Emp sabotage, p.25
EMP Sabotage, page 25
“You’ll be glad you’ve got someone on your side when everything is said and done,” he said. “AILS isn’t playing around. You might think they’re nuts, but they’ve got big plans, big money, big connections, and they’re making real progress. When they were first talking about this years ago, nobody really believed it was possible. Now, the whole world may be within their grasp. I don’t want you guys to get steamrolled under the wheels of progress.”
“You sound like a maniac,” Kay said. “Or a brainwashed cult member.”
“I’m neither,” he said, “whether you believe it or not. I’m just a guy who sees the writing on the wall and doesn’t have any other choice.”
Parker was moving through the entry room now. Ruth was torn. Did they really want to let him make direct contact with his AILS buddies? Would it really be better to let the terrorist group on board? Ruth had a bad feeling, a twisting fear in the pit of her stomach. Welcoming terrorists on board the oil platform would be a disaster, no matter what Parker promised to do.
As they approached the exterior door, she glanced at the gun. It wasn’t pointed directly at her, and it wasn’t quite within reach. She thought she might be able to lunge forward and grab it. Even if she got shot, she could distract Parker long enough to allow the others to grab hold of him.
Well, if you’re going to do it, she told herself, do it. He’s almost at the door.
She waited until Parker was reaching for the door handle, his face turned away. As soon as his eyes were off her, she took one big stride forward, trying to close the gap while also moving behind him. She reached out, though the gun was still out of reach.
And then someone barreled into her from behind. She was shoved to one side, arms flailing, which made her drop the flashlight. As she went down, she saw Curtis rushing past her. Parker sensed him and turned to confront him. Ruth’s flashlight landed at her feet, the angle of the light creating strange disorienting shadows that climbed the wall and danced on the ceiling.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Curtis shouted. “You have to answer for what you did!”
They were two shapes locked together, spinning. Ruth picked herself up, grabbing the flashlight. As she did, there was a deafening gunshot and a flash of light. Stella screamed, Curtis cursed loudly, and suddenly everyone was moving about frantically.
Ruth aimed the flashlight at the two men and found them locked together like wrestlers, each pushing and pulling at the other. The gun was in Parker’s right hand, but Curtis had a firm grip on his forearm, and he’d thrust it upward. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, but Ruth couldn’t see where the bullet had gone.
“Don’t you understand?” Parker shouted. It looked like he was trying to get his left forearm against Curtis’s throat. “You’ll all be killed without my intervention. I’m your only hope. Your lives mean nothing to them.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Curtis replied. “I’m not letting a murderer escape.”
John came up then, grimacing from what must have been a tremendous effort. He tried to grab the gun from Parker’s hand, but Parker twisted to one side, dragging Curtis with him, to keep the gun out of his reach. In the process, they both went down, dropping to the ground in a tangled heap. Curtis inadvertently swept John’s legs out from under him as they fell, and John landed on top of them.
“Parker, stop fighting,” Ruth said. “You’re outnumbered.”
The three men were thrashing on the ground, fists flying. Ruth kept the flashlight on them. Suddenly, she heard a clatter of metal against metal, as the pistol flew from Parker’s hand and went tumbling across the room toward the far corner.
“I’m not outnumbered,” Parker said, taking a swing at Curtis. “You’re outnumbered! This place is going to be swarmed. Don’t you get it?”
His fist caught Curtis hard on the jaw, and Curtis fell to one side, rolling off Parker. John, despite his injury, quickly flung himself onto Parker, taking his son’s place. He grabbed Parker’s jacket with both hands and began slamming the man against the floor.
As the fight went on, Ruth turned to look for Stella. Both Stella and Kay were standing to one side, clearly looking for some approach to enter the fight. Ruth went to her granddaughter and grabbed the crowbar out of her hand.
“Without my help, they’ll kill everyone on board,” Parker snarled. “Don’t throw your lives away. You need me!”
