EMP Sabotage, page 21
But then the flashlight glinted on something, and she froze. Fixing the beam on a spot just in front of generator, she strode forward. Motes of reflected light on a small puddle. Ruth knelt down close, her hand shaking, struggling to hold the flashlight still.
“Is that…?” Stella almost said it, but she stopped mid-sentence and seemed to choke on the word.
It was a small puddle, little more than a few large drops that had flowed together, but it was clearly blood. Nevertheless, Ruth stooped down and ran her finger through it, holding her bloody finger up into the light. She turned to Curtis and Stella, saw the shock in their eyes.
“This is fresh,” she said. “It hasn’t even begun to dry. This just happened. Probably right before Jorge came outside.”
“So it definitely wasn’t Kay,” Curtis said. He sounded breathless, clearly struggling to hold it together. “She was outside chatting with me for a while.”
“Kay’s not the saboteur, then,” Stella said, eyes wide. “We set a trap and the wrong person came out.”
“And John paid the price,” Ruth said, wiping her finger off on the edge of her boot heel. “By God, we’re going to turn this oil rig upside down to find him. Come on.”
She rose, grabbed a large crowbar in passing, and headed out into the hall. She strode in the direction of the happy voices in the rec room, so furious that she felt her heartbeat in her temples and throat, felt a flush in her cheeks and forehead. When she neared the cafeteria, she saw Kay sitting at a table by herself, a bottle of water in her hands. Ruth stepped through the door, motioned for Stella and Curtis to stay back, then sat down across from the woman.
Kay took a long drink of water, screwed the cap on, and only then did she look at Ruth.
“Yeah, I know, I know,” she said. “I’m not with my buddy, but there are exceptions, remember? You’ll find Parker in the rec room. Can I have a minute alone before I chain myself to him again?”
But Ruth just stared hard at her, trying to read the woman’s expression, her tone of voice. Kay seemed annoyed, not guilty.
Kay set the water bottle down and gave Ruth a confused look. “Are you going to say anything, or are you just going to glare at me? What is going on?”
And Ruth decided to go for it. “What do you know about the ruined pallet of supplies from the helicopter? The one that was left in the outdoor storage shed with the door wide open? Did you have anything to do with that?”
Kay frowned. “What? Heck, no, I’m not that stupid or incompetent. Dennis was in charge of finding a place for the pallet, and he knew damn well that he needed to close and lock the door. Everyone knows that. Did someone tell you it was my fault?”
Ruth shook her head. “Dennis ruined an entire pallet of supplies, and then he turned up dead not long after. That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
Kay glanced left and right, but Ruth saw something changing in her expression. The hardness seemed to melt, and real fear entered her eyes. “Are you suggesting Dennis’s death wasn’t an accident? He wasn’t electrocuted touching the fuse box?”
“I am,” Ruth replied.
“Someone always had to follow along behind Dennis and fix what he did wrong, usually a shift manager. But if someone actually hurt Dennis because of his job performance, that’s messed up.”
“Can you look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t you?” Ruth asked. “It wasn’t you who killed Dennis? And you had nothing to do with Clark’s disappearance?”
“Or my dad’s disappearance,” Curtis shouted from the doorway. He was so loud, his words echoed down the hallway. “Did you do something to my dad? Are you the one who’s killing people and sabotaging equipment?”
Kay looked back at him, then turned to Ruth. She was grimacing, and Ruth couldn’t tell if it was from shock or fear. “Oh, is that what you think?” she said. “Is that why you’ve been treating me this way?”
“Well, you have given us a few reasons to suspect you,” Ruth said. “Why were you in the morgue room by yourself?”
“How do you know about that?” Kay said sharply.
“Never mind how I know. Why did you go in there by yourself?”
Kay bowed her head. “I took his employee ID tag and keys. Even under these circumstances, I have to write an incident report and put it in an envelope to deliver to the company. The ID and keys go with it. I told you, there are SOPs we’re supposed to follow. Just because the power went out for a couple of days doesn’t mean we’re living in anarchy.”
