Goliath by Shawn Corridan

Author:Shawn Corridan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

On Sharpe-Shooter, Captain Brooks took it all in. He lowered his binoculars. It’s early. It’s still early. One screw-up and the ship will be ours.

CHAPTER 37

AT NOON, SONNY leaned on a convenient section of fat pipe, sharing it with his just-arrived daughter and O’Connell, drinking coffee, watching Matt out in the Whaler and enjoying the sight of the crude being pumped from one of the interior tanks. With ten-inch hose, the oil was not sluggish. A hundred yards aft, a pair of roustabouts from one of the tugs was lowering heavy, black body bags over the side into one of their lifeboats. Mary noticed, sighed, and turned away. She sat between the men and tried to pour shots of booze into three cups. Death was never pretty. But pumping oil was a great sign that things were going right.

“It’s too early to celebrate yet,” Sonny said.

“Not for me,” said O’Connell, gritting his stained teeth. The creases in his face were black with soot.

Mary gave O’Connell an extra shot. “Breenco Petroleum has just signed on,” she said. “They have four or five barges, ten thousand barrels apiece. So we have these three pumping now, and Breenco tonight. And Lucky Diamond is on the way with their stuff. Plus two more companies are trying to free up some of their equipment. We might be floating this girl by tomorrow.”

Sonny said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know how much water we have to displace. Ten or fifteen feet at least, so we’ll be pumping for a long time. But that’s good. Real good, in fact. And the stern is up again. Manny and the Inuits packed the rudder housings with monkey shit last night. They wrapped things really tight, and now the bearings on the shaft have sealed themselves. This morning, when she was pumped almost dry, they put a come-along on both rudders and set them amidships. She’s towable, we get her off.”

The trio sat and watched as the Eskimo crew worked with abandon. Big black hoses vibrated with surging oil as the barge below settled into the sea inch by inch. The smell of crude hung in the air, an unmistakable reek of black mulch—the smell of money. Back towards the stern a quartet of pelicans stood on the superstructure, their wings spread, drying in the last of the direct sunlight. The sky had started to cloud over again. Cold rain was a few hours away.

Mary looked at her father’s face. “You need a nap. Your face looks like a dried fig.”

“Not yet,” he said. “We’re too close, baby girl. I gotta get back to Bones, spell Manny. We still have fire, Mar. And when’s your fish, Matthew, gonna get me those depth specs?”

“My fish? Hah! Hiring him was your idea, not mine.”

“Yeah, well, he was prowling this ship all day, you know. That’s not what he was hired for.” He pointed astern. “So he’s still out there, late with the numbers.”

“I know. But he’s been freaked out over the flare-ups.

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