Lincoln Child - Deep Storm

STORM KING OIL PLATFORM

Off the Coast of Greenland

It took a certain kind of man, Kevin Lindengood decided, to work an oil rig. A certain screwed-up kind of man.

He sat morosely before his console in the Drilling Control Center. Outside, beyond the reinforced windows, the North Atlantic was a blizzard of black and white. Spindrift frothed above its surface, churning, angry.

But then again, the North Atlantic always seemed angry. It didn't matter that the Storm King oil platform towered more than a thousand feet over the surface: the ocean's vastness made the platform seem tiny, a child's toy that might be swept away at any moment.

"Pig status?" asked John Wherry, the offshore installation manager.

Lindengood glanced down at his console. "Seventy-one negative and rising."

"Pipe status?"

"All readings nominal. Everything looks good."

His gaze rose once again to the dark, dripping windows. The Storm King platform was the northernmost rig in the Maury oil field. Somewhere out there, forty-odd miles to the north, was land, or what passed for it around here: Angmagssalik, Greenland. Although on a day like this, it was hard to believe there was anything on the surface of the planet but ocean.

Yes: it took a screwed-up kind of man to work an oil rig (and they were always men, unfortunately-the only women ever "on platform" were company relations flaks and morale officers who came by helicopter, made sure everybody was well adjusted, then left as quickly as possible). Every man seemed to bring his own portion of unfinished business, personality tic, or lovingly tended neurosis. Because what drove a person to work inside a metal box suspended over a freezing sea by steel toothpicks? Never knowing when a monster storm might come along, pick him up, and fling him into oblivion? Everybody liked to claim it was the high pay, but there were plenty of jobs on dry land that paid almost as much. No: the truth was that everybody came here to escape something or-more frightening-escape to something.

His terminal gave a low beep. "The pig's cleared number two."

"Understood," said Wherry.

At the terminal next to Lindengood, Fred Hicks cracked his knuckles, then grasped a joystick built into his console. "Positioning pig over well slot three."

Lindengood glanced at him. Hicks, the on-duty process engineer, was a perfect example. Hicks had a first-generation iPod on which he had stored nothing but Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas. He played them constantly, day and night, on shift and off, over and over and over. And he hummed them while he listened. Lindengood had heard them all, and had in fact memorized them all-as had just about everybody on Storm King-through Hicks's breathy humming.

It was not a tutelage likely to foster music appreciation.

"Pig in position over number three," Hicks said. He adjusted his earbuds and resumed humming the Waldstein sonata.

"Lower away," said Wherry.

"Roger." And Lindengood turned back to his terminal.

There were just the three of them in the Drilling Control Center. In fact, the entire massive rig was like a ghost city this morning. The pumps were silent; the riggers, drillers, and derrick men were lounging in their quarters, watching satellite TV in the crew's mess, or playing Ping-Pong or pinball. It was the last day of the month, and that meant everything had to come to a complete stop while electromagnetic pigs were sent down to clean the drilling pipes.

All ten drilling pipes.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Hicks's humming changed in tempo, acquired a kind of nasal urgency: clearly, the Waldstein sonata had ended and the Hammerklavier had begun.

As he watched his screen, Lindengood did a mental calculation. It was over ten thousand feet to the ocean floor. Another thousand or more to the oil field itself. One hundred and ten thousand feet of pipe to clean. And as production engineer, it was his job to run the pig up and down again and again, under the watchful eye of the rig boss.

Life was wonderful.

As if on cue, Wherry spoke up. "Pig status?"

"Eight thousand seven hundred feet and descending." Once the pig got to the bottom of pipe three-the deepest of the bores into the ocean bed-it would pause, then begin crawling upward again, as the slow, tedious process of cleaning and inspecting began.

Lindengood shot a glance at Wherry. The offshore installation manager was validation of his certain-kind-of-man theory. The guy must have been beat up one too many times on the school playground, because he had a serious authority problem. Usually, chiefs were low-key, laid-back. They realized life on the platform was no fun, and they did what they could to make it easier on the men. But Wherry was a regular Captain Bligh: never satisfied with anybody's work, barking orders at the line workers and junior engineers, writing people up at the least opportunity. The only thing missing was a swagger stick and a