Decipher Read online

  “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a small aircraft,” Charlie explained. “That storm we got moving in just fucked up their day. They’re past the point of no return. They’re going to have to find somewhere to land and refuel if they’re going to get back. And between you and me, I don’t think they’re even gonna make it to their fuel dump.”

  “What do we do? Charlie, we can’t just let them crash! What if it was us out there?”

  “We can’t just get on a radio, either. We’re not supposed to be here, Ralph.”

  “I know, but—look, see? The two closest research stations to Pirrit Hills are both American. Siple, and Sky-Hi—y’know, Eights Station. They’re both manned. Charlie, you gotta send out an emergency message—on the Internet at least. Just make sure they’re anonymous.”

  “If I send out any message, they’ll know somebody’s out here,” Charlie said defensively.

  “You gotta do something,” Matheson argued, distressed.

  “I’m sorry, but they’re on their own.”

  Matheson watched the scope. Watched the plane head off into oblivion.

  “What’s that?” He gestured at a red blip about twelve miles off their port bow and sipped his coffee. It was bitter. Shittiest coffee he’d ever tasted.

  “That’s our carrier I was tellin’ ya about. Been doin’ maneuvers or something. They’re too busy worryin’ about each other to give a damn about us. But hey, fuck ’em. So Frankie ran a simulation test on a dump. We can be outta here before they get close enough to sniff around.”

  Matheson nodded and had more coffee. On his computer screen a graphic cut-away view showed the drill in progress. A string of steel-alloy pipe extended down from Red Osprey to the node. The node then ran its own length of pipe vertically down a further 500 meters. The pipeline then changed direction dramatically and had been steered around difficult strata of rock. It was approaching the estimated site of the oil field at a gentle downward sloping angle.

  Directional drilling had been pioneered by the Norwegian National Oil Company in the early 1990s when they sank a well nearly 24,000 feet horizontally from a starting point 9,000 feet under the North Sea. It was so successful there was a rush to adopt the technology since it allowed for more oil drainage than conventional means.

  “Thorne was on the sat again,” Charlie dropped in casually.

  Matheson almost choked on his coffee. “What did he want?”

  “Test results. Come on, Ralph, he wants to know how your baby’s holding up. Just thank God he’s not on a plane out here.”

  Matheson gulped more coffee. Tried not to taste it, just enjoy its warmth. But his hands were shaking and this time it had nothing to do with seasickness.

  Rip Thorne, President of Rola Corp. Exploration. Asshole. Just a mention of the guy’s name was enough to give Matheson the willies. Thorne was the one who had caused his ulcer in the first place. Rip Thorne and Bulger. Between them, they were responsible for him winding up out here. Six whole months. How the hell could Thorne expect to bring this project forward by six whole months and expect it to work? And what was with Bulger anyway? Thorne’s personal little rottweiler. He’d already overruled the first test drill site, said he wanted to drill someplace else. Someplace he’d personally picked out.

  Matheson checked the data. “Charlie, please tell me you didn’t give him an answer.”

  Charlie glared at his friend. “Without checking with you first? Are you shittin’ me? Of course not! I told him he’d have to wait for your damn report.”

  Matheson nodded. Tried to shake off his mood. He checked the data again. “Remote drill-bit’s operating fine,” he relayed warily. “Geosteering sensor … Hmm. Interesting rock composition … crystalline? Huh … MWD, MWD, where are you? Uh, got it.” He clicked on the Measurement-While-Drilling icon and checked the torque and forward force on the drill-bit. It was high. Within operating limits, but still high.

  They had hit a tough strata of rock earlier in the day and were trying to break through, so the order had been given to go to full power. It would wear the drill-bit out at twice the rate, but since this drill-bit had been going for a day and it wasn’t unusual to change the bit every twenty-four to forty-eight hours, they might as well just let it burn itself out.

  Geology was a funny business though. No one was quite sure what kind of rock they had encountered. And in the past six hours they had only advanced enough to attach one more nine-foot section of drilling pipe. So just in case the drill broke through to an underground cavern or soft, particulate matter, like sand, a clamp harness had been attached to the pipe at their end to stop the bit running off with the entire pipeline if there was a sudden lurch forward. It would scupper the whole job if that happened and nobody wanted that, since retrieving miles of pipe from the ocean floor just wasn’t an option. They would be forced to start again from scratch.

