Devlin and the Deep Blue Sea

“Then why do you go to the beach so late?” Jorge wanted to know.

“Donny sent me an e-mail.” The words tasted as sour as three-day-old frijoles. “He’s dumped me. Seems he’s fallen for a foreign news correspondent.”

The mechanic fired off a string of highly colorful Spanish. Liz caught only a few of the more exotic phrases, but they were enough to produce a reluctant smile.

“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

Spitting out a final curse, Jorge squinted at her through the iridescent waves of heat rising from the dirt pad.

“Will you go back to the States now?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided.”

“But the helo you have saved every peso to buy! The charter service you plan to start! You do not need this pig, this Donny. You can start your own company without him.”

Liz didn’t tell him about her now-empty bank account. No sense broadcasting her monumental stupidity in making Donny joint on her account when he’d somehow never got around to putting her on his.

Nor did she care to reveal that she didn’t have enough cash left to cover her rent, due tomorrow. She’d have to swallow her pride and ask the smarmy AmMex on-site rep for an advance on next month’s salary. Trying not to wince at the prospect, Liz repeated her often made promise.

“When I do open my own charter service, you will most definitely be my chief mechanic.”

“Bueno! We make a good team, yes?”

“That we do.”

Satisfied, Jorge returned his attention to the pre-flight checklist. While he inspected the main driveshaft forward coupling for grease leakage, Liz checked the engine inlet and plenum to make sure they were clear of obstructions. The rumble of an approaching vehicle announced the arrival of their passengers.

The bus pulled up at the terminal and a half-dozen men filed into the building. Liz went back to the pre-flight inspection, knowing it would take the sleepy-eyed terminal official a good half hour to search the crew members’ bags for drugs and alcohol, weigh both men and luggage and show them a video explaining the safe boarding and ditching of a helicopter at sea. The video would play twice, once in English, once in Spanish. Hopefully, the non-English-, non-Spanish-speaking crewmen would get the idea from the video.

When the crew filed out of the terminal, Liz pasted on a smile and went to double-check their IDs against the manifest provided by AmMex. Like most of the men working the big rigs, these were a mixed bag of nationalities and skills.

A big, beefy Irish driller led the pack. A Filipino welder followed, then a Mexican radio operator and two Venezuelan cooks. When the last passenger stepped forward, Liz read off his name from the manifest.

“Devlin, Joe.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The slow drawl brought her head whipping up. “It’s you!”

He responded to that with the same wolfish grin he’d given her last night. “Yes, ma’am.”

Two

Devlin waited while a variety of expressions flickered across the face of the woman OMEGA had ID’d as Elizabeth Moore. He’d spent most of what was left of the night after the fiasco on the beach assimilating the background data headquarters had assembled on her.

He had to admit the info was pretty impressive. After completing USAF flight school at the top of her class, Moore had opted to fly rotary wing aircraft because that’s what her father had flown during his long and distinguished military career. Brigadier General Moore had died of a massive coronary less than a year after his daughter pinned on her wings, but she’d lived up to both his name and his reputation as a crack pilot. She’d spent four years inserting special-ops teams into particularly nasty spots all over the globe before leaving the military with the announced intention of opening her own charter service.

Unfortunately for her, Captain Moore’s smarts didn’t extend to her choice in men. According to OMEGA’s hastily assembled dossier, she’d fallen for a jerk by the name of Donald Carter and let him talk her into taking this boring, if highly lucrative, job as a contract pilot in Mexico while he did his thing in Malaysia. In recent months said jerk had reportedly been getting his rocks off with a Malaysian newswoman.

It didn’t take a NASA engineer to fit the pieces together. Obviously, Moore had just found out about her fiancé’s affair. Just as obviously, she’d gone to the beach last night determined to flush the bastard out of her system.

Devlin wished to hell he’d been able to help with the flushing. The woman looked even better in the bright light of day than she had in the glow of the moon, and she’d looked damned good then! Her zippered flight suit didn’t display her long, sexy legs the way her cutoffs had, but the tan fabric hugged her curves very nicely. Very nicely indeed. Devlin almost hated to depart for the oil rig.

