“Um, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he called out, not knowing if the radios were set on the right frequency, not even knowing if his headset could access the radio. There was no reply.
When he scanned the instrument panel to see what he could do, he lost concentration momentarily, and the helicopter began to rotate again. Panicked, he overcompensated, losing altitude the whole time. The altimeter showed he was at five hundred feet, but the ocean seemed to surge just below the landing skids. He eased his grip on the controls, remembering that flying helicopters was all about finesse. The light touch, the instructor had said over and over during his two-day tutorial. Though he wasn’t allowed to solo, Abdullah had landed an identical helo exactly twice, and both times the instructor’s hands had never been more than a millimeter from the controls.
Once he had stabilized the chopper, he looked out across the sea for the nearest oil rig. Uniformly, they all had landing pads either on top of the accommodations block or, more commonly, cantilevered over the ocean. To his dismay, he was in one of the few regions of the oil and gas field that wasn’t currently being worked. He saw only one rig, about three miles away. He recognized it as an older semisubmersible. Below its four stout legs, and under the water, were two enormous pontoons that could be filled or emptied via computer control. Such a rig could be towed to any location in the world. Once there, the ballast tanks could be filled to stabilize it, and anchors set on the seafloor to keep it in place. The platform was quite possibly abandoned. He saw no telltale plume of fire spewing from the vent stack, and as he got closer he noted the rust and peeling paint.
It wouldn’t matter, he realized. Once he was down he could devote his full attention to the radio and call for help.
Amid the monochromatic gray paint scheme was a faded yellow circle enclosing a yellow letter H. This was the rig’s landing pad, a steel platform hanging a hundred feet over the water. The pad wasn’t solid but rather was a grille that allowed the chopper’s downdraft to pass through, thus making it easier to land.
Abdullah coaxed the little Robinson closer and closer. There was no movement on the deck, no roughnecks working on the drilling floor, no one coming out of the accommodations block to see who was approaching. It was a ghost rig.
He brought the helo to an unsteady hover, slowly easing off the power so it sank down toward the platform. He praised Allah that there was no wind to contend with. Keeping a helicopter in a hover required the same skill and coordination as balancing a Ping-Pong ball on a paddle. A cross breeze would have been deadly. The chopper waggled and wiggled as he brought it lower. He wished he could wipe the sweat from his palms. They were slick on the controls, and a bead of perspiration dangled from the end of his nose.
When he thought he was about four feet from the landing platform, he chopped the power dramatically. But in his unfamiliarity with judging vertical distances through the Plexiglas bubble at his feet, he was closer to ten.
The Robinson slammed onto the deck hard enough to bounce it into the air again, and, when it did, it tilted over onto its side. The rotor blades smashed into the steel grille and splintered, bits of them peppering the sea far below.
The chopper’s hull crashed to the deck on its side and fortunately remained still. Had it rolled, it would have plunged off the platform. Abdullah didn’t know how to shut off the engines. His only concern was getting out of the aircraft. Everyone who watched as many action movies as he had knew that cars, airplanes, and helicopters always exploded following a crash.
He clicked off his safety belts and climbed over the inert form of the pilot, fear overcoming his revulsion at actually touching a corpse. The four-cylinder Lycoming engine continued to squeal behind the cockpit. He managed to unlatch the pilot’s door and thrust it up and over so that it lay flush with the fuselage. He had to physically stand on the pilot’s hip to get enough leverage to haul himself from the chopper.
Did he smell gas?
A new burst of fear shot through his body, and he jumped free. No sooner had his feet hit the grating than he was running off the landing pad in the direction of the accommodations block, a huge steel building that took up a third of the deck space on the massive rig. Above it all soared the drilling derrick, a spindly network of steel struts that looked like a miniature Eiffel Tower.
Abdullah reached the corner of the block and turned back. He saw no fire, but smoke billowed from the Robinson’s engine compartment, and it thickened by the second.
And then he had the terrible thought that maybe the pilot wasn’t dead. He didn’t know what to do. The smoke grew more dense. He could see into the cockpit though the nose canopy. Was the pilot moving, or was the image being blurred by heat?
He took a tentative step as if to return to the chopper when flames emerged at the base of the column of smoke. It wasn’t the dramatic explosion of Hollywood or Hong Kong moviemakers but a steady fire that quickly engulfed the aircraft. Its roar drowned out the whir of the helo’s engine. Smoke poured into the sky.
Abdullah stood frozen. Already he was thinking that he’d be stuck out here forever. If this was an abandoned rig, there was no reason for anyone to come out to it. He was trapped.
No, he told himself. He didn’t just survive a plane crash to die on a deserted oil platform. The smoke, he thought. Surely someone will see the smoke and come to investigate. Then he remembered that smoke poured off every rig within a hundred miles, and the fire wouldn’t last for very long. The odds that a passing workboat or helicopter would see it before it burned itself out were too long.
But if he saw one coming, he could start another fire to signal them.
Yes, that’s what he would do. He took several deep breaths. His hands weren’t trembling so badly anymore, and the knot in his gut was easing. He grinned at his good fortune and was soon roaring with laughter. He’d be a hero, once he got back to the office. They would probably give him a promotion, or at least some paid time off. Abdullah had always been able to find the good in any situation. He was an optimist, always had been.
He spotted a large fire extinguisher and, still concerned about an explosion, went for it anyway. The heat was brutal, but as he laid down the chemical suppressant the flames diminished rapidly. It appeared the fire was fed off of gasoline that had leaked out of the helicopter, but most of it had fallen harmlessly through the metal grille. In just a minute the flames were out. He was grateful to see the pilot’s body hadn’t been too ravaged by the fire.
With that taken care of, he felt he could leave the rig’s open deck and explore the accommodations block. There could be a working radio left inside. He retraced his steps and quickly found a hatchway that led into the interior of the four-story block. It was padlocked shut.
Undeterred, Abdullah scoured the deck until he found a length of steel pipe that would suit his purpose. He threaded it through the shiny chain and heaved. The links didn’t even rattle, but the pad eye welded to the side of the building twisted and then tore free. He set aside the pipe and hauled on the door. It creaked on its hinges, setting his teeth on edge. It hadn’t been opened for months. The hallway beyond was draped in murky shadow. From inside a small pocket sewn to the sleeve of his coveralls he pulled out a penlight and twisted it on. It had been issued by the Ministry and cast a harsh white light that belied its small size.
The walls and deck were steel, utilitarian, and free of dust. It wasn’t that they’d been cleaned, it was just that with no human presence there was nothing to create dust in the sealed structure. He peered into several offices. The furniture had been left behind, and a three-years-out-of-date calendar, but there were no files or paperwork of any kind. Even the mundane items like staplers and spare pens were gone.