Redback (20 page)

Mick Fleming meanwhile decided to take control of the misfit in the group. 'Alan, why don't you
take a stroll with me and I'll introduce you to the Prime Minister.'

Alan did not need to be asked twice, while Shirley, uncertain what to do so suddenly on her own,
dithered away towards the food table. That left Jana alone with Danby and three Redbacks.

Oh, make that one Redback
, Jana amended as Triko and Coop trailed casually after Alan.

'So, Jana, you are okay?'

'I'm fine thanks Aaron.'

What?
Gideon resisted the physical double-take, but even her curiosity was stirred by this
sudden familiarity. She wondered if the Doc would want her to piss off now.

'I couldn't believe it when I heard you were one of the hostages,' Danby continued.

Gideon made as if to move off but Jana's hand, suddenly on her forearm, held her in firmly in
place. 'It wasn't exactly on my to-do list, Aaron,' she was saying. 'But tell me, would you have
sent our rescuers if I hadn't been there?'

Danby leant in as close as publicly possible. 'I didn't send them.' It was obvious she didn't buy
that, for he added, 'Seriously, babe, not responsible.'

Babe?
Gideon didn't quite know where not to look.

Jana still didn't believe him. If she really was Gideon's so-called 'PO' then that fact alone
should put her on Aaron's need-to-know list; he should be able to admit his involvement to her. But
if he couldn't tell her, then what the hell would Gideon's boys do to bigmouth Alan? She searched
the room.
Oh. They
are
going to introduce him to the PM.

She turned back as Aaron leant down to catch what a short Kiwi official was trying to whisper to
him.

'Right, no worries, I'll be right there,' Danby said. 'Sorry Jana, Ms Hellier. Duty calls. I'm,
truly Jana, I'm relieved you're okay.'

Jana nodded as graciously as she could. She let go of her last-held breath as he walked away.

'Can I have my arm now?' Gideon said.

'Oh sorry,' Jana said turning towards Gideon, then away, then back again. 'You know, I was so
hoping it had been my uncle who'd organised your deployment; and that of the submarine; and the
helicopters that flew us into Wellington Harbour; and now all of this brouhaha.'

'You must have amazing connections to have more than one Spielberg to call on.'

'I didn't call anyone, remember?'

'Yeah right. So who the hell's your uncle? What kind of clout does he have?'

'Francis Rossi. He has no influence whatsoever anywhere; other than what he can muster with his
nine iron as President of the Sandy Grove Golf Club. But, I thought he might have rallied the other
Senior Cits at Dalkeith Park and got the government off its fat arse to come and get us.'

Gideon wondered if Jana was suffering post-traumatic stress. Or maybe she's just deranged.

'Anyone
other
than Aaron Danby being responsible, is what I'm getting at Bryn.'

'Oh,' Gideon nodded. 'But he really didn't send us.'

'He didn't?'

'No. It was the other guy. Fleming.'

Jana blew a raspberry. 'Same bloody thing. They're conjoined twins, those two. It's just that you
can't see the umbilical between them.'

'Well, all I can say is that Fleming approached Back Door personally five days ago; and that
Aaron Danby knew nothing of our mission until last night.'

Jana's expression, and then her voice said, 'Yeah right, and turtles fly in formation.'

'The point is,' Gideon shrugged, 'none of you would be here now if it wasn't for Fleming
requesting our services to retrieve you. At the time he didn't even tell me who he was.'

'Well,' Jana said, somewhat flummoxed, 'thank God for me then.'

'Yeah,' Gideon agreed. 'Or, as your dickhead mate put it, you might all have been blown to
Baghdad and back.'

Jana laughed, and then looked up at Gideon. 'Back door? Whose back door did he go to?'

Gideon frowned, amazed she'd given Jana an opening like that. 'The question should not be 'whose
back door', but 'what
is
Back Door'. And, before you do ask, it's the name of my agency.'

'Your retrieval agency?'

'Yep.'

Jana looked Bryn Gideon over from head to toe again. Her perfect skin, blue eyes and neat hair,
plus the oh-so-casual jeans and T-shirt, were so far removed from the first-impression war-painted
action figure in jungle fatigues and helmet - complete with ammunition belt and several guns - that
it was almost impossible to believe they were one and the same.

