The Rig 3: Eye of the Hurricane Read Free Page A

announcing the storm caused by a new El Niño complex. The American media were still focusing on the terrorist attack, but the Mexicans were not in the least bothered with that. The news they brought to his screen was a lot more to his liking than anything else he had heard all day. That storm was exactly what he needed.
    ‘The City’ was his creation, but it had been a big failure. When the FBI approached him about an event there, he had been only too happy to agree. The insurance would cover his losses and his face would be saved. The man who had made billions developing software and used his billions to improve the world could not be seen to fail.
    But the bomb that had gone off had not taken the place out completely. It had caused an oil spill and a fire, which would eventually make things right, but there was a chance people would escape from ‘The City’. This storm made any rescue mission impossible. Nobody would survive to tell anyone what had really happened.
    His wife was already in bed, wearing her big flannel pajamas and a night mask. He growled. He was in a good mood and wanted her now, but he did not dare upset her. She was the guiding light behind most of his projects and he loved her.
    Instead of waking her up, he turned the television back on. He looked up the CBS San Diego channel again and watched the cute multicultural reporter make a fuss. He undid the button of his trousers and let himself go, watching the woman. She really was a good find, he thought.
     
    ***
     
    Elly Boukhari had given up her reporting on the situation of the pregnant girlfriend since her Uncle Dan had called. He had told her there might be more to the whole situation than met the eye and that FEMA did not intend to mount any rescues.
    Information began flooding in about the man who had set off the bomb in ‘The City’. CNN reported on the manifesto he had published, but she was not interested anymore. Neither was she interested in the picture she had just received. The picture that showed Akhmed Hussain Abbasi with a woman in a burka. There was more going on, and she was going to find out what.
    The first person she wanted to talk to was Helen, the girlfriend. And Helen would not come out to talk to the cameras after she had previously accosted her outside her door. She needed to find a way to persuade the woman to talk to her. How, she did not know. Yet.
     
    ***
     
    Helen looked over the last posts on Akhmed's Facebook page. She shook her head. She did not believe her boyfriend could have ever posted those things. The note that contained his “manifesto” made no sense. And the privacy setting on it was public, too. He never did that.
    The manifesto spoke of how the Americans raped the Middle East and North Africa, and how the Faithful should strike back against the Infidels. It made no sense. Akhmed was an agnostic. He had not even been raised as a Muslim. His father was a Muslim, his mother a Coptic Christian. With the tensions between those two faiths in their native Egypt, they had decided not to raise their child with religion. He could figure it out for himself when he was older.
    Instinctively, she felt her stomach. When she had told him she was pregnant over the phone, he had been so happy. But even then, his happiness was marred by the possibility of him being framed for the bombing on ‘The City’. He had been so scared.
    He said they had been after him, trying to kill him and then make it look like he had committed suicide. And she believed him when he had said it.
    She looked out the window and frowned. It was very distant, but it seemed there was a storm drifting in. Her father had been a fisherman, so she had been raised with a sort of sixth sense ability to predict a storm. There was definitely a storm coming. A big one. And fear struck her heart. If that storm hit the already damaged and burning rig, Akhmed would never come back to her. He would never be able to see their baby, nor would the baby ever