Page 37 (1/2)

I BELIEVE YOU CHAIRMAN WILL, TOO

She appreciated his faith in her, but it was heartbreaking to see her brilliant older brother like this, robbed of his voice andthat she could not convince Womack about what really had occurred that day, for now Sylvia would play along with her theory She agreed that Juan Cabrillo ht be the only person ould believe her besides Mark But somehow, some way, she vowed to herself that she would find whoever was responsible for killing and injuring her friends and colleagues

And when she did, she would ain

TWENTY-ONE

NHULUNBUY, AUSTRALIA

Late December was smack in the middle of monsoon season in the Northern Territory An afternoon downpour pounded April Jin as she disembarked from the trimaran Marauder, named for the experimental plasma weapon stolen from the Americans that served as its o ship Shepparton, which aiting its final load before sailing She hurried toward the te the shore

The deepwater port was located next to a giant aluminum factory that had permanently shut down a few years before, its tanks and processing equiph the local bauxite , the closure of the refinery and the loss of its jobs had hit the small town of Nhulunbuy hard The town on the Gove Peninsula was so remote that one had to drive the seven hundred kilohway to reach it The townspeople were happy to get an infusion into the economy from a new business called Alloy Bauxite, a shell co

Jin’s stepfather had bought up fifty square miles of worthless land in the middle of a secluded swamp on the other side of the bay and built a secret facility there far froh the muddy marshland and shallow rivers to reach it where there were no roads at all, but Lu had thought of that, too Jin’s husband would be arriving on Lu’s transportation solution momentarily

She entered the office and shook out her raincoat before pouring herself a cup of coffee She stared at the laptop on the desk, barely able to control her curiosity The final piece of stepfather Lu’s plan was to be revealed today Jin was tereed to watch it with her husband, so she surfed Australian neebsites instead

Their attack from the day before was all over the internet, exactly as planned She scanned the articles for details The Australian Maritime Border Command had responded to a distress call from two ships in the Timor Sea, one American and one Australian There were survivors that were flown to a hospital in Darwin, but they were all seriously ill Ruas in an accident, that the patients were paralyzed after exposure According to reports, the ships had been perfor a classified experiment in a joint operation between the US and Australian militaries, so speculation was raot out of control Preprogra conspiracy theories that a secret Australian weapon was responsible for the tragedy

Jin s The seed of doubt and fear were already being planted in the public’s mind Even if the US and Australia decided to reveal what those ships had been really experi on, the truth would be scoffed at as a ridiculous cover story concocted to deflect blame for the accident

She was still savoring the irony when she heard the drone of huge propellers approaching She rose and went to the , looking not into the sky but out to the sea Although the thick rain obscured the view, she couldtoward the shore It wasn’t a ship It was a giant hovercraft called the Marsh Flyer

The rebuilt SRN4 was the type of hovercraft used to transfer passengers and vehicles across the English Channel before the opening of the Chunnel reen, s where four hundred passengers would have been seated and large doors at the front and back for loading up to sixty cars and sigantic propellers on steerable pylons used for propulsion and navigation A black skirt captured the air bloard by the lift fan, which allowed the Marsh Flyer to cruise froh the swamps and across the bay back to Nhulunbuy

The Flyer slowed as it approached the apron Jin always enjoyed watching it float out of the water and onto land in defiance of all normal expectations When it was on dry land, the hovercraft spun around on its axis until its tail was facing the docked Shepparton Then the lift fan was shut down, and the skirt deflated, easing the Flyer to the ground

A ra off in the direction of the freighter’s waiting cranes When they were all unloaded, Angus Polk cah the rainfall