Assuming he did depart. The issue looked doubtful at the moment, judging by the suspicion in Moore’s brown eyes.

“Jorge!” Her face tight, she called to a mechanic in grease-stained overalls. “Get our passengers briefed and strapped in. Devlin, you come with me.”

She shoved the clipboard at the crew chief and stalked toward the corrugated tin hangar. Devlin followed, eyeing her trim behind with real appreciation.

“In here.”

She led the way into an office with a beat-up metal desk, a single file cabinet and an ancient air conditioner rattling in the window. The walls were decorated with the usual clutter seen in operations shacks around the world. Weather updates. Flight schedules. Area NOTAMs. A fly-specked calendar depicting a luscious Miss May falling out of a blouse unbuttoned almost to her navel.

Devlin spared Miss May only a passing glance. Ms. Moore held his full attention. Her blunt-cut hair swirled in a silky arc as she slammed the door behind them and spun around.

The woman didn’t waste time. Spearing him with a narrow-eyed stare, she launched a direct attack. “What were you doing on the beach last night?”

Devlin had anticipated this meeting since learning Moore’s identity and had his cover ready. Luckily, it fit him like a second skin. Born and raised amid the oil fields of Oklahoma, he’d worked his way up from mud man to pipe handler to site supervisor. Along the way he’d accumulated undergraduate and graduate degrees in petroleum engineering and drilled holes in every ocean floor from the Gulf of Aden to the Bering Strait.

He’d also racked up a brief marriage and quick divorce. Candace had insisted his pay and benefits compensated for the long separations, but had soon gone looking for other distractions. Devlin didn’t blame her. Divorce was an occupational hazard in his line of work.

His life had become even more erratic after he’d joined the OMEGA team. Nick Jensen, aka Lightning, had recruited him just months after terrorists blew up an American-operated rig in international waters off the coast of Kuwait. Devlin had lost friends in that explosion and had jumped at the chance to use his civilian cover as a means of bringing the murdering bastards to justice.

Now another friend had disappeared. A close friend. And a real badass who specialized in transporting underage aliens across the border to sell into sexual slavery had been picked up while using Harry Johnson’s passport and ID. Law enforcement officials from a dozen different agencies had grilled the imposter but didn’t get much. Turned out he’d never met the man who’d supplied the stolen documents. They’d been left at a designated drop site after the recipient had deposited a hefty sum in the same location.

Nor had Harry’s body ever been recovered. All his fiancée knew, all anyone knew, was that Harry had disappeared after rotating off an AmMex oil rig, and someone using his passport had popped up on U.S. customs screens a few weeks later. What little intelligence OMEGA had been able to gather indicated the brains behind the ring supplying stolen passports operated out of this general vicinity. Devlin fully intended to nail the bastard. He wouldn’t let anyone—Captain Moore included—jeopardize this mission.

Hitching a hip on the desk, he responded to her sharp question with a deliberate combination of fact and fiction. “I went to the beach last night to meet someone.”

That part was true. What came next wasn’t.

“He said he had a onetime good deal for me on personal gear for use on the rig.”

“Why didn’t he come to your hotel in to conduct this sale?”

“My guess is he lifted the equipment from a roustabout, either on the rig or after he came off.”

That didn’t happen often, but it did happen. Rig crews hailed from just about every country on the planet. That made communication a distinct challenge. Their staggered rotations also presented opportunities for high-dollar tools and unsecured personal items to disappear.

Still suspicious, Moore tapped a booted toe. “So who fired the shots? This light-fingered entrepreneur?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the man he stole from. The shooter had departed the scene when I reached his victim.”

“This victim. Was he dead when you got to him?”

“He took a bullet between the eyes. You don’t get much deader than that.”

Her foot tapped the floor again. Once. Twice.

“You didn’t kill him,” she said, scowling. “I could have vouched for that. So why did you disappear?”

“I only arrived in Mexico with the replacement crew yesterday.” Another lie, followed by another truth. “But I’ve been around enough to know you don’t get mixed up in an incident like this unless you want to spend some not-so-quality time with the federales.”

“So you left me to do the explaining?”

