A Cold-Blooded Business Page 5

  The archaeologists were impressed, too, at Belle in her little cowgirl suit and Jane in her very little leopards king sheath and shark-tooth necklace. When they got to the airport, the pipe liners standing in line on their way south were equally impressed. "Praise the Lord!" one man was heard to shout, and Toni, bidding Belle and Jane a fond farewell, observed that the two might make their goal after all, and before they reached Anchorage, too. "Push Ms. magazine as hard as you can," Kate heard her tell Belle. "These yahoos could stand to have their consciousnesses raised a tad."

  "I'll try, honey." They hugged, and Toni waved them out onto the tarmac and up the air stairs of the waiting jet.

  Toni's official tour, arriving on a special charter, kept them kicking their heels at the airport and eventually arrived ninety minutes late.

  It consisted of one United States senator from Illinois and his entourage, including various representatives of the environmental militia and the superintendent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

  They were all on their first orientation tour of the North Slope, in spite of the fact that the Honorable Levi Poulsboro sat on the Senate Energy Committee, and to a man they were determined not to be impressed.

  Two of them, one tall and a Sierra Club commando, one short and a member of the Wilderness Society, both aggressively determined to find fault, occupied the two front seats on the bus and cross-examined Toni all the way across the field. As Kate listened, admiration for the other woman grew. The difference between a straight and a crooked hole, the flow status of the wells on H Pad, the intricacies of tertiary recovery techniques, current manpower status in the Western Operating Area, all these were grist for Toni's mill. The two men were stumped, but only temporarily. "What about slick em the tall one said. "That stuff they put in the pipeline to make the oil flow faster?" "Slickem," Toni said, her brow wrinkling, and Kate, who had by now abandoned any pretense of impartiality, feared they had her. But no.

  Toni's brow cleared. "Slickem, of course. I was just reading about that in Petroleum Intelligence Weekly. It's a long-chain polymer, I believe, sort of a gooey plastic. It's injected into the pipeline at Pumps One and Four, Four being the station just this side of the Brooks Range where the oil might need a little extra oomph to get over the hump." She smiled. The two men didn't smile back. "Yes. Well.

  Slickem reduces the turbulent flow of the oil in the line, and causes it to expend its energy more profitably in getting down to Valdez." She smiled again. With difficulty, Kate repressed a cheer.

  The two men scowled in unison. The short one said accusingly, "Well, we heard that it greased the inside of the line and made the oil flow smoother that way."

  Toni's fund of smiles was bottomless. "I don't believe that's the case, sir, but we'll be going to Pump One later this afternoon and we can check then."

  A half-dozen caribou, looking moth-eaten from their long winter spent beneath the Central Power Station, climbed up on the Backbone and proceeded to cross to the other side. Kate muttered a prayer and pumped the brakes gently. The front bumper came to a stop inches from the oblivious caribou, which didn't even look around at the big bus sliding to a halt on their left, just kept on going across the road and down onto the snow- and ice-covered tundra on the other side. Kate took a surreptitious breath, her foot off the brake, and goosed the gas. The bus creaked and groaned and started forward again.

  The senator spoke for the first time. "Where's the corral?"

  Kate saw Toni at an unprecedented loss for an answer. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Well, I assume you put the caribou away when you're done with them," the Honorable Levi Poulsboro said sternly. "Is there a corral somewhere you keep them in?"

  Kate took her eyes off the road long enough to see if he was serious.

  He was. She turned back and in the mirror saw the expression on one of the archaeologists' faces, Chris Heller, a thin young man with large, very expressive brown eyes, and had to look hastily away, catching her underlip between her teeth and biting hard. She heard Toni say, with no discernible trace of hysteria, "Prudhoe Bay is a wildlife habitat as well as an oil field, Senator. Some caribou drop off from the central Arctic herd during its migration every fall and winter here. They like the shelter the modules give them. They like the pads in the summertime, too. When they're on the pads, they're up off the tundra and in the wind; it keeps the mosquitoes away." "The pads," the Sierra Club commando said, "that reminds me." He waved a hand in a gesture that appeared to encompass the entire North Slope, Canadian border to Chukchi Sea. "When's the rest of this going to be graveled in?"

