another on the instrument panel, she put her aircraft into a hover above the deck and brought her down.
The skids touched, lifted and settled with a small thump. While the red-vested tie-down crew ducked under the blades to anchor the helicopter to the deck, Liz powered down. Once the blades had chugged to a halt, she keyed her mike.
“Welcome to AM-237, gentlemen.”
Swinging a leg over the stick, she clambered into the cargo compartment.
“Claim your gear and pass it to the deckhands,” she instructed the new arrivals. “Make sure you hang on to the lifelines when you climb out onto the pad.”
The old-timers knew the drill, but there were questions in the eyes of a couple of obvious newcomers. Liz repeated the instructions in Spanish, then in elaborate pantomime. Looking both doubtful and nervous, the newbies poked their heads outside the hatch. Liz saw several Adam’s apples bounce and knuckles turn white as the crewmen measured the distance from the pad to the ocean below.
“Don’t piss yourself,” the beefy Irishman advised one of the Venezuelans. “Just hang on to that strap. Out you go now, there’s a good lad.”
Since the brawny oilman supplemented his friendly words of encouragement with a solid thump between the shoulder blades, the cargo compartment soon emptied of everyone but Liz and Devlin. Passing his gear bag to a waiting deckhand, he turned back to her.
“How often do you make this run?”
“Five maybe six times a month. Depends on whether they need supplies or there’s a crew rotating off.”
“Maybe I’ll see you on your next run.”
“Maybe.”
He took a step toward her, his sun-streaked hair ruffled by the wind whistling through the open hatch. “Do I have your permission?”
“My permission? For…? Oh! No, as a matter of fact, you don’t. No touching, Devlin, and definitely no kissing.”
“Sure you won’t reconsider? It’s going to be a long twenty-eight days out here.”
“Just grin and bear it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Tipping her a two-fingered salute, he exited the aircraft and made his way to the stairs leading to the main deck.
Liz saw to the unloading of the replenishment supplies and accepted the sealed outgoing mail pouch, but instructed the landing officer to wait before bringing up the departing crew members.
“I need to talk to the company rep,” she informed him, holding back her wind-whipped hair with one hand. “Do you know where he is?”
“Try the galley. Conrad is usually there this time of morning, swilling coffee and shooting off his…Er, shooting the breeze.”
She gave the LO a wry smile. She’d dealt with AmMex Petroleum’s on-site representative before. She had no doubt she would find him pontificating to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in his immediate vicinity.
She took the stairs, crossed the deck to the main superstructure and entered a world like none other. The ever-present reek of fresh paint and diesel fuel flavored the air. Machinery constantly in motion thumped out the rig’s steady heartbeat. Metal creaked as the massive platform rode the waves.
The giant anchors and stabilizers minimized the motion until it was almost imperceptible, but Liz had to lay a palm against the bulkhead once or twice as she followed the scent of fried onions to the galley. Sure enough, the AmMex on-site rep was sprawled in a mess chair at the officers’ table, holding forth.
Big and amiable and impervious to all attempts to shut him up, Conrad Wallace never seemed to tire of the sound of his own voice. Today’s topic appeared to be a crew Ping-Pong tournament that evidently didn’t come off to Wallace’s satisfaction. The rig’s Pakistani-born doctor sat across from him with a glazed expression on her face. When she spotted Liz, relief sprang into her eyes.
“Hello, Elizabeth. Did you bring the waterproof cast liners I ordered?”
“Sure did.”
“What about the metronidazole tablets?”
“They’re on back order, but marked priority. I’ll fly them out as soon as they arrive.”
“Thank you. I need them. Excuse me, Conrad. I must go inventory the new supplies.”
She hurried out, leaving Liz to help herself to the coffee before joining Wallace at the gleaming teak table reserved for the rig’s officers. The officers lived well out here on the patch, as did the hundred-plus crew members. Accommodations included hotel-class rooms, a galley that served international cuisine, a cinema showing satellite TV and movies and a gym that would get a gold stamp of approval from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oil companies had to provide such facilities along with high-dollar salaries to induce men and women to live surrounded by miles of empty water for months at a time.
Cradling her coffee, Liz sank into a padded captain’s chair. The company man shifted his bulk in her direction and picked up almost where he’d left off.
“We were talking about the fluke shot that won the crew Ping-Pong tournament last night. Did anyone tell you about it?”
“No, I just got down.”
“It was crazy. The ball ricocheted off a steam pipe, hit the forehead of one of the watchers and slammed back on the table. No way the referee should have allowed that shot, but you know how these foreigners are. They make up their own rules as they go.”
Liz started to remind the man the rig sat in Mexican territorial waters and he was the foreigner here but didn’t want to set him off on a new tangent. Instead, she cut straight to the point.
“I need an advance on next month’s salary.”
Wallace blinked at the abrupt change of topic and pursed his lips. Liz recognized his pinched expression. She categorized it as his company face.
“Payday was last week,” he pontificated, as if she weren’t well aware of that basic fact. “Don’t tell me you’ve already run through the exorbitant flight pay AmMex shells out to you.”
Her supposedly “exorbitant” flight pay was an old issue, one that came up every time Liz renewed her contract.
“What I did with my pay is my business, Conrad.”
Frowning at the cool reply, Wallace shifted in his seat. He was a big man, but soft around the middle. Not lean and hard like the roughnecks who wrestled pipe or the roustabouts who performed general maintenance work.
Not like Joe Devlin.
Irritated at the way the man kept popping into her head, Liz laid out her requirement. “I need six hundred.”
Living was considerably cheaper in Mexico than in the States, thank goodness. That amount would cover the payment due on the loan and get her though to the next payday with no problem.
“Six hundred?” Wallace echoed, looking as horrified as a man asked to sacrifice his firstborn child.
Liz should have known he’d balk. The man managed a multimillion-dollar operating budget, yet was so tight he squeaked when he walked.
“You know, Conrad, you’re the perfect company man. You think every cent you dole out comes out of your own pocket.”