The disdain in her eyes stung. Devlin deflected it with a shrug. “I went back to look for you. You had departed the scene, too.”

“Wrong! I ran up to my car to get my cell phone and call the police.”

He hooked an incredulous brow. “And you hung around to wait for them?”

“Someone had to.”

He let that pointed barb hang on the air for a moment before giving her a smile of genuine regret. “I have to admit, I had to think twice about leaving. If I’d stuck around, I might have gotten real lucky.”

The ploy worked. The reminder of her rash vow brought her chin up and a flush to her cheeks.

“Not hardly, Devlin. You’re not my type.”

“Best I recall, you didn’t specify a type last night.”

The pink in her cheeks deepened to brick. “Yeah, well, that was last night.”

He pushed off the desk and moved closer. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup that he could see, but her gold-flecked brown eyes didn’t need any goopy mascara to emphasize either their depth or their intelligence. And he had to admit the light dusting of freckles across her nose turned him on. That, and her unique scent. It drifted on an air-conditioned breeze, a tantalizing combination of soap and perspiration and aviation fuel.

He needed to keep her off balance, he reminded himself. Prevent her from probing too deeply. Throwing himself into the task, he gave her a wicked grin.

“How about this morning? Nothing says we can’t take up where we left off.”

“Oh, sure! With a rotation crew waiting outside in the heat?”

“I’m game if you are.”

Liz shook her head, suspended between suspicion and disbelief. “You’re something else, cowboy.”

“Yes, ma’am. I do believe I’ve been told that once or twice.”

She was damned if she could figure this guy out. He certainly looked like the roustabout he claimed to be. The sun had bleached his close-cut hair to golden brown. The white squint lines she’d noticed last night cut into skin tanned to dark oak by wind and sun. A couple days’ stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, as if he was getting a head start on the bushy beard most of the crews sprouted while on the rig. Then there was the palm he slid under her hair to circle her nape. It was callused and leather tough.

Liz stiffened at the touch of his skin against hers. Her eyes met his and telegraphed an unmistakable warning, which he ignored.

“If we can’t finish what we started,” he murmured, his gaze sliding downward to fix on her mouth, “how about we just settle for a kiss?”

Holding her in place with that thorny palm, he bent and brushed her lips with his.

Liz stood stiff, debating whether to whip up a knee or ream out his gut with her elbow. Devlin took full advantage of the hesitation, as brief as it was. Shifting his stance, he brought his mouth came down on hers with a hunger Liz hadn’t tasted in seven months.

Or longer, she realized with a jolt as his lips molded hers. To her chagrin, she couldn’t remember the last time a man had kissed her as if he meant it. Donny’s affectionate pecks hadn’t come close to packing this powerful a charge.

She savored the sizzle for a moment, maybe two, before breaking the contact. Feeling the loss of warmth immediately, she buried it in biting sarcasm.

“Finished flexing your masculinity, cowboy?”

“Guess so.”

“Then I’ll chalk this little interlude up to my stupid remark last night and let you walk out of here.” She looked him square in the eye. “Touch me again without my permission, however, and you’ll be drilling for something besides Mexican crude.”

Spinning on her heel, she strode out into the smothering heat. Jorge was waiting beside the pad with a question in his eyes. Liz answered it with a small shake of her head and brisk order tossed over her shoulder to the man who’d followed her from the operations shack.

“Get aboard and buckle up.”

Devlin joined his companions in the passenger compartment. Only after Liz had climbed into the cockpit and buckled her seat harness did she realize she’d bought his story about the supposed thief he’d gone to meet last night.

Frowning, she strapped on her kneeboard and forced herself to concentrate on the power-up sequence checklist. The engines whined. The forty-four feet of main rotor blades churned up dust, slowly at first, then in a reddish whirlwind. The aircraft began to shimmy as Liz radioed the tower.

Once she received clearance to taxi, her years of training and experience kicked in. Flying an aircraft that operated in both horizontal and vertical planes required a level of coordination not all pilots possessed. As always, getting her bird in the air and shifting smoothly from one plane to the other produced an adrenaline rush.

Her second in less than twenty minutes, Liz thought as she banked and aimed for the blue, sparkling Pacific. Her mouth still tingled from the kiss Devlin had laid on her.