John was bigger than him, and clearly quite a bit stronger, even with the injury. He was repeatedly slamming Parker against the metal floor, even as Parker tried to shove him away. But then Parker reached around his right shoulder and grabbed the bandaged wound. John shrieked in pain and pulled away. As he did, Parker got a boot against his stomach and kicked, shoving him backward. John hit the floor and slid toward Stella and Kay.
Ruth decided to make her move then. She rushed toward Parker as he rose, and she swung the crowbar at him. Unfortunately, she could tell there wasn’t much strength behind the swing. Parker saw it coming and caught the crowbar in his hand, stopping it cold. Then he twisted it to one side, forcing it out of Ruth’s hand.
“Let me through that door,” he shouted, “or everyone on this oil platform will die. Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand, Ruth? Stop fighting me.” As if to emphasize the point, he flung the crowbar to the ground. It made an enormous bang that echoed down the hallways.
If the other workers didn’t realize something big is happening in the entry room, they do now, Ruth thought.
Parker stood at the door, facing his attackers. He was out of breath and scowling. John was on the ground. Stella had stooped down to help him. Kay was glaring at Parker in a fighting stance.
“You killed Clark and Dennis,” she said. “Admit it. I want to hear it from your mouth. You killed them.”
“I did,” he replied. “I had to. Clark is at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico now. I led him out the back door and pushed him over the railing. He never saw it coming. So what? You never liked him anyway.”
“Dennis was a decent guy,” Kay said. “Incompetent, maybe, but just a nice, dumb kid. He didn’t deserve to die. And Clark was a bad boss, but you had no right to kill him. We were searching this damned oil platform room by room, and you knew all along that he was in the water.”
“Clark went into my room,” Parker said. “He saw something there. He said he wanted to talk about it later. And Dennis, he heard me talking on the radio. He was going to report me. I had no choice. Now, I’m walking through this door, and no one is going to try to stop me. Is that clear? Even though you already attacked me, I’m still going to try to convince AILS leadership to spare your lives. It’s the best I can do.”
Without turning away from them, he reached back and grabbed the door handle. He turned it and pulled the door open. As he did, outside light flooded the room, revealing the figure who had been crouched in the corner at the edge of the flashlight beam. While Parker talked, Curtis had made his way, unnoticed, to the far corner, and he rose up now. As he did, he raised his right hand, revealing the pistol clutched there.
“You tried to kill my father,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “The only reason he survived is because he’s tougher than you gave him credit for.”
Parker, seeing the gun, turned to one side and flung himself through the open door. But Curtis fired then. One shot, two, three. With each one, the ringing in Ruth’s ears grew until she could scarcely hear anything. Parker fell, landing on the threshold of the door, half in and half out of the building. He rolled onto his stomach as Curtis advanced toward him.
It looked like Parker wanted to say something, his mouth opening and closing. He pressed his hands to the slotted mesh floor outside and just managed to drag himself forward a few inches. As he did, Ruth saw blood running out from behind him, a lot of it. Then Parker slumped onto the floor, mouth open, and did not move again.
She waved Curtis back and went to Parker’s side, squatting down beside him. She tried to roll him onto his back but lacked the strength. Kat leaned down and helped her. It looked like he’d taken two bullets in the side of his chest, a third in the shoulder. The wounds themselves were bleeding badly, but foamy blood was also running out of his mouth and nostrils. He was fading fast.
And then she heard a faint squawk. Ruth had a terrible ringing in her ears after the gunshots, so the sound seemed to come from miles away. However, a faint red light flashed from inside the folds of Parker’s half-zipped jacket.
She pulled the jacket apart, trying not to get blood on her hands, and reached inside. She found a small plastic object in the inner pocket and pulled it out, revealing a small two-way radio. A red light was flashing on top. Someone trying to contact Parker, trying to get a response.
Ruth turned the radio off and stuck it in her own jacket pocket. Then she rose and stepped to one side. As she did, Curtis grabbed Parker’s feet and dragged him into the room.
