Chapter 1
A helicopter is no place for a hangover. Hooper closed his eyes and breathed carefully as the engine spooled up. His gorge rose at the toxic mix of jet fuel, stale sweat, and bile at the back of his throat. The thudding of the rotors punched deep into his chest: sickening deep-body blows that travelled up his spinal column, directly into his neck and head. He bit down hard on a gag reflex, refusing to heave up what little remained of his stomach contents, most of which he’d left in a steaming pile on the grass at the edge of the helipad.
‘Oh, fuck me,’ he grunted as the red and white Era Helicopter took off, driving him down into his seat. Years of ass compression had squashed the foam cushioning into a thin hard sandwich between his butt and the steel struts of the seat fitting. The chopper, a venerable old AW139, was streaked with rust and oil, the plexiglas scratched and the nonslip floor sticky with chaw tobacco and chewing gum. Like Dave, its glory days were behind it, and the air conditioning did nothing to mask the baked-in stench of sweat, cigarette smoke, and budget cologne. Dave was just glad he had the cabin to himself on this trip. The only stewed farts and bad breath he had to contend with were his own.
As they ascended, the great rusty iron lever behind his eyeballs cranked up the pressure on his headache. He squeezedhis eyes shut behind wraparound Oakleys, but the bright gulf sun burned through anyway, driving a sharp spike through his eyeballs, an unpleasant contrast to the duller concussive hammering on the sides of his skull. He removed his Detroit Tigers cap and rubbed gently at the thinning hair on top of his skull in an effort to alleviate the pain – all to no avail. He kept his hair short these days. You had to when it started to fall out, and no matter how tenderly he ministered to himself, his fingertips seemed to rake deep, bloody furrows through the unprotected scalp.
‘Oh, fuck me,’ he grunted again, replacing the cap and making the stubbled skin disappear.
‘Oh, Lord, no!’ Juliette Jamieson called out from the pilot’s seat. ‘Bump uglies with you, Dave? I think not. I mean, y’all are purdy. In a grizzly, wore-down kinda way. But the way you tomcat around, I wouldn’t let that penile biohazard of yours anywhere near my unmentionables. Probably just about ready to fall off by now, I’d reckon. I shoulda made you leave it back on the grass with your breakfast, or dinner, or whatever that nasty- lookin’ mess y’all upchucked was. You know the company rules about flying with hazmats.’
Juliette added the wheezing cackle of her laughter to the rotor’s roar in his headphones.
‘Doritos and tequila, J2,’ he said in a croaky rasp. ‘Not break- fast. More of a midnight snack. To keep my strength up.’
He tried to grin, but it came out more as a grimace, and Juliette harrumphed at him, pretending to be offended. She wasn’t, of course. Over the years J2 had hauled his sorry ass out to the rigs and away from whatever retarded mess he’d left back on shore so many times that he doubted there was anything he could do to lower her estimation of him as a potential husband. Men, in J2’s opinion, came in two standard flavours: potential husbands and other women’s husbands, and neither of them ever measured up to her exacting standards. Dave, as she never tired of pointing out, was an exemplar – she used the actual word, too, having read it in one of the unreadable werewolf romances she immersed herself in between flights – Dave wasan exemplar extra-fucking-ordinaire of why a woman like her, a woman of independent means and good breeding hips, had to be careful. Men who weren’t to be found in the blessed state of being other women’s husbands were generally deserving of their wretched and benighted state by way of being . . .
‘. . . unmarriageable assholes.’
‘What?’ croaked Dave, who’d drifted off into a hangover haze for just a moment.
‘Completely unmarriageable assholes, Dave. Such as your- self. World is full of them, I said. All trying to get at my good breeding hips and my 401K.’
He did his best to zone out the lecture he knew was coming on the poor choice facing the modern marriageable lady between potential husbands who were all, without significant exception, gravely disappointing or downright dangerous.
‘Or a volatile combination of both, such as you represent, Dave Hooper.’
Once they had altitude, she pushed forward on the stick and brought them around to the southeast, breaking off her lecture to check in with air traffic control. Hundreds of feet below, the trailers and demountable huts of the Baron’s Petrochemical depot slipped from view as the nose dipped a little and they commenced the long haul out to Tiber Field, about 300 miles due south of New Orleans. Hooper had made this flight out to the rig so many times that he could picture the landscape without needing to look. In the sprawling dirt and gravel parking lot below were dozens of SUVs and pick-ups – way too many for the size of the depot – mostly owned by guys working a twelve-day shift out on the Longreach. They came in from all over the Gulf Coast, some even driving all the way down from Austin and Dallas, leaving their Fords, Dodges, and Chevys in the company lot to grow a second skin of red dust and oily particulates. No imports for these men, and lift kits aplenty.
In his mind’s eye he could see, without looking, the taco stand where everyone stopped in for a last ‘home-cooked’ meal before flying out – home-cooked because Pedro, who ran the stand, lived there as well, bunking down in a sleeping bag on a pile of crushed cardboard boxes in the storeroom. With his eyes closed, Dave could see the small pound across the two lanes of unsealed road running past Pedro’s taqueria. A fine example of American entrepreneurialism, the Dog House had sprung up two years ago to serve the needs of those rig workers who didn’t trust their partners on shore to look after their best friends while they were out on the water. The proximity of Pedro’s to the Dog House provided cheap and unlimited laughs to those who never grew tired of pondering aloud just how Pedro was able to stay in business providing, as he did, the cheapest loose meat snack anywhere on the Gulf Coast.
