91, Oilrig

“Theez wavez make peeple seek, but I eet cookink from Russian veemen, so I don’t puke, no.”  Russian secret agent demolitions expert Dimitri Connorvich held onto a hand railing as the twenty foot transport boat got rocked by another big wave on the Black Sea.  His accent was thick but understandable.  “Eet eez ok eef you puke.  Americans don’t eet Russian cookink from veemin.  You two have veek stomach.”

“I drink whiskey by the metric ton, brother.  My guts are fine,” American special agent demolitions expert Dale O’Connor joked.  He held onto an arm rail with one hand as he used his free hand to lift a flask to his lips.  After taking a pull, he offered it to his girlfriend.  “Honey, how’re you holding up?”

American special agent Alexi Blacktide looked queasy.  Currently she was breathing in a rhythmic fashion to calm her nerves so she wouldn’t puke up her dinner.  She waved the flask away with one hand and quickly brought it back to the hand railing.  “I never drink before missions, you know that,” she said, but she held her tongue rather than share her opinion that it was stupid to be drinking right before the task that lay before them.

“More for us,” O’Connor joked dryly.  He handed the flask to Connorvich and the Russian threw down a good swallow.  O’Connor was jolly as he said, “I still have a liter more in my bag, so drink up.”

“Eet’s not good like Russian vodka, but eet’ll do.  Thank you, comrade,” Connorvich said approvingly while taking another long pull.  Connorvich offered it to his fellow Russian secret agent, Bradmir Vandolocov.  

“Niet,” Vandolocov said dismissively.  He was looking at his cell phone.  He cussed in Russian, “God dammit, Krasnodor just gave up a penalty in our own box.  We’re looking at a penalty kick!  Fuck!”

The American demolitions expert couldn’t understand the words Vandolocov was saying, but he could instinctively tell that the Russian was upset about sports.  O’Connor looked at Connorvich.  “What sport?”

“Futbol,” Connorvich answered.  He took one more long drink from the flask and handed it back to the American.

O’Connor took it and said, “To your health.”  The American took a swig, then screwed the lid back on with one hand.  As he slipped it into a chest pocket on his wetsuit, he shook the flask and it felt about half full.  “We’ll have to refill before we jump in.”

Blacktide wanted to protest, but the waves were really giving her a hard time.  Two days ago in front of a warehouse explosion that she’d helped cause, her boyfriend had told her he wanted to marry her but he couldn’t yet.  He’d recently had a magic mushroom experience where he’d had a vision.  His favorite childhood pet, Harvey the hedgehog, told him in a British accent that he had to ask for Connorvich’s help in killing a Russian thug named Gosavich before he could ask his girlfriend to get married.  Blacktide was annoyed that O’Connor took this vision seriously, but she loved the idiot with all of her heart.  Half enthusiastically, half reluctantly, she was helping in this insane mission to go to an old abandoned Russian off shore oil drilling platform where Gosavich was presumed to be located.

The boat rocked harder than usual as a freak wave crashed down on the deck outside.  She concentrated on her breathing and talked to herself.  “You can do this, Lex.”  The twenty nine year old beauty shook her head and tried to stay focused on her breathing.  Another hard crash on the boat made her even more nervous and ill.  “Are we one hundred percent for certain that Gosavich is on that god damn thing?” she asked Connorvich.  The boat ride felt like insanity to her.

“Da, Alexi,” Connorvich answered.  “And vehn vee keel heem, I ask for inveetation to veddink in Amereekah.”  He nodded politely but with a Russian smile that basically implied, “I’ll be attending whether you want me there or not.”

The wedding.  Blacktide had not given one thought to the wedding.  Where would they get married?  What kind of theme did she want?  She thought about her brides maids.  Death, Blitz, Porter and Lorenz would for sure be standing there with her, but should she ask her bosses Rice and Schuman too?  Who would O’Connor have for groomsmen?  Obviously Murdock and McVandalay, but would Miller and Owens maybe round it out?  A thought crossed her brain and she gasped.  Would he ask Connorvich to be a groomsmen?

Another pounding wave on the boat brought her back to reality.  The four agents held onto the arm rails in the captains deck for dear life.  The long bearded stereotypical Russian boat captain kept his hands on the wheel and laughed maniacally every time the boat got rocked by another wave.  He called out to the two Team Vodka agents in Russian, “Almost there!  Get ready!”

Connorvich nodded at the captain and translated for the Americans.  “Vee geet close, then vee jump een!”