'What?' Gideon asked.

'You make it sound like a side alley private-eye operation.'

'I do?' Gideon said.

'Yes. But it can't be can it, not given all of this,' Jana waved her arm at the room.

'Not responsible for any of this. All we did was retrieve you.'

'I don't suppose you can tell me anything else about your agency. Or do I need special clearance
for that?'

Gideon was saved from having to reply by another of Doc Rossi's admirers.

'Excuse me.'

Jana turned from Gideon to find Mick Fleming grinning at her. 'Michael Sean Fleming, fancy
meeting you here.' She smiled back at him.

'Well I'm very glad I'm meeting you here,' Mick said. 'I, we were all a bit worried there for a
while.'

Jana waved her hand between Mick and Gideon. 'I believe real introductions are not
necessary?'

'Not at all,' Mick said. 'And thank you again, Commander.' Gideon gave a slight nod, knowing
anything else was unnecessary. 'I'm sorry to have to do this to you Jana,' Mick said, 'but the
pollies want a photo or ten. Would you mind?'

'I guess not,' Jana sighed. She briefly touched Gideon's arm, 'Thanks for the extra duty, I'll be
fine now.'

'No worries,' Gideon said. A couple of minutes later, as the delegates and VIPs were herded into
ranks by 'bug Jum Funch', she smiled in amusement as she saw Jana being placed between
two of her favourite men: Alan Wagner and Aaron Danby.

Checking to make sure there was no one standing nearby, Gideon squeezed her left earlobe.
'Link?'

'Yes Gideon.' It was a woman's voice in her head this time. 'Please let the boss know that I may
have found a bunny for that new assignment but may need a tempting bone to keep someone
distracted.'

Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas
Tuesday 6.45 pm

Jesse-Jay Bagget and Micah O'Brien had no trouble locating the birds their comrades
had placed strategically in the lakeside undergrowth. Just like the rest of their equipment, they'd
been brought in piece by piece over the last week and assembled near the spot where they now
waited.

On their walk around the water's edge Micah, for want of anything better to talk about, had been
re-explaining everything.

'I get what we're doing Micah, but I gotta say this seems an odd way to protect our guys.'
Jesse-Jay moved the first bird into optimum take-off position, running his hands attentively across
the 71-inch span of the elliptical wing. He just loved these warbirds.

'Well, first, it's only their equipment we're targeting,' Micah said. 'Second, the way the
Colonel explains it, they aren't really our guys anymore. We're like saving them from theirselves
- and us from them.'

'What do you mean they're not ours? This is a US Army base.' Jesse-Jay opened his satchel,
removed the laptop and the quad-port surveillance system, and laid the gear on the grass. Micah
meanwhile checked his compass readings and the topographical map to ensure the birds and the
guidance gizmo would be in-sync.

'Come on Jess, you know full well that any citizen conned into a permit for like driving or
fishing, and specially a gun licence, has entered into an invalid contract,' Micah said. 'It results
in that individual's loss of liberty because none of them federal organisations that require our
signature on whatever shit they feel like, have any rightful jurisdiction over us.

'That loss of freedom applies big time to any man or woman what signs-up for the armed forces of
the US of A. They've like excommunicated themselves from the sovereign citizenship to which they are
otherwise entitled. They can't have it both ways. If they're going 'yes sir, no sir, whatever you
say sir,' to the military arm of a tyrannical government well, then shit, they're asking for it.

'And, as you've heard him vouch, the Colonel says regular folks have the power and the
responsibility to take back the government, by force of arms if necessary. The minute he accepted us
into his Texas Star Brigade, we Thunder Militia boys became honour bound to do just that.'

'I guess so,' Jesse-Jay said. He wished he appreciated what Micah was on about but he'd never
been fond of anybody's damn laws or permits, let alone their notions of what he should be
responsible for. His Pa had always told him that federal regulations and law enforcement types were
to be ignored or obstructed, but the local Sheriff was to be heeded. Why? Because someone had to
keep the peace, which was just plain stupid. But then, given his Pa was a violent drunken SOB, no
advice he had to impart was worth digging him up to have him explain it better.

