Emergence Read Free Page A

. . fighting them . . . coming up from the pylo . . .’
    ‘Jonty. D’you read me? It’s Hoop. I’m less than a minute out. You’re breaking up, man. What the fuck is going on down there?’
    ‘. . . ooper? . . . acking us . . . We need . . .’
    But the interference washed any sense out of the few words that broke through.
    ‘Dave?’
    It was J2, jumping in on his channel, sounding even more worried than before.
    ‘I got the navy on my case now, man. They’re telling me we’re in restricted airspace. They’re warning us off, telling me not to land. Talking about terrorists or some garbage.’
    ‘Bullshit!’ he said in amazement. ‘Are they fucking crazy? Why is it restricted to us? We gotta get casualties off. I have to get down there and get to work. Where the fuck are terrorists gonna come from out here? What’d they hijack, a submarine? Look down there, J2. There’s nothing there. Fireboats haven’t even made it out yet.’
    ‘Dave . . .’
    ‘Get me down, Juliette,’ he said, talking over the top of her objections. ‘You put me down and get the wounded to Thunder Horse and you’ll be back at the depot before that navy asshole you’re talking to has even tied a slipknot in his little pecker to stop from wetting his pants.’
    She opened her mouth to try one more time, but Hooper cut her off with another harsh bark.
    ‘Do it.’
    The helicopter pilot tugged at the bill of her Era baseball cap, as though saluting him. She pushed forward on the stick and took them in.
    Juliette threw them into a tight corkscrew descent that crushed him into his seat, where the broken seat spring speared into his butt like the shrimp fork of an angry little vengeance demon. The pressure on his back and neck cranked up the misery of his hangover, turning the dial to 11 on the Spinal Tap amp. Dave Hooper ignored it, along with the urgent need to dry-retch again and the feeling of having his eyes gouged out by the pressure of high-speed deceleration. He gritted his teeth, which were still slimy from the night before, and tried to pick out as much detail from the hellish scene as he could.
    It was almost impossible. Rig monkeys and fire teams ran everywhere. Secondary explosions shook the lower levels of the structure as thick black clouds of smoke poured into the sky. He caught the briefest glimpse of a rainbow, formed in the mist drifting off a water jet, before the skids slammed down on the helipad, sending a painful jolt up his backbone.
    The chopper doors flew back as evac teams wrenched the handles and wrestled wounded men into the cabin. Dave was about to start shouting directions, imposing some sense of order on the scene, when he was struck dumb by the sight of a couple of Vince Martinelli’s second shift guys trying to scramble in over the top of the casualties. They looked terrified, with huge white eyes bugging out of oil-stained faces. But they didn’t appear to be injured in any way. Dave shouted at them to get the hell back, but the pounding of the chopper blades, the roar of explosions, and the hoarse shouts and screams of a dozen other men drowned him out.
    He tried to push the first of the interlopers out of his way and was surprised when the man suddenly flew sideways, the victim of a stiff arm jab by Martinelli himself, who followed up with a series of vicious rabbit punches to the neck of the second man. Vince wasn’t fucking around, either. He really hammered the guy, forcing Dave to jump down and grab his fist as it was cocked for another strike.
    ‘Jesus, Vince, knock it off. You’re gonna kill him.’
    ‘Sorry, boss,’ yelled the shift supervisor, who looked on the edge of panic himself, ‘but I figured this might happen when you showed up. Some of these fucking idiots even tried to throw themselves over the side to get away from the things. Got at least one life pod away as well.’
    ‘Away from what?’ Dave yelled as Martinelli threw the other man to the side of the helipad like a bag of