Outpost Read online

'He's got his back to the wall. And look at him. He's twitchy. He's watching for someone to make a move.'

  'I should go over there,' said Nail. 'Offer him another coffee.

  I want to see if the safety catch is on.'

  'We could wait until he's up and walking. Catch him in a stairway, a corridor. It would give us a chance to get close, but we'd have to take his gun.'

  'Yeah.'

  'What about the first mate?'

  'What about him? We'd have a gun.'

  'Could you do that? Could you shoot a man?'

  'I'd fire a warning shot.'

  'But if it came down to it?'

  'Then, yeah,' said Nail. 'Him or us, right?'

  'Okay. You and me. Gus, Mal, Yakov. You give the signal. We move at once. We do it quick. But we'd have to be on the boat and gone before anyone has a chance to react. Bags and coats ready to go.'

  'I'll tell the guys. Go to the kitchen and fix yourself a sandwich. Get some knives while you are in there.'

  Rawlins brought the captain to his office. The captain still carried his shotgun like he expected to be jumped any moment. They examined a map of the Arctic.

  'They sent us to a pump station in the Kara. The place was deserted. We swung by Severnaya to see how the Russian team were doing but they had cleared out. Norway is closed for business. Don't dare approach. They have a couple of AWACS planes guiding gunboats.'

  'Where will you go?'

  'We'll catch the current south. Skirt Norway. Skirt Iceland. Western Scotland seems like a good place to ride out doomsday. We'll find an island. Hide ourselves away.'

  'So what have you heard?' asked Jane. 'All we have is the television.'

  'Dave, my first mate. He saw it for real in Roscoff a month ago. He was sitting in a cafe eating lunch. Noon. Not much happening. Suddenly people ran in, yelling for the police. There was a woman in the street trying to bite everyone like a rabid dog. She was bleeding.'

  'Bleeding?'

  'That's what he said. Some soldiers shot her dead. Then they shot everyone she had bitten. They made a big pile and burned the bodies.'

  'Oh, my God.'

  'Sorry to break it to you folks, but no one is coming to your rescue any time soon. You might have to find your own way home.'

  'Christ.'

  'Have you picked your men yet?'

  'We're working on it.'

  'I could do with some food for the trip, and any diesel you can spare.'

  'We'll sort you out.'

  'I'm going back to the boat,' said the captain. 'The weather is turning. Wind is getting high. Could be force ten when it hits. I'd like to be gone in thirty minutes.'

  The captain left.

  'Do you have any names for me?' asked Rawlins.

  Jane gestured to the board. 'Two names for certain. Bunch more possible.'

  Rawlins scanned the list.

  'It's an easy choice,' he said. 'You two. Sorry, ladies, but I need skills. You're both surplus to requirements.'

  The fuel store. A wide chamber. Punch switched on the lights. He led the captain between racks of fuel cans, oil drums and propane tanks. The captain loaded jerry cans on to a pallet truck. Punch struggled to help.

  'So you need food?'

  'We're both starved,' said the captain. 'We ate our last tin of beans days ago. We didn't expect to be at sea this long. We need enough food for two, three weeks. Not much. I don't want to clean you out. Just enough each day to keep us going until we get back to Britain.'

  'I'll fill a box. Tins and stuff. How about fresh water?'

  'Can you spare some?'

  'We have a desalination plant. It's not a problem.'

  'I'm sorry to leave so many of you guys behind, I truly am. I don't like to think of you all marooned out here.'

  'You're doing what you can.'

  'It's royally fucked up. Things were bad when we set sail from Rosyth a month ago. Fighting in supermarkets. Looting. Sounds like it's got a whole lot worse since then. Myself. Dave, my mate. We both have families. It's time to be a little selfish and head home.'

  'Nobody blames you. No one at all.'

  'We'll tell people you're here. We won't let them forget you.' They hauled the pallet truck down the corridor to the Level Four elevator.

  'I'll head back to the canteen,' said Punch. 'Fetch you some stuff.'

  'Thanks,' said the captain. He stepped into the elevator and pressed Down.

