The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  O’Hara was standing side by side with Wong and the pair were staring at the submarine. Ten men stood still and gaping on top of her hull or on the scaffolds along her sides forward while welding torches still making tiny suns aft. The standing men were staring along with the Admirals at an excited Johnson who was gesturing angrily at something on the misshapen hull, tossing her white hair and cursing in such an imaginative way that several of the delicate sailors and frail construction crewmen visibly blushed at the language. A chagrinned foreman three times her size stood contritely in front of her, his head drooping in a meek listening posture like a whipped dog. Bear stepped between his fellow leaders and listened quietly as Johnson intimidated the hulk who dwarfed her.

  Bear looked up at the curiously yellow mercury vapor lights that hung from the ceiling of the huge tent that covered the sub like a particularly neat formation of stars in a canvas firmament. Outside he knew a crew was rapidly throwing up butler building walls in an uncomfortable truce with the swarm of security guards fingering their automatic weapons nervously and casting beady eyes on the men with torque wrenches as if they concealed machine guns. The trouble as Bear saw it was that the guards might get too bored and feel the need to use their hardware. Some were ex-Navy Seals and it was a safe bet that at least third thought from well below their belt buckles. The physical danger was that the connection would be direct from their hormones to their trigger fingers; generating action and bypassing the poorly wired electrical rig of the SEAL brain.

  As a danger—twitchy guards firing on workmen was the least of their problems; which said a great deal about their problems.

  The inside of the structure was an anthill of workers racing about with a bewildering variety of tools despite the passion play being enacted by the engineer in charge and her charges. As Bear walked into the tableau from behind, he resisted an urge to put his arm around Maureen’s shoulder.

  Maureen looked up at him and he looked back in one those gestures with the human eye that was almost as good as a caress.

  Wong chose that moment to look too and cleared his throat politely. Both Bear and Maureen moved their eyes to him in a common self conscious impulse. It was a shared fear that their secret heterosexuality would be ‘outed.’

  “How is it coming?” Bear asked.

  “Fantastic! Thank you very much . . .” Wong said primly, pointedly ignoring having seen their longing glances. “. . . Johnson is something ain’t she?”

  Bear looked up at her and nodded instantly.

  “Oh! She’s something all right.”

  “She has developed a plan that should get the basic structure built in two months then we can install the engines and test the atomic power plant and fine tune the interior.”

  “How long to space it?”

  “My guess at this point . . . about six months for the first test!” Wong offered.

  “You have three—total!” Bear said decisively.

  It made them all go quiet.

  “What is going on?” Maureen challenged.

  “Not sure . . .” Bear said. “I am working as much on the level of intuition as facts. The facts say that the opponents are feeling their way right now. Two weeks ago we scared off three guys trying to make a quiet entry to the Kansas hanger at three in the morning. You may not have been briefed about the fake UPS guy last week at the cave. Then there are the two members of the Q Kink team have already been approached with bribes, as well as a half dozen guards at various locations I know of. They’ve even tried to get to a pair of our cooking staff. For every incident I know about I figure the rest of the iceburg of this kind of espionage is hiding 9 more. Logically, at least some of their efforts are already bearing some fruit somewhere and people are blabbing. I do not think it will be much. They are just begun picking up a pear here, an apple there, but sooner or later they are gonna get a plum. The whole schlemiel builds up to a picture that of us being methodically attacked and quietly penetrated. The . . . ‘opposition’ . . . is escalating their efforts slowly . . . feeling their way, thinking they have all the time in the world. The way I see it, they will want to get the information easily and slowly because on the QT is how they are used to working. The difficult physical methods like breaking and entering and wire tapping we can make harder and harder for them, but there will be holes we have not seen and they will drill like moles to find them. I want to beat them out there to space before they get too close. If they figure out how far along we are . . . they may try something . . . well frankly try something silly or drastic or . . . dare I say it? Desperate?”

  That settled the faces of the other two into grim lines.

  Maureen was the first to change the grim grimace to a thoughtful one.

  “I’ve been thinking. What if we didn’t manufacture the outer tanks, but just modified some that already exist. I saw several over in a yard near Sausalito, I think the Air Force used them as some kind of fuel tank . . . maybe they would do for the exterior water and fossil fuel storage. It would save a week or two of manufacturing.”

  Wong rounded on her with his hands on his hips.

  “Now why the hell didn’t you think of that before! I have been racking my brains and you think of it now? Right while I am trying to look at the boss all seriously and shit? I even got all moon faced about the enemy storm troopers and agents of Satan coming in here and stuff. You are such a kiss ass! Trying to make me look bad . . .”

  O’Hara swelled up to respond, but couldn’t manage her feminine version of outrage and instead explosively spit air out between tightly pressed together lips and collapsed in laughter—guffawing helplessly. Wong broke into his own fit of helpless giggles and they leaned on each other—Peas in a pod.

  “Nice . . .”Bear rolled his eyes. “Real sweet you two! The future of the universe hangs in the balance because of a bunch of skulking pirates and my two strongmen are yucking it up like Laurel and freaking Hardy.”

