Snakehead

towers, immediately lost in the great tangle that had been designed to pump oil from the seabed, thousands of feet below. Ben was carrying a miniature flashlight, which he kept cupped in his left hand, allowing only a trickle of light to escape. His right hand held an automatic pistol, a Walther PPK with a Brausch silencer attached.
    Scooter and the other SAS men had dropped out of sight. Alex could imagine them moving toward him on the other side of the water. In the far distance he thought he heard a sound: a soft thud, the clatter of metal against metal, a stifled cry cut off very quickly. Maybe there were guards after all. If so, one of them might be wishing that he had been a little more alert.
    Ben was opening doors, peering in through windows. There was still no sign of life on the drilling platform. They climbed a flight of steps that brought them to a metal walkway on the very edge, high over the sea. Alex looked down, and that was when he saw it. The oil rig was actually balancing on four huge legs, like an oversized metal table. One of the legs had a ladder that ran all the way down to the surface, actually disappearing beneath it. Next to the ladder and tucked away almost underneath the platform was an executive yacht, the sort of thing that would have looked more at home in a private marina—perhaps in the south of France. The boat was about sixty feet in length, sleek and white, with several sundecks and a bow that was clearly designed for speed. Alex tapped Ben on the shoulder and pointed. Ben nodded.
    It had to belong to Major Yu. It was surely there to provide him with a fast escape, meaning that he must be on the processing platform, just as Scooter had suspected. If Alex had known the make of the yacht, there would have been no doubt in his mind at all. It was a Sealine F42/5 flybridge motorboat with a unique extending cockpit system. It had been designed and manufactured in Britain.
    Ben signaled the way forward. More than ever, Alex wished that Scooter and the others were with them. They were following a narrow gantry that led to a door set in a circular building, jutting out over the corner of the rig with curving windows that provided views in three directions.
    The control room. It had to be.
    They crept toward it. Alex didn’t know what Ben had in mind. Maybe he was going to wait for the rest of the squadron to catch up. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
    But in the end, he was never given a choice. Without warning, a spotlight swept through the air, searing its way across the drilling platform. A second later, a machine gun began firing, bullets ricocheting crazily off the railings, slamming into the walls and sparking as they flew off the metal walkways. A siren began to wail, and at the same time Alex heard answering fire from the other side of the bridge. The silence of the night had been shattered. There was an explosion, a ball of flame erupting into the night like a brilliant flower. More shooting. Ben twisted and fired twice. Alex didn’t even see his target, but there was a cry and a man fell out of the sky, slammed into a gantry, and bounced off it into the sea.
    “This way!” Ben shouted. He had already started forward, and Alex went after him, knowing that Yu would be expecting them now but that there could be no going back. Yu’s men would be taking positions all over the oil rig. They had the advantage. There were a dozen ladders they could climb and platforms high above from where they could pick off the invaders one by one. He and Ben would be safer inside. The door was ahead of them, leading into the circular room. Ben reached it and crouched down. “Stay back!” he commanded.
    Alex saw him count to three.
    He slammed the door open and went in firing. Despite what he had been told and even though he wasn’t carrying a weapon himself, Alex followed. And that was how he saw what happened in the next few seconds, even though it would be a lot longer before he took it all in.
    There had been two men in the control room, surrounded by computer screens, a radio transmitter, and the equipment that Alex had seen on the Liberian Star. One of them was Major Winston Yu. He was holding the pistol that he had just used to gun down Ben Daniels. Ben was lying on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood. The Walther PPK had dropped out of his hand and lay pointing toward Alex. There was another man lying facedown a short distance away, and Alex realized that Ben