Hooper felt the chopper alter course and commence its run out to the Longreach. He was going out a day early but knew better than to stay on shore until the last day of his leave. He would be able to dry out and detox in his bunk on the rig, protected from his own excesses by the tyrannies of distance.
So, he calculated, six days out on the water and then back to the Baron’s Death Star up in Houston, then back out to the Longreach, then . . .
He wouldn’t have minded the usual routine for himself – twelve days on, ten days off – but since word had come from the company overlords that Longreach was going to test all the way down to 45,000 feet – 5000 beyond the rig’s listed specs – Hooper had found himself up for months of rolling back and forth between the platform and the office in Houston. He seemed to spend most of his time in transit because, as the Longreach’s boss hog of safety, his objections to the company’s plan had to be ‘noted’ insofar as that word meant ‘Fuck you, Dave, just make it happen. And while you’re at it, cover our asses.’
And their asses were exposed. Highly. Fucking. Exposed. In Dave Hooper’s expert opinion, at least. And on this, if not much else besides hookers and Hooters, he was an expert. Tiber Field was spread across a Rorschach inkblot of Lower Tertiary reser- voirs, with multiple sweet spots of light crude hidden in among some of the oldest, gnarliest rock formations on the planet, themselves buried under thousands of feet of compressed salt.
There was a reason oil companies didn’t do much drilling at those levels. There was a reason things had gone wrong for British Petroleum on the Deepwater Horizon years ago. Working a field like this was difficult and dangerous, and . . .
What the fuck, Dave, they’d roared at him in their big dumb booming voices. Are you on board for the big win or what? There’s six billion fucking barrels down there. Let’s just go git ’em!
And they had because his guys were the best and he was pretty damn good too, and even if it meant hauling ass thou- sands of miles a week and banging heads with a bunch of greedy fucking suits who didn’t give an actual fuck about the safety of his guys or his rig . . .
‘Y’all doing all right back there, Dave?’
‘Huh? Oh, sorry, J2. Talking to myself.’
He wondered how much of his rant he’d muttered angrily over the headset.
Well, tough shit, anyway. J2 knew the score. She made most of these shuttle runs with him. She flew the guys back and forth to the rig, heard them bitching about the company nickel-and- diming them to death whenever it could. The company screw only turns one way. She knew they’d done a hell of a job out there.
Thirty-five thousand feet down.
That was like drilling on the fucking moon.
Well, okay, maybe not, but it was a hell of a thing.
He had good reason for torching his bonus on a week-long blowout to celebrate. No matter what Annie’s lawyer said. Same goddamn lawyer she was sleeping with. He was sure of that. The asshole.
J2 powered them out over the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the coast behind. Dave, who’d been trying to doze and sleep off at least some of his hangover, risked opening his eyes. He quickly squeezed them shut again. A fierce morning sun hammered down on the beaten blue metal bowl of the ocean, throwing off jagged shards of white sunlight. Each sunburst felt like a hot needle jabbed into his eyeballs. He groaned quietly, thanking the good Lord again that at least he was the only passenger
this morning. The next big shift change was scheduled for tomorrow. If he’d been flying out to Longreach with Marty or Vince, they’d have ragged his ass to bloodied shreds.
As he’d have done for them if they’d spent the last three days of their leave blowing a six-month bonus on two premium hookers flown all the way down from Nevada.
Not that they would have, of course. That sort of repro- bate bullshit was strictly a Dave Hooper special. Marty Grbac might have looked like a shaved gorilla, but when he wasn’t out on the rig, he was the sort of born-anew Bible-thumping bore who loved nothing more than tooling around on his old rebuilt Triumph, just like one of Steve McQueen’s, taking in shows by as many revivalist tent preachers as the South had to offer.
The South, in Dave’s experience, had more than enough of that Southern revivalist nonsense on offer, which was partly why he’d flown those hookers in from Nevada.
Dave had once made the mistake of teasing Marty about his faith, asking if his ‘invisible friend’ rode behind him on that big-ass Triumph. A permanent crook in his nose and a ghostly white scar line where Marty’s fist had laid open his cheek helped Dave remember never to do that again. Pain was supposed to be an excellent teacher. Dave’s own father had said as much and delivered on the principle time and again. Yet for as much pain as he had endured, he kept making the same fucking mistakes.
And Vince Martinelli?
Well, Vince came on like an enforcer for the Calabrian Mafia, but he was a true family guy. A foul-mouthed, hard-knuckled shift supervisor on the Longreach but on land the gentlest, most considerate father of three little girls and one over-indulged baby boy you could ever hope to meet.
Dave Hooper tried squinting into the sun again. Even through his shades, the bright light was painful in his eyes. All the way down to his brainstem. He was a family guy, too.
In that he had a family. And . . . well . . .
