Lost in that consideration, she was startled by the deep and resonant voice that spoke from behind her. “Good evening, Captain.”
Turning swiftly, she found herself face-to-face with the enemy.
“I’ve been remiss as a host,” Harconan continued soberly. “You are my guest of honor, and yet, I’ve been able to devote almost none of my time to you. l apologize.”
Amanda’s voice caught in her throat for a moment, then she continued smoothly. “No apologies are required Mr. Harconan. It’s a lovely evening and a wonderful welcome to this part of the world.”
“A gesture.” He shrugged. “I’ve noted you on the dance floor, availing yourself of our entertainment. I trust the music has been to your liking?”
“Excellent,” she replied. You may be a pirate, Makara Harconan, she added silently, but you do know how to throw a party.
“I’m pleased.” He held out his hand to her. “Then, shall we enjoy it together?”
The silent pager clipped to the inside of her skirt waistband vibrated a three-ring burst. Chris’s signal her op was starting.
Amanda smiled and set her glass down on a table. “I’d love to,” she replied, moving into Harconan’s arms.
With the action notification sent over the silent pager net, Christine Rendino tapped a second number into her phone. Keying the call into the local cellular system, she waited.
The call was picked up on the first ring. “Yes?” A guarded voice answered.
“Authenticator Victoria George,” Christine murmured. “Execute. T minus two. Duration five.”
“Acknowledged. T minus two. Duration five.” The connection broke.
Christine snapped the phone shut, tucking it away in her evening bag. Glancing up into Inspector Tran’s face, she stated. “I have a sudden overwhelming urge to go tinkle.”
“And when one has to go …” Tran deactivated the miniaturized “bug sniffer” he had used to ensure their concealing pocket of shadows had been free of security microphones. Together they started toward the courtyard entrance of the Makara Limited headquarters building.
Makara Limited was a decisively security-conscious firm. They had hired a major Singapore-based private security agency to wrap their operations in multiple layers of high-tech corporate defense. Literally the best money could buy shielded the Makara headquarters building.
But that was its vulnerability as well. What could be bought once could be bought again, and Christine and Tran were eager purchasers.
The “acquisition of cooperation” is an art form in Asia, and Christine Rendino and Nguyen Tran were artists each in their own medium. For Tran, it was in the deft use of his National Police identification card and the hinted-at power of the all-encompassing Singapore national government. For Christine, it was in the deft use of a smile and access to NAVSPECFORCE’s “special contingency” funds.
During the days before the Carlson’s departure from Singapore, they had mapped out the Makara security network, bit by bit and contractor by contractor.
Layer one would be building access. After business hours, all exterior doors in the climate-controlled building were locked and alarmed. Access was possible only through the use of both an employee’s computer-coded key card and clearance through the internal security station.
Oddly enough, the reception itself breached this first barrier. One simply could not ask the wife of the French ambassador to use a port-a-potty. The courtyard entry of the headquarters building had been left open to permit access to the ground floor rest rooms.
A stolid Nung Chinese security guard stood at parade rest next to the open courtyard doors. As Christine and Tran brushed past him, he nodded politely, then refocused his attention to the outside building approaches. What happened inside was someone else’s responsibility.
The entry lobby and the corridor beyond it were done in muted tans with framed batik panels intermittently adding flares of dramatic color. The indirect lighting had been toned down and their footfalls were silent on the fitted carpeting.
Directly ahead at the T intersection with the central building corridor, a small dark glass dome had been inset into the ceiling. Christine felt another set of eyes regarding her.
Harconan’s interior defense line would present a far greater obstacle. Low-light-capable security cameras, like the one at the intersection, monitored every hallway, stairwell, and public area. Every interior office door was alarm-locked and every office space blanketed by radar-type motion sensors.
Multiply redundant, with an independent power backup instantly available, this was no Hollywood movie security system that could be deactivated by the snipping of a few convenient wires.
Christine and Tran had concluded the system to be almost impenetrable by conventional means. Fortunately, they had far more than conventional means available to them.
Seven kilometers away, at Benoa Port, Commander Ken Hiro returned the cellular-linked interphone to its cradle. He’d passed on the reception tonight, preferring to personally oversee a different round of “festivities” from shipboard. Turning, he crossed the screen-lit dimness of the Cunningham’s hexagon-shaped Combat Information Center, passing from the radio shack, starboard side forward, to the electronic warfare bay, portside aft.