  Nail and his buddies waited by the elevator doors on Level One. They each held a knife. A screen displayed floor numbers. They monitored the elevator's descent. 'Here he comes,' said Nail.

  Jane looked down at her hands.

  'No,' she heard herself say. 'I appreciate what you are saying. I want to go home and yeah, I don't bring much to the party. Just another mouth to feed. But I'm not going.' 'Can we skip the ritual objections?'

  'I want to get on that boat. I've got folks back home. But there are plenty more deserving than me.'

  'Executive decision. You're leaving.'

  'You'll have to Taser me aboard.'

  'Happy to do it.'

  'Some of these guys have kids. Bardock. Doesn't he have a son? Half the guys on this rig took the job to pay child support.'

  'Bardock runs the pipe.'

  'We won't be pumping any time soon. He's a spare part, just like me.'

  'It's the same for me,' said Sian. 'I'm alone. Just a step- dad. Pick a couple of men with children and put them on the boat.'

  'Is that how you want to do it? Dependants? Last chance to change your mind. No shame in seizing an opportunity.'

  'Put their names in a cup.'

  They drew RICKI COULBY and EDGAR BARDOCK.

  'Bardock and Coulby,' said Jane. 'A couple of well-liked guys. Can't see anyone objecting if they won a ticket back to the world.'

  'Coulby has four daughters,' said Sian, checking the files. 'And yeah, Bardock has a son. Pretty much settles it.'

  'Unless we put Nail on the boat,' said Jane. 'That's our other option.'

  'Why the fuck would we do that?' asked Rawlins.

  'Because he's trouble.' She turned to Sian. 'How many times has he hit on you? We barely see you these days. You're a prisoner in your room. Call it gut instinct. We could be stuck here a while. It might be easier all round if we mailed him home.'

  The elevator doors opened. Nail ran into the lift, knife at the ready. His buddies ran after him. A pallet truck stacked with jerry cans. No captain.

  'Hi, fellas.' The skipper was behind them. He stood in the stairwell doorway, shotgun at his shoulder. 'Drop the knives.'

  Nail was holding a diver's serrated knife. He adjusted his grip. Four metres between him and the captain.

  'Seriously, guys. The choke on this thing is set for a wide spread. I can put all of you down with a single shot. Drop the fucking knives.'

  Yakov inched along the wall like he was getting ready to attack. Shaved head. Cyrillic knuckle tattoos.

  Nail shook his head and threw down his knife. They all reluctantly dropped their weapons.

  'Kick them over here.'

  They kicked their knives into the stairwell.

  'Hands on your head. All of you.'

  'No hard feelings, all right?' said Nail. 'If you were in our position, you would do the same thing.'

  'Grab some cans, fellas. You're going to help me load up.'

  They carried fuel cans to the ship and stowed them in the hold. The captain and first mate stood on the transom, shotguns at the ready.

  The men reluctantly disembarked and stood on the dock platform.

  'Sorry, guys,' said the captain. 'Wish there was room for you all. Now why don't you folks fuck off and let us get going?'

  Departure.

  Nail and his gang of muscle freaks were nowhere to be seen.

  The remaining crew stood on the docking platform and shouted questions to the first mate. Jane watched from the helipad. The mate stood at the prow, shotgun over his shoulder. He kept his answers non-committal,
said less than he knew. He watched for any sign the Rampart crew might make another attempt to storm the boat.

  The four chosen crewmen climbed aboard. There wasn't room for their luggage so they left it behind. They stood on deck and waved as the tug pulled away. Spirit of Endeavour. A little ship on a big ocean. Jane wondered if the boat would reach Scotland. It was a long journey south, but they might make it if they ran ahead of the weather.

  The remaining crew retreated to their cabins to unpack.

  There was nothing new on TV.

  CNN was down.

  Sky News was a test card: ' We apologise for the break in transmission. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Normal programming will resume shortly.'

  BBC: a haggard newscaster repeated the same advice. Keep calm. Stay off the street. Stay tuned for updates. Jane remembered the young man. He used to present the weather. He used to stand in front of a map and forecast sunny spells and rain. Now he found himself reporting the end of the world.

