Out of Control

Out of Control

Stephanie Feagan

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright ©
2013 by Stephanie Feagen
. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in
any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact
the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com.

Edited by Nina Bruhns

Cover design by Fiona Jayde

Ebook ISBN
978-1-62266-080-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition
June 2013

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners
of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
John Wayne, Coast Guard, NOMEX, Jeep, CNN, The Three Musketeers, Mercedes, Athey
Wagon, Hermes, Aramco, Matthew McConaughey, Rambo, Altoid, Semtex, Al-Haggi Hotel,
Holiday Inn, Radisson, Al Jazeera, Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love, Miss Alabama, Sheetrock,
Kleenex, Heineken, Kenny Rogers
.

For Mike. They’re all for you.

Chapter One

An offshore oil platform

Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana

The blond guy was making me jumpy.

As I wrapped up my visit with James, the offshore platform foreman, I realized Blondie
had been hanging around, far enough away that he couldn’t hear us speak, but close
enough to keep an eye on me all during my inspection. Not wanting to sound paranoid,
I didn’t ask James about the man—not his name, his job on the Maresco platform, nor
why he might be staring at me. I decided to pass it off as just another curious guy
who wondered why a company like Lacrouix and Book would hire a woman.

I get that a lot, no doubt because people think of New Orleans based Lacrouix and
Book Wild Well Control and Blowout Prevention as a company of ultra-macho men. Actually,
they’d be right. With the exception of me. I’m not ultra-macho, or a man. But I am
a petroleum engineer—a blowout specialist who kills well fires, pretty close to the
same way the founders did it way back when they started the company in 1959.

Mr. Lacrouix and Mr. Book have long since retired, but I think the spirit of how they
began the business is still behind how things get done. They were the original oilfield
guys from the fifties, when men were men and everybody else better get the hell out
of the way. They were rough and crude and could give a damn about money. They made
John Wayne look like a pansy. Seriously tough hombres who carried pearl handled pistols,
drove too fast, drank too much, bird-dogged women, and fought oil well fires because
nobody else had the balls. Is it any wonder that people are surprised when they call
with a blowout emergency and a woman shows up?

But Blondie was different than the usual curious guy. There was something sinister
about him, and by the time I was done with the inspection I had a bad case of the
creeps.

“Glad to know everything’s right and tight,” James said with a wide smile as he shook
my hand.

I returned the smile and the handshake before I pointed toward the center of the platform.
“If you have any problems with the equipment let me know.” I glanced toward Blondie
again, then blinked when I realized he was gone. My relief only clarified to me how
nervous he’d made me. I had no idea why. Sixth sense, maybe.

As soon as I climbed into the helicopter, Doug lifted off the pad and we were airborne,
headed back to shore where I had a two hour return drive to New Orleans ahead of me.
I hoped the blond guy wasn’t on the platform during my next visit.

In the distance, I saw a tiny dot on the horizon, the boat that would ferry the production
platform crew back to shore for the night. Was it that late? I glanced at my watch.
Three-ten. No, it wasn’t that late. Why was the boat coming out so early?

“Everything look okay?”

I glanced at Doug and opened my mouth to answer, but never got the chance. The sound
of an enormous, thunderous explosion surrounded us, and the helicopter shook violently,
sending it down toward the water. My heart jumped into my throat while Doug worked
the controls to keep us from crashing. Already certain what I’d see, I jerked around
to look behind us.

The Maresco platform was in flames. That’s why the helicopter took a dive. The explosion
sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. “
Turn around
. Go back and see if anyone’s in the water.”

Doug looked at me like I was crazy, but he did it anyway. We couldn’t get very close
because of the intense heat, but I could see that there was no one. At least twenty
yards in every direction from the platform the water was on fire with gas bubbling
up from the well bore, infusing the sea with hydrocarbons that fed on the fire as
they reached the surface.
Dear God
. Every man on the Maresco platform, what was left of it, had to be dead. And there
wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it except feel the crushing weight of guilt.
I’d just inspected the blowout prevention equipment and everything looked good. How
the hell had the well blown?

I radioed the Coast Guard and managed to tell them what happened, although my voice
shook so much I’m sure it was hard to understand me. Faces and names floated through
my brain; smiling faces and friendly voices that belonged to good guys. Hard workers.
Family men whose faces and smiles and voices wouldn’t be going home.