“I see. Why did you enter the morgue through a back hallway?”
Kay rolled her eyes. “It’s not a damned conspiracy. There are some maintenance corridors back behind the clinic and the other rooms. I didn’t want to release a stench from the morgue that might drift into the cafeteria, so I went the back way. Big damn deal.”
“And did you happen to notice anything about Dennis while you were in there?”
“You mean, besides him being dead? I didn’t look. I knew he kept his ID and keys on his belt, so I grabbed them and got out of there as fast as possible.”
It was a reasonable enough explanation. The woman had expressed her fondness for standard operating procedures before.
Ruth heard movement in the hallway behind Curtis and Stella. Startled, she half-rose, raising the crowbar and shining the flashlight in that direction. Her flashlight beam met other lights from the rest of the crew approaching the cafeteria. They crowded into the doorway, pushing in around Stella and Curtis. Ruth saw shocked and angry faces.
“I told them,” Jorge said, stepping past Curtis. “I told the others about John. They all know now. Someone is making people disappear. Someone on this oil rig is killing us, and we want to know who it is.”
26
At Jorge’s words, Curtis made a sound that might have been a sob and said, in an enraged voice, “I want to know who did it! I want to know! Right now!”
This caused the rest of the workers to begin talking over each other, all angry voices, some cursing and shouting. At first, Ruth wasn’t sure who they were shouting at, but then she realized they were approaching the table and most of them were glaring at her. Ruth raised her hands to try to quiet them down, but she no longer had John beside her to regain control of the crowd.
“Please, you can’t all talk over each other,” Ruth said.
“People are being murdered on the Mako,” Jorge said, speaking more forcefully than she’d ever heard him speak. “There’s a killer among us, and you knew it! You’ve been conducting an investigation, and you never even told us. Now, we find you interrogating Kay, and meanwhile, we’re all sitting in the rec room playing cards with no idea that any of us might be next!”
“Okay, stop. Just stop.” When the crowd continued to talk over each other, Stella jumped on a chair and pulled a whistle out of her backpack. She blew it long and hard.
“Everyone needs to quiet down” Ruth yelled. “We’re not going to get anywhere if you keep talking over each other!”
The combination of the whistle and her shout did the trick. The crowd stopped talking all at once, and some of the angry faces turned to fear. Jorge pressed his lips tightly together and stepped back. Parker was farther back in the crowd, but he finally pushed his way forward. Ruth could see that he was going to try to help her, but she didn’t want help right now.
“Everyone sit down,” she said, stepping back from the table. “Everyone. Parker, even you. Nothing is going to be solved like this.”
She rose and went to her usual place at the front of the room. When she turned around, she was relieved to see that most people were sitting down at tables. Jorge had sat down across from Kay. Parker started to come toward Ruth, as if to join her, but she motioned him to one of the tables. He frowned, clearly troubled by this rejection, but sat down.
“Now, we can handle this in a civilized manner,” Ruth said. “Raise your hand and speak one at a time, and I will try to address your concerns.”
Immediately, half the people in the room raised their hands, including Parker, Jorge, Ricardo, and Ignacio. Ruth nodded at Jorge. Better to let him finish venting.
“The deaths happening on the platform aren’t accidental,” he said. “Is that true?”
“That appears to be the case,” Ruth replied.
“And you’ve been keeping secrets from us,” he added.
“Correct, but only because we aren’t sure who is responsible. I didn’t want to reveal our suspicions until we identified the guilty party.”
“So you’ve been letting people die,” Jorge said, smacking an open palm against the tabletop. “If we don’t know about the danger, then we don’t know to protect ourselves.”
“No, I was attempting to handle this quietly until I figured out who was responsible,” Ruth said. “I didn’t want an innocent person being accused and punished.”
“We just want to know what’s happening to us.” That was Ricardo, who was sweating profusely and constantly dabbing his forehead with a napkin. “Don’t leave us in the dark if people are dying.”
