in the bud.
Before he could get a bead on his target, dropping and rising on the gentle swell, Maxwell shouted something and a dozen of his boys emerged from the pilot’s cabin, their orange jackets glowing like beacons in the torchlight.
He glanced at Walfield, clearly thinking the same thing: why the fuck are those morons wearing those glow-in-the dark jackets for a night assault?
The tugboat’s floodlight blinked out and then all of a sudden its foredeck was illuminated by the strobing light of a dozen muzzle flashes. Sparks danced along the rim of the deck and the railing and the torch that someone further along the deck had been holding tumbled down spinning end over end into the water where it glowed greenly for a moment beneath the froth before disappearing.
‘Shit, shit!’ hissed Adam, ducking back as he felt the warm puff of a shot whistle past his ear, too close for comfort.
Walfield popped his head over the side of the main deck to look down. ‘Bollocks!’ he shouted. ‘They’re all over that bottom deck already!’
Adam snapped his teeth angrily. The bastards must have sneaked in some boys underneath. They were swarming the spider deck now and there were too many stairwells and rung ladders from there up to the cellar deck, then the main deck, for them to risk making a stand here. He realised he should have had everyone on watch up this end of the string of platforms instead of spread out amongst them all.
For fuck’s sake. Great start.
The spider deck was the big hurdle he’d been hoping would stop them. Clearly Maxwell’s parley had been intended to be nothing more than a distraction whilst the rest of them found a way to scramble up. Never mind, they still had the choke point of each connecting walkway.
‘All right, screw this, Danny, they’re on. We’ve already lost this platform.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Bushey? BUSHEY!’
‘Over here, sir!’
‘First horn! Everyone back across the walkway.’
‘Right.’
A moment later the horn belched a loud football terrace honk above the clatter of gunfire and the heavy metallic ringing of boots on the stairwells below them.
‘Go, go, go!’ he said, slapping Walfield’s arm.
He waited until the last of those who’d been stationed on this platform scrambled past him, then set off after them, stumbling a moment later over the prone form of somebody. He didn’t know her by name, but recognised her: a mature woman with long grey hair in plaits. He’d listened to her strumming a guitar a couple of nights ago. Presumably she’d been the one holding the torch aimed down on the tugboat.
From below he could hear the boys whooping with delight as they charged up stairwells on the decks beneath them, a multitude of heavy feet clanging on metal rungs.
He looked around and saw Harry still firing over the rail in controlled three-shot bursts. ‘Harry! We’re pulling back! Move your bloody arse!’
‘Right!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I’ll cover you, sir!’
Adam nodded. He sprinted back across the deck picking out, by the flitting moonlight, the obstacle course of redundant junction boxes and cable conduits ready to trip him up, listening for Harry’s pounding footsteps behind him. He heard chattering gunfire. Short double taps - Harry’s . . . and long undisciplined pray-n-spray bursts - the boys.
Come on, you idiot, just run!
A moment later his feet clattered onto the mesh floor of the walkway, it rattled and rang beneath his boots. He turned back, looking for the lance corporal, listening for his following footsteps.
‘Come on, Harry!’ he shouted.
The silly bugger must have got himself lost. Even on this small deck, a third of an acre of it, it was all too easy to get lost amidst the maze of rusting metal pipes and Portakabins. Especially in the dark.
He heard another couple of double taps, then a volley of return fire from several guns that seemed to go on for ages.
Jesus.
Then it was quiet.
Chapter 83
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Leona tripped, stumbled and spat a curse as she rubbed her barked shin. She could hear the distant rattle of firing and voices screaming. Where she was, at the opposite end of the row of rigs, standing on the main deck of the primary compression platform with Rebecca and Claire, they’d spotted the flicker of a floodlight lancing up from the sea. Leona had decided they should stay where they were, keeping a vigil at this end of their archipelago. Just in case. But then things had