On the trip back to shore, we passed the boat I’d thought was to ferry the men, but
it turned out to be a shrimp trawler. There didn’t appear to be anyone aboard. Strange.

“Looks like a drifter,” Doug said. “Wonder what happened to the crew?”

I only shook my head, not really focused enough to give it much thought. We flew on,
and by the time we set down on the Maresco helipad I had myself together. Sort of.

With tears clogging my throat and dread in my heart I called my boss in New Orleans.
There would be a lot of questions and I had no answers. How and why had our equipment
failed? Our company banked on the reliability of its equipment—and employees. It was
a rare engineer who got hired to work at Lacrouix and Book, and I always considered
myself lucky to be one. I was also the one and only female engineer ever hired, and
that said something, didn’t it?

Now, I was the one who missed something hugely important that had cost the lives of
many men and would cost an enormous amount of money to fix. Putting the fire out would
be astronomical because offshore blowouts take some kind of magic to control. Rebuilding
the platform would cost a fortune, too, and there was no doubt there would be lawsuits
from the men’s families.

But more than anything, I had to take responsibility for all those deaths. I wasn’t
sure how I’d ever get past it.

Trick answered on the first ring. He knew it was me. “It’s not your fault. She was
blown on purpose.”

I sucked in a deep breath, sitting in my car, staring out to sea at the billowing
clouds of black smoke polluting the dusky sky. “How do you know?”

“Within the past six hours we’ve had calls on eleven blowouts, all across eastern
New Mexico and west Texas. No way would that many blow at the same time if they weren’t
set on purpose. Homeland Security is all over it. My bet is on terrorists.”

I couldn’t say anything, I was so stunned. And I admit, a part of me was relieved.
It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t been the cause of all those deaths.

But who was? I remembered Blondie and wondered if he’d had something to do with it.

Trick was impatient, which wasn’t anything new. He’s always impatient. But this time,
he had an edge to his voice I’d never heard before. Fear. As much as anything, that
freaked me out. “Me and Sweet have to handle the platform blowout because Thompkins
is in Malaysia and the rest of you lightweight candy-asses don’t know how. That means
we need every man we’ve got to send to these other fires. Get your butt home, sister.
Pronto.”

I didn’t bother reminding him I’m not a man, nor telling him not to call me sister.
He’d do it anyway. Had since the day he hired me over seven years ago, straight out
of Tulane. It caught on and all the guys call me sister, or little sister, and sometimes,
if they’re kinda pissed off at me or things are tense, they call me Blair, because
that’s my name. Well, actually, Evangeline Blair Drake. I try hard to keep that under
wraps because who’d want a name like Evangeline? But it’s a family name, so I got
stuck with it. “I’m on my way,” I said to Trick as I closed the car door and started
the engine. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“You’ll be here in two hours. If you get another speeding ticket you could damn well
be arrested, and I ain’t bailing you out, understand?”

“Got it.”

He was quiet for a while, then let out a deep breath. “Hell, sister, you coulda been
killed out there.”

“But I wasn’t, so I’ll be there in an hour. Where’re you sending me?”

He didn’t answer for a minute and I was pretty sure he couldn’t talk because he was
choked up, which was too weird for words. Trick Holmes is the least mushy man I know.
The son of a ranch hand, raised in eastern New Mexico, Trick got his nickname because
he used to do trick roping in the rodeo. He’s a tough, rough man who rarely cracks
a smile and says exactly what’s on his mind.

When he interviewed me, it took less than a minute, and was maybe the most politically
incorrect interview in history. He’d asked me, “You got a problem working with a bunch
of foul-mouthed, smelly guys who sometimes take a leak offa drilling rigs?”

“No, sir,” I replied.

“You planning on having a baby?”

“No, sir.”

“See thatcha don’t. And watch those sonsabitches out there.”

I said I would and he said I was hired. That was seven years ago, and I’d been through
a lot in those seven years. I’d grown up. And my relationship with Trick had grown
into one that was all about respect. I’d never considered that with respect can come
a certain amount of affection, but listening to the silence coming over the cell phone,
I knew it was affection he was feeling. The potential loss of someone he cared about.

“How long’s it been since you saw west Texas?” Trick finally asked, his voice suspiciously
deeper.

“Not long enough.”

