Sea of Greed

“Right corner, by the freezers,” the other commando yelled.

Cheval was on the ground, scrambling for cover, as Gideon opened up with his weapon. By the time Cheval looked up, Lukas was dead, lying prone on the deck in a pool of his own blood. A few feet away, Ben-Avi was faring little better.

Cheval rushed to him and tried to check or stop the flow of the bleeding. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is all my fault. Please forgive me.”

Ben-Avi looked past Cheval as if he wasn’t there. He moved his mouth to say something but never spoke a word.

• • •

WITH THE SUBMARINE under control and the first batch of materials and a few prisoners on their way to the Dakar, Gideon contacted the captain. He received bad news.

“French aircraft on radar, heading this way. Unsure of intentions. Our escape may prove to be more difficult than expected. We’re submerging and departing immediately. You and your men are to remain on the Minerve and sail her to Israel.”

Gideon seemed surprised. “We’re commandeering her?”

“I’m not going to send her to the bottom with her crew on board, nor can I put them in lifeboats or let them sail into port and tell the world about us. We must take the ship. We’ll send the sailors home once we reach Haifa.”

“Without a wreck to find, the French will be suspicious,” Gideon insisted. “They’ll come looking that much faster.”

“Do your best to deceive them,” the Dakar’s captain said. “Dump some oil and toss some life jackets and other materials overboard, then submerge and head south. Hopefully, they’ll think the Minerve went down.”

“And if they do come looking?”

“They’ll be looking for us,” the captain replied. “Either way, two boats gives us a better chance to get the materials back to Israel than one. But if at least one of us gets through, then Israel will be safer than she is today.”

Gideon would have preferred sinking the Minerve, with or without the crew on board. He had no desire to lead the French crew at gunpoint. There were too many ways to sabotage the ship, too many things that could go wrong. Still, he did as ordered, dumping four hundred gallons of diesel oil and tossing out anything that might float and look like wreckage.

The attempt to make the French think their submarine had gone down took only a few minutes. When it was completed, they were ready to move off.

As the submarines turned away from each other, the Dakar signaled Good luck with a flashing light and then submerged.

The Minerve dove less than two minutes later. Neither ship would ever surface again.

PART TWO

INFERNO

3

GULF OF MEXICO

THE PRESENT DAY

RICK L. COX stood in the operations room of the Alpha Star oil platform, ten stories above the water.

Cox was a tool push, which meant he oversaw the whole drilling operation. It was a job he loved and after thirty years in the oil business he had a sixth sense about things. He didn’t need it today. One look at the panel told him a bad day was getting worse.

The flow rates and pressure levels in the pipelines were off. And they were off in the wrong direction. Low and dropping lower, even though the Alpha Star platform and two of her sisters were pumping massive amounts of filtered water into the seabed to pressurize the oil field and force the black gold and natural gas upward.

“This can’t be right,” Cox said to one of the crew. “How much water are we pumping?”

“We’re maxed out on capacity,” one of the techs yelled back. “All pumps are running at full power.”

Even so, they were registering only a weak stream of natural gas and no oil at all.

Cox tilted the OSHA-mandated hard hat back to scratch his head and then grabbed a radio. Alpha Star was working in concert with two other platforms to save a dying offshore field. Maybe the other two rigs were holding back on him.

“Alpha Two, pick up,” Cox said into the radio.

“Alpha Two here,” a voice with a healthy Southern accent replied. “Reading you loud and clear.”

“What’s your injection pressure?”

“We’re right up against the redline.”

Cox pressed the talk switch again. “Alpha Three, can you give us any more pressure?”

The foreman from the third platform replied without hesitation. “We’re maxed out here as well, boss. If that oil doesn’t break loose soon, we’re gonna have to back off.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Cox looked over the gauges once more. “Keep the pressure up. The geologists insist there’s an ocean of oil down there. If so, we’re going to force it out. I’m drilling down another hundred feet. That’ll tap it for sure.”

As Cox finished speaking, he glanced over at Leon Nash, one of the roughnecks on his crew. “Take the bit down another hundred.”

Nash hesitated. “The guys are a little worried, Chief. No one wants a blowout.”