“Roger,” O’Connor said casually as he fished his flask back out of his chest pocket.  He let go of the hand railing and reached into a backpack that was positioned between his legs.  Despite the fact that the boat was rocking forward and backward as well as tipping side to side, O’Connor had prefect balance as he pulled out a large bottle of Jameson.  The two Russians along with Blacktide watched him masterfully fill the flask without spilling even a tiny drop.  When he was done, he twisted the cap on the flask and put it back in his wet suit pocket, then took a huge drink straight from the bottle.

“Impressive, comrade!” Connorvich said as he cheered him on.  O’Connor didn’t have to ask Connorvich if he needed a swig.  He simply handed the bottle to him and watched the Russian take a very large drink.  Upon getting it back, O’Connor capped the Irish whiskey and zipped it back into his waterproof backpack, then grabbed back onto the arm rail as a huge wave rocked the boat hard.

O’Connor turned to Blacktide.  “I’m ready to do this, Lex.  We’re gonna kill that dark wizard once and for all.”

Alexi Blacktide knew her boyfriend was a dipshit, but it annoyed her that he thought magic was real.  Another big wave made her grasp even tighter to keep her footing and distracted her from thinking she should cuss him out.  When the boat leveled out, all she could say was, “Good luck, honey.”  Their chances of actually getting to the oil platform felt pathetically low, and she figured if today was the day she had to die, at least she’d die with the idiot she loved.

The captain of the boat called out in English with a very thick accent, “Thees eez time to go svimmink!”

Vandalcov nodded and turned his phone off as he also said in English with his own thick accent, “Vee losink game, two goals to nil.”

“I buy you dreenk vehn deez eez over, Bradmir!” Connorvich said cheerfully.  He patted his own wet suit and felt his hand gun, extra clips, as well as all of his explosives.  They were secure.  “See you under platform, comrades!” he called out enthusiastically, then he exited to the cabin of the boat.

The three agents watched Connorvich put on his goggles and head gear.  He grabbed a one man special operations underwater propeller and jumped overboard fearlessly into the treacherous stormy waves.  Blacktide was horrified that he hadn’t attached the emergency strap to his arm.  She tried to process what she’d just seen as Vandalocov did the exact same things in the same sequence.  “Honey!” Blacktide said nervously, but another wave rocked the boat and distracted her.

O’Connor could see that the woman of his dreams was scared.  “I love you, Lex.  I’m gonna spend forever with you.”  He’d had no fear of the crashing waves from the storm outside, but now he could feel excitement bubble up inside of him.  “Harvey told me that Connorvich would help me kill that mother fucking dark wizard, and it’s time.”

Blacktide wondered if her idiot boyfriend might kiss her but the boat rocked back and forth so much that it would’ve been a nightmare to try and connect her lips to his.  He gave her arm a squeeze, then turned and grabbed his own propulsion system.  He pulled over a neoprene head cover that had underwater night vision goggles and a state of the art breathing apparatus.  Blacktide watched O’Connor intelligently wrap the nylon safety cable around his arm to secure it in case he lost grip on its handle, then before she knew it, he’d jumped over the railing with no fan fare into a possible death sentence.

The captain of the boat yelled out with his thick accent in Russian, “You!  Woman!  You are scared, yes?”

As the waves crashed into the boat and sent it this way and that, the captain’s grin got bigger and bigger, as if he was the cockiest captain alive.  Blacktide found herself silently judging the arrogant man, assuming he was about to say something sexist.  She wondered if it was bad mojo to kill the man before she jumped in.  “I’m good, thank you,” she lied.

The brash Russian man yelled, “That man, your man, he jump eento water with no fear.  He love you.  Go!  Be brave!”  The captain laughed an obnoxious Russian laugh to himself and said, “I love my wife, but I no jump eento cold vater for her.  And she no jump eento cold vater for me!  Ha!”  He turned around and went back to steering the boat and said nothing more.

The American secret agent considered all of her life choices up to that current moment.  Did she deserve this kind of shit?  Surprisingly, the captain was being encouraging, but he was a total dick about it.  One thing was for certain, Blacktide knew O’Connor loved her, and that she loved him.  She was jumping into the cold ass Black Sea in the middle of a crazy fucking storm to kill a thug on an abandoned oil drilling platform, just so her boyfriend could feel good about proposing to her.  Her life made no sense.  She exhaled deeply and relinquished control.  The universe was in charge now.

As her body hit the cold water, it took her breath away.  It took several seconds for her adrenaline to force her to take a big breath through her oxygen apparatus.  She clicked a button on her goggles and her vision quickly became as clear as if she were looking through a virtual reality headset.  The computer in her goggles located the other three agents and showed her their distances in relation to hers.  The three men were ten feet below the surface and all of them had started their battery powered propulsion systems.  She followed suit and since she weighed less than the men, she easily caught up to them within a minute.