“That stopped being anywhere close to funny about five years ago.”

“Sorry. West Texas it is, then. Who’s on my team?”

“Deke, Harley, Cash, and Robichaud.”

Damn. Why’d he have to assign Nick Robichaud to this job? They’d invented the term
“cocky bastard” the day Robichaud was born.

Reading my mind, Trick added, “If you got a problem, I don’t wanna hear about it.
Just remember you’re the boss and grow some balls, sister.”

“Yeah, I’ll work on that.”

“I better not see the whites of your eyes for another two hours. Do
not
speed.”

“Yes, sir. I’m on it, sir.” I ended the call, tossed the phone into the passenger
seat, and sped up to eighty-five.

…

By ten o’clock that night, we had a plane loaded with our hardhats and NOMEX fire
suits, miscellaneous supplies, and enough provisions to last into the next week, because
there was no way to know how long it might take to kill the fire.

I boarded through the rear hatch into the cargo hold that takes up the back three-quarters
of the plane and grabbed a parachute. On every flight we’re required to take a chute
with us and store it beneath our seat. It’s mostly for the flights that take us over
hostile territory in other countries, but the policy is the same for every flight.

I’ve never known of anyone who had to use one, with the exception of a guy named Parnell
who worked for Lacrouix and Book before my time. The story goes that Parnell was a
pyro, and like a lotta those guys do, he got pretty excited when they got in range
of his first well fire. And when I say excited, I don’t mean the clap your hands and
yell
Hooray!
kind of excited.

The guy had a boner he could hang his laundry on. Maybe that wasn’t such a big deal,
except that Parnell unzipped and decided he’d take care of the problem. The man who’s
now president of Lacrouix and Book, a big linebacker of a guy everyone calls Sweet
because he grew up in Sweetwater, Texas, saw Parnell doing something men learn at
a very early age to do privately, and Sweet went ballistic. He grabbed Parnell and
shoved him into a parachute pack, opened the hatch and heaved him out. They were over
Malaysia. Nobody heard from Parnell again until six months later when he hit the company
with a lawsuit. Mr. Lacrouix, an old man but still ornery, countersued and Parnell
dropped the case. No one has heard from him, or about him, since.

I looked up from the parachute at my feet and met the steady gaze of Nick Robichaud,
who’d taken the seat next to mine. Unlike most of the other guys who were tall and
brawny, with biceps the size of small hams, Robichaud was lean and lithe and just
a smidge under six feet. His hair and eyes were dark, he had a hint of a southern
accent, and a way about him that reminded me of stories my Romanian immigrant grandfather
used to tell about The Old Country.

Robichaud had a degree in geophysics from LSU, where he’d been Mr. Football. This
didn’t impress me. I’ve got nothing against football, but I’m not inclined to elevate
a guy to god status just because he was better than average at chucking a ball. Until
recently, he’d been working at Lacrouix and Book’s main competitor, Worldwide Well
Control. I wasn’t sure why he’d left and come to work for us, but I suspected Sweet
lured him over. He’d been with the company less than three months and I’d only worked
one job with him, but it was enough to know he redefined alpha male. Like I said—Old
Country.

“Funny story,” he said, obviously picking up on my train of thought about Parnell.

“Funny if you weren’t on that job.”

He eyed me curiously. “Suppose you’d been supervising? Would you have tossed him out
of the plane?”

“Absolutely. But I’m not sure I’d have waited long enough to give him a chute.”

With the ghost of a smile, he settled back in the seat and stretched one long leg
out into the aisle. “You ever jumped?”

“Not a chance. If God wanted me to fly, he’d have given me wings.”

“Afraid of heights, are you?”

“Only a lot.” I pointed at my chute. “Every time we go on a job, I pray I won’t have
to use that.” I glanced at him. “How about you? Are you a jumper?”

“I tried it a couple of times, but I don’t really get it.” He nodded toward the other
men, who were busy giving the pilot hell because he was wearing a Jets cap. “Not like
those guys. The only thing they like better than tempting death is…” He stopped and
cocked a crooked smile at me. “Well, you know.”

I did know, but said anyway, “No. What?”

If I’d hoped to shake him up a little, I was doomed to failure. He looked at me directly.
“Sex. Lots of it. Preferably with big-breasted, easy women.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. “Guess I had that coming, didn’t I?”