"So that is my request — and quite a reasonable one, wouldn't you say? Surely the lives of 19 million people are worth a mere 50 million troy ounces of gold. That's 125,000 bullion bars, to be left on an unmanned vessel I will supply at the specified coordinates three miles off the northern coast of Nukuʻalofa, Tonga on New Year's Eve. Or Australia finds itself at the bottom of the ocean floor on New Year's Day."
The image of a beautiful dark-haired young woman with a knowing, Mona Lisa smile dissolved into a stylized diamond superimposed with the initials L D, then faded to black.
"Play it again," said Darcy, staring intently at the monitor.
Sam rolled her eyes but looped the video back to the beginning. Darcy was a pain in the ass know-it-all; she might be the captain of Alpha Squad, but Sam suspected she was spinning her wheels because she had no idea what to do in the face of their first actual major crisis.
She glanced over at the two newbies they'd been saddled with. Another of Ms. Petrie's brilliant ideas, the Big Sister program assigned each of the upperclassmen to mentor a member of the incoming class. So far she hadn't had much opportunity to form an opinion on hers; Recruit Trainee Bradshaw said little, just tended to huddle in a corner taking in everything with wide-eyed bewilderment. Hard to believe that she had received the highest possible score on the secret entrance test. They'd thought it was just a rumor, but Sam had confirmed it by breaking into the school's records database.
Darcy's Little Sister seemed more promising. Recruit Trainee Brewer was outgoing, abrasive and refused to be ignored. Word was that she had tested out of both Defensive Driving and the more advanced Aggressive Driving and would be the TA of the Egregiously Offensive Driving course when she matriculated in the fall.
The video came to an end again. Darcy turned in her chair to face the rest of the squad. "Okay, everyone. Thoughts?"
"Could it be a hoax? Someone trying to take advantage of the end-of-the-millenium paranoia?" said Bettina, chewing at her nails, stopping guiltily at a pointed glance from Darcy.
"Possibly. This Lucy Diamond character managed to tap into the television broadcast satellites of every major country in the world simultaneously. Pretty elaborate for just a hoax. Sam?"
"Still working out how she did that. No identifying marks on anything in the video and the signal itself is untraceably scrambled with the most sophisticated encryption tech I've ever seen. She could be literally anywhere."
"Can it really work? Could she really sink Australia?" Martine asked diffidently, blowing out a stream of smoke and tapping the ash from her cigarette into a potted plant, ignoring Sam's glare.
"The math checks out — if that laser is truly capable of what she claims," Sam shrugged. "If it is, it would be the most powerful one in existence by a factor of at least a thousand. So on the one hand, it seems like an impossibility, but on the other, we have to consider that she's somehow made the impossible happen."
"Okay, let's stick with what we know for now," said Darcy. "She claims to be part of the Reynolds Crime Syndicate, but none of the known operatives is named Diamond. She's also a lot younger than any of them."
Bettina looked up from her computer screen. "The amount she's demanding is pretty specific. 50 million troy ounces is the amount of gold produced in one year worldwide."
"Why Australia?"
Four heads swiveled around at the sound of the unfamiliar voice.
Recruit Trainee Bradshaw blinked at the sudden attention and swallowed hard.
"What do you mean?" said Sam, deliberately softening her tone. The girl looked as though she wished she could sink to the bottom of the ocean.
She bit her lip. "I just meant, it seems like a random target. Almost too random. But in order to accomplish what she's threatening, she'd have to have a lot of infrastructure already in place, which means that this is territory she's familiar with. And logistically speaking, that laser has to be somewhere in the vicinity — even as powerful as it's supposed to be, the limiting factor is the prism. So she has to be somewhere nearby."
Sam scowled, mostly because she was pissed that she hadn't figured that out as well. Her fingers flew over her keyboard. "Bingo. There's a Lucy Diamond enrolled in the Master of International Business program at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. She's American, 24 years old, owns an import-export company and has a Sydney P. O. Box listed as her primary address." She entered multiple search strings and frowned as the results streamed in. "This is weird. Everything in her record is squeaky clean. Not even so much as a parking ticket. So what's the connection with the Reynolds family?"
"That's what we've got to figure out. But it's a lead," said Darcy, scribbling notes on a pad.
Recruit Trainee Brewer leaned forward intently. "So how do we take this bitch down? And when do I get a gun?"
Darcy raised a patronizing eyebrow. "We will have to do a lot more research and wait for orders. You two will finish out your senior year of high school and continue attending orientation sessions here on campus, not in the line of fire. There's too much liability and we can't waste our resources babysitting — "
"Attention, D.E.B.S.!" barked Mr. Phipps from their monitors as the general alarm sounded. "Convenience store hold-up in progress, potential hostage situation. Alpha and Gamma Squads, report to HQ ASAP!"
As the squad members scrambled for their weapons and communicators and prepared to leave, Sam stopped in front of her trembling charge. "Nice work, Amy. You've got good instincts."
The girl blinked rapidly again — it seemed to be a nervous habit — and then smiled, the previously rabbity face instantly transformed. Well, what do you know, there's a real personality behind that impossibly naïve exterior. Maybe this mentoring thing won't be such a drag after all, thought Sam. Then her mind turned to the job at hand, everything else forgotten, as she followed her team out the door.