It also never made sense that the other militia boys always did whatever Micah told them to,
including, 'defy all authority and obligation'. As far as Jesse-Jay was concerned, taking orders
from Micah or even the Colonel, was as odious as obeying anyone else - whether it be his Pa, the FBI
or the damn President. Only difference was, he really liked what the Colonel was telling him to
do.

So Jesse-Jay moved from bird to bird, screwing the one-inch camera-pods into the bespoke brackets
on the underneath of each fuselage. Kero had always said the pods looked like scary little snow
globes, which was pretty weird coming from a guy who collected pickled eyeballs. Wow, that was the
first time he'd given that idiot a thought since leaving Dallas. He wondered briefly if he'd gotten
away from the truck in time - he didn't care, just wondered - then he returned his attention to the
mission.

The test flights on the radio-controlled Spitfires, back in Carthage, had confirmed that the
additional 12-gram-load of the pods had a negligible affect on control. Besides, the cameras had
been counter-weighted by the precise distribution of the cargo, just over half of which lined the
Spitfire's 56-inch fibreglass fuselage. The other two pounds of plastic had been moulded, along with
the caps, to form the wings, then covered in a Solartex fabric painted black as pitch. In-flight
manoeuvrability was unaffected by the optional extras, and take-off and landing had been a snap. Not
that landing would be on the cards tonight.

'When you think about it,' Micah continued, 'the only reason we need a national force of armed
soldiers is because this illegitimate government keeps on using its so-called 'emergency war powers'
to remain in charge. It's been one war after another, after another. Every time we got a chance for
a peaceable life, this damn government goes off ready-cocked to find somewhere else, foreign and
filthy, for Americans to die.

'And now look what we've got - a war on terror. Fuckenhell, that's like the perfect excuse to
finance their military machine forever, you know, until old Lucifer his-self gets frost bite. There
ain't never gonna been an end to terror - and our unconstitutional government knows it. I mean it
ain't like terror is a place or people, like Russia or Iraq or the Canadians.'

'You sure are right on that point,' Jesse-Jay said, although he wondered just who Micah would
dispatch to defend their borders if the Iraqis or Canadians decided to invade.

He, on the other hand, had confidence his warbirds would help the Colonel's mission to re-arm
America against the real terror of what he called complacency. Squadrons of real Spitfires had won
the Battle of Britain in World War II, and this, the second mission of the Star Brigade, should
light the fuse in the Battle for Freedom.

One-sixth the size of the piloted originals, Jesse-Jay's RC

Spitfires were powered by 4-stroke nitro engines running on his own blend of homemade wood
alcohol, castor oil and 38 per cent nitromethane. It was a highly combustible mixture he'd developed
for competition racing and would certainly do the trick tonight.

He sat cross-legged on the grass and opened the laptop. It was already running, so it was just a
matter of logging-on and verifying that the spycam program and the cameras were talking to each
other. He reconfigured the camera system from motion-sensor mode to continuous live-feed and from
standard to night-vision. Three image windows opened up on his screen, showing him the views from
the three closest planes.

'Okay Micah. We're all set to go.'

Micah checked his watch. 'Great, a couple minutes to spare. Harlan and the boys will be lighting
up dead on 7 pm. We launch at five after. What's the picture like?' He stepped around behind
Jesse-Jay to get a look at the screen. 'How come there's only three view windows operating?
Shouldn't we be seeing something from all four cameras?'

'Yeah, it was working a second ago,' Jesse-Jay lied. 'Do me a favour and go check the end bird.
Make sure the pod is attached properly.'

'Sure,' Micah said stepping back to pick his way through the darkness to the furthest Spitfire,
about 30 feet away.

Jesse-Jay scooted across on his knees and felt around the ground where the nearest plane had been
concealed earlier. He found the loose piece of turf, retrieved the last vital piece of equipment
then got up to wander over and see if Micah had worked anything out yet.

'It's damn hard to do this in the dark, Jess,' Micah said, glancing over his shoulder.

'Yeah well, if it was easy anybody'd be able to do it.'

Even though the men had been expecting the explosion of sound from the other side of the lake,
they both jumped as the combination fireworks and rockets were launched into the night sky.