  He walked away while they fell almost to the floor, clutching each other, tears of laugher running down their cheeks, wheezing and gasping.

  Bear kept his back to them when he smiled so they could not see.

  Two months and twenty six days later Bear leapt over a mound of old pilings and rolled into an inelegant crumpled heap with his legs in the air and his buttocks against a wall beside Wong. He had driven into the gate at the Groton submarine yard two minutes before, just in time for the shooting to begin. He had seen Wong’s head pop up and down from behind the pile of what looked like railroad ties just as his two left side tires took bullets and the SUV slewed to a stop; if by stop you meant skidded through a spin of 60 degrees, clipped a building and then slammed nose first into a concrete retaining wall, crumpling the whole right front of the car and killing the engine. Bear had little energy to spare regretting the leap in his insurance premiums because he was busy leaping from the vehicle and ducking behind construction rubble for cover while his body guards erupted from his car and the chase vehicle and began to plink back at the attackers aggressively. Showing initiative he sprinted for where he had seen his XO last and did a beautiful sailing dive over the wooden pile just as Wong mimicked him, returning from some side trip of his own.

  Wong half lay there himself, a turtle on its back looking winded and Bear lay beside him doing his best imitation of his XO. Wong waved arms and legs around and got to his knees, and crouched there looking down at Bear with a contrite expression on his face and Bear contrived with some struggle to execute a similar writhing twist. He got lucky, made it upright and sat up on his butt in the dust.

  “Some fun, Eh?” The question almost drowned by several bursts from automatic weapons and three of four whip crack replies from the semiautomatic pistols many of rental guards carried.

  Wong’s voice was apologetic.

  “Sorry. They knocked so politely . . .” He left the obvious conclusion of failing
to properly look through the peep hole before allowing the miscreants in to Bear’s imagination; an imagination punctuated by the splat of three rounds into the concrete above his head. The hirelings of their opposition were expending bullets with a fine profligacy.

  Bear looked at Wong critically.

  “You always were the master of understatement. It’s an Asian trait.”

  The Navy man’s rabbit-like breath rate, a vein throbbing in his forehead and his tendency to glance towards the sound of rifle fire bespoke a certain selfish interest in survival. Bear shared it, but had at least been in several fire fights before. He grinned, to spread around his Sang Freud. It half worked and Wong smiled crookedly back.

  “Like you round eyes check the door every time you answer it!” Wong added sarcastically.

  “I assume the sub is Banjaxxed?” Bear inquired politely.

  Wong jerked his head in the negative.

  “No, sir. In fact, she was pretty ready for a sea trial and these guys ain’t reached it yet. I was getting ready to go into the sub hanger and board her when our security guys called me to the front gate with some reports about suspicious activity outside the wire. I was most of the way there when our trick-or-treaters got . . . weird.” He waved his hand in boneless effeminate manner encompassing universal weirdness. “Other than a stray round or two I do not think they have got near the sub . . . at least not yet. “A stray round provided an exclamation point with a zip overhead.

  Bear nodded and poked his head above the wood beams for a second. He saw two black clad men race out of sight in three second rushes around the corner to the right. Bear’s guards were being flanked and they would soon be cut off from the submarine pen if they did not act soon. He caught a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision and jerked his head down as more cone shaped blobs of lead comingled molecules a high velocity with an iron tank beside him. There was the crump of an explosion somewhere in the distance to the left and then another and another. Grenades were being used somewhere. A typewriter rattle off to the left answered it and showed that the hired security force with at least some automatics, were still emphatically in action and earning their pay, but the pistols that Bear’s protection team carried were being outclassed.

  “Suddenly I have an overpowering desire to see what she looks like.” Bear said. He looked at Wong. “Let us become one with the earth.” He rolled onto his belly and began to low crawl around the corner to the left toward the giant tent slash shed that covered the submarine four blocks behind them.

  They were halfway there when he saw a congregation of faces, some of whom he recognized clustered behind the cover of a solid looking wall. Some were ordinary seamen from the submarine’s water trials crew, a handful of construction workers and various electrical contractors; the lot of them was huddled around a small group of uniforms and a man named Neil Batten, TESS’ hired head of the base security team. He had a paper diagram on a ragged hunk of concrete flooring that showed the shed and surrounding buildings that constituted the TESS property and he was barking orders occasionally into a radio and pointing with a pen at the paper. Several men almost rose to their feet in panic when he and Wong materialized, slithering like snakes over the wall. Then a handful cheered when they recognized the pair. He patted his hands down to quiet them.

  “Any Q-Kink personnel here?” Two raised their hands at the back of the cluster, Pinta and Woo.—” Get aboard!” Bear shouted over the background racket. The rest of you . . . unless you are security personnel best get out of here. We do not need to endanger you further.” He jerked his chin over his shoulder to indicate the gunfire, grabbed Wong’s elbow and shouted into his ear over a loud exchange of gunfire and more grenades sounding nearer.

  “Get the sea doors open, cast off and be ready to head for sea. We move the sub away from this nuthouse until things settle down. I will join you in a second.”

  He did not wait for Wong to answer and the XO waved their two Q-Kink team mates to follow him and gamboled off towards the house of sub without a backward glance.