  "The rest of what?" Toni said, puzzled.

  He waved his hand again. "The field. When are you going to gravel in the rest of the field?"

  This time Kate didn't dare look in the mirror, and instead concentrated fiercely on the foggy road in front of her. Toni, still with that astounding self-control, said, "Sir, the Prudhoe Bay field measures approximately twelve miles north to south, and twenty-five miles east to west. That comes to approximately three hundred square miles all told. With one mile of gravel road costing upward of a quarter of a million dollars, I don't think we can look forward to graveling in the rest of the field anytime soon."

  "I see," the Honorable Levi Poulsboro said with a grave nod. "You'll probably have to wait until the price per barrel of oil goes up some more."

  "Probably," Toni agreed.

  Quite a bit more, Kate thought.

  The tour took all afternoon, beginning with the Base Camp and including the pool and the weight room and the track ("Eleven times around makes a mile," Toni told them) and the movie theater, upholstered from floor to ceiling in red plush, and moving on to cover the entire western side of the Prudhoe Bay field in exhaustive detail. The operations module housed Production Control, where three operators sat in a darkened room surrounded by an enormous, U-shaped counter. Their faces eerily backlit by the green reflection from the computer screens, the controllers spoke in low voices over headsets and tapped out rapid commands on keyboards, looking for all the world as if they were on the bridge of a spaceship headed for lapetus, except that this computer didn't talk back.

  Next door was the Communications Center and although the room was about the same size as Production Control the contrast was immediate--bright lights and constant noise and perpetual motion. This room looked like the bridge of a spaceship, too, only in this case the Enterprise, on Red Alert under Romulan attack. A bank of radios monitored traffic on three channels amid bursts of static, two switchboards rang nonstop, five telex machines cluttered out yards of yellow tape, a fax machine spewed out page after page, its twin sucking up reams going in the other direction. A tall man with disappearing red hair, bright, inquisitive blue eyes and a wickedly attractive grin rolled rapidly in a wheeled armchair from switchboard to radio to telex to fax with never a wasted move, except the occasional collision with his coworker. She was a short, pudgy woman with small, penetrating eyes that saw everything whether you wanted them to or not and a tenor squeal of a voice, the grit and gravel voice Kate had heard calling race odds over the public address system. "Meet Warren Rice and Sue Jordan, communications operators extraordinaire," Toni announced. "You can run but you can't hide from a communications operator."

  The redhead caught sight of Kate and rolled his chair over to halt in front of her. Ignoring the honorable senator from the great state of Illinois waiting for adulation next to her, he said in a deep, mellow voice that made her toes curl up just a little inside her steel-toed, RPetco-issue safety boots, "You don't have to run from me, babe. I promise I don't bite." He grinned. "Hard."

  Everyone has a weak spot, and Kate's was a deep, mellow male voice; fortuitously at that very moment an alarm whooped like the dive siren on a submarine, an entire wall of ominous yellow telltale lights went off like a pinball machine and Toni hustled them out the door. "False alarm," she said airily, to the deep disappointment of the two pit bulls, who would have rejoiced to see the roof blow off duri
ng their visit just to confirm all their deepest suspicions about oil production in the Alaskan Arctic. "Probably dumping Halon in some skid. Happens all the time, especially in the spring when the snow melts and gets down into the roof detectors."

  In that case Kate didn't see why they couldn't go back and get to know the redhead better, but Toni had her in the bus and behind the wheel before she could muster up the presence of mind to say so.

  In the field they climbed up on a rig floor and watched the roughnecks change out a bit and go back into the hole, ninety feet of drill pipe at a time. Personally Kate could have spent the rest of the day there, watching the roughnecks throw the chain and manhandle those enormous tongs, but Toni dragged them back down to ground level and over to a very dull row of metal shacks surrounding equally dull, more or less vertical arrangements of pipe and valves. "Christmas trees," Toni called them, although anything less like a Christmas tree Kate had yet to see.

  These were allegedly the first point at which the oil came up out of the ground after the well was drilled.

  They stopped at Production Center Three and the two pit bulls attacked Dale Triplett before they were all the way in the door. "We were wondering about this slick em stuff," the tall one said.

