The Phoenix Deception

By J. R. Maddux

The Phoenix Deception is a Mack Flynt mystery thriller following the private investigator as he tracks two men who went missing after an oil rig blow-out in the waters off the Gulf Coast. When the trail leads to conspiracy, corruption and murder, he quickly finds himself being hunted by mercenaries and plotted against by government officials in high places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623095550

Book preview

9781623095550

CHAPTER ONE

April 2, The Gulf of Mexico

Norsk Utforsker was a floating deepwater petroleum drilling platform deployed some ninety miles off the Louisiana coastline. Essentially a big, boxy ship, the Utforsker was owned and operated by Norsk Petroleum Exploration and Production (NPEP), a large Norwegian-based company working under the supervision and with the permission of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the United States government. Establishing a wellhead some forty-three-hundred feet beneath the surface, the Utforsker, which means explorer in Norwegian, tapped into a deep reserve that amounted to several hundred million barrels of oil, plus the accompanying pockets of natural gas. In short, it was a bonanza for both Norsk and the Americans.

Eleven months earlier, the drilling moratorium that was the knee-jerk reaction of a panicked administration to the disastrous Deepwater Horizon blowout was overturned by the courts as an egregious hardship on the industry and residents of the Gulf Coast who made their livelihood in the rich offshore oilfields. The devastating spill that followed the Deepwater Horizon event polluted the Gulf waters, shorelines and marshes of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and fouled even some of the pristine white sand beaches of the Florida panhandle. New, stiffer regulations were in place now that were designed to make offshore drilling fail-safe, or at least as safe as it could possibly be. But all of this was quite beyond the pay grade of the stout, bearded man in the gray hooded jacket who sat huddled over the blowout prevention controls of the giant rig that was the size of two side-by-side football fields. His job was simply to perform periodic checks on the pressure in the wellhead, maintain the equipment used to monitor it and, in an emergency, take such action as necessary to be sure that the well was sealed down to prevent a massive spill. He was presently situated in a closed, hardened cabin above the drilling floor of the big ship, separated by a short corridor and thick steel doors from the engineers who continually ran tests on the well below.

Juergen Van Bruder, that was the man’s name, was bleary-eyed, partly because he wasted his rest period playing a mindless video game, and partly because of the three marijuana joints he smoked within the ninety-minute period before he went on duty. Nevertheless, he relieved his superior promptly at four PM and assumed his normal shift that was scheduled to end at midnight. On this night, however, it was destined to end sooner.

He sat, as if in a daze, staring out over the drilling platform below that fell away to a still and darkened ocean that was covered by a transient, wispy blanket of fog. At his fingertips were a set of black buttons and switches controlling the functions he was charged to oversee, and just to his right was a dizzying array of gauges conveying various related strains of information about the status of the well’s pressure. A mystery to many, deep sea drilling is essentially a contest pitting man’s invention, super-hardened steel, against mother nature’s ferocious strength in the form of enormous pounds-per-square inch compression from the ocean’s depth, and the often treacherous surges of natural gas pressure within the well itself. Research and human ingenuity most often win such battles. Stretching from the ship toward the ocean’s floor are huge, jointed steel pipes called risers, in different circumferences, thicknesses and states of buoyancy. One serves to convey the drilling mud thousands of feet below the sea floor to force out the precious black treasure beneath. The others disseminate pressure from seawater and spent mud, or convey the harvested oil to the platform above. Below the risers is the drilling pipe or string encased in hardened cement, and directly on top of the wellhead sits the BOP, the annular blowout preventer designed to close the well in case of emergency.

A presumed failure of the blowout preventer in the Horizon cataclysm led to a whole assortment of new government mandated safety regulations. One of these was the installation of triple redundant blowout prevention systems on all deepwater rigs. Should the worst happen, the BOP was now supposed to close automatically. If, for any reason it didn’t, a manually operated valve behind where Van Bruder now sat could be turned to initiate complete closure. An alternative means was to flip a switch that would send an acoustic signal to the BOP below prompting it to close, seal the wellhead and prohibit the upward escape of an uncontrollable rush of oil and natural gas. The chances of all three failing simultaneously were virtually nil.