He shifted uncomfortably, trying to position himself in a way that didn’t leave a broken seat spring sticking in his butt.
Considerate husbands and fathers didn’t blow six-monthly bonus checks on top-shelf hookers from Reno, did they?
No. Considerate husbands and fathers took that sort of money and put it into college funds and made sure there was enough to cover their boys’ orthodontist bills next week, and maybe they even dropped a few dollars on dragging them- selves north for an access visit. They would have been there for the Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby and done sterling duty as a scoutmaster. There would have been camping trips on which he taught the boys how to bait a fishhook and clean bass and catfish. Maybe he would have played catch with them. Sure, when he wasn’t down at Joe’s blowing every dime he had buying drinks for his friends and perfume and trinkets for the waitresses he’d later bang in the alley out back.
That was what considerate husbands and fathers would do: spend time with their families. His wife had tried to explain that to him many times before she packed up his boys, walked out of their company town house in Houston, and drove two thousand miles north to her dad’s place in Maine. Dave risked peering out through the plexiglas again, shading his burning bloodshot eyes this time. Another man, one in less pain, might have described the water as sun-dappled. To him, this morning, the gulf looked as though it were on fire.
He blinked a few times and sucked up the pain, staring off to the northeast. Strange to think that he could follow the coastline all the way around the panhandle and up the eastern seaboard, up to Toby and Jack. This time of day they’d prob- ably be down the foreshore with their granddad, prospecting for shellfish, maybe throwing a line out into the cold, slate-grey waters of the north Atlantic.
Same waters, he thought. Just different.
Like a sick child fatigued by illness and empty of any real motivation, Dave toyed with the idea that he could be flying toward them right now, the earth a blur beneath him.
Dave Hooper, their hero father, swooping down from the skies if J2 just pushed that stick over a ways.
But Dave Hooper the deadbeat, hungover asshole burped and tasted an acidic reduction of Jim Beam, Doritos, and top- shelf pussy-for-hire at the back of this throat. He grimaced and dry swallowed, shaking his head and throwing off any visions of imagined redemption. Time to drag his sorry ass back to the real world.
‘How long, J2?’
Her voice came back through his headset.
‘We got us a good two hours of flight time comin’ up yet, Dave, if y’all be looking to stack some z’s.’
‘Yeah. I might have a nap. Late night, you know.’
‘Oh, I know, Dave,’ she said. ‘I saw those two ladies on your
Facebook page last night.’
They were flying straight and level, but his stomach dropped out through the floor of the chopper.
‘Oh, man, I got on Facebook last night?’
‘Yep. Pics. The images were up for hours until they got flagged. Your account got suspended for indecent use.’
He could almost hear her grinning with malice.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said more to himself than to J2. Annie had access to his page.
Even worse, Annie’s lawyer had access to his page. And the boys, too, of course.
Why the hell he even had that account anymore he didn’t know. He’d set it up so that Toby and Jack could stay in touch when he was out on the water. They’d begged him to when they were still of an age to innocently ask something of their dad and expect him to deliver.
Yeah. What a brilliant idea that’d been. Damn thing had fucked him up so many ways from Sunday when he got on the sauce.
A sour, shuddering breath ran out of him as he deflated at the memory of the photos he’d posted from a hot tub in Miami.
Not that he remembered much about that night.
But it didn’t matter, because the woman he’d picked up in the Sheraton had kindly recorded the highlights on his brand-new iPhone – a gift from Annie and the boys, natch – and posted the all-too-admissible evidence on his Facebook page.
Not hers, even. His.
‘Ah, man,’ he sighed. ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’
He let his head fall into his hands. As usual, he hadn’t been thinking at all.
*
‘Whoa! Dave. Wake up. We got a problem, man.’
For one confusing moment, he was back in college and his roommate was trying to wake him up because the cops and campus security were banging on the door, looking for a missing KFC bucket.
Not a cardboard bucket full of Southern-fried awesome.
No. They wanted to ask him a few pointed questions about a giant fibreglass bucket missing from the tall pole in front of the Colonel’s nearest off-campus eatery. Someone had sawed it off and . . .
Then the better part of twenty years fell away, and he came to in the cabin of the chopper hammering out toward the Longreach.
‘S’up?’ he asked.
His voice cracked, and he coughed until he could speak again.
‘Sorry. What’s up, J2?’
Her voice replied in his headset. Controlled, but only just.
‘Fire on the rig, Dave. A fire and . . . something else. I don’t know what.’
He was instantly awake. His fatigue and the ragged edges of the hangover sluiced away in the adrenaline surge. Dave twisted left and right in his seat, disoriented, unsure of where he might find the rig. If Dave Hooper had trouble understanding people and social graces, mechanical objects were an entirely different matter. He had a natural knack for machines, engineering, and the rigs. When he was dealing with a mechanical problem, the universe felt right, as if solving such problems was why he’d been made.
Dave knew what he had to do.
‘You gotta get me down there, J2, right now.’
He waited for her to say no, to quote the company rules and federal law and common fucking sense, but after a second of silence she came back in a clipped voice.
‘Yep. Okay. Gonna be a fast one, though.’
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