getting close to Tel Aviv . .
. one hit to the three main religions' complex in Jerusalem, and it's on."
"I know," Carlos said. "That's why, after thinking about this hard and long, I'm suggesting
a more conservative ap proach."
Mouths dropped open at the table and didn't close.
"I'm serious," Carlos said, glancing at everyone's expres sion.
"We know," Mike said, leaning forward and glancing at Shabazz, then Inez. "Baby, you ain't root the man, did you?"
"Naw, that would have to be Damali," Inez said. "Carlos, you feel all right?
Conservative?"
"You?" Marlene said, fanning her face. "Oh, now I know it's the end of days."
"C'mon, y'all, I'm not that bad," Carlos said, laughing, but he glanced at Damali for support. He smiled wider when she could only shrug on his behalf. "Okay, maybe conserva tive is the wrong word. Maybe I should have said smarter... hit 'em how they don't expect."
"Okay, now that's my husband," Damali said, leaning forward with her elbows on the table and making the group laugh. "Semantics. Let's go before he starts talking in Dananu."
"I'm crushed, girl," Carlos said, flinging a balled-up nap kin at her, that she caught. "But we did this before in Sydney, sort of."
Damali closed her eyes and laughed. "And the man said conservative."
"Can I state my case, please?"
"Go ahead," Damali said, waving her hand. "At least this time we get to hear it before you make it up as we go along."
Carlos laughed. "Yeah, well, I'm mentally designing this on the fly, so think about it. J.L., I need your technology ex pertise on this." He looked around and J.L. leaned forward and nodded. "Cool. I'm thinking, since you know who owns the airwaves, and we have solid Guardian signature patterns in several locations already, we simulcast the concert, live, just like they do the international New Year's Eve count downs, into zones too hot to get our team in and out of quickly. This means teams don't have to necessarily gather."
"I'll be honest," Dan said, "I really wasn't feeling drag ging the team in and out of all these airports ... uh, right now, with things being as hot as they are."
"We feel you, man," Shabazz said. "We know the deal. But we've still gotta work - just find a way to work smarter, not harder."
"That's where I'm going," Carlos said, nodding to ac knowledge Dan's concern. "We've gotta use the technology like they do. Shabazz said it - work smarter. So, we get un
derground units of Guardians that we already know to send clips from the concert to each other on the Internet, bounce 'em through the Covenant, who can flip 'em to teams we haven't yet met. When they make the clips, they can edit the tactical energy wave pattern for me and Damali right into the clip like a subliminal message or code encased in mental silver - white light."
"That's smooth, man," J.L. said, rubbing his chin.
"This way our own can know what to hone in on." Carlos stopped for a moment and looked out toward the beach. "Yeah, by doing it over the Net, we have a way to secure the data bursts with some type of prayer encryption code or password - so when the darkside hacks it to try to see what this special flurry of messages are that're spiking on the In ternet, it fries their brains, their tubes, their sight. It oughta backward protect the sender and receiver's machines, too, if they're our people - so if the wrong side gets it, bam... smoking black hole. They don't even know where it came from, no trace. In and
out, smooth."
"That is nasty, man," J.L. said, reaching around several Guardians to slap Carlos five.
"Like our teams caught be hind firefights in Lebanon, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Iraq, we could ask Rabbi, Imam, and Father Pat to give us some strong prayer ammo, word phrases, specific passages in the old texts that if the wrong side opens it - "
"Yeah," Carlos murmured. "Like a silver shot virus that keeps imploding throughout their network, and the only way to get at it is to shut down cells, cut it off, black out a part of their network before they can bring it back up again. We've been going about this the conventional way. High body count on our side. We saw what one backfired spell did - -shut 'em down for twenty-four hours. We've got to fight nasty, like them. Send them some bugs they can't shake in their house."
Damali watched him