the side of the nearest platform, dimly picking out the next one along, a hundred feet further away. They were doing a good job of clearly announcing their arrival. There were more faces now lining the railings. More and more.
As the tug chugged closer, Maxwell tried to pick out individuals; how many of these people were adult, young, old? How many men were there? But the floodlight was dancing around too quickly, not lingering long enough to pull a single face out of the growing crowd.
‘Just put her over there, near that support-leg, Jeff,’ he said, picking up the loudhailer and stepping outside the cockpit, along the runner and onto the foredeck.
‘Hello?!’ His voice echoed over the thrum of the diesel engine and the churn of water past the bow. It sounded tinny, almost comical, over the loudhailer.
‘Hello there! My name’s Alan Maxwell! Who are you?’
There was movement amongst those gathered on the main deck but no answer.
‘I heard about this place from some people who came from here! Would it be possible for me to talk to someone?’
Maxwell was getting the response he wanted with this noisy well-illuminated arrival; everyone’s full attention. He’d made sure the tugboat appeared as harmless as possible; only Nathan and another lad were on the foredeck, Jeff in the pilot’s cockpit, the other boys - a dozen of them - were down below, armed to the gills and out of sight.
He glanced down at the bobbing troughs and hillocks of seawater and tried to locate Snoop and all the other boys in their rowing boats. He was pretty certain they’d be in position by now, waiting in the moonless gloom beneath the drilling platform, tied up to one of the legs and awaiting the signal to come out.
The tugboat’s engine finally dropped in pitch as it approached the base of the platform and bobbed slowly forward under its own momentum.
Maxwell craned his neck to look up again at the distant faces lining the main deck. He thought he could see one or two men standing up there.
‘Hello?!’ he called out again. ‘Is there someone I can speak to? We’ve come in peace!’ He smiled to himself at how corny that last bit had sounded.
The diesel engine had settled down to a quiet throaty mutter, accompanied by the slap of water against the boat’s hull.
‘We heard about this place!’ Maxwell said again. ‘Can we talk?! We’ve got a boat full of supplies. We’d like to join you, if . . . if that’s okay?’
‘Wait a moment!’ shouted a female voice back down to them.
He glanced across the foredeck at Nathan and the other boy standing right next to him; Notori-us. The nickname suited the young lad; a completely bloody psychotic little pit bull. He was packing a handgun and a knife under his orange jacket, and had orders to jump Nathan and slit his throat if he showed any sign of blowing the whistle on them. Even though Notori-us liked Nathan, he was happy to do it - there was the promise of double dope rations for a month if he did his bit well.
Maxwell was banking on the simplest approach. To talk these people into lowering a ladder and to allow him - just him, he’d assure them of that - to come up and talk. That’s where Nathan’s assurance of their good intentions came in. Lulling them into lowering a ladder. Of course, once the ladder was down, Notori-us was going to grab hold of it, whilst the boys hidden down below in the tugboat would spring out of hiding and storm up the thing as quickly as possible.
And with that going on as a distraction, Snoop and the rest waiting quietly in their rowing boats had knotted ropes and hooks which they’d sling onto the spider decking and pull themselves up.
Nothing particularly clever there in that plan. All nice and simple. Maxwell had been into the Bracton gas terminal, found an office block shared by Shell, ClarenCo, ATP and several other North Sea players. He spent most of yesterday rifling through their filing cabinets and found what he wanted; a proposal brochure on the platforms and modules manufactured for those oil companies. It wasn’t specific information about these particular gas platforms, but it was good enough ball-park information about this class of rig for him to work from. He now had a pretty good idea of the layout of the underbelly of these rigs, and that this one, the drilling rig, was