Power Down by Ben Coes

Dewey shook his head. Talk about awful timing. What would Marks think when he heard about Capitana’s sudden shutdown? Dewey was too tired even to contemplate that.
    As he lay back, he felt the rig move, enough to make him sit up again.
A wave,
he thought. He reclined once more, taking another sip from the bottle. A noise echoed down the hallway outside his room. He stood and flipped on the main light switch in his cabin. Everything was silent except for the occasional bell or door slamming somewhere on the rig, the ocean patting the tide deck, the wind. Maybe he was getting paranoid from all of the mayhem of the last forty-eight hours. Still, whatever it was, it alarmed him enough to make him walk to the far end of the cabin and look out the window.
    What he saw caused him to shudder.
    There, against the side of the rig, stood the dark silhouette of a ship, its running lights shut off. He recognized the profile of the vessel. It was the
Montana.
    He walked to the dresser and took his knife from the top drawer. Dressed only in his Carhartts, he walked to the small closet and opened the door. He took out a gray T-shirt and put it on. Then he heard it. The sound of footsteps. Steel-toed boots coming down the corridor to his cabin. He tensed. He felt the warmth of adrenaline in his veins.
    The door flew open and Dewey found himself facing four armed gunmen with rifles trained on him. One was Pazur, the murderer of Jonas Pierre; he’d been put aboard the
Montana
with the others, specifically to face charges in Cali.
    From behind the gunmen stepped Esco. “Drop the knife,” he ordered.
    Dewey held on to the knife for a moment more, despite the command, and eyed the gunmen. One of the men raised a rifle and aimed it at his head.
Kalashnikov,
Dewey’s soldier’s brain registered automatically. The gunman fired a round over his shoulder. It ripped a hole in the wall next to the bed.
    He tossed the knife to the ground, where it slid beneath the desk. “Where’s Pablo?”
    Esco walked between the gunmen. He stood in front of Dewey, confident but serious, quietly staring at him.
    “Dead,” said Esco.
    Dewey looked at the gunmen again. He knew he’d regret what he was about to do, but he couldn’t help himself. Without warning, he delivered two quick, ferocious punches to Esco’s ribs and a right hook to his left eye. Esco collapsed as his gunmen lunged at Dewey, the one to his right striking first, with the butt end of his gun to the side of his head. A gunman to his left kicked Dewey squarely in the groin, folding him in pain. A third man swung at his face and nailed him above his eye, which began to bleed. All four of the men pounded away at him as he descended to the floor in pain from the blows.
    “Stop,” Esco ordered from behind them after nearly a minute. “We need him alive.”
    Dewey turned his head slightly and opened his eyes. He was looking straight ahead at Esco’s boots.
    “Lift him up,” Esco said.
    Two of the gunmen reached down and picked Dewey up. They placed his arms around their necks and got ready to lead him away.
    “You’ll pay,” Dewey muttered as he stared at Esco.
    Esco stepped forward and delivered a last sharp kick to the balls.
    They tied his hands behind his back, then stuck a rag in his mouth to gag him. Then the gunmen led Dewey down the corridor to the main deck of Capitana.
    Despite the arrival of the armed men, despite the violence of the past days, nothing prepared him for what he saw next. Bodies lay piled at different points on the deck, now dimly illuminated by the sunrise tothe east. He counted more than two dozen corpses strewn about. Rage began to replace Dewey’s initial shock. As they walked near the edge of the platform, he saw yet more corpses floating in the waters off the platform, then Pablo’s corpse lying face-up on the deck.
    They led him to the infirmary. Inside, the body of Chaz Barbo lay awkwardly contorted on the ground. His head had been blown off.
    The two