The rig manager’s throat was dry and swallowing didn’t help.
‘Fuck,’ said the drilling contactor, blinking. ‘How long is it going to take us to shut the platform down and get everyone off?’ He was new to the job, having spent most of his time on dry land in head office.
‘We’ve got two shifts, one of them asleep. Ninety people in all. We can pinch the drill string…twenty minutes.’
‘We’ve got ten.’
Both men were vaguely paralysed by the news that the terrorist weapon was not targeted at Darwin, but at them. Or rather, the entire oil field. The news had just been conveyed via satellite link from Canberra by no less than the head of Australia’s defence forces himself, Air Marshal Ted Niven. Understandably, everyone on the rig with friends and family in the north of Australia had been preoccupied with the evacuation of the city ever since the prime minister’s shock address. And all the while they’d been the ones in the target zone. Right now, the platform had to be cleared, but the reasons for it would have to wait until they were bobbing in the Timor Sea. That was the air marshal’s advice – get into the lifeboats and motor upwind of their platform as fast as they could. Australian warships and merchant vessels were heading there now to pick them up.
The rig manager hit the large red knob hard with the flat of his hand and the air around them suddenly filled with an ear-splitting wail. The rig was sitting on a trillion tons of explosive gas and everyone was well versed on the emergency evacuation procedures. All over the rig, the manager knew, the men and women would have one thing on their mind – to get the fuck off the platform now, now, now.