The four agents spent the next five minutes fighting the underwater currents.  The waves were ridiculous, like something out of a horror movie.  The water was frigid, and the propulsion systems worked abnormally hard to pull them forward, but before they knew it they had reached their destination.

The Russian made oil platform was huge and had four insanely large round steel pylons that were over ten feet in diameter.  They descended over three hundred feet to the bottom of this part of the Black Sea and were all that held up the huge four story drilling structure.  Even in the dark light of evening, it all looked like it was constructed of railroad shipping containers on top of one another.  The agents were able to propel themselves up to one of the large steel pylons that had a metal ladder attached that went well below the ocean surface.

After a few minutes of being pushed up and down by the incredibly powerful waves, the four agents were able to secure their propulsion units to the ladder and climb up to an open grid metal floor that lead to an enclosed observation room.  It hard large windows made of thick transparent acrylic PVC which stood up easily to the harsh salt water environment.  The room was the length and width of a railroad car.  The four of them were tired from fighting the currents and waves but in good spirits as they discovered the door was unlocked.  As they closed it behind them, it was obvious that the platform was not abandoned.  The room was warm from an operational heating system.  The sounds of the loud ocean below became a dull murmur.

“Thees eez fun, no?” Connorvich said to the others enthusiastically as cold water dripped from his wetsuit to the metal floor.

“More fun than vatcheenk my team looz, yes,” Vandalacov complained.  “I don’t know vie I geev them my attention.”

Blacktide couldn’t help but notice that Bradmier Vandalacov resembled her friend and fellow special agent, Bradley McVandalay.  They were both broad chested beef cakes who watched sports on their cell phones and bitched about their teams.  Blacktide tried to sound innocent as she asked, “Bradmir, do you watch any American sports?”

The Russian laughed heartily and it made the other three agents feel great.  His voice was jolly as he got straight to the point.  “Only sport good in Americah eez hockee.  Rest of sports borink. Baseball, too slow.  Football ok, but also slow.  We have hockee in Russia.  We like.”

Connorvich grinned.  “Vee like sports veeth hiteenk, comrade,” he said to Blacktide.  “Eef you heet, vee like, da?  Like hockey, ant rugby.”

“Shit,” Blacktide mumbled.

Without skipping a beat, O’Connor asked the two men, “Do you ever watch Irish rugby?”

“Da!” Vadnalacov answered enthusiastically.

Blacktide threw her hands up and hollered, “Not now, honey!  Let’s get this fucking mission over with and get off of this fucking thing.”

“I agree weeth Alexi,” Connorvich said encouragingly.  “Vee vant Gosaveech dead too.”

For months Connorvich had a recurring dream about O’Connor coming to ask for his help in killing Gosavich.  When the two men met randomly in a bar a week earlier, Connorvich had told his American friend about how Gosavich was a part of a mafia family that controlled a gambling ring.  His favorite Moscow watering hole had a bar owner named Ivan who had bad gambling debts.  Ivan was always good to Connorvich, letting him drink for free sometimes, which lead to Connorvich calling him “Ivan the Great.”  Suddenly, Ivan had gone permanently missing, and Connorvich knew who was to blame.

Everyone on Team Vodka knew Gosavich’s crime family was the culprit.  After making several phone calls through his contacts, Connorvich had found out that Gosavich was on this oil drilling platform.  Their mafia family was making it operational again in an attempt to generate more cold, hard cash for their nefarious misdeeds.

Today was Connorvich’s chance to avenge the loss of his favorite bar owner who often used to let him drink for free.

O’Connor pulled out his flask and absentmindedly took a swig, then handed the flask to Connorvich as he mentioned, “The heat is on in here.  I’m guessing this whole drilling rig has one central office that controls everything, including their bathrooms.  My guess is Gosavich is gonna be in that control room or close nearby.”  His right hand clinched into a fist and punched into his open left palm.  “I wanna see that mother fucker before we pop this place.”

Connorvich took off his neoprene backpack and started pulling out cubes of C4 explosives.  “My contacts say, hee vant dees drilling rig to start operations again, and heez mafia bosses make money.”  Connorvich spat on the ground and cussed in Russian, clearly in disgust with this idea.  “We deestroy platform and keel heem.”

Alexi Blacktide was damn good at demolitions and she was able to see that the Russian had brought enough C4 to destroy the whole drilling platform several times over.  “Jesus, Connorvich, what the hell!”  She felt nervous at the sight of the explosives.

“No fuckeenk around, Alexi!”  Connorvich grinned and tossed two bricks to O’Connor and then pointed to the far side of the platform.  “You geet thees on gas pipes, da?”

“On it,” O’Connor said with a smile.  He casually tucked the explosives under his arm and opened the door, then quickly flew out of the warm room.

