*~*~*~*
Yvette had quickly fallen into an exhausted sleep in her cramped little space, halfway down the aircraft, while Chloe fidgeted in her seat by the window, next to her mother.
A kindly flight attendant smiled at Chloe and whispered to her, "Would you like a colouring in book and pencils to play with?"
Chloe jumped at the chance and soon, she was busy colouring in.
The A330 was an attractive aircraft and even though it was cramped, it still offered a comfortable journey. Apart from a bump every now and then, the ride was smooth and you could easily forget you were flying so high above the ground.
*~*~*~*
Colin Brund was scheduled to make a radio call into the Hawaii Control Tower. They had been flying for four hours now and were almost directly overhead. As soon as he had made the required call, he intended to wander through and check out the new flight attendant and get her number.
"Hawaii Control Tower, this is Qantas Flight, QF1156, en route from LA to Sydney, do you read, over?"
Samu recognised the voice of Brund. He didn't care for this hotshot cowboy, lady killer and he had made his feelings known when they had met at a party for aircraft pilots in Hawaii, nearly coming to blows.
"This is Hawaii Control Tower, reading you loud and clear. Your air space is clear; no significant weather until you get within five hundred miles of the Australian coast; maintain current altitude, over."
Brund recognised the big Hawaiian and decided to play dumb. "Thank you for your assistance, Hawaii Control. Qantas Flight, QF1156, over and out."
Samu watched the blimp on his radar screen slowly moving to the outer edges. Air traffic was unusually light today for the busy airport and that always made the shift drag. He silently made a gesture of raising a cup to his mouth, to a nearby colleague across the room. The colleague nodded enthusiastically and Samu disappeared into the kitchen and soon was back with two steaming, hot cups of strong coffee.
As Samu repositioned himself at his desk, carefully juggling his hot coffee and concentrating on the overstretched capacity of his cup, he glanced down at the blimp of Brund’s plane still moving slowly across his radar screen. At the same time, he checked the neighbouring weather satellite screen and noticed the cloud near the Australian coast had started to break up. Brund would have clear skies all the way to Sydney.
*~*~*~*
Colin Brund unbuckled his shoulder sash, slapped his co-pilot on the shoulder and wriggled out of his seat. "Take over, Tex. I'm going to check out the talent."
Tex knew Brund's reputation as a ladies' man. It seemed wherever he cast his net, he always brought in a fish, and while shaking his head in disbelief, he continued on with his job. The scene outside the cockpit windshield was blue and cloudless.
A dream run.
Indicators showed a slight tail wind and the A330 was humming along sweetly. They would land in Sydney ahead of time and if this kept up, they would collect a fuel saving bonus in their pay. Tex fiddled with the ECAM to see how much fuel they were using and then he would calculate the fuel bonus, a nice little reward since he and his new wife had just bought a house on the bay side in Sydney.
As he was scrolling through the menu, it suddenly blinked and an amber caution and warning light flashed up, followed by a memo scrolling across the screen: Right hand engine oil pressure has fallen 3 kPa. Monitor condition. No immediate action required.
Tex felt his stomach muscles tense. He pressed the intercom to call the flight attendant station and shortly after, Jeanie appeared at the door.
"Are you ready to eat, Tex?" she asked.
"Arr... no. Can you get Brund back in here immediately?"
Jeanie could see the amber light and scrolling memo. "Anything wrong, Tex?"
"No. Just get Brund back here."
A few minutes passed before Brund appeared at the cockpit door.
"I got it!" he boasted, waving a piece of paper with a 10 digit phone number written across it.
Brund's face fell as he saw the amber caution light glowing and the memo scrolling across the screen. "Right hand engine oil pressure?" Brund parroted worriedly, divulging his prior knowledge of the fault.
Tex just nodded.
"We're right in the middle of the Pacific, too," Tex added.
Brund swallowed hard and tried to give the illusion of calm. "Okay, so we monitor it. Have you entered it into the flight log?"
"Yep, already done."
Just then, another memo started scrolling across the screen: Engine temperature has climbed two degrees.
"I had better call it in," Brund replied, the nervousness in his voice evident, while his calm facade began to crumble.
*~*~*~*
Samu lay back in his chair, threatening to overtax the backrest and yawned, stretching his big frame in every direction and ending his yawn with a loud, "Ya!"
His shift had begun at 12 pm and it had been slow. He had spoken to Brund just half an hour ago and he instinctively checked his radar screen to see if the blimp was still there. The blimp was nearing the outer edge of his screen. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, if for nothing else than to shake the tiredness from his mind. 2.30 pm. His cousin was in town and he hadn’t got much sleep, but his social life was just as important to him as earning a wage. Samu’s shift wouldn’t end till 12 am and he was already wanting to sleep.
Just then, he heard Brund's voice come across the intercom, "Sydney Control Tower, this is Qantas Flight, QF1156, do you read, over?"
"QF1156, this is Sydney Control Tower, reading loud and clear, over."
"We have an amber caution light illuminated; a memo for falling oil pressure; and rising temperature for the right hand engine is current; request emergency services on standby. Eta...tsshk...ours...tsshk...er."
"QF1156, please repeat! Your message is breaking up, over."
"Requ...Tsshk...sta...Tsshk...Eta...Tsshk...OH NO!"
Samu stared at his radar screen while listening to Brund's broadcast.
He was awake now.
Just as he heard the 'Oh No!', two new blimps appeared on either side of Brund's blimp and then all three vanished.
