Seismic Surge. Don Pendleton
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up a drudgery as it devolved into rote observation and paperwork.
“Get the camera, Gerb. Document anything you can find,” Jackson ordered. Neither Gerb nor the other cameramen on the inspection teams really needed to be told this, but it was the best way that Jackson knew to turn off his partner’s manic running commentary.
While Gerber was normally a motormouth, when he was recording footage of safety violations, he had the steady focus of a laser beam.
That professionalism, as well as Gerber’s entertainment value, went a long way to helping Jackson forgive the younger man’s many quirks.
Now it was time to go to work.
* * *
“BERNIE! BERNIE!” Gerber shouted, his big green eyes wild and wide as he rushed back to Jackson’s side. He wondered what could light such a fire under his coworker’s
ass like that when a sudden bout of stammering answered his unspoken question. Jackson could recognize the symptoms of too many ideas competing to get out of Gerber’s mouth. Something that the jug-headed man caught on camera had led him to believe that he had conclusive, documented proof.
“Look! Just look!” Gerber squawked, pushing the LCD screen of the digital camera far too close to Jackson’s face. “I knew that the MIC was behind these accidents! Heyerdal is making weapons to provoke a world war!”
Jackson reached out, trying to still the camera so that he could get a better look. “Then let me look at it, dummy!”
Distant laughter from the closest pair of inspectors reached Jackson’s ears through the excited chatter and dancing of Gerber. Finally, he was forced to snap the camera out of his partner’s hands. “What the hell are you on about, son?”
“They killed workers who had stumbled on that dilapidated old hulk,” Gerber exclaimed. “Once those men saw the submarine pens, they had to die, so they wanted to lay proof about sabotage before we got here.”
The glow of the liquid crystal display showed the interior of a gutted freighter and small docks low in the water and designed for slender craft less than a quarter of the width of the hulk. They would have gone unnoticed had it not been for all of the recent accidents and the diligence of a young inspector with a head full of ideas. The dead freighter didn’t look out of place in a boatyard, as many shipbuilders found that good, extant hulls were a basis for updated craft. However, the footage showed a hull without a keel and small hydraulic doors at the front.
“That is damn strange,” Jackson muttered. “Especially since Heyerdal doesn’t have anything in its records about designing submersibles, just light seacrafts.”
“Told you!” Gerber snapped, all excited. “Secret submarines!”
Jackson pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose. Whenever Gerber got a hair up his ass, he was nearly incomprehensible. What a secret berth had to do with a conspiracy involving the government and Heyerdal’s deck designs would take forever to straighten out in an intelligible manner. But first he had to calm Gerber down, and right now, unfortunately, the kid had a gallon of adrenaline to burn off before he could make any sense.
“Gerb! Focus!”
“This could be used to sink international ships and draw the U.S. into another stupid, bloated war,” Gerber continued. “It’s the Lusitania all over again!”
“Gerb, they must have had weeks to clear anything out. Why would they even leave that area unlocked for you to stumble upon?” Jackson asked.
Something gave the older man pause.
Their two friends, though they had only been about a hundred feet away, close enough to laugh out loud at Gerber’s renewed antics, were now nowhere to be seen. That didn’t feel right, and Jackson’s scalp tingled as if his close-cropped gray-white hairs were all trying to stand up at once.
“Hey, Jake! Ned! Where’d you two go?”
Gerber’s agitation seemed to drain away, as if someone had cut a hole in the bottom of a tub. The call to their coworkers hadn’t seemed to calm the young man, but it had silenced him for the moment.
Gerber snatched back his camera and pulled his phone from his pocket. With a device in each hand, Gerber’s left thumb flew across the touch screen, his lips moving silently as if quietly narrating his own actions. “This is bad.”
“What are you doing?”
Gerber spoke up. “They don’t want witnesses.” This time his manic energy had disappeared, and his voice was flat and serious. The thrill of discovery had been shocked into submission by the dread of some realization. “Got to get the footage out.”
“Because Ned and Jake are probably smoking on government time?” Jackson asked. Even as he spoke the words, he lost faith in his rationalization. Something could have been wrong; he could feel that in the air, even though logic dictated that the deaths or disappearance of ten OSHA inspectors would actually invite even more intense scrutiny to whatever secrets lurked in the boatyard. Such a loss would probably involve the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, so any top-secret construction projects would simply be uncovered in the wake of foul play. They were simply too high profile to warrant any harm, even by the most desperate businessman intent on concealing his shady dealings.
Submarines? he thought to himself.
Why the hell would that be so important to kill witnesses? Sure, there were cases where companies, if they had failed at bribery, sometimes resorted to violence, but there had been no interaction between the OSHA team and the Heyerdal company. There should at least have been a man at the gate with an envelope full of cash.
As much as he tried to dismiss his fears, Jackson couldn’t quiet his nerves. He could sense a predator stalking in the shadows. No one had been allowed through the gate for the past week except for the OSHA team, not even the usual security guards hired to babysit the shipyard. He just couldn’t shake the feel of being stalked, the weight of malevolence hanging in the air.
“It’s out.” Gerber sighed with relief. “They can’t keep this shit quiet.”
“What? Where?” Jackson asked.
“App on my phone and built into the camera. It can read off the memory and then upload it to a backup site,” Gerber explained. “Better than the little piece of garbage in the usual cell. This transmits good, crisp images.”
“Why?” Jackson continued.
“Safety for us. Keeping my documentation of their secrets kills any incentive for them to do the same to us.”
Jackson looked around.
“Kill us? Try to silence us? No go,” Gerber said. He let loose a nervous titter. “Their dirt is now in the Cloud. The whole conspiracy sphere knows and is breathing this all in now.”
“Gerb, they wouldn’t kill federal inspectors,” Jackson countered. His strength ebbed, and he added in a softer, more nervous tone, “Would they?”
The red-haired ex-Navy man pocketed his phone after frowning at its screen. “I wish I had brought my knife.”
That was all Gerber had to say for Jackson’s sake. The older man brought out his walkie-talkie and keyed it. All he received was static, unfortunately. He tried again, but the radio was working; it just wasn’t receiving or transmitting any usable signal.
“Hey! Anyone’s walkies still working?” Jackson yelled as he transferred to his own cell. “Ned?”
“All the phones are out, Bernie,” Gerber said, deadly serious.
In the distance he could hear spasmodic coughing erupt. A silhouetted form, Jackson couldn’t tell who, staggered into view, then clutched his throat and chest, toppling over. Sudden bright flares, vomitous blossoms of flame, erupted throughout the area. Smoke billowed from multiple sources, obscuring the scene as at least two men screamed their last.
“Gerb,