Then he hurried back to the rocking deck. A glance over the bow. Yes, she was making right for the rig. He scanned the massive deck of the structure—easily a hundred feet above the surface. No workers were visible. This was typical. Nobody on oil rigs wasted time lounging on the fiercely hot iron superstructure, taking in the non-view. They were hard at work in the interior of the unit, mostly in the drill house, or asleep, waiting for the next shift.

Cruz hurried to the side of the vessel and climbed down the rope ladder and dropped into the speedboat with Cheval and the others of the crew.

The motor started.

But before they pulled away, Cruz opened his palm and kissed the pads of his fingers. He then touched it to a rusty patch of hull and whispered, “This is for you, Roberto.”

Chapter 95

CHAPTER 95

THE CLUSTER OF PASSENGERS ON the cruise ship’s forward deck was being photographed by Jim from New Jersey, as opposed to Jim from Cleveland or Jim from London (all right, the Brit preferred “James” but since he was on holiday, he was happy to play along with the others).

The group had become friendly in the days since the ocean liner left Hamilton, in Bermuda, and had spent the first tipsy cocktail hour noting coincidences of career and number of children…and given names.

Four Jims, two Sallys.

Jim from California was below, neither the patch nor Dramamine working well, and so he would not be included in the picture.

Jim from New Jersey lined everyone up against what he said was a gunwale, though nobody knew exactly what that was—he didn’t either—but it seemed very nautical and fun to say.

“Nobody sing the Titanic song.”

There’d been a lot of that, especially as the bars remained open late into the night, but the truth was that very few people, men or women, could bring off the treacly song like Celine Dion.

“Is that Florida?” somebody asked. One of the Sallys, Jim from New Jersey believed.

He saw a dim line on the horizon but that was probably just a layer of clouds.

“Not yet, I don’t think.”

“But what’s that? It’s a building.”

“Oh, that’s the oil rig. The first one in this part of the Atlantic. Didn’t you see the news? A year ago or so. They found some oil between Nassau and Florida.”

“They? Who’s they? Everybody always says ‘they.’ Are you going to take the picture? My margarita’s melting.”

“U.S. Petroleum. American Petroleum Drilling. I don’t remember.”

“I hate those things,” Sally from Chicago muttered. “Did you see the birds in the Gulf? All covered with oil. It was terrible. I cried.”

“And we couldn’t get good shrimp for months.”

The photog marshaled his subjects into line against the gunwale and tapped down on the Canon shutter.

Click, click, click, click, click…