  Glancing at the secondary monitor, Matheson hesitated over the three data icons. One meant a remote data dump via satellite to his workstation back home. A second meant an immediate digital download onto the ship’s system core. And the third one—was yellow. Yellow? What did that mean?

  “This is my ship! What did you think you were doing?”

  He turned from the screen as the door flew open and the captain of Red Osprey stormed in. Jaffna was a small man with Indian features and a western temper. He flipped the lights on and everyone screwed up their eyes for a second. Abuse was hurled, but he didn’t give a damn. He zeroed in on Bulger.

  Bulger was on his feet. “You’re a fucking idiot!”

  “I gave direct orders and you overrode them. Try it again and I’ll take your head off!”

  “Are you an idiot, Jaffna? Is that it?” Bulger met him center-stage. Everyone else knew better, and got out of the way. “What kind of a fucking idiot displays the signal? Anyone with a good pair of fucking glasses could see it, goddamnit!”

  Matheson leaned in quick and whispered, “What signal?”

  “Jaffna turned the lights on,” Charlie explained quickly and quietly. “Flew the signal that we’re doing sub-aqua work to passing traffic. Bulger told a deckhand to switch ’em off.”

  Matheson shook his head in surprise. “Well, by international law he’s supposed to.” He grimaced and sat back. Watched the two men go at it and was even enjoying the entertainment until suddenly it hit him.

  Yellow meant block resistance. Recoil forces and internal pumping pressure.

  Matheson spun around fast. “Shit!” He grabbed the mouse, clicked on the yellow icon, called up the data. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He spun back around. The recoil was massive. It hadn’t struck oil at all. “Who’s on forward resistance?”

  As Bulger and Jaffna stuck at it, Jaffna screaming something about not wanting to lose his license and planning on captaining another ship someday, Matheson scrambled to his feet. Screw them. Screw the Chinese navy. This was more serious. The shit had already hit the fan and none of them knew it.

  He scanned the room fast. Jabbed a finger at Frankie, a fat, young, nervous-looking guy. “You!” he growled. “You were monitoring forward resistance. Why didn’t you pick up on it!”

  “I—I went for a piss,” Frankie stuttered.

  Matheson shoved him out of the way, dived for his monitor. “The bit’s broken through. It’s pumping pressurized seawater!” This was unprecedented. He wheeled around and bellowed at everyone in the room. “Dump the pipe now! We got a Code Zero!”

  Everyone knew what that meant. There was a terrified silence. Code Zero was a theoretical situation they’d computer simulated back in the States. They had broken through to an underwater sinkhole. At this temperature the water should have been solid ice, but the pressures exerted from the sheer weight of the glacier ice shelves above meant the water was under extreme pressure and remained liquid. Give it a means of escape and of course it was going to take the path of least resistance. Recoil effects would be buckling the pipe. In this cold, the pipe should have
snapped, but it couldn’t because it was a steel alloy designed to remain elastic. For the node to work, the pipeline was a pipe within a pipe. It was the central-core pipe that was going haywire, and it was the core pipe that Red Osprey was directly connected to. The recoil would be speeding up the pipe in waves. At some point it was going to reach the ship. In calm weather they’d clear decks until all the fun was over. But in this storm—it could sink them.

  Everyone dived for the controls. Bulger hit the alarm and was on the intercom in a blink. Klaxons whirred. Hazard lights flashed. “This is an emergency! Everyone below decks, now! Get off deck! Leave everything! This is not a drill! Go! Go! Go!”

  No one stuck around to ask questions. But it was already too late. The first buckle hit Red Osprey when it was already in the throes of another thirty-foot icy wave. The roughnecks all lurched in one direction as they started to unclip safety-lines and transfer over to the main deck-rails. But the pipe whiplashed with such force that it righted the ship on the crest of the wave, and when Red Osprey finally lurched to port, three roughnecks were catapulted into the ocean. They were dead inside a minute.