“Are they on their way here?” Kay asked. “Did he already talk to them?”
“We don’t know what he told them,” Ruth said, shouldering the door shut. “We can only hope that they’ll take radio silence as a sign of the mission’s failure.” She gazed down sadly at the body on the floor at her feet. “Come on. Let’s deal with him.”
“Why?” Kay said. “Leave him outside for his friends to find.”
“He’s not quite dead,” Ruth said. “We might get more information out of him. Come on. Help me move him.”
32
By the time they got Parker into the clinic and laid him on one of the examination tables, word had spread and the workers had gathered. The general response seemed to be shock and amazement. Nobody had suspected Parker, it seemed. The guy was so friendly and easy to get along with that everyone had given him a pass.
Kay did a good job of keeping everyone away as Ruth, Curtis, and Stella carried Parker and laid him down on his back. Ruth had Curtis and Stella round up medical supplies. As they did that, she pressed two fingers against Parker’s throat and felt a weak pulse. He wasn’t dead, not yet. She leaned in close to his face and heard him taking shallow, wet breaths. It sounded like he had a collapsed lung.
“Do we have anyone with medical expertise on board?” Ruth asked, looking in the direction of Kay and the other workers. They were all grouped together near the door. “I know the nurse left, but surely someone has some kind of training.”
“Beyond basic first aid skills?” Kay replied. “Not really. And anyway, nobody’s going to try to save that traitor’s life,” Kay said. The other workers nodded then. “I’ve told them everything. That snake would have killed all of us if he’d had the chance.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Ruth said with a sigh.
Still, she felt compelled to at least try. She couldn’t just watch Parker die on the table, not if there was even some slight chance that he might survive. Curtis and Stella soon came back to the table bearing a first aid kit and some additional medical supplies. Curtis dumped what he had on the table, gave Parker a look of contempt, then went to sit with his father.
“What can we do for him?” Stella asked.
“I don’t know,” Ruth replied. “Not much.”
Even so, she opened the jacket fully. Then she retrieved a small pair of scissors from the supplies and proceeded to cut off Parker’s shirt.
“It would be better if he survived,” she said. “He has a lot of information we need, and we could use him to negotiate with AILS.”
“If you say so, Gran,” Stella replied, but she had tears welling in her eyes. “He brought this on himself. Curtis had no choice.”
“I get that. I didn’t say otherwise.”
But as Ruth peeled open the shirt, she saw that his entire torso was wet with blood.
Maybe if I plugged the hole in his lung, he’ll be able to breathe better, she thought.
As she considered how to do this, Parker’s eyes fluttered. She leaned in close, and he looked at her. She could see the light fading from his eyes, but he managed to lock onto her for a moment. His mouth worked up and down.
“I’m going to try to save your life,” she told them. “We’ll have to hold you prisoner, but at least you’ll be alive.”
“It…doesn’t matter,” he replied, each word coming thickly. “AILS is coming. They want the Mako platform.”
“Just lie still for now,” Ruth said. She could see blood on his tongue and teeth.
“They’ve been…planning this takeover for years,” he said, barely above a whisper. Ruth’s hearing was still returning to her, so she practically had to read his lips. He was struggling greatly to get the words out. Blood was coating his lips, now.
“Why do they want the Mako?” Ruth asked. “What do they plan to do with it?”
“Base of operations,” he said. “Offshore. Safer. Big boss has some kind of connection to this place. Emotional or personal, not sure.”
“But why, Parker, why did you work for them? You’re a decent guy, a hardworking guy. I don’t understand how you fell in with an extremist group.”
“Someone on inside,” he said. “I…didn’t want to… they got my daughter. Against her will. Only way to keep her safe. Doing what they say. Promised to let her go.”
“We saw her pictures in your footlocker,” Ruth said. “That’s your daughter? AILS has her?”
His response was a wet gurgle, but then he managed to say, “Why I ran. For her. They’ll kill her. They’ll kill you.”
“We’ll deal with AILS if and when they arrive,” Ruth said. “In the meantime, we’ll work together to survive.”
