"Activate the device."

“Melvin. Activate the device.”

“Are you sure, boss? If this backfires, it could…”

“Do it.”

Melvin pulls the lever. There’s a sound like a thunderclap as the souped-up anti-bikini field generator, set up on the roof of the Delta Omega Mu sorority house, crackles to life. The boys feel an eerie pulse of energy wash over their bodies, making their hair stand on end, as bolts of electricity leap between the machine’s bristling antennas.

Then, silence.

“Power overload,” reports Melvin. “Boss, d-d-d-d-d-did… did it work?”

“Simon! Status report!”

“Checking live feeds from Copacabana,” reports Simon, scanning a huge bank of computers. “Getting some distortion in the signal. Not sure if…”

He pauses. There’s a huge smile on his face.

“Boys,” he says. “Get over here.”

The boys all scuttle over to look at the screens. They smile as well.

On Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, perhaps the most famous bikini spot in the world, thousands of beautiful brown women are running in every direction, covering their bodies with their arms as they squeal their little heads off. Some of them are fighting over towels. Every single bikini on the beach has been removed in an instant.

Chad cracks open a beer.

“Let’s do another one,” he says, checking the control panel. Tape labels have been attached to a number of preset co-ordinates. Waikiki. Surfers Paradise. Miami. Saint-Tropez. Mykonos. “Does anyone know what time it is in Greece?”