to look at a familiar enough sight that he could never quite get used to. It appeared to be a woman, or at least that was a possibility. She had the athletic build of a man - angular shoulders, thick neck and muscular arms and hands - yet her complexion and make-up belied this: her unblemished Indonesian skin cared for, her eyebrows plucked to form a thin curving line, a ring of pale blue pencilling around the eyes. She was adjusting her make-up using a small mirror.
‘Queen?’ he said.
She sighed and ignored him.
‘Is that really necessary?’
She finished what she was doing, put the lipstick away and snapped the compact closed. ‘I’ve been asked that all my life, Deacon dear,’ she said in a rugged accent. She removed an M-15 from her bag and deftly pulled back the working parts. ‘I think you asked me the same question that first job I did with you.’ She let the mechanism spring back into place. ‘The high-profile convoy from the Kuwaiti border to Mosul - remember?’
‘Yeah. You were winding up the Iraqis.’
‘They didn’t know what the hell I was when we ran into the first ambush. They pretty much loved me by the end of the second one.’
‘No one’s doubtin’ your fightin’ skills. I just don’t want you weirdin’ out this lot. Some are a bit confused about you already.’
‘They’re only confused about themselves,’ Queen said, applying the safety catch with her thumb and placing the weapon back in the bag.
Deacon shook his head and turned away, heading back to the front of the helicopter. The large red-headed Viking-like man he passed twisted in his seat to take a look at Queen. She pushed her breasts together and gave him a wink. He looked to the front again, his brow furrowed.
Deacon stopped beside a man with short spiky ink-black hair, his nose to the window. ‘Banzi?’
The man looked at Deacon. He was Japanese, his serious expression distorted by a false porcelain eyeball bearing the Japanese flag instead of a pupil, the red stripes of the rising sun disappearing into the surrounding edges of the socket.
Yet another weird characteristic that Deacon could not quite get used to. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ Banzi said in an abrupt manner. ‘Make sure the Pirate does,’ he added, jutting his chin with obvious contempt towards the man in the seat in front.
Banzi went back to looking out of the window and Deacon moved forward to the tall slim Somali seated in front, his expression blank as if in a trance. A deep scar ran from his chin, across an eye and into his scalp where it continued to the back of his head through short wiry hair. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ Deacon asked. The jet-black man did not respond. ‘Pirate?’
He half looked towards Deacon and gave a solemn nod.
The man’s lack of communication skills had begun to frustrate Deacon but he put it to one side. It was too late to do anything about it, anyway. He’d wanted to leave the Somali behind but the boss had insisted that he should remain with the team, assuring Deacon that he had extraordinary killing abilities. The Pirate’s partner, the Jap, seemed reliable enough.
Deacon went back into the cockpit.
The pilot was on the radio to the oil platform. ‘Roger that, Morpheus. Understood.’ He gave Deacon a thumbs-up.
The Morpheus, one of the North Sea’s biggest oil platforms, filled the windshield as the helicopter drew closer, its series of exposed decks like a massive denuded steel tower block. The main platform, at least half the size of a football field, lay covered by building blocks with workspaces in between and a huge crane on one side. The flame derrick stuck out a long way on the far side. The deck below, like a layer of a thick sandwich, was crammed tight with more box shapes, all the same height but with different widths and lengths. Below that was a collection of large pieces of machinery amid more storage structures. A large heli-deck, with its red circular target, came into view on its own level to one side and on top of the platform. They saw the brightly dressed standby fire crew on the side of the deck. As the helicopter came in they could see workers on the various levels. Deacon had never been that close to an oil rig before but he had studied the Morpheus’s blueprints and knew