At five minutes past ten, Vincent Spiller, an engineer and consultant assigned to the project by Neptune Undersea, Ltd., called Van Bruder on the intercom, his voice fluctuating between tones of irritation and minor alarm.

Did you feel that? he demanded.

Feel what? the groggy Van Bruder retorted, annoyed at the interruption of his stuporous watch.

Something like a thump, Spiller replied. Check the damned pressure.

Alerted, Van Bruder consulted the pressure gauges to his right. They indicated nothing amiss. In fact, they seemed locked in place, as though frozen. He checked the digital read-outs attached to the acoustic signaller, and saw that all the lights were green, except for one. As he processed in his clouded mind just why that one stubborn light would be red when all the others were green, he got the first faint whiff of it. It was the unmistakable odor of raw natural gas, every driller’s nightmare. Instinctively he whirled and flipped the switch meant to send the signal to the BOP to close immediately, but nothing happened. Panicked, he dashed toward the manual closure valve just as a major jolt rocked the ship, causing him to stagger backward and fall. Alas, he was never to reach the valve. Momentarily an even larger shock wave threw him back to the floor as an unstoppable geyser of gas, oil, drilling mud and seawater blasted up through the risers and tore a jagged, gaping hole in the floor of the platform. Almost instantly a spark ignited the rampant hydrocarbons, turning the Norsk Utforsker into a floating inferno.

Screams emanated from the platform floor as terrified workers ran this way and that, some of them ablaze. Terrified souls crowded into covered lifeboats while others simply jumped overboard as the claxoning alarm alerted them to abandon ship. Lit by the red-orange flames that shot as high as a fifty-story building, and the flickering emergency lights that came on when main power shut down, the eerie panorama played out before the eyes of Juergen Van Bruder, now dead and sightless due to a mortal collision with a displaced control box.

Of the one-hundred twenty-eight aboard the Utforsker, one-hundred-sixteen survived, nine were known dead, their bodies recovered, and three were missing. Two days later, the Utforsker capsized and sank in four-thousand feet of water. In another twenty-eight, the well was capped and sealed. A million plus barrels of oil were cast adrift on the Gulf, and Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida prepared to re-live the nightmare of Deepwater Horizon in miniature, a grim reminder of the high stakes game that constitutes deepwater offshore drilling.

A Week Later, the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.

Tom Steele fidgeted impatiently while he showed the credential dangling from a lanyard around his neck, and was waved through by the armed security guards. He walked with singular purpose, paying no attention to the distractions of the DOI’s interesting first floor museum. Summoning the elevator and inserting his pass card, he pressed a button ordering the contraption to deliver him to the fifth floor where his office was located. DOI offices were closed for the day, and he only gained access because he was a middle management employee there, returning to tidy up after a late meeting.

He wasn’t, however, thinking about straightening up his office, so much as he was about his friend, Renee Stoddard, administrative assistant to the undersecretary of the department. Friend would actually be a euphemism, for Tim and Renee were lovers, and had spent several nights a week together for more than four months now. Maintaining distance and decorum at the office, they were nevertheless carrying on a torrid, if clandestine, love affair during their off hours, no one being the wiser. They were scheduled for a quiet dinner at his place the evening previous, but she stood him up. She did not answer his repeated calls to either her home or cell phone, and when he swung by her office this morning he was informed that she neither reported for work nor called in. He was very worried about her.

Upon entering his office, he had the eerie feeling that things were out of place. Someone took care to replace things where they found them all right, but a few binders were askew, his stapler and tape dispenser mysteriously reversed places in his orderly top drawer and his chair was turned to face his computer screen rather than the door as was normal. In short, Steele was persnickety about having everything in its place. Only so particular a person would notice the subtle rearrangements. The message light on his phone was not flashing, but on a whim he checked his messages anyway. He froze when he heard the anguished voice on the other end.