  Matheson watched the monitors when he should have been concentrating on his readings. He watched Ilana climb down from the crane as a brace from the derrick sheered off and shot straight through her abdomen. It blasted out her back and took her guts with it. Blood sprayed red across the sky like lightning and was gone in the crash of another wave. Her body clung to the ladder for a moment—then broke away. She never had time to change her expression.

  Matheson heard Charlie’s breath catch in his throat. Glancing at him quickly he saw his friend was glued to the monitor too. He had the look of a man who’d just lost his lover. When had those two gotten together? The ship lurched and swung back. Screw Charlie’s love-life. Matheson dived across the room. Everyone was panicking. He flipped up the Plexiglas sheath on the central console and hammered the bright red abort switch.

  More sirens added to the din. The computer confirmed that the node had capped off and had jettisoned the ship’s umbilical. But the internal pressure readings didn’t change. Something had been pumped and was rocketing up the inside of the pipeline. If they didn’t dump the umbilical now it might catch on the sea-bed and they’d never get out of there.

  Matheson whirled around looking for the dump controls. He found Captain Jaffna already on the intercom, yelling at the bridge for full ahead. His fingers flew across the keys. The umbilical would be gone in seconds.

  Matheson checked the monitor again, checked Jaffna. Watched the pipe begin to fall through the deck-hole into the water below.

  The remaining roughnecks scrambled for cover. Some made it, but some didn’t.

  Dumping the umbilical was becoming impossible. As it slid into the ocean it caught on more sheering braces. Hanging limply from the towering derrick it was 3,000 feet of dead weight pipe under no control, at the mercy of the undercurrents.

  The creaking got louder. The derrick buckled, came crashing down and crushed another roughneck. Matheson could see the guy’s thick bushy mustache. His name was Pete. He was still alive, but he was trapped, Matheson realized, under a pipeline that was now pointing directly at the bridge and living quarters. Directly at them. Like a cannon.

  Matheson braced himself, watching Pete struggle under tons of battered steel until the nozzle inevitably exploded. Freezing mud blasted out, smashing everything in its path. Fists of rock tore through portholes like bullets. The smell of sulfur was overwhelming. And the cold …

  Jaffna never wavered. Always thinking, always looking for an option. He keyed more controls and the ship rocked as a blast ripped through the deck-hole. Jaffna had instigated an emergency dump. The pipeline was gone and they were free. But the devastation was immense.

  Red Osprey tossed back and forth several times before Jaffna’s orders finally kicked in and the ship steamed full ahead. But she was limping badly, smoke pouring from her engine room.

  Bulger thumbed the klaxons off. Everyone stood motionless, trying to take it all in. Charlie, his dark skin stained with tears, rubbed his cheeks angrily and tried to focus on the GPS systems.

  “The sub?” Matheson demanded.

  Charlie shook his head and shot a look at Jaffna. “We got a destroyer coming at us. North-north-west. Full speed. Sending out registry USS Ingersoll DD-990 … it’s the Marines.”

  Jaffna nodded. It was time to get out of here. He yanked the door open and let a slew of mud and rock slide into the room as he beat a retreat to the bridge. The large picture porthole beyond was smashed and the wind and ice gusted in, driving it all across the floor. A large knot of muddy rock skidded up to Matheson’s boot.

  Matheson turned to Charlie. They eyed each other for a moment before he tentatively stepped out onto the upper deck, ignoring the squalls that blasted his face with ice. The drilling tower was buckled the length of the deck. Bodies lay strewn about. Huge boxes of equipment were broken and junked from stem to stern.

  “Clip yourself on,” Bulger ordered quietly. He was looking distastefully at his cigar. He tossed it overboard as he clipped his own safety line to the main rail and made his way down the ladder. All Matheson could hear him keep saying was: “Christ, what a fucking mess. Oh, Jesus, this is terrible.”

  Stunned, Matheson went down to the main deck to give a hand with the clearing up. He’d have preferred to go back to bed and give the day a shot from another angle. Even a sunset would have given him the sense of closure he wanted. But this was Antarctica and sunset wasn’t due for another six weeks.

