⚔️🛡️ The rain outside the safe house had become a death drumbeat. Indah knew The Nine's protocol. If Victor had issued an elimination order, the cleanup team wouldn't be far behind. She had less than three minutes before the building was surrounded.
Indah moved with flawless agility, fast and efficient. She pulled on a black tactical jacket made of lightweight Kevlar, slipped her karambit into the sheath at the small of her back, and strapped two suppressed semiautomatic pistols to her thighs. Her backpack held only hacking equipment, extra ammunition, and the flash drive from Professor Hendra.
Beep. The motion sensor on the front door lit up red. They were here.
Indah didn't use the front door. She smashed through the fragile wooden ceiling and punched a hole in it, climbing into the narrow space between the roof and ceiling. The next second, the safe house's front door exploded inward. Three men in tactical gear entered with short-barreled weapons, sweeping the room with green lasers.
"Clear!" one of them shouted.
Indah, directly above them, held her breath. She crawled along the wooden beams, moving silently like a spider. Below her, the pursuers began checking the laptop she'd deliberately left running as a distraction.
Now.
Indah dropped from the ceiling, landing squarely on the rearmost man's shoulder. With one swift twist, she snapped his neck before he could scream. The other two men spun around, but Indah was already moving. She ducked beneath a spray of bullets and drew her karambit.
Slash!
The curved blade tore through the first opponent's hamstring, sending him tumbling to the floor. Indah carried her momentum forward, spinning like a ballerina with nimble precision, and drove the tip of her blade into a gap in the second opponent's tactical helmet. Hot blood sprayed across her face, but her eyes remained cold and focused.
She snatched up the fallen opponent's submachine gun and fired at the small gas tank in the corner of the room.
BOOM!
The explosion produced a cloud of smoke that could conceal her body. Indah leaped out through the back window, landed on the roof of a car parked in the narrow alley, and immediately ran toward the main road.
At 4:00 a.m., Jakarta was still dominated by night. Indah headed for the Shadow Bus Terminal on the outskirts of the city; she needed a vehicle that couldn't be tracked by GPS. On the main road, a black sport bike was being warmed up by its owner in front of a convenience store. Without a word, Indah approached, kicked the man to the ground, and took over the handlebars.
"Sorry. Emergency," she whispered coldly before gunning the bike until its engine roared.
"Hey!" the bike's owner shouted behind her.
Behind her, two black SUVs emerged from the darkness, their high beams dazzling her. The chase was on. Indah weaved between the container trucks beginning to fill Jakarta's roads. The speedometer climbed to 140 kilometers per hour. Bullets began flying, shattering her motorcycle's side mirror.
Indah drew a deep breath and sped toward an overpass still under construction. The road ended abruptly, a wide concrete chasm yawning beyond it. The SUVs behind her slowed, their pursuers certain they had her trapped. But Indah only accelerated.
"Never underestimate Nightingale," she hissed.
She yanked the handlebars, launching into the air and clearing the ten-meter gap between the sections of the overpass. The bike landed with a brutal jolt, throwing sparks as its undercarriage scraped against the concrete. She had made it. The SUVs behind her were forced to slam on their brakes, their tires screaming against the asphalt.
Indah kept going, vanishing into Jakarta's morning fog and leaving her pursuers frozen on the gaping asphalt road.