Tom, this is Renee. I can’t see you tonight, or ever again. I took something, something I shouldn’t have. Now someone is chasing me. I have to go away, find somewhere safe where no one knows me. I love you. Have a good life.

By the end of the message, her distraught voice was quivering, wracked by sobs born of both terror and deep sorrow. It sent a shiver clear through Tom Steele. He stood there for a moment, pondering what to do. Should he call the police, the FBI, building security? As he stood there pondering, he heard a muffled sound in the outer office. This was odd, because the outer door locked when it closed behind him. He cracked his own door ever so slightly, and peeked out. Three men in coveralls and wearing gloves were engaged in a painstaking search of the office. Their clothing was an exact match to that worn by janitors who cleaned the DOI from stem to stern each night. But these men were no janitors. They left not a shred of paper unexamined, no drawer or file unopened as they worked in silence. Then it hit him. Next they would be coming to his office.

There was no escape. Access to his small office was controlled by the solitary door. There was a coat closet big enough to hide in, but searchers this thorough would surely look in there, and then the game would be up. Frantically he looked for alternatives. The place had two double windows that faced on Washington D.C.’s C Street, below. They were the old style French type windows that opened inward in opposite directions and actually sometimes provided a cooling breeze during the capital’s sultry spring afternoons.

Steele was a slight man, and the windows were surely large enough for a man of his size to slide through. But the ledge outside was only a foot wide, and he was five stories up and chronically afraid of heights. He gave fleeting thought to just walking out and confronting the men, but he could see bulges inside their coveralls, dead giveaways of shoulder holsters. He became quickly convinced that his only hope was the dreaded ledge outside, and that this whole thing, his life included, was not likely to end well. He never turned on the light, so had no need to extinguish it. Opening one side of the window behind his desk and to his right, he stepped gingerly out onto the terrifying perch, pulled the window closed behind him, and plastered his sweating, shaking body against the concrete and brick facade of the old building, jamming his fingers deep into the mortared cracks and holding on for dear life. Ten seconds later he heard the thump of the door opening and closing as they entered the room.

Tom Steele refused to look down, confirming the terror he already felt. He prayed that they would finish soon, and believed they might since they, or someone else, already apparently searched the office once. Through the narrow slit of vision he had into the room, he could see one man, a muscular, squat fellow wearing a woolen skull cap, removing a jump drive from the back of his computer. That would be a copy of everything on his hard drive. He could also see just the feet of another man, standing beyond the first and on a step ladder. He was doing something at ceiling height, but Steele could not make out what it was. His phone receiver was partially disassembled and lay on the return to his computer stand. Were they bugging his phone? If so, why? In under ten minutes his prayer was answered. No one remained in his line of sight, and there was no more movement of shadows in the office. He patiently made himself count to three-hundred, trying to wait five minutes before attempting re-entry. The grim specter of a misstep flitted across his mind, and in that scant moment he saw his crushed skull and broken body splattered on the pavement far below. Gently he baby-stepped back toward the window and pushed. As it folded inward, he stumbled and lurched awkwardly back inside, landing unceremoniously on his hands and knees and thanking his lucky stars that he was still in one piece.

