“You still suspect me?” Raven asked. “Even after all the money I’ve secured for the cause?”
“I’m a careful man.”
Raven tensed, ready to fight if she had to. It would take time for the rest of her team to extricate her in an emergency.
“We’re two cars behind you,” came a honey-thickened Louisiana drawl in her ear. It was Marion MacDougal “MacD” Lawless, who’d been listening to her through the molar mic. “Be aware traffic back into the capital is moving slower than a Mardi Gras parade. If this is a fake-out, it’ll take us an hour to get back to the conference center.”
“So why bring me along?” Raven asked Sinduk.
“Because I want you to prove yourself. You need to show me that you’re really invested in our cause.”
“How?”
It couldn’t be a suicide bombing. She would have felt a bomb in the backpack.
“The Americans sent two Senators to the summit. Certainly, those are the kind of highly priced targets that would get attention in the United States.”
“But we’re nowhere near the conference center,” Raven said.
“The security around Denpasar is impenetrable. We wouldn’t get within a half mile of the conference hotel before we were stopped.”
“But you want the attack to happen while they’re here.”
“It has to happen while they’re here. The Americans are arrogant. They think they are invulnerable. But we will show them that they are not safe anywhere.”
Sinduk picked up the backpack and unzipped it. He pulled out some clothes and tossed them to Raven.
“You’ll wear that,” he said.
She held up two small pieces of cloth. It was a blue and green bikini.
“You must be joking,” she said.
“You’re tall, but it should fit. You have to blend in with the tourists. Don’t worry, I have a sarong for you as well.” He handed her the sheer wrap.
The other men began removing their suits, revealing colorful tank tops and swim trunks underneath. She now realized they’d worn suits merely to throw her off.
“Don’t worry,” Sinduk said, misunderstanding her uneasy expression for shyness. “You won’t have to change in front of us.”
But she was more concerned that she would no longer be able to communicate with her team once she changed since the transceiver for her molar mic was cleverly embedded in her clothes.
The van turned and slowed as if they were approaching their destination.
At the same time, she heard MacD say in her ear, “What the what? What are these guys fixin’ to do?”
The van came to a stop. Sinduk slid the door open, and Raven suddenly understood why MacD was confused.
They were stopped in a vast parking lot set along a seaside cliff. Above a crowded entrance pavilion was a large sign that said “Welcome to Ocean Land.” A row of tall hedges stretched to either side, and Raven could see waterslides towering behind them.
“A waterpark?” she said.
“The newest and biggest on Bali,” Sinduk said. “Very popular with foreigners.”
“What’s the plan?” She noticed that the entrance pavilion had metal detectors and guards checking bags. “We can’t get any weapons inside.”
“That is why we have cells independent of one another, so that you can’t know enough to be a problem. There will be guns waiting for us inside along with more men. Besides,” he added, ominously, “we have a backup plan.”
For just a second, he glanced out to the channel separating them from a nearby island covered in jungle vegetation, but all Raven saw was a single fishing boat collecting the morning’s catch.
“And what’s my role?”
Sinduk handed her a small ceramic knife. “You should get this through the metal detector without trouble.”
“What do you expect me to do with it?”
“The American Senators’ spouses are currently enjoying a day out with their children while the summit is going on,” Sinduk said, eyeing her carefully. “To prove you are really one of us, you’re going to use that knife to kill one of them.”
TEN
THE TIMOR SEA
Sylvia Chang’s clothes were in tatters, but she’d suffered only minor burns. She could do nothing but watch in horror as the Namaka was blasted apart while she clung to the experimental drone they hadn’t recovered before the assault began. She couldn’t fathom a reason for them being targeted, but she recognized the type of weapon the hostile trimaran was using to decimate the American research ship. As stunning as the realization was, she could come to no other conclusion. It had to be a plasma cannon.
Her own work with the Rhino plasma shield meant she was very familiar with the concept, but she had no idea someone had made such an enormous breakthrough. In any other context, the discovery would have been exhilarating. Now it was simply terrifying.
Of course, she had heard about the MARAUDER experiments conducted for the Strategic Defense Initiative at Lawrence Livermore in the nineties. MARAUDER stood for Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultrahigh Directed Energy and Radiation, and the idea was to force superhot ionized gas into a doughnut-shaped ring and shoot it out at ridiculously high velocities. Some estimates were that it would reach two thousand miles per second.
The project was a success in its early stages, which led to MARAUDER being classified by the military. But despite her own top secret clearance, Sylvia could find no further mention of a working plasma weapon, so she believed that the next phase had been a failure, and the project was disbanded.
Here, however, was proof that a plasma cannon was not only viable but devastatingly effective. The Namaka had been reduced to a burning hulk in mere minutes, sinking into the water by her stern. It wouldn’t be long until she was completely swallowed by the ocean.
Strangely, their other research ship, the Empiric, was mostly spared. Only the masts of the ship had been melted, preventing any contact by radio or satellite.
What was even odder was the launch of a different weapon from the trimaran. It shot a rocket toward the Empiric that detonated directly above it, dispersing a fine mist that settled over the ship. After that, the Empiric had been unmolested by the trimaran, but it made no effort to escape, and she could see no activity on her deck. The Australian research vessel just floated there, adrift, like a ghost ship.
Sylvia’s idea to climb onto the drone to get out of the water was dashed when the unknown trimaran, instead of slinking away, motored toward her and the sinking Namaka. She kept the drone between her and the trimaran, with just her eyes peeking out from behind it.