Parker took a shaky breath, then exhaled and died.
Ruth pressed her fingers to his throat, but she could no longer feel a pulse. She rose from the table and looked at the gathered workers.
“He’s gone,” she said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
Her hands were bloody, so she wiped them off on Parker’s jacket. Despite everything, there were no cheers when he died. The workers were looking on somberly, clearly disturbed by the death. Even Curtis looked troubled by what he’d done. Stella dabbed her eyes on her sleeve and sat down in the nearest seat.
“He killed Clark and Dennis,” Kay said, as if to remind herself. “He tried to kill John, and he was going to let a bunch of terrorists on board, who might have killed all of us. Why does everyone look like they just lost their favorite uncle?”
“He was your friend,” Ruth noted. “It’s hard to lose a friend in any situation.”
“The person that I thought was my friend turned out to be a character,” Kay said. “A character played by a terrorist named Parker Jamison.”
But Parker had always been so friendly and well-liked. It was hard to avoid the impact of his loss, even if his evil actions had been revealed. Ruth was especially troubled by the mention of his daughter. Was it true? Could she trust anything he’d said, even at the moment of death? If it was true, then Parker had been coerced into doing what he did. That didn’t remove his guilt for the murders, but it did change the situation somewhat.
“I suppose we should store the body with Dennis,” Ruth said.
Jorge pushed his way out of the crowd then. “Don’t put the killer beside his victim. Might as well toss it into the sea,” he said. “It’s more than he deserves.”
“Maybe so, but for now, we’re storing the body,” Ruth said. “Come and help me carry him.”
Jorge, Kay, and a few other workers came toward the examination table. Parker’s body was such a bloody mess that they had to get a body bag from the morgue and zip him into it. Then they carried the body into the back room and laid him on a table across the room from Dennis. Afterward, they stood around for a minute, staring at the motionless shape.
“I can’t believe our maintenance team leader was a terrorist,” Ricardo said, standing beside the footlocker at the end of the bed. “And I can’t believe he’s dead. Parker always seemed like such a good guy. He played Texas Hold’em with us all the time. Couldn’t bluff for nothing, but he never complained when he went broke.”
“I never liked him all that much,” Jorge replied. “Never trust a guy who smiles all the time. He usually has something to hide. A snake would smile all the time, too, if he could, and then he’d bite you. And that’s what Parker was. A snake.”
As a funeral eulogy, it would have to do. Ruth didn’t feel like saying anything. Parker had done terrible things. She’d been absolutely furious at him, and now she just felt a kind of sad regret that she’d lost a friendship, both the past and present. She directed the men to grab the footlocker and bring it with them as they left the room. She caught a last glimpse of the body on the table, just a lump now covered in plastic.
What a sad and pitiful way to go, she thought, pulling the door shut. But she couldn’t shake the picture of Parker’s daughter from her mind. Would I have done the same as Parker if AILS held Stella captive?
33
Ruth stood in front of the console, staring at the drag marks in the dust on top. That’s where Parker had briefly set his gun. When she leaned forward, she saw the wires trailing from the back of the new console into an open panel on the back of the old console. Parker had killed and threatened, but he’d also gotten the new system up and running again, even if he’d done so for nefarious reasons.
Bestie was sitting in a corner of the room behind the table. The poor dog had finally made her quiet reappearance, padding out of some secret place as Ruth was walking back to the control room from Parker’s room. Ruth took that as a good sign. Maybe the worst was over. At the moment, Bestie was gnawing on a rawhide treat she’d retrieved from one of her hiding spots.
“I never expected to see Parker Jamison go out like that,” Kay said. She was standing behind Ruth. Once the adrenaline had passed, her anger had gone with it, and now Kay seemed deeply shaken. Ruth heard her teeth chattering. “And you say he fixed the console?”
“Yeah, but not for our sake,” Ruth said. “I guess AILS wants to use the Mako oil platform as a base of operations.”