“Okay,” Ruth said. “I’m going to level with you. I’ll tell you what I know. There’s a saboteur on board this oil platform, someone who is also a killer. Probably someone in this room.”
The workers began looking at each other, some whispering, some clenching fists. Ruth studied their behavior carefully. Everyone was looking around suspiciously, even Kay. The only exception was Parker, who was watching Ruth.
Parker didn’t tell me it was Dennis who was supposed to move the pallet, she thought. He said it was Kay. One of them is lying.
Not wanting him to read this on her face, she quickly looked away.
“Well, who is it?” Jorge asked.
“And how are we are supposed to keep from getting killed?” Ignacio asked.
“I think the buddy system is still the best way to keep everyone safe for now,” Ruth said.
“But that means someone has a killer for a buddy,” Jorge said, practically shouting. “How can we trust anyone?”
“Stay in communal areas for now,” Ruth said. “Keep an eye on each other. From here on out, I promise to be completely transparent with you. We’ll figure this out as a team, and we’ll deal with the saboteur together. That’s the best I can offer. Do you all agree to this?”
It seemed like Jorge wanted to argue again, but instead he sighed and nodded. Then others began to nod. Even Kay nodded.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Ricardo said. “Can’t we launch the other lifeboat and escape?”
It’s not Kay, Ruth told herself. She wasn’t in the control room when John was attacked. It was someone else. Someone else in this room. But she did come out to check on the antenna, and she was more gregarious than usual. Could there be more than one saboteur? Is she working with someone else? Are there a bunch of them?
She glanced at Jorge, then at Parker, then at the floor beneath her feet. Could she trust anyone? Stella and Curtis, perhaps. That was it. But from now on, everything would be out in the open.
“Ricardo, you and Ignacio check on the lifeboat,” Ruth said. “I don’t know if it can be launched. First, I’d like to look for John, just in case he’s in a room somewhere. There’s a chance he’s not dead, just hurt, so we can’t assume the worst just yet.” She shrugged. It felt like a hopeless gesture. They’d never found Clark, after all.
Oh, God, I’m so sorry, John, Ruth thought, and suddenly she was fighting tears.
27
It was a fruitless search, as Ruth had known it would be. John was nowhere to be found. And so, it was with a heavy heart that Ruth finally sent all of the workers to get some sleep. That night, they all slept communally in the rec room, where everyone could see everyone.
In the morning, Ruth found Curtis sitting in a corner of the rec room beneath the DVD player, his arms folded, the brim of his baseball cap pulled low to hide his eyes. She wondered how long he’d been there.
“Should I stay with him?” Stella asked softly. Ruth flinched. She hadn’t realized her granddaughter had woken up.
“No, you stay with me,” Ruth replied. “He’s safer here with everyone else. You and I are going to see about the lifeboat.”
She headed for the door when Parker hopped up and came toward her. A hint of his usual smile crossed over his face, but it didn’t last long. She waited for him, if only to prevent him from following her down the hall.
“Ruth, I’m so sorry about John,” he said. “What can I do? I don’t want to just sit here.”
“There’s not much you can do at this point,” Ruth said. “Things are more desperate now, but we need to keep everyone safe.”
“Have you changed the suspect list?” he said. “Have you figured anything out?”
“Only what I already told the rest of the group,” she said. “Stay here with the others, Parker. Keep an eye on things. Let me know if you see anyone acting suspiciously. Don’t go anywhere.”
He stared at her with narrowed eyes for a second, as if trying to read something on her expression. Then he shrugged one shoulder and said, “You got it, boss.” He turned and went back to his chair. More of the workers had woken up, now, and were getting breakfast.
She saw Ignacio and waved him over. “We’re going to continue working on the lifeboat this morning. Would you join me?”
“Do you want my brother to come, too?”
“Just you, for now,” Ruth said. “Ricardo can stay here with the others.”