Scowling behind her mirrored sunglasses, she set a course for floating the platform designated American-Mexican Petroleum Company Drill Site 237.

She must have made the run to AM-237 forty or fifty times in the past seven months. Every time, the sheer immensity of the ultradeepwater semisubmersible rig inspired awe. It was as big as a city block—a floating platform spiked by two giant cranes and a derrick that rose to impossible heights.

Anchored to the ocean floor by chains and 45,000-pound anchors, the superstructure sat on massive pontoons and four corner columns. Once the platform was positioned over a drill site, the columns were flooded with seawater. This caused the pontoons to sink to a predetermined depth and lessened the platform’s surface movement, making it relatively stable.

Relative being the key word. To a pilot aiming for the helideck that jutted out over the rig’s bow some seven stories above the water, even slight up and down movement had to be taken into consideration. The trick was to contact the helideck at its highest point and ride it down. Slamming into it on the way up stressed the landing gear and made the passengers just a tad nervous.

Liz chose a leeward approach and put the helo into a descending spiral a quarter of a mile out. The fat orange flanges for pumping the crude into tankers stood out like beacons on the east side. She lined up on the flanges to begin her final approach.

“AM-237, this is Aero Baja 214 on final.”

“Roger, 214. We have you on the scope. We’re putting out the welcome mat.”

While the rig’s two crane operators lowered the booms to clear the airspace, a support ship maneuvered into position at the pontoon closest to the helideck. The ship’s mission was to pick up survivors if the incoming aircraft hit the drink instead of the deck.

“The LO is standing by.”

The rig’s landing officer climbed onto the pad, clearly visible in his bright yellow vest.

“I see him,” Liz acknowledged.

Although this was only a secondary duty for him, she knew he’d been doing it a long time and trusted him to guide her in. Keeping one eye on his arm signals and another on the instrument panel, she put her aircraft into a hover above the deck and brought her down.

The skids touched, lifted and settled with a small thump. While the red-vested tie-down crew ducked under the blades to anchor the helicopter to the deck, Liz powered down. Once the blades had chugged to a halt, she keyed her mike.

“Welcome to AM-237, gentlemen.”

Swinging a leg over the stick, she clambered into the cargo compartment.

“Claim your gear and pass it to the deckhands,” she instructed the new arrivals. “Make sure you hang on to the lifelines when you climb out onto the pad.”

The old-timers knew the drill, but there were questions in the eyes of a couple of obvious newcomers. Liz repeated the instructions in Spanish, then in elaborate pantomime. Looking both doubtful and nervous, the newbies poked their heads outside the hatch. Liz saw several Adam’s apples bounce and knuckles turn white as the crewmen measured the distance from the pad to the ocean below.

“Don’t piss yourself,” the beefy Irishman advised one of the Venezuelans. “Just hang on to that strap. Out you go now, there’s a good lad.”

Since the brawny oilman supplemented his friendly words of encouragement with a solid thump between the shoulder blades, the cargo compartment soon emptied of everyone but Liz and Devlin. Passing his gear bag to a waiting deckhand, he turned back to her.

“How often do you make this run?”

“Five maybe six times a month. Depends on whether they need supplies or there’s a crew rotating off.”

“Maybe I’ll see you on your next run.”

“Maybe.”

He took a step toward her, his sun-streaked hair ruffled by the wind whistling through the open hatch. “Do I have your permission?”

“My permission? For…? Oh! No, as a matter of fact, you don’t. No touching, Devlin, and definitely no kissing.”

“Sure you won’t reconsider? It’s going to be a long twenty-eight days out here.”

“Just grin and bear it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Tipping her a two-fingered salute, he exited the aircraft and made his way to the stairs leading to the main deck.

Liz saw to the unloading of the replenishment supplies and accepted the sealed outgoing mail pouch, but instructed the landing officer to wait before bringing up the departing crew members.

“I need to talk to the company rep,” she informed him, holding back her wind-whipped hair with one hand. “Do you know where he is?”

“Try the galley. Conrad is usually there this time of morning, swilling coffee and shooting off his…Er, shooting the breeze.”