  He had set to work making a note of the victims. There were thirteen dead in all. As he ticked them off on a clipboard, trying his best not to be sick again, a roughneck by the name of Pico interrupted. He had a large chunk of something in his hands. It looked heavy. “Hey, I think this must be yours. What kinda stuff did you guys have on deck? This looks pretty expensive.” He handed it over.

  “I don’t remember us having anything on deck,” Matheson commented. He frowned and examined the object, turning it over in his hands. He wasn’t the only one. Bulger had a piece and Frankie made a grab for a chunk. Now he came to think of it, there were lumps of the stuff all over the deck. “This isn’t from any of our equipment.”

  Matheson took the rock-like object over to a puddle and started washing the dirt away. It was crystal, and picked up the light so effectively that it appeared to be glowing pale blue. Almost clear. He shared a wary look with Bulger and for that brief moment they both forgot their differences. “It’s a piece of rock …”

  “What kind of rock?” Frankie asked furtively. His skin was peeling. He hadn’t used his balaclava either and looked terrible.

  Matheson turned it over again. “Looks like diamond.”

  “Doesn’t look like any diamond I ever saw,” Frankie mused. “It’s heavy, but it ain’t nearly heavy enough. Did this come through the pipeline?”

  Charlie stepped up to them. Exchanged sympathetic glances. “Must have,” he said.

  Slowly, very slowly, Bulger smiled, baring his teeth like a shark. “I knew it,” was all he said.

  Matheson suddenly held his piece up to the light. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He positioned himself so they could all see. “Look,” he said, disbelievingly. “It’s got writing on it.”

  Glinting in the light were finely etched, perfectly formed glyphs—ancient-looking symbols whose meaning was lost on them. So clear were the hieroglyphs that it looked like the diamond itself had incorporated the writing into its natural structure.

  It was astounding.

  “I wonder what it says?” someone was asking.

  “Looks Egyptian.”

  “Egyptian?” Matheson jerked a thumb at a distant iceberg. “Out here? Come on, man!”

  Frankie set about picking up every piece he could find. “We gotta get more of this stuff,” he said. “Someone needs to take a look at this. We’re gonna be rich!” But his hand was quickly squashed under the sole of
Bulger’s thick heavy boot.

  “This shit right here is company property, Fat Boy. You collect it all up for the company.”

  Matheson warily ran his fingers over the etchings on the stone. Thirteen people had just died because of this stuff. He gripped it tightly. They were going to be rich? Somehow, he wasn’t so sure. He held the stone up to the light again. Took another good look. And that was when he noticed the black smudge on the horizon closing in rapidly. A black smudge. of storm clouds against a green sky … a green sky?

  Klaxons erupted on deck again before he could say anything. As cliff-sized waves crashed across the bow, and the destroyer circled in from the North, Matheson watched a sleek gray military Sea-Hawk helicopter swoop in from the sky, its screaming engines barely making a dent in the noise from the storm. Hovering low over the center deck where Red Osprey moved least and the derrick lay crumpled, its doors slid back abruptly. Ropes were tossed out. And as a dozen Marines swung down from above, a loud-hailer fixed next to missiles on the stub wings of the chopper suddenly sprang to life.

  “This is the United States Marine Corps! Stay where you are on deck! You are being boarded!”

  Machine guns were cocked. Hands held high. A braided officer took center-stage. With a scowl firmly fixed to his young face he assessed the crew with one definitive sweep before finally locking his gaze on Matheson and making a beeline for him.

  Still gripping the rock, Ralph Matheson had a manic grin smeared across his face.

  The Marines were here.

  They had been caught at last. Thank God, he thought.

  the eighth day

  It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher, 1844–1900

  FULTON CONFERENCE CENTER MAGNOLIA UNIVERSITY, NORTH MISSISSIPPI MARCH 16, 2012

  “In the beginning was the word,” Dr. Richard Scott announced, fumbling with the switch and pressing it twice by mistake. The digital projector raced through a sequence of images so fast it was impossible to pick out the detail. Scott muffled a groan and tried in vain to cue the slide up once more, but couldn’t find the number to punch in. He looked to the audience. Letting his shoulders sag. “And that word is currently not repeatable in public,” he said.