Beneath his rubber-soled shoes, the Duke’s deck trembled lightly. Down in the power rooms, one of the cruiser’s three massive turbine/electric generator sets was spooling up to feed the upcoming load demand.
In the EW bay, the systems operators looked up from their workstations with anticipation. Tonight was going to be an interesting challenge. They would be applying the awesome power of their electronic arsenal in a way not exactly intended, or ever before used.
“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 i
nterest 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.
Before he could complete the move, something silver flicked from left to right across his field of vision, a polished coin that bounced down the beige carpeting.
Long couldn’t stop the instinctive turn of his head to follow the flash of movement. But then he froze entirely, feeling the circular coolness of a gun barrel pressing against the back of his neck.
“Continue turning, please,” a masculine voice said in flawless Straits Chinese. “All the way to your right. Raise your hands, then step forward, just three paces. Do not look back over your shoulder. It would not be wise.”
Karate-trained, Long tensed, readying to try for a spin, block, and strike. Before he could act, however, the gun barrel was withdrawn as his ambusher stepped back, denying Long his positioning mark. Whoever this man was, he was not an amateur.
Long completed his turn to the right and lifted his hands, taking the three steps down the corridor as ordered. The pistol was not removed from his shoulder holster; both Long and the man standing behind him knew it was an irrelevance at the moment.
The guard strained his ears, catching the hint of another footfall, a suggestion someone had just passed into the security office. Who else was here? What did they want and might it include his life?
“How is your family in China faring, Long?”
Those words snatched up the guard’s attention. What could this man know of his family? And how?
“Your elder brother in Singapore is working hard to get your mother out of China,” the voice continued evenly. “Your mother, your cousin and his wife, their children. Things are hard after a civil war has ravaged a nation. There is little work in Guangxi Zhuangzu region, where they live. Food is scarce, medicine is hard to come by…. Your grandmother is ailing, is she not, Long? I know both you and your brother have been trying to bring them to safety to Singapore. But getting the immigration permits is difficult … so difficult.”
Long felt a slight tug at the side of his coat.
“There is a card in your pocket, Long. It has a name on it, an official in the Ministry of Immigration. This official could be of great use to you in your quest to bring your family to safety and prosperity. There is also a date and a time for an appointment with this official. He has your brother’s name and will be expecting him. Truly, this may be your best chance for obtaining the permits you require. It would be such a pity if an … untoward incident should lead to the cancellation of this appointment and the loss of this opportunity….”
Inside the security office Christine Rendino, skintight rubber gloves drawn on over her hands, slipped into the still-warm chair behind the systems console.
This was the last line of defense to overcome: the cybernetic guards overwatching the Makara Limited internal computer network. Here, too, no expense had been spared. Christine had greased copies of Makara Limited’s purchasing orders from a junior clerk in the office of their corporate software provider. Specifically the ones involving computer security.
Even she was impressed. There
would be no easy way to batter past the firewalls and virus screens erected around Makara Limited’s secrets. Nor, once inside, would there be any way to quickly and easily find a way through the maze of in-company encryption barricades that had been deployed.
Even the physical use of a Makara network terminal required both a company key card and a personal access code recognized by the system … unless, of course, one could get access to an already active terminal, such as this one in the security office.
Leaning in over the keyboard, Christine made no effort to penetrate deeper into the network. There was no time and far too many chances of tripping an internal watchdog program. Instead, she called up the Internet provider used by Makara Limited, typing in the Web address of Sony Business Security Systems Division.
From the main menu, she windowed up the USER TROUBLESHOOTING Web page. She went to the STATE PROBLEM window and typed in a memorized eight-digit code.
A FILE READY TO DOWNLOAD prompt appeared on her screen and she moused over and double-tapped, initiating it.
That was the interesting thing about computer firewalls: They were one-dimensional, keeping intruders out. However, as with a vampire, if something was invited in, all bets were off.
The programmers at Sony Security would not have recognized the link Christine had just keyed off of their Web site. They had not incorporated it into their system. It had not even existed twenty minutes before, and after this single use, it would disappear as rapidly as it had materialized, leaving no trace of its brief presence. All involved security and provider logs would register only a routine information request to a reputable host within proper business-use parameters.
Likewise, the Makara antivirus screens would not recognize the sophisticated espionage program caging itself over their operating systems. Until further notice, the combat hackers at NAVSPECFORCE’s computer warfare center in San Diego would have an open back door into the Makara business net.
Target Lock Page 23