  "Oh, sure, slick em Dale said. "It's kind of neat stuff, actually.

  It's a long-chain polymer, kind of a gooey plastic. It's injected into the line at Pump One and"--she looked at Toni--"Pump Two? Anyway, it kind of gums up the oil, not much, just enough to slow the turbulent flow so it doesn't ball up inside the line, and instead uses its energy to push itself down the pipeline to Valdez. The crude is under such tremendous pressure when it enters the line that it can snarl around in there instead of getting on its way."

  The tall man looked at the short one, who said accusingly, "Well, we heard it greased the inside of the line and made the oil go faster that way."

  "Really?" Dale raised her eyebrows. "Well, you heard wrong."

  "This way, please, gentlemen," Toni interjected smoothly, and marched them down cramped, dimly lit corridors over what felt like miles of metal grating, through what seemed like hundreds of boxy modules; from the eerie silence of Skid 4 where the oil came into the complex from the wellheads, to the deafening clamor of Skid 14 where the process of depressurization and drying out began.

  Except for the fluorescent yellow signs reading

  "Danger! So2O4 may be present! When alarm sounds vacate premises at once!" and the ubiquitous, bright yellow Scott Air Paks mounted every ten feet, there wasn't much to look at except pipe of every diameter going in every direction, all too often making unexpected, ninety-degree jogs to go off in others. For the first time in her life Kate had to duck to avoid banging her head, a lesson it took three painful whacks to learn.

  The scream of natural gas going through those pipes at six hundred pounds per square inch made her ears ring for an hour afterward in spite of the foam earplugs Toni had handed round at the beginning of their trek.

  "There are six production centers in the Prudhoe Bay field," Toni shouted. "One, Two and Three on the RPetco, or Western Operating Area side, and Four, Five and Six on the Amerex, or Eastern Operating Area side. Each one is designed to process 300,000 barrels of oil per day.

  During that process, each one can produce up to 4,800,000 cubic feet of natural gas and 30,000 barrels of water. The oil has to be degassed, dry, and no more than 154 degrees Fahrenheit before we send it over to Pump One--bottom hole temperature is 220. Kate, get the door for us, would you?"

  Kate, hopelessly lost in a maze of pipe and frame and grating that seemed to go on forever, now discovered to her horror that she was lost inside the skid in which they were currently standing, too. It was possibly the single most humiliating moment of her life. Kate Shugak had never been lost before. Not ever. Put her down anywhere inside 20 million acres of Park at any time of the year and she could have found her way home blindfolded, but this metal maze was something totally beyond her experience. Dazed from the din, squinting in the dim light, head hurting from three different welts, she looked back at Toni and spread her hands helplessly.

  "It's okay," Toni shouted, "it takes a while to find your way around."

  She reached past Kate and thumped a previously invisible bar and a previously invisible door opened. They stumbled through it in a body, grateful to leave the clamor of Skid 14 behind them.

  The Honorable Levi Poulsboro was first out the production center door.

  The air was cold and refreshing. Kate paused for a moment, eyes closed, sucking it deep into lungs that felt starved of oxygen.

  "Oh, look! How cute! Here, puppy, come here, come on," she heard someone exclaim, followed by Toni's voice, jolted out of its usual calm. "Sir, don't do that! Don't touch them! Don't!"

  Kate's eyes popped open and she pushed through the crowd and found the group confronting a half-dozen little arctic foxes, no more than kits really. The Honorable Levi Poulsboro bent over to pet the lead one, the biggest and the brashest of the litter. Toni was just moving forward to prevent contact when the kit nipped at the outstretched senatorial hand and leapt smartly back.

  There was a loud, disbelieving bellow. "Ouch! Goddamnit! Why, that little son of a bitch!"

  Toni shoved her way to his side, Kate right behind her. Toni grabbed his hand and Kate peered around to see blood welling from a small wound.

  "God damn it," Toni said, spacing the words through her teeth.

  "Everybody stay put, don't move, don't talk." She turned and approached the kits. They were almost but not quite tame, and held their ground, eyeing the brunette's approach warily.