Ignacio gave her a quick nod. “Just let me grab something to eat, first. I haven’t had breakfast.”
Ruth turned to Stella. “I’m going to take Ignacio and see if we can finish getting the other lifeboat unstuck. Stay here for now, please. Don’t wander off, and never go anywhere without your buddy, not even for a second.”
Stella looked like she wanted to protest for a moment, but then she glanced over at Curtis and nodded.
Poor Curtis, she thought. He was rescued off that boat only for this to happen.
It was hard to breathe. The weight of everything was so heavy on Ruth now. Stella stayed with her, quiet and sad.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Stella said after a moment. “I wish we were on that cruise ship headed somewhere else.”
“I know,” Ruth replied with a sigh that seemed to go from her head to the soles of her feet. “I really wish you’d stayed on that lifeboat.”
“The lifeboat went to the mainland,” Stella reminded her. “We don’t even know if they made it to safety. They might have sailed right into the flames. I’d rather be on a tropical island.”
Once Ignacio was done eating, Ruth and he went to the control room to grab some tools. Ruth took a crowbar and slid it under a loop on her jacket. Then they stepped outside and headed for the lifeboat lift arm. It had taken some work from Parker and Jorge to loosen the first lifeboat from the metal arm and get it attached to ropes so they could lower it. As Ruth peered down at the other lifeboat she realized it was going to take just as much work to get this one free.
“It’s not going to be easy to get this disconnected and dropped into the water,” Ruth noted.
“Ricardo and I thought the same thing yesterday,” Ignacio said. “But we don’t need the lifeboat. We could use the fishing boat instead. It’s in decent condition.”
“We can’t fit all of these workers on that small boat,” Ruth said. “We’d capsize the thing. No, we need the lifeboat to get everyone off the oil platform.”
They were both standing at the handrail, looking down at the lifeboat. Ruth was finding it very difficult to dredge up any energy or enthusiasm for doing anything. The anger had mostly passed, leaving exhaustion in its wake.
“Ignacio, have you seen anything else suspicious?” she asked. “You and your brother had your concerns before.”
“That’s the real reason you brought me out here?” he asked.
“One of the reasons.”
“No, we haven’t seen anything else,” he said, after a moment. “I still don’t trust Kay. Doesn’t matter if she seems innocent now. I think she…”
Ignacio stopped suddenly and pointed out at the water. “What is that?” It was some sort of debris, being carried out to sea on the waves. “Could it be from the helicopter?”
“That was so long ago…” Ruth trailed off. There was a piece of metal that was drifting by. It had words written on it. Words that looked awfully familiar.
She glanced over at the remaining lifeboat and saw the exact same words printed in the exact same font and pattern.
“Oh no…”
Beside her, Ignacio’s head whipped over to look at their lifeboat, then back at the debris. He crossed himself. “Madre de Dios…”
The lifeboat. The debris was the remains of the lifeboat that had evacuated the rest of the crew.
The two of them watched the debris for a while longer, until it was drifting out of sight. Then they walked back together into the rec room to tell the others what they’d found.
News of the lifeboat debris cast a pall over the whole group of survivors, casting them into am even deeper and darker gloom. Not only were they all stuck on the Mako for now with a killer on the loose, but even those who had fled earlier were lost at sea. No hope in any direction.
Later that day, Ruth rejoined Stella and went out on deck to see if they could spot any other debris. They stood near the handrail, gazing out at the sea and the many trails of distant smoke.
Stella grabbed her hand, squeezing it. It grounded Ruth and she was able to take a deep breath and refocus. “Troubles are compounding, and I’m letting it paralyze me,” she told her granddaughter. “I can’t do that. We have to do everything we can to survive.”
“You know, Gran,” Stella said, “with terrorists attacking, if we have to leave the Mako, we should consider somewhere else. Not the mainland.”
“Somewhere else,” Ruth echoed numbly. She gazed out across the expanse of late morning waves.