But his joy was short-lived. He had to get out of there and now. Someone thought he knew something he shouldn’t know, just as they apparently thought Renee knew something she shouldn’t. They wouldn’t be stopping with a mere search of his office. Now they would be looking for him. He couldn’t go home. They might be waiting there. His car was parked safe in his own garage because he took the Metro to and from work most days, including today. He needed to get out on the street, hail a cab and get as far from this place as he could. Gingerly and on tiptoes he exited first his own office, and then the outer one. He opened the door and scanned the empty corridor. As he closed it silently behind him, he turned to pass the row of mailboxes on the far side of the darkened hallway. In the dim light, he imagined that he saw the slender profile of a single piece of mail in his box. Fumbling with his keys, he finally found the right one, inserted it in the lock with trembling fingers and made a half turn of his wrist. Seizing the envelope, he stuffed it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and walking quickly toward the stairwell descended the five flights in record time, his heart pounding uncontrollably as he went. He was relieved to see the familiar faces of the security guards patrolling the lobby, and after greeting them as casually as his agitated state would allow, he walked out the single night exit door and into the cool fresh air.

Every instinct told him it was time to run far, far away. But he had very little cash with him, and worst of all he had no knowledge of who or what he was running from, or how long their reach might be. The driver of the cab he hailed patiently waited for him at the convenience store where he took the ATM maximum two-hundred-fifty dollars from his account. He used the travel hiatus to think through where he might go next and decided that whatever the risks, he needed to find and talk to Renee. He paid the driver and got out three blocks from her duplex, walking the rest of the way and staying to the shadows and unlit portions of the street wherever possible. Standing behind two trees, he watched her place for a full twenty minutes to see if anyone else was doing likewise. There were no cars on the street, and except for the occasional yapping of a small dog, no noise. Choosing discretion as the better part of valor, he circled the block and approached from the alley at the rear of the building. He had a key to the place that Renee gave him, and knew that it fit the locks on both front and rear doors. He unlocked the one in back, slid it open and stepped into a small, darkened dining area, situated just between the main living area and small kitchen.

His night vision was fairly acute, and what he saw caused him to hesitate and consider for a moment just turning and leaving the way he came. The place had been thoroughly tossed, not a methodical, orderly search like the one at the offices, but a random, almost violent ransacking that left broken pottery, shredded furniture, scattered papers and books everywhere in its wake. Slowly he made his way through the living room and into the hall that approached the two bedrooms and a small room Renee used for an office. The office was in the same disheveled condition as the rest of the house, the second bedroom less so, but still obviously pawed through. At the very end of the hall was the master bedroom, in which Steele himself recalled spending many pleasurable nights with Renee. The door was partially open, and he entered cautiously, stopping to look around and get his bearings. The bureau drawers hung open, their contents scattered on the floor. The mattress and box spring on the queen-sized bed were still in place, but were carelessly replaced so that their contours no longer matched and they sat crooked on the frame. The bathroom door was open and the medicine cabinet smashed and emptied of its contents, most of which were either on the black and white tiled floor or in the bath tub. But there was no sign of Renee.

Almost as an afterthought, he opened the sliding door to the walk-in closet. As he did so, a figure came hurtling headlong toward him causing him to cry out in fear. After falling down while trying to evade his perceived pursuer, Steele got to his hands and knees and realized that the figure now lay prone and still on the floor. Crawling, he approached and saw with deep sadness that it was Renee’s limp, dead body. Over her head was a plastic bag, cinched at the neckline to guarantee her suffocation. On her face was the look of abject horror that he now felt. She was murdered, then stuffed into the closet. And when he opened the door, she simply fell out in his direction.

For a few moments he lay there on the carpeted floor beside her, tears welling in his eyes and a pervasive sadness overwhelming him. What could he do now? If they killed Renee, they surely wouldn’t bat an eye over killing him too. And given the present circumstances, he would die without even knowing why. But what if Renee died with her secret? What if they didn’t find what they were looking for? What if it was still here? If he could find it, then at least he would know. But where could he possibly look that they would not. He had two immediate ideas, both springing from personal knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the woman who lay dead next to him. As it turned out, both were golden.