Blacktide wanted to tell him to be careful.  Every time she thought he was doing something dangerous, she kicked herself for not saying “I love you” to him yet.  She watched as he moved swiftly across the catwalks into the dark under belly of the drilling rig and disappeared into its dark maze.  She wanted to follow him, to protect him, but Vandalacov’s voice brought her back to the moment.  “Alexi, Doc say you good weeth being stealthy.  We go find mafia guys, yes?  How you say… verify, they are heer, da?”

Ever the professional, Blacktide pulled herself together quickly.  She nodded as she pulled out a handgun from a zipped up wet suit pocket.  “Follow me, Bradmir.”

“We meet back heer een feeteen meeneets, yes?” Connorvich asked.

“Da,” Blacktide answered with a grin.  She nodded towards the opposite door that O’Connor had gone out and said, “Let’s do this.”

“I like thees voman!” Vandalacov barked.

As Blacktide and Vandalacov took off to explore and find the bad guys, Connorvich got to work.  He pulled out more explosives and made four specific piles.  By the time he’d gotten organized, O’Connor had returned.  “Comrade, you place exploseevs on gas line, yes?”

“There were two different gas lines that were about a hundred feet apart from each other, so I got an explosive on each one of them.”  O’Connor grabbed a pile of explosives as calmly as if he’d pick up a basket of laundry.  “I’ll be sure to get the base of each purlin as well as…” O’Connor paused, gasped, then smiled a huge smile as he changed his train of thought.  “Incendiary discs!”

Connorvich grinned back at his friend.  “I save thees for rainee day.  Today is rainee, I theek.”

“Hell yes.”  O’Connor knew that each support purlin was made of high strength steel, capable of holding a yield in excess of thirty six thousand pounds per square inch.  The cross beams held up millions of pounds of steel and was capable of holding a hundred thousand barrels of crude oil extracted from below the floor of the Black Sea.  These discs would melt each attached support beam, then as the C4 exploded, it would be like throwing a hand grenade into a playhouse made of soft butter.  The whole thing would sink, killing anyone trapped inside.  “You’re a genius, Dimitri.”

“I’m thirsty!” Connorvich said in his thick accent.

O’Connor shared his flask, then the two men took the next ten minutes to place the incendiary discs on each attach support beam that held the massive four story drilling platform to its massive steel pylons.  They expertly attached the C4  in the perfect places that would rip through the softened metal after the discs did their job.  They got back to the observation room as Blacktide and Vandalacov entered from the other side.

Blacktide was giddy.  “There’s a dozen bad guys in a main lounge room, all of them drinking.  We saw Gosavich, and he’s very drunk!  Did you guys get your explosives placed?”

Her boyfriend filled her in on their progress as Connorvich said, “Vee are ready!  Let’s deestroy thees theeng and avenge Ivan the Great!”

Completely confused, Blacktide was about to ask questions, but O’Connor stopped her with a smile and a shake of his head.  The agents put their head gear and goggles back on, then exited the observation room.  They all struggled to get down the ladder back to the water, but eventually they were able to get to their propulsion systems.  When they were a few thousand yards away, they all surfaced to get a view of the drilling platform with their night vision goggles.  Connorvich yelled, “For Ivan!” as he pushed a button on a remote detonator, but no one heard him over the sound of the crashing waves.

The oil platform didn’t do anything for several seconds, then a huge BOOM! erupted throughout the area.  It was as if the platform had been hit by lightning.  Within a few seconds, the massive structure went smashing into the water.  It’s heavy steel was greedily pulled down by gravity and had completely sunk in less than half a minute.  

The waves did not allow Blacktide or O’Connor to kiss, but with their night vision goggles they could see each other.  Even with his face covered by the breathing apparatus, Blacktide just knew that her boyfriend was smiling as big as he’d ever smiled.  The waves crashed as the sea bubbled with escaping air from the sinking oil rig, but despite their dangerous situation, Blacktide felt a sense of calm for the first time in weeks.  She knew that O’Connor would be satisfied with his superstions now that Gosavich was at the bottom of the Black Sea.  In her mind, O’Connor would propose marriage in a romantic way in a romantic place, and she’d finally throw her arms around his neck and tell him how much she loved him.

The agents fired up their powerful battery powered propulsion systems and went back underwater as they endured the long five mile trek back to shore.

In the distance, a very intoxicated Russian thug named Gosavich was the lone survivor of the insane explosion as he somehow had passed out drunker than shit in what he thought was a bedroom but was actually an air tight sleeping compartment in a baby submarine that had it’s own battery powered air filtration system as well as emergency gear to help its occupants survive an unforeseen emergency crash into the Black Sea if one should ever unexpectedly occur.