Sea of Greed

KURT HAD TAKEN plenty of firefighting courses during his years in the Navy and NUMA. He knew the basics, advanced techniques and everything in between. He’d helped blow out oil rig fires on land several times. All his training told him one thing. Fire was a living thing that needed to breathe. Take away the oxygen and you cut off the fire’s life.

The problem was this fire seemed to be supernatural. Not only was it an unearthly mix of orange and blue, it burned in sealed compartments where there couldn’t possibly be any free oxygen. It burned in and under the water. He couldn’t swim beneath it, only around it.

As he made his way from the sinking part of the rig to the surviving section, he was forced to circumnavigate one column of flames after another.

Reaching the main section of the rig, he climbed out of the water and onto a stairway, moving through a tangled mess of burnt and twisted metal.

So far, the platform’s auto leveling system was keeping it from tipping over, even if that required taking on so much ballast that the lower decks were now underwater and the remaining section of the platform was slowly settling.

Making his way around the side, he reached the outer stairwell. Kurt found himself free of fire for the moment but surrounded by smoke and toxic vapors. A monitor strapped to his arm was reading four different kinds of poisonous gas, along with a lethal level of smoke. If Kurt weren’t suited up like an astronaut, he wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds.

The heat was another problem. Though the heat-resistant suit and the coolant still running through it were keeping his body temperature from rising too much, it wouldn’t last for much longer.

He checked the oversized chronometer strapped to his other arm. It showed eleven minutes of oxygen and five minutes of coolant left. He would have to work quickly.

Continuing upward, he climbed three flights, fought his way past a set of loose pipes and spotted his destination, an orange-colored pod, roughly fifty feet long, with a pointed nose and rounded tail.

The escape boat resembled an oversized torpedo and was designed for its own type of launching. The vessel wasn’t lowered into the sea like a ship’s lifeboat. Instead, it sat on rails that were angled downward. Once the restraining clamps were released, it dropped nose-first, sliding forward and then free-falling from the high decks of the oil rig.

Kurt had endured a test ride in a similar escape boat. It hit the water at fifty miles an hour and, despite the pointed nose designed to break the surface tension, it felt like they were smashing into a brick wall. Because of that, the occupants sat backward, wearing harnesses and head restraints that kept them from suffering from whiplash. This wouldn’t do them any good unless the boat could get free of its cage.

Kurt saw the problem as soon as he got close. One of the launch rails that directed the pod as it slid forward had been bent inward by the explosion. It was now acting like a gate, preventing the boat from releasing.

“That’s not going to be an easy fix,” Kurt said to himself. He wondered why the men hadn’t come out to free themselves or look for a second boat.

Picking up a length of pipe, Kurt climbed onto the rails and then banged on the hull to get the occupants’ attention. With his gloved hand, he rubbed away the soot and oxidation that had covered the porthole.

Putting his face up to the glass, he counted ten people inside. They were strapped in and waiting. Even from his limited view, Kurt could see that several were injured and burned. Another man was at the controls, desperately working a radio that he’d used to call for help.

Kurt banged on the hull again and the man finally noticed him. He staggered over to the porthole. “You’re caught up,” Kurt shouted.

The man pressed a button and his voice came over a speaker. “We tried to shake the boat loose by rocking it back and forth. But no luck.”

“And you’re not going to have any,” Kurt said. “If you come with me, I can lead you to another boat. Or we can get to the water. I have a small submersible coming back to pick us up.”

The man shook his head. “I got injured men and women in here, five with burns, two with broken legs, three more unconscious. None of us has fire gear. It took us forever to climb down two decks just to get in the pod. We’ll never make it.”

Kurt realized instantly that the man was right, it was either escape in the boat or die inside it. “Strap yourself back in,” Kurt said. “I’ll try to cut you free.”

“With what?”

“Swiss Army knife, if that’s what it takes.”