Rising shakily to his feet, he walked to a corner between the end of the closet and the bathroom door. There on the floor lay the full length navy blue raincoat Renee liked to wear as a buffer against the torrential spring rains. She was wearing it when he last saw her. One thing about Renee was that she liked to squirrel things away in the pockets of her outerwear. No one else would know that, but Tom Steele did. He reached into the deep left pocket and found nothing. But in the right, he felt a small, hard object. Withdrawing it, he inspected it as closely as the dim light would permit, and saw that it was a small jump drive. Maybe it was something and maybe it was nothing. But he would take it along just in case.

His next stop was the refrigerator in the kitchen. Renee was a pack rat who trusted no one with what was important to her. Once, when they were going away to spend a long weekend at a rented cottage on Chesapeake Bay, she went to the refrigerator with an opaque plastic bag filled with her most valuable jewelry and a wad of cash, and stuffed it into the freezer behind a package of frozen broccoli and under a bag of frozen corn. He teased her about it, and she passed it off as they joked, during the drive south, about her frozen assets. He threw open the freezer door at the top of the fridge, and the light that came on automatically momentarily blinded him. When his eyes adjusted, he began rifling through the various items frozen there. Among them was a bag commercially labeled as broccoli in butter sauce, but the bag was much too soft and squishy to contain the frozen vegetable. He unzipped it and found it filled with hundred dollar bills. Another one labeled cauliflower contained even more of them. It made a kind of convoluted sense to him. If Renee was getting ready to run, she probably emptied her bank account. While she was packing and doing last minute errands, she would store her stash the same place she always put valuables she didn’t want others to find. He closed the door again. Then it hit him. He should take the money. It certainly wasn’t going to do Renee any more good, and if he had to go on the lam, he was going to need some resources to tide him over. In seconds he was stuffing crisp, cold hundreds into all his jacket and pants pockets. Then he left by the same door he entered, closing it carefully after him. He walked down the alley, looked both ways, turned left and trudged briskly off into the night.

Next Morning, Springfield, Virginia

The Rest Inn in Springfield was six blocks from where the cab dropped him the night before. It totaled forty-two units that were built in an L-shape under a flashing orange neon sign that touted rooms to rent. Tom Steele’s room was twelve by fourteen, not counting the small bath and, so far as he could tell offered modestly comfortable beds with no visible bugs. The exterior was a newly painted uniform white, but the interior contained mix-and-match furnishings that showed considerable wear and tear. The lamp near the bed was adorned with a shade that had a six inch tear in it, but he turned it to the wall so he wouldn’t have to look at it. The threadbare easy chair in a neutral beige appeared mended several times, and sported a large spot that Steele fancied to have been caused by someone dropping a large slice of pizza face down and then sitting on it. The glass door on the smallish shower was so covered by embedded soap scum that an army of crazed maids with scrubbers and harsh detergent could never get it clean. But the place was low profile, off the beaten track, gratefully took cash and required no identification. It was a perfect place to sit and think through his next move.

A block away, next morning, he found a nondescript coffee bar where he bought a Washington Post, a muffin with ham, egg and cheese and a large coffee to go. Back in the room he consumed it greedily, ravenous because he missed dinner on the harrowing evening prior. He threw open the paper, scanning it to see if there were any accounts of Renee Stoddard’s murder. He didn’t have to look far. There on the front page, lower column left, was a headline that read Civil Servant Found Dead. His heart skipped a beat when, at the end of the second graph he read the words another government employee, Thomas Steele, is being sought for questioning in the death.

Of course. It made perfect sense. They were afraid that he knew what she knew and if they could frame him for her murder they could take him out of play while at the same time destroying any credibility he might otherwise have and prompting authorities to look no further for their killer. He did not wipe down surfaces and objects he touched the night before, but it wouldn’t matter because his prints would already be all over the place from the other nights he spent there. It was the perfect set-up, and his all-too-predictable actions made it so easy for them.

Under normal circumstances, Steele was a consummate problem solver. That’s what made him valuable to his department, and why he progressed so quickly to his current pay grade. But even in these abnormal circumstances, what he needed to know was crystal clear to him. Who were these people? What were they after? And what, then, should he do?