She gave the LO a wry smile. She’d dealt with AmMex Petroleum’s on-site representative before. She had no doubt she would find him pontificating to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in his immediate vicinity.

She took the stairs, crossed the deck to the main superstructure and entered a world like none other. The ever-present reek of fresh paint and diesel fuel flavored the air. Machinery constantly in motion thumped out the rig’s steady heartbeat. Metal creaked as the massive platform rode the waves.

The giant anchors and stabilizers minimized the motion until it was almost imperceptible, but Liz had to lay a palm against the bulkhead once or twice as she followed the scent of fried onions to the galley. Sure enough, the AmMex on-site rep was sprawled in a mess chair at the officers’ table, holding forth.

Big and amiable and impervious to all attempts to shut him up, Conrad Wallace never seemed to tire of the sound of his own voice. Today’s topic appeared to be a crew Ping-Pong tournament that evidently didn’t come off to Wallace’s satisfaction. The rig’s Pakistani-born doctor sat across from him with a glazed expression on her face. When she spotted Liz, relief sprang into her eyes.

“Hello, Elizabeth. Did you bring the waterproof cast liners I ordered?”

“Sure did.”

“What about the metronidazole tablets?”

“They’re on back order, but marked priority. I’ll fly them out as soon as they arrive.”

“Thank you. I need them. Excuse me, Conrad. I must go inventory the new supplies.”

She hurried out, leaving Liz to help herself to the coffee before joining Wallace at the gleaming teak table reserved for the rig’s officers. The officers lived well out here on the patch, as did the hundred-plus crew members. Accommodations included hotel-class rooms, a galley that served international cuisine, a cinema showing satellite TV and movies and a gym that would get a gold stamp of approval from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oil companies had to provide such facilities along with high-dollar salaries to induce men and women to live surrounded by miles of empty water for months at a time.

Cradling her coffee, Liz sank into a padded captain’s chair. The company man shifted his bulk in her direction and picked up almost where he’d left off.

“We were talking about the fluke shot that won the crew Ping-Pong tournament last night. Did anyone tell you about it?”

“No, I just got down.”

“It was crazy. The ball ricocheted off a steam pipe, hit the forehead of one of the watchers and slammed back on the table. No way the referee should have allowed that shot, but you know how these foreigners are. They make up their own rules as they go.”

Liz started to remind the man the rig sat in Mexican territorial waters and he was the foreigner here but didn’t want to set him off on a new tangent. Instead, she cut straight to the point.

“I need an advance on next month’s salary.”

Wallace blinked at the abrupt change of topic and pursed his lips. Liz recognized his pinched expression. She categorized it as his company face.

“Payday was last week,” he pontificated, as if she weren’t well aware of that basic fact. “Don’t tell me you’ve already run through the exorbitant flight pay AmMex shells out to you.”

Her supposedly “exorbitant” flight pay was an old issue, one that came up every time Liz renewed her contract.

“What I did with my pay is my business, Conrad.”

Frowning at the cool reply, Wallace shifted in his seat. He was a big man, but soft around the middle. Not lean and hard like the roughnecks who wrestled pipe or the roustabouts who performed general maintenance work.

Not like Joe Devlin.

Irritated at the way the man kept popping into her head, Liz laid out her requirement. “I need six hundred.”

Living was considerably cheaper in Mexico than in the States, thank goodness. That amount would cover the payment due on the loan and get her though to the next payday with no problem.

“Six hundred?” Wallace echoed, looking as horrified as a man asked to sacrifice his firstborn child.

Liz should have known he’d balk. The man managed a multimillion-dollar operating budget, yet was so tight he squeaked when he walked.

“You know, Conrad, you’re the perfect company man. You think every cent you dole out comes out of your own pocket.”

“Well, it does! Anything that impacts the company’s bottom line affects its profit margin, which in turn affects its stock value. Since I receive a large portion of my compensation and retirement in stock options, I’m obligated—”

“I know the spiel,” Liz interrupted ruthlessly. It was the only way to get through to the man. “You’re obligated to act as a responsible guardian of company funds. Are you going to give me the six hundred or not?”