"MacLean, Alistar - Seawitch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

Larsen hung up his phone and smiled widely. One might have expected this action to reveal a set of yellowed fangs: instead, it revealed a perfect set of gleamingly white teeth. He turned to look at Scoffield, his head driller and right-hand man.

Scoffield was a large, rubicund, smiling man, apparently the easygoing essence of good nature. To the fact that this was not precisely the case, any member of his drilling crews would have eagerly and blasphemously testified. Scoffield was a very tough citizen indeed, and one could assume that it was not innate modesty that made him conceal the fact: much more probably it was a permanent stricture of the facial muscles caused by the four long vertical scars on his cheeks, two on either side. Clearly he, like Larsen, was no great advocate of plastic surgery. He looked at Larsen with understandable "curiosity".

"What was all that about?"

"The day of reckoning is at hand. Prepare to meet thy doom. More specifically, his lordship is beset by enemies." Larsen outlined Lord Worth's plight. "He's sending what sounds like a battalion of hard men out here in the early morning, accompanied by suitable weaponry. Then in the afternoon we are to expect a boat of some sort, loaded with even heavier weaponry."

"I wonder where he's getting all those hard men and weaponry from.'

"One wonders. One does not ask."

"All this talk -- your talk -- about bombers and submarines and missiles. Do you believe that?"

"No. It's just that it's hard to pass up the opportunity to ruffle the aristocratic plumage." He paused, then said thoughtfully: "At least I hope I don't believe it. Come on, let us examine our defenses."

"You've got a pistol. I've got a pistol. That's defenses?"

"Well, where we'll mount the defenses when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine."

"When they arrive."

"Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers."

"From his own private armory, I suppose."

"It wouldn't surprise me."

"What do you really think, Commander?"

"I don't know. All I know is that if Lord Worth is even halfway right, life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days."

The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on the platform. The Seawitch was moored in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water-—nine hundred feet, which was well within the tensioning cables capacities -- safely south of the U.S. mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, right on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.

Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.

Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night.

The men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well-housed and well-fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song, but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn't hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal, then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.

Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some tune, then turned and walked back toward the accommodation quarters.

Scoffield said: "Decided on your gun emplacements yet, Commander -- if there are any guns?"

"There'll be guns." Larsen was confident. "But we won't need any in this quarter."

"Why?"

"Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, I'm not too sure. It'll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four."