The Jungle - Cussler Clive - Страница 54
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He muscled his way back out of the duct and reentered it feet-first. When he got to the elbow, he flipped onto his stomach and eased himself over the edge, his shoulder screaming in protest. He felt with his toes until he touched the bottom of the duct and then shifted his weight entirely. The metal popped and echoed as it adjusted.
A minute later he was lying prone in the lower section of duct-work, grinning to himself when he saw light up ahead. He pushed with his feet until he was over a ceiling vent that was easily large enough to crawl through. He’d assumed he’d have to cut his way out of the air-conditioning system. Instead, he pounded out the grille with his heel, oozed his way into the opening, and allowed himself to drop to the floor of the oil worker’s cabin. The room had a single porthole overlooking the ocean and an iron bed frame without a mattress. Whatever else had been in here had been removed long ago.
He stepped out into a hallway beyond, calling Linda’s name as he searched thirty identical rooms and a large space in the middle of the building that had been a rec center or conference room. It was nothing now but bare walls, linoleum floors, and fluorescent lights affixed to the ceiling.
The stairwell to the next level down was pitch-black. He pulled a halogen penlight from his pocket and rotated the bezel until it threw a tight shaft of light.
“Linda,” he called when he cleared the stairwell. His voice echoed and crashed back like he had entered a massive space. The air carried the lingering effects of an ozone tang. It smelled of old electronics and burned wire.
He could tell right away that the room had been extensively modified. The dropped ceiling had been removed as well as all the partition walls. The windows had been blacked out, and additional vents in the form of silver collapsible tubes rose up another stairwell and snaked across the floor. What drew Cabrillo’s attention, though, was what else had been added. Floor-to-ceiling racks in tight rows filled the entire space, and on them were rank upon rank of powerful-looking computers, all linked into one massive parallel processor. There had to be ten thousand or more machines all working as a single computer. The amount of processing power boggled the mind. It probably rivaled that of a large university or even NASA. The extra ductwork was to dissipate the heat buildup created when the machines were in operation.
He searched the room as quickly as he could on the off chance Linda was here and then descended to the next level, where he found an identical setup. Thousands of computers sat mutely in their racks with thick data cords linking machine to machine.
He puzzled at what Croissard needed all this number-crunching capability for. Somehow it must tie in with whatever his man Smith had recovered from the Buddhist temple in Myanmar, but he had no idea how.
Again, Cabrillo swept the room and failed to find Linda Ross.
He hated to think that she was on one of the lower levels under the rig’s main deck. It would be a rabbit warren of crawl spaces, corridors, and storage rooms that could take hours to search. He didn’t want to even consider that she could be stashed down in one of the rig’s legs or giant floats. He flicked the light onto the face of his watch and was dismayed to see that he’d already been aboard the J-61 for more than an hour. He also estimated the rig’s list had increased a few degrees in that time. She was still solidly planted on the Hercules, but for how much longer?
The next level was the accommodations block’s ground floor. His first task was to unlock and prop open one of the doors leading to the catwalk that hung off the seaward side of the structure. The fresh air helped dispel the ozone stench. He also took a moment to check in with Max. Hanley had yet to find a way into the ship. He told Juan that Adams was about to move the chopper onto the rig’s pontoon and use its undercarriage winch to haul him up.
This level, Cabrillo discovered, was mostly offices as well as changing rooms for the roughnecks. There was no sign of Linda, so he set off once again, descending into the guts of the rig, his tiny light unable to do more than push at the murky gloom.
A screech of steel on steel boomed and roared through the platform like the shriek of a speeding train slamming on its brakes. Juan felt the whole structure shift and then stabilize. The list increased another couple degrees in as many seconds.
They were running out of time.
ERIC STONE PUSHED the Oregon mercilessly. Rather than take the command chair in the middle of the Op Center, he remained in his customary seat at the helm, where he had a better sense of how the ship was responding to the waves and therefore could make minute adjustments to eke out the most speed.
The tramp freighter had never let them down before and she was delivering again, cutting across the sea like an offshore powerboat, her bows slicing cleanly through the water while a boiling wake astern marked her passage.
They covered the eighty miles to the Hercules in record time, but when they arrived, he knew immediately that they were too late. The heavy-lifter was so far over that she looked ready to capsize at any moment. The towering oil rig astride her deck leaned far out over the water, casting a long shadow that darkened the sea. He imagined only its tremendous weight was keeping it glued in place.
“Well done, lad,” Max’s booming voice came over the ceiling-mounted speakers. He was in the MD 520N, heading back to the ship to pick up men and supplies that were already waiting.
“What do you want me to do?” Stone asked, secretly relieved that he wouldn’t be responsible for the rescue attempt.
“Lay her right up under the rig and shove with everything she’s got,” Hanley said without pause.
“What?” Eric couldn’t believe his ears.
“You heard me. Do it.”
Stone snapped on the ship’s intercom. “Deck crew, lay out every fender we’ve got along the portside rail.” He wasn’t worried about ruining either ship’s paint scheme but was concerned about staving in hull plates.
Afraid that making waves near the Hercules would send her plummeting into the depths, Eric coaxed the Oregon alongside the ship like she was a skittish colt, all the while ballasting her down so that her rail would slip under the rig’s projecting pontoons. The J-61 loomed over them like a castle on a sinking foundation.
“Chopper is down,” Max announced as Stone made tiny corrections to their position.
The two ships came together as gently as a feather falling to earth, the thick pneumatic fenders compressing and easing the contact even further. When the vessels were pressed against each other as snugly as possible, Eric slowly ramped up the Oregon’s athwartship thrusters and cranked the directed-thrust drive-tube nozzles to ninety degrees.
The effect was immediate. Burdened by tens of thousands of gallons of water flooding her starboard tanks, the Hercules was over nearly twenty degrees, but as soon as the power came up, the Oregon managed to shove her eight degrees closer to vertical. The forces in play were titanic but so carefully balanced that the slightest mistake on Stone’s part would send the twenty-thousand-ton oil platform tumbling off the Hercules and crashing down, and ultimately through the Oregon. The worst part was that unless they could shut the heavy-lifter’s sea inlets and pump her dry again, this was a delaying action at best.
Max’s dangerous ploy bought them time. Just how much was anyone’s guess.
NO SOONER HAD THE HELICOPTER settled onto the deck than Hanley, with his back aching, practically fell out of his seat in an effort to get out quickly. Julia Huxley was waiting with a wheelchair, her lab coat billowing around her in the rotor wash. Max was grateful for the chair but had no intention of allowing her to wheel him to the infirmary. He locked the wheels with his hands and watched as Mike Trono, Eddie Seng, and Franklin Lincoln—the men who had planned on spearheading the armed takedown of the Hercules—load up gear they would need to breach the ship’s superstructure and stave off a disaster. They couldn’t simply jump aboard the sinking vessel because there was too much of a gap caused by the rubber fenders sandwiched between the two ships.
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