  Punch muted the sound and cued some tunes on the jukebox.

  'Hope you feel good,' he told Jane. 'You did something heroic today. You could be on your way home right now.'

  'I'm not sure my mother would agree.'

  'She'll be all right.'

  Jane looked out to sea.

  'Check out the cloud bank. There's a weather front moving in. Waves are starting to build.'

  'I went aboard with a box of food. It's little more than a rowing-boat. I wouldn't want to be out there right now. Not with six people crammed inside. It'll be touch-and-go. Take a lot of luck for them to reach land.'

  'Think we're better off here?'

  'How can we know? Did we give our folks a ticket home or send them to die?'

  Rawlins led Jane and Sian to an observation bubble on the roof.

  The bubble was at the edge of the helipad. A circle of windows gave a three-sixty view of the refinery, the sea and the jagged crags of Franz Josef Land.

  'Since you two are staying you better make yourselves useful.' He pulled dust sheets from transmission equipment. 'We should have done this days ago.' He pointed to a swivel chair. 'Sit there,' he told Sian. 'Don't touch the sliders.' He powered up a bank of amplifiers. 'A bloke called Wilson used to play DJ after each shift. Had his own little drive-time show. I filled in for a couple of days when he broke his wrist. This kit is designed to broadcast to the rig but if the atmospherics are right we could reach two, three hundred miles.'

  'What about the ship-to-shore?'

  'Too patchy. I want to try short-wave. Go broad and local. It's a big ocean. We can't be the only people stuck out here.'

  'What do I do?' asked Sian, positioning her chair in front of the mike.

  'Press to talk. Release to listen.'

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.'

  No response.

  'Mayday, mayday. This is refinery platform Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over.'

  No response.

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim, is anyone out there, over?'

  No sound but the static hiss of a dead channel.

  Fragile

  The radar in Rawlins's office sounded a collision alarm. Iceberg warning. His desk screen showed a massive object closing in, moving slow.

  They watched from the observation bubble. A mountain of ice passing five kilometres distant. A table-berg, a colossal chunk of polar shelf. Ridges and canyons. Blue ice marbled with sediment. A strange hellworld.

  'I walked on a berg once,' said Rawlins. 'They fizz and crackle. Trapped air. Sounds like a bonfire.'

  'Some big waves down there,' said Jane.

  Heavy swells broke against the ice cliffs. Spume and spray.

  'Yeah,' said Rawlins. 'Wind speed is way up. There's another storm coming. Line squalls. One cyclone after another until spring.'

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.'

  Two a.m. Jane's turn at the microphone.

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim. Do you copy, over?'

  Sian unscrewed her Thermos and refilled their cups.

  'We're alone out here,' said Sian.

  'I don't even want to think about it.'

  The upper deck of the rig was floodlit. A storm lashed the refinery. A blizzard wind scoured girders and gantries. The girls watched the swarming ice particles from the eerie silence of their Plexiglas bubble.

  Sian put her hand to the window. A thin film of plastic separating her from the lethal hurricane outside. She felt the warm up-draught of the heating vent between her feet and was acutely aware of the refinery's life support systems, the elaborate machinery keeping them alive minute by minute in this implacably hostile environment.

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart. Can anyone hear me, over?'

  'How long until the sun sets for good?' asked Sian.

  'Three weeks.'

  'Jesus.'

  'Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over.'

  'Thank God, Rampart. This is research base Apex One. It's wonderful to hear your voice.'

  Rawlins swept his desk clear and unrolled a map of Franz Josef Land. He pegged the map open with a stapler, a hole-punch and a couple of mugs.

  'They are here,' said Jane. 'Indigo Bay. Some kind of botanical research project. Not much of a base. Two guys and a girl. A couple of tents. They ran out of food days ago.'

  'Poor bastards.'

  'Imagine it. Out there in the middle of this storm. Huddled in a fucked-up Jamesway. I'm amazed they are still alive.'

  'Indigo Bay,' said Rawlins. 'Nearly fifty kilometres. That's a long way to hike.'