  He knelt by Batten.

  “Can you men hold them for ten more minutes and give us a little time?”

  Batten sported a fine head of red hair, rude curls that refused to lay flat. He nodded.

  “We’ll hold . . . but only for those few minutes.” He pointed at his map. “There are bad guys closing in from about 120 degrees of the perimeter . . .” He made a pie slice on his diagram. “. . . and while we are slowing them up, we were not ready for a raid of this size and I am having our security fall back slowly. It leaves only a narrow corridor to get this group and two others out of here to safety.” He jerked his head at the workers.

  Bear nodded in understanding.

  “Roger—buy us what time you can. Have you lost any?”

  Batten nodded.

  “Of course, they are throwing lots of bullets and shrapnel around—At least a half dozen and more wounded. Maybe two or three killed so far.”

  Bear nodded without comment but his face said he was pissed which was a rare enough expression on his face to show he really meant it.

  “Thank the wounded for me. Make sure I get the names of the families of the dead and the widows and orphans. If I survive I’ll do what I can for them.”

  Batten looked at him.

  “If you survive . . . ?”

  Bear grinned.

  “Other than the bullets, the ship is still experimental. We are kind of rushing it into production here . . . with my luck she’ll go out a half mile and sink like a stone.”

  Wong shouted something at him from a door in the big tent building surrounding the sub. It was drowned out by multiple weapons firing, but it was self evident that he was urging Bear to hurry. The XO disappeared back inside. Bear patted Batten clumsily on the shoulder, turned and ran. A pair of Batten’s security guys simultaneously led a cluster of non-combatants in a jog for the little used side gate to the compound that was still free of attackers. Batten was talking busily into his radio. Bullets chipped a concrete curb to the right of the door as Bear fell through it.

  Two months and twenty six days and one really bad hour after warning his fellow leaders of his suspicions of possible danger, Bear ran into the submarine shed just slightly ahead of his premonition’s posse behind him. He was annoyed the bad guys were early. Three or four of Batten’s guards were still there in the shed. They had the look of ex-Special Forces guys who liked to fire their guns; a lot. They demonstrated their tastes by popping caps behind him and over his shoulder as he passed by. He noted they were sticking to single shot, but impatient at the lack of noise they switched to full automatic in short order and heard the rattle of disciplined three round bursts without paying close attention.

  His attention was primarily focused on the boat. The sub lay like a large black whale, left forlorn on a beach by the tide, her hide scarred by crude and hurried work with blunt cutting torches, and her previously smooth lines made ungainly by wind after wind of packing straps that bound her like rope gammoning on a jury mast until she was half mummified. It was the same technique they had used on the B-52, modified on the much more massive scale of the sub. It was fast and effective at forming a corset to keep her figure pinched in space when air pressure inside would push her outer plates from the inside. There was a ring of large ellipsoid tanks full of fresh water welded to a steel ring around her belly that ruined her previous lovely lines built for shark-like aquadynamics. He scrambled up the curvature of her hull on a wooden ladder left there by Wong who stood on deck above brandishing a Beretta pistol casually. The guards left at the door indulged themselves in an orgasm of zeal and used all their remaining ammunition in a few seconds. They then immediately demonstrated that discretion was indeed the better part of rented valor and skedaddled around the rear of the sub headed for the back door. They had been replaced by two more men, the last li
ne of defense. The first two had made the posse think hard though about running into the door right away. They were sending single bullets through instead to remind outsiders that of the lesson. Several rounds penetrated the largely canvas walls and ricocheted now and again off the hull. There was blood on Wong’s torn shirt and he looked the image of some Dyak reaver of old. Bear glanced down at dockside and saw two men of Asian ancestry in moist black wetsuits lying on their backs and staring upward as if sunbathing sightlessly in the ceiling lamps. The XO had earned the blood on his shirt from the pair of swimmers who tried flanking the shed through the river. Bear felt no regret. The sprawled corpses would certainly have done the same to Wong and to the unarmed Bear.

  “Ready?” Panted Bear when he reached the same level as the piratical Wong.

  His XO grunted, put a foot on the top rung to the ladder and pushed it hard with his leg. It levered over and clattered sloppily onto the dock edge and then slipped and slithered into the water with a loud bloop.

  “Damn it!” Bear cursed. “I meant after I use the head!”

  Wong grinned as him as the pair of them tumbled down into the hatch at their feet. Wong dogged the hatch shut above their head.

  They reached the operations room after skinning a pair of ladders with burning palms and ten hurried steps. Wong called out in a voice with a hard edge.

  “Chief Pinta! Those sea doors better be open. All ahead on the screw and I hope that damn weld on the shaft holds or I’ll have someone’s ASS! Chief Killien you have the controls! Do it just like we did in the simulations last week!”

  “Aye, sir.” Shouted Killien who crouched on a stool in front of an incongruously small set of controls which included a tiny steering wheel. “Where away!” Killien asked in a nautical gale force voice—his ears still ringing from the gunfire.

  “Hard left inside the buoys for the channel in the river and dead out to sea . . . we need maneuvering room as fast as you can get it.”