The ridiculous argument was costing precious time. The men inside the lifeboat looked desperate enough. Stratton let go of the mechanism and jumped for it, painfully grabbing hold of the boat’s side. Men pulled him aboard.
Jason yanked at the release mechanism with all his strength and it gave way. The lifeboat began to drop towards the water and Jason jumped after it. Stratton and others grabbed him as he hung over the side.
The small orange vessel dropped like a lift with its cables cut, the lines whipping through the pulleys. Men leaped off the disintegrating platform - their only chance of survival lay in the water.
Stratton’s lifeboat hit hard and the men recovered to release the lines. The force of the impact threw Jason off and he disappeared below the water. Seconds later he popped back up and Stratton grabbed his harness and hauled him on board.
Yet they were far from safe as the platform threatened to collapse on top of them. The remaining legs couldn’t keep it upright as the wind and tide forced the rig against the remaining anchors.
The lifeboat had come down on the weather side of the platform and the tide pushed it into the guts of the decaying structure. After the last down-line had been disconnected the rolling sea swept the boat up into the cavernous mass. A massive girder plunged into the water beside the small fibreglass boat and another struck its side.
They could only pray, well aware that one spar or chunk of machinery hitting the boat would smash it like a toy. Metal rained down. The boat struck a collection of smashed spars and for a moment was held fast. Stratton, Jason and others fought to push it off.
‘Down!’ Stratton shouted as the swell raised the boat and the roof slammed into a heavy beam, which split it open like an egg. A sliver of steel stabbed into the boat and passed through a man’s body like a kebab skewer. The vessel dropped into the following trough that freed it from the collection of spars and it turned on its axis to sail on sideways. A couple of the men fought to start the engine and as it suddenly boomed into life Jason grabbed the wheel.
The lee side of the platform was fast approaching but the structure looked like it was going to collapse on them before they would make it. Jason pushed the throttle fully open and steered for clear water. The little boat weaved between a series of spars and rose onto a peak. As it dropped down below a hanging section of spider deck they sailed out from beneath the claws of raking spars and raining metal and were suddenly free from the jaws of the groaning beast.
Every man on the boat watched in silent disbelief as the gap between them and the platform increased. Despite the thunderous seas, the massive structure somehow maintained its unnatural position and for the time being seemed to roll with the punches it was taking from wind and tide. Chunks of it still fell away. Drill pipes clattered between the decks and down into the water. Fires burned. Thick smoke billowed. An entire section of lights flickered before going out completely while others glowed brightly.
They began to search the water for survivors. Everywhere men struggled to stay afloat, holding on to debris or swimming for their very lives. Many of the men they hauled into the lifeboat were already dead, either drowned or battered.
Stratton went over in his mind all that had happened. A single nagging thought kept returning: how much of this had he caused, how much was the consequence of his actions? Heads were going to roll for this one. He fully expected his to go on a spike at the Tower of London.
His thoughts went to Jordan and his strange involvement in it all, wondering why the man had done it. Had Stratton been the reason for his old friend’s turnabout? Had he caused it? He wondered about Binning and Rowena who he supposed were not far away, awaiting their fate. It was a bloody disaster - in so many ways.
‘There she goes,’ someone shouted. They all looked in the direction of the Morpheus.
The great platform’s end had finally arrived. The monster structure had given up the struggle and succumbed to the forces massed against it. The decks once parallel to the surface of the ocean turned vertical, levering one