  'They've got a rubber dinghy. No outboard. Otherwise they use skis.'

  'Then they're truly fucked.'

  'We have to help. We can't abandon them.'

  'I wanted to raise a rescue ship, not bring extra mouths to feed. So yeah, I must admit, I'm reluctant to risk men and equipment for no real benefit.'

  'That cuts both ways. Why should anyone answer our call? Why should anyone pick us up, help us home? We have nothing to offer. We're just a bunch more problems.'

  'If anyone is going to fetch these guys it will be Ghost. Rajesh Ghosh. Our resident fixer. It's down to him.'

  Rawlins led Jane to the pump hall. The hall was a vast, poorly lit chamber on the lowest level of the rig. The oil-streaked walls were ribbed with girders and studded with pressure valves, stopcocks and instrumentation.

  'Is this the pipe?' asked Jane, walking the circumference of a huge steel column that disappeared into the floor. 'The main oil line?'

  'Yeah, this is MOLL' He slapped the metal. 'It's retracted from the seabed right now, but yeah, that's the umbilicus. When this facility is fully on-stream it can suck nearly a million barrels a day of heavy crude out of the ground. The entire Kasker field siphoned into these tanks. Super-grade. Liquid bullion.'

  Jane checked her watch. 'It's three in the morning.'

  'He doesn't keep office hours.'

  They followed the sticky-sweet smell of cannabis to a bivouac in the corner shadows of the pump room. A camp stove. A pile of books. A guitar.

  Ghost lay on a bunk, eyes closed. He was Sikh. He had a turban and a heavy beard.

  Rawlins kicked the bunk. Ghost sat up and took off his headphones. Jane caught a brief snatch of Sisters of Mercy.

  'We have a job for you,' said Rawlins.

  They studied the map.

  'It's too far.'

  'We could use snowmobiles,' said Rawlins. 'We could cover a lot of ground, if the weather breaks.'

  'Until you reach your first crevasse and then you have to park and walk. A few weeks ago it wouldn't have been a problem. But we're down to a couple of hours' daylight and it's minus fifty out there. Normal circumstances, I wouldn't consider leaving the rig. Shit. The s
ea is so rough we couldn't even reach the island right now.'

  'We must do something,' said Jane. 'I'm not going to sit by that radio night after night and listen to those poor sods freeze to death.'

  'Okay,' said Ghost. 'Here's the deal. We'll meet them halfway. There's a log cabin at Angakut. Built by whalers. Empty, but good wind shelter. If they can make it that far, we'll fetch them home. I'll go out myself, when the storm breaks.'

  'Angakut?'

  'It's at the base of a mountain. You can see it for miles.'

  'All right.'

  'And you better tell them to get going, because the weather is going to get worse before it gets better.'

  Rawlins summoned the crew to the canteen.

  Most channels were dead. BBC News no longer chronicled carnage. They had lost contact with their outside broadcast units. Instead they re-ran communion from Canterbury Cathedral.

  'The BBC has gone religious,' said Rawlins. 'Not a good sign, I think you'll agree. We're doing everything we can to get off this platform. The girls are broadcasting night and day. Sooner or later, someone will respond. But it's time to admit we might be stuck here for winter. Maybe that's no bad thing. Looks like all hell has broken loose back home. So if we are going to make it through the next few months we need to get organised. I know you folks like your privacy, but we can't heat and light the whole refinery. Everyone must move into this block by tomorrow night. We'll live in these few rooms. The rest of the rig can freeze.'

  'I want a sea view,' said Nail.

  'Flip a coin. Arm wrestle. I don't give a damn. Just get it done.'

  Jane joined Ghost in the canteen. They sat by the window. They sipped coffee and watched the storm.

  'I didn't know we had snowmobiles,' said Jane.

  'Two of them. Part of a cache of stuff on the island. There's an old bunker near the shore. Not much in it. Couple of Yamahas. Some fuel.'

  'So we must have a boat to get ashore.'

  Ghost smiled. 'Clever. Trying to formulate an escape plan, yeah? Well, that's the big question. What if nobody comes for us? Worst-case scenario: how do we make our own way home?'