  She moved slowly, no hint of threat in her stance. The instant she was within reach her arm lashed out, exactly like a snake striking, and caught the big kit by the scruff of the neck. Before anyone had a chance to protest, she had wrung that neck in a quick, sharp twist. A high-pitched, panicked whine was cut off before it really got started.

  A second later, the body hung limp from her hands. The rest of the kits scattered like marbles and vanished into holes dug in the snow beneath the Production Center's foundations.

  There was a moment of instantaneous shock before exclamations of horror resounded from the tour group. Kate herself was momentarily startled into immobility. Toni was more efficient at fox killing than Mutt.

  "Oh, poor little fox!"

  "How could you?"

  "How awful!"

  "It was just a little bite, he was just scared, you didn't have to kill him!"

  "Shut up," Kate said curtly, regaining her tongue. She retrieved the pups body and stowed the corpse beneath her seat on the bus. Outside she could hear Toni talking, a note of steel underlying the brunette's professionally syrupy voice. "Senator, ladies and gentlemen, please.

  There is an epidemic of rabies rampant across the Slope. When someone gets bitten, we have to kill the animal involved and send the body to Fairbanks for testing." That brought silence. "If the tests are positive, if that pup was rabid, you, Senator, will have to undergo a series of rabies shots."

  "Which involve a very large needle and very painful abdominal injections," Kate said, raising her voice so it would be heard by everyone in the group.

  "That's right." Toni moved to the attack. "None of you were supposed to come up here without proper orientation as to how you interact with wildlife on the North Slope. Did you not know, Senator, that you were not supposed to approach the animals you encountered during your visit?"

  One quiet voice, not the senator's, admitted, "We knew. They told us."

  "Then you know who's at fault for that fox's death. Now then. We've got a pump station to tour. Get on the bus, please."

  As they pulled off the Production Center's gravel pad, a dark shape shot up over the snow berm on the right. It passed directly in front of the bus's front bumper, and in a purely instinctive reaction Kate slammed on the brakes with both feet.

  The bus plunged violently three times, like a recalcitrant horse, and stalle
d. The shape scooted across the road, skidded down the snow berm on the left and vanished into the fog. Kate sat where she was, gripping the steering wheel tightly in both hands and trying not to shake, her burgeoning confidence in her ability to drive this monster withered on the vine.

  "What's the problem?" Toni inquired from the seat behind her.

  Kate swiveled and stared. "What's the problem? Didn't you see that snow machine?"

  "So what?"

  "Toni, I almost hit it."

  "Nan." Toni shook her head. "That was Cindy Sovalik. She doesn't run into buses." Kate asked what seemed like a logical question. "What's she doing out here on a snow machine in the first place?"

  Only apparently it wasn't. "She's on her way home, of course," Toni said impatiently.

  "Home?"

  "Yes. To Ichelik. It's a village thirty miles east of the Sagavanirktok.

  It's her home. She commutes back and forth to work from there."

  "Commutes?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "On a snow machine?"

  "During the winter, yes. Anything wrong with that?"

  Kate looked out at the blowing snow and fog, through which she could see maybe two feet, and said, "What could possibly be wrong with that?

  I suppose during the summer she drives a four-wheeler?"

  "Yes."

  Kate restarted the bus. "Did I see a rifle on her shoulder?"

  "Probably."

  "I thought no one was allowed to have firearms in the field."

  "No one is, except for the field manager and Cindy. Polar bears do wander ashore from the ice pack now and then, you know. They must have mentioned something about it during orientation."

  A voice from the back of the bus added, "Right after they told us about not interacting with the wildlife."

  Kate looked in the mirror to see Chris Heller's out thrust jaw and indignant eye, and restarted the bus. The drive to Pump One was accomplished in record time in a cold silence that rivaled the temperature outside. Kate heard the Sierra Club commando pounce on the pump operator who greeted them at the door, the Wilderness Society's representative close behind. "Slickem?" the operator drawled. "Well now, slick em That'd be a long-chain polymer, kind of a gooey plastic, reduces the turbulent flow of the oil in the line so that it'll expend its energy getting down to Valdez instead of tying itself in knots north of the Brooks Range."