Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

He’d have to wait and hope they left. Of course, if they opened the door, the whole operation would be a bust.

* * *

—

Natalie Taylor was arguing with the chef in the kitchen next to the ballroom. He claimed that there was no record of a cake that was supposed to be delivered to the party.

“I didn’t approve that monstrosity,” the Frenchman said, sneering at the giant novelty cake. He’d been flown in from Paris especially for this event.

“Mr. Mallik himself requested it,” Taylor said in a calm voice. “Here, I’ll show you.”

She took a piece of paper from her pocket. It was an invoice with Romir Mallik’s signature on it. Even Mallik would think it was his own handwriting.

The chef examined it carefully, frowning the entire time.

“If you’d like to interrupt Mr. Mallik while he’s entertaining guests, I’m sure he’d be happy to come in here and attend to this. Or maybe you could call him.” She wasn’t bluffing. She’d be perfectly happy for Mallik to come into the kitchen.

“You can’t expect me to have his personal number,” the chef said.

“No, but I do,” Taylor said, holding out her phone. “He said to call him if there was any trouble.”

The chef pursed his lips, then shoved the invoice back to her.

“Fine. When does he want it?”

“Now.”

“But we are still serving the hors d’oeuvres!”

She raised an eyebrow and held out the phone again.

The chef put up his hands in surrender. “All right. It’s his party. But is any of that edible?”

“Just the top tier.”

“Before you go, let me finish preparing the rest of the desserts to go with it.”

“How long will that take?”

“Just a few minutes.”

Taylor made a show of looking at her watch. “I will wheel this out in two minutes no matter what.” She lowered the bunting over the sides of the cart to hide the wheels.

While she waited for the chef and his staff to frantically get the desserts ready, she looked at her phone, activating the app she would need once the cake was in place in the ballroom.

Inside the cake was a tripod-mounted remote-controlled machine gun called a Small Caliber Ultra-Light, or SCUL. Her app showed the view from its thermal camera, which could see through the paper-thin sides of the cake. With the controls on her phone, she could rotate the gun in a three-hundred-sixty-degree arc, raise or lower the angle of the barrel, and fire its eight hundred rounds of belt-fed 5.56mm bullets.

In a few minutes, Mallik’s ability to stop the Colossus Project would be finished. As soon as the cake was locked in place in the ballroom and Taylor had a clear view of him, she’d cut him down, taking as many of the guests with him as she could. She’d escape in the panic and confusion after she made sure he was dead.

* * *

—

Raven, unhappy that she was relegated to serving as distracting eye candy, pretended to sip her champagne as she watched the hallway to the restrooms. MacD, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying himself. Women continually gave him the once-over as they passed by.

“Mallik sure is well connected,” he said. “Ah recognize at least four high-ranking generals here, in addition to the celebrities and politicians.”

“How do you know?” Raven asked.