“Yeah, we’ve been looking into that. We think the Malaysian government may have purchased them from the Ukraine roughly a year ago, then had them shipped into the country. I won’t know for sure for a while.”

“You think they’re working with the terrorists?”

“I don’t know. There’s no evidence. As a fellow member of ASEAN, they should be allies.”

“Being allies hasn’t stopped people from going to war before,” said Zen.

“Agreed. If we had evidence that they were cooperating, we might be able to pressure them to stop.”

Good luck, thought Zen. He glanced over at the clock on the night table, hoping Breanna was long gone from there.

Brunei

1910

The back of Sahurah’s head continued to pound as he got out of the car and walked slowly to the house. The pain had been with him since yesterday evening, a dull throb that receded at times, but never fully lifted.

A woman with her face covered met Sahurah at the door, staring at him a moment before removing the chain to open it fully. She had a machine pistol in her hand, similar to the one Sahurah had given the boy yesterday. Sahurah frowned at the weapon as he passed into the house. Women were useful in some situations, he believed, and certainly the faithful might follow the dictates of the Prophet, but to arm them was close to folly, and to depend on them at a moment of stress surely desperation.

The two young brothers at the end of the foyer, both equipped with AK47s, were much more reassuring. Sahurah recognized one—he had been in the boat for the beach mission—and nodded before passing by them to go upstairs to the room he had been given. Inside, he closed the door and lay down on the wide bed. He spread his arms out as if supplicating the angels for relief of his headache and tried to sink into the mattress beneath his back.

Just as the pain began to ebb, a sharp knock on the door brought it crashing back.

“Commander Sahurah?” said a voice he did not recognize. “Yes.”

“Commander Besar wishes to discuss the day’s events with you”

Sahurah opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling another moment, then closed them again. He pushed his right leg down so that it bent to the floor, and rolled his body to its side, rising like a wounded animal struggling to its feet. He went to the door, and was surprised to see that the messenger was a man nearly three times his age, with hair whiter than bleached cotton.

Sahurah followed him back down the stairs, through a pair of empty rooms, into a hallway that led to a suite at the back of the house. There was a pool and a patio to the left; the old man led him outside through a pair of French doors, gesturing to the semicircle of chairs just beneath the roof.

Besar sat with his back to him, flanked by a pair of women in Western-style bathing suits. The women were of Chinese extraction—no Muslim would dress so outrageously, surely. They sipped from tall glasses of liquor, both of them obviously drunk.

Pain poked into the side of his head, a hot spear breaking through the bone into the soft flesh.

“Commander Sahurah, sit, sit,” said Besar. He gestured and the women rose. Sahurah closed his eyes and they were gone.

“Besar,” he said, still standing where he had been.

“You don’t look well. And yet your operations have had exceptional results. Sit. Sit. Rest yourself.”

Sahurah managed to slide over to a nearby chair. He had the exact opposite opinion of his missions. The attack on the restaurant had killed only a few people, since the boy had not managed to ignite the bomb before being killed. He had helped plan other operations, including two attacks today on police stations that had demolished both buildings, but to take credit for their success when he himself had not expended any effort would be a great sin.

“Relax, my young friend. Relax. Have a drink.” Besar pushed a glass into his hands. Sahurah, suddenly thirsty, brought it to his lips, then smelled the bitterness of the liquid. He threw the glass to the ground.

Besar laughed. “Never to be tempted”

Sahurah’s head pounded or he would have yelled at Besar, who was always playing such tricks. Besar snapped his fingers, and someone walked toward them. Sahurah, his eyes still closed because of the pain, heard liquid being poured.

“Tea only, my friend, iced tea from China. A soothing drink,” said Besar.

Sahurah was not sure whether to trust him or not. He opened his eyes and saw the glass being held out to him. The young man with the glass trembled slightly.

“Is it tea?” Sahurah asked.

“Yes, Commander.”

“I will kill you if it’s not” Sahurah took the glass. It contained only tea.

“You really have to relax,” said Besar. “And remember the teaching—our sins are being cleansed by our actions.”

“Forgiveness is not a license to sin.”

“Life without sin is not possible,” said the other guerilla leader. “We are men, not angels. Even an ayatollah sins. The imam himself is not without fault; he has said so himself. You are not holier than a holy man, are you?”

Sahurah did not answer. Soon this would all be over, he told himself. He would soon receive the order from the imam to join his brothers in heaven. Sahurah prayed for that day; he prayed for release from the throb at the top of his head.

“Five hundred brothers from the Malaysian territory will join us by daybreak,” said Besar. “We will storm the sultan’s palace at eight, after the council arrives.”

“Five hundred?” said Sahurah. The number seemed incredible.

“Too little, you think?” For the first time, Besar’s voice was contrite, even concerned.

“I could do it with twenty,” said Sahurah, who had planned such a mission several months before.

Besar laughed lightly, then reached over and patted his knee. “You are thinking too conservatively now, Sahurah. We have the entire country to take over. Capturing the sultan is a priority.”

“How will we feed five hundred men?”

“From the sultan’s own kitchen,” said Besar, sliding back in his chair.

San Francisco

0430

Dog’s weight against her side felt reassuring, and as she stared into the dimly lit hotel room Jennifer realized she felt safe for the first time in weeks.

What was safety? Being comfortable? Being immune to attack? She’d been on combat deployments and in test aircraft and not felt vulnerable. It was when she’d been accused of being a traitor to her country—that was when she had felt vulnerable.

Why’? Because people didn’t believe in her? Or because she didn’t believe in herself?

Was she afraid that she might be a traitor? That she might not truly believe in all the things she professed to believe?

That her father, dead before she was born, might think of her as an unworthy daughter?

Dog rolled away onto his side. Jennifer slid over, pushing her hand up across his arm and then over his chest, clutching him from behind.

Tecumseh believed in her. He loved her. She could feel it like a physical thing, a coat she could wear. He was inattentive at times, maddeningly so. But he had many concerns, and the same could easily be said of her. His love, however, couldn’t be questioned.

She pressed her breasts against the muscles of his back, starting to drift back to sleep.

And then the phone rang.

“Rrrrr,” said Dog, the sound more like a snore than a word.

“Phone?” she muttered.

“Yeah.” He reached toward it, dragging the receiver to his ear. “Bastian,” he said.

Jennifer already knew that it would be Dreamland—and that it inevitably meant it was time to get up. She sighed, then swung out of bed to take a quick shower before dressing.

Brunei

1930

“We have to get missiles for the Megafortress,” Mack told McKenna as he drove back to the airport. “I’ll try calling around and see if I can break through the paperwork crap. Maybe I can beg some out of Dreamland.”