“Links set with the Carlson?” Hiro inquired.
“Yes, sir, Carlson reports go and we have joint control through our boards.”
The LPD’s countermeasures arrays were fully as potent as the Cunningham’s, and both formidable systems had been harnessed in tandem through the joint-engagement matrix.
Hiro glanced at his wristwatch. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, the word is go in ninety seconds. Duration is still five minutes by the action plan. Heat ’em up.”
“Aye, aye, sir ”
The primary jammers came on line, the powerbars crawling up the display scales marked CLA-79 and LPD-26. The senior SO chuckled evilly. “Boy, the local couch potatoes are gonna hate our guts.”
Seated at the main console of the Makara headquarters security office, Chiang Long leaned back in his chair and yawned enormously, aiming yet another drowsy curse at his relief man.
Long’s proper guard shift was the treasured nine-to-five daytime, befitting his years of seniority within Makara Limited’s security division. But this afternoon, just short of the end of his shift he’d received a call from his division chief. The man supposed to cover the board during the five-to-one shift had called in unavailable. Somehow the idiot had gotten himself mugged and rolled, and now he was in hospital with a sprained shoulder. Long would have to cover the evening watch as well.
He didn’t object too strenuously to the overtime, but his wife was fixing unfried spring rolls and hokken mee noodles for dinner — his favorite. The packet of shrimp crisps from the lounge vending machine had been a poor substitute. Beyond that was the sheer boredom of night duty.
During the day, one could at least spy on the better-looking office ladies via the scanner cameras. After hours, there was nothing to watch but the empty hallways.
This evening, at least, there was the reception going on in the courtyard. That was outside of Long’s coverage sector: The special-team boys had that duty, the bastards. But at least the access corridor from the courtyard lobby to the rest rooms was open. The occasional low-cut evening gown made an interesting change from the usual heels and business suits on the day watch. Long had taken one of his six console monitors out of the rotational camera cycle and had left it permanently linked with the entry corridor camera. All in the interest of security, of course.
The courtyard lobby doors, the ones whose lock and alarm systems currently read DISENGAGED on the status boards, opened now, and a couple entered Long’s field of view. The man was only a man, one of the fat cats invited to the reception, but the woman was worth consideration.
She was Caucasian — a blonde, no less — maybe a little skinny for Long’s taste, but the tits were good. Reaching for the joystick of the camera scan override, he zoomed in on her for an inch-by-inch examination.
Hmmm, maybe not too skinny after all.
Long followed the couple down the entry hall to the rest room entries. They paused before the door to the women’s lounge, facing each other and conversing for a moment. Then, much to Long’s growing interest, the little blonde slipped her arms around the man’s neck and a most impressive kiss followed. As she came up on her toes, the pleasantly short skirt of her dress lifted until one could… almost… see…
Pah! The kiss ended and the skirt settled. Smiling, the blonde disappeared through the ladies’ lounge door, the one barrier in the building sacrosanct to Long’s hungry cameras.
Long yawned again and rubbed his gritty eyes. The show was over until she finished her business….
“Three… two… one… Jammers are active, sir.”
The task force’s electron warriors had spent all day consulting with stateside specialists in their field and modifying their systems for this attack. A waveform had been sculpted with the care of a Michelangelo, an intangible etheric sword designed to cut precisely across certain portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The ships’ planar arrays had also been aligned to blanket only the quadrant to the southeast. The island capital of Denpasar and its suburbs, as well as the Ngurah Rai Airport, would be uninvolved. “Brute force” electrical systems such as land-line telephone, lighting, and power would also be safe enough, as would most computer systems. “Frequency windows” had been carefully programmed into the strike that would leave processors and memory unaffected. Still, in an expanding cone-shaped zone engulfing Cape Benoa and the resort communities strung out along it, certain electronic devices convulsed.
When Long looked up again, all six of his camera monitors shimmered blankly in a cascade of snow.
Long sat erect, his boredom evaporating. As his eyes tracked across the console displays, the status board delivered another shock. Every motion sensor in the building had gone off simultaneously.
What in the hell…? He’d never seen anything like this before, even in the training programs. The hard-lock sensors hadn’t gone berserk, at least. All doors still read secure, as did the elevators, the safes, and the confidential hard-copy files.
But could he trust the readouts? What else might be going wrong?
Hastily, Long turned to the screen of the security office computer terminal, calling up the systems diagnostics display.
Green boards on both the television and the internal alarms. According to this damn thing, all systems were testing fully functional.
Long glanced uneasily at the red panic button, the one with the guard flipped down over it. A press on that would sound an alarm at the regional polisi headquarters, bringing outside assistance. But Long knew that his employers didn’t like outsiders, particularly from the local government, within the building — not unless there was a very good reason for it. That was why the manual man-break had been incorporated into the system. Indeed, that was why Long’s security cadre had been hired and brought in from Singapore. Best to keep things in the house until he had a grip on what was happening.
Long reached for the Motorola walkie-talkie plugged into its charger atop the console, intent on contacting the head of the outside security team. There was no response to his call, and when Long lifted his thumb from the transmit button, static sizzled angrily in his ear.
So, it was a problem from outside of the building. An electrical storm, perhaps, or some kind of sunspot interference like they’d had last year. A check of the landline phones showed they were still working.
Long glanced at the panic button again. If this was just some kind of natural phenomenon and he called in the police needlessly, he could be looking at empty corridors until his retirement. Likewise, his division chief enjoyed his sleep and didn’t appreciate unsubstantiated emergency calls. The smart move might be to just wait it out.
But what if it wasn’t some natural phenomenon?
Long stood up, loosening the Beretta automatic pistol in his shoulder holster. He was a capable security man and nobody’s fool. Before he did anything else, he would pull in a couple of the outside special force guards and have them institute an interior patrol. Then he’d see about sorting these systems out.
Donning his suit jacket, he deactivated the security office hard-lock alarms from the main console. Stepping to the entry, he released the dead bolt and swung open the heavy steel fire door. He started to make a visual sweep of the halflit central corridor beyond.