"QF1156, please repeat your message, over."
Silence.
"QF1156, please repeat your message, over."
Again, silence.
"Sydney Control Tower to Qantas Flight, QF1156, do you read, over?"
Samu and his colleagues exchanged stares, as the muscles in his stomach knotted in tension. He wasn't sure what he had just witnessed, but he was sure it wasn't good.
*~*~*~*
Chapter 4
“Dulcet...! My office... now...!” Mitchell Blair's voice boomed down the corridor.
*~*~*~*
Edwin Dulcet was a scrawny kid who didn’t look much older than twenty one. His dark hair hung over his head like strains of half eaten spaghetti; his brown eyes accentuated by thick, black framed glasses. His uniform hung loose around the areas where biceps should have been, but what he lacked in physical attributes, he more than compensated for in mental ability.
He had applied for the regular army, but was knocked back on his poor physical aptitude. They had then enlisted him into army intelligence, after an outstanding game of cat-and-mouse with an experienced military tactician. Dulcet's main weapon was a computer screen and he was deadly. In a last-ditch effort to stave off being kicked out of the selection process and lose sight of his dream, Dulcet had protested at his imminent disqualification and claimed he could outwit the army’s best war games tactician. The enlistment officer had stared down into Dulcet’s haughty eyes and was ready to make mincemeat out of this cocky young wannabe, ordering a simulated tactical war game on computer against one of the army’s best. The officer-tactician was outflanked on every side and lost the war game, hands down to Dulcet; expediting Dulcet’s entry into the military, but ending up under the command of the very officer he had outmanoeuvred.
Completion of brutal boot camp train
ing saw Dulcet deployed to army intelligence, but after making a mockery of the commanding officer, he wasn’t received well and was ostracised by the other members. Dulcet longed to use his skills in a practical way and had applied for a transfer to the Sabre Regiment as a tactician, subsequent to being used as an office boy with army intelligence.
Dulcet had stood on the corridor side of his commanding officer’s office door and swallowed hard, knowing what was coming. He’d knocked aggressively on the door, hoping to inspire some confidence by the intensity of his knock.
"YES!"
"YOU WANT WHAT?!"
His commanding officer had stood two inches from Dulcet's nose and laughed. Dulcet stood at attention in his presence; the stench of coffee and bad breath wafting into his face.
“Those fellars will chew you up and spit you out!” Dulcet’s CO paced around the room as he berated the scrawny soldier, still standing stiff at attention.
This kid doesn’t fit here anyway. Let’s see how he enjoys a non-operational role with Mitchell Blair and his team of cutthroats. Blair will fold this skinny kid’s carcass and jam him up a drain pipe, using whatever sticks out as target practice.
The CO’s thoughts tantalised his feelings of hatred towards Dulcet and then he smirked, coming to his decision. He was confident of Dulcet’s short destiny with Blair’s outfit and he was all too keen to help him attain it. Dulcet would finally get what was coming to him.
"Transfer request granted. Your orders will come through in a couple of weeks. NOW GET OUT OF HERE!"
*~*~*~*
Dulcet's remaining weeks with intelligence were sheer agony. He was used as a slave for all the other members, getting coffee, running errands, even cleaning the toilet block. Although they made a mockery of him, he didn't complain. He was in the army anyway and he felt soon he would have a chance to showcase his abilities.
On the afternoon before he left, one of the intelligence team took him aside. "Don't make a fool of any of the Sandy Berets. They will cut your head off and bury what's left."
Dulcet remained silent. Even though he didn't like the intelligence team, they were all like him–brains and no brawn. He was seriously considering whether he had just made an gigantic mistake.
*~*~*~*
A five tonne Mack truck troop transport pulled up at the front of the barracks; a camouflaged, green tarpaulin completely covered the tray back like a huge tent on wheels. Dulcet, dressed in combat fatigues and pack, walked out to the waiting truck, pulled the flap back and peered in. Three other soldiers, dressed in fatigues, silently stared back out at him. The tailgate dropped and Dulcet heaved himself onboard, stowing his pack beneath the wooden seat, while no one spoke.
The hour long drive from Holsworthy to Richmond, in New South Wales, seemed to take forever and he was sweating under the covered in canopy. The seat bit into his back and he felt every bump, wondering whether the truck had any suspension at all. When the truck finally came to rest on the airfield at Richmond Air Base, Dulcet climbed out and put his hands in the middle of his hips, then bent his body backwards, trying to get the stiffness out of his aching, skinny frame.
As the troop transport pulled away, Dulcet stood staring into the gaping cargo hold of an open Hercules C130. The aircraft was used as a flying warehouse, delivering anything from troops to tanks and military hardware of every kind. Travelling in a C130 was like sitting in a boilermaker's workshop in full production and just as slow. The thought finally dawned on Dulcet: this was intelligence's departing gift to him and a final shot. Instead of a comfortable, civilian, commercial flight from Sydney to Perth taking just over four hours, the CO had organised a wooden seat aboard the C130 which would take eight hours and possibly send him deaf.
After a bone numbing eight and half hour flight, the C130 finally touched down at Pearce Air Base on the outskirts of Perth. Dulcet was feeling stiff, hot and irritable, and sighed heavily when another 5 tonne Mack truck troop carrier, identical to the one that had delivered him to the start of his ordeal, arrived to take them to SASR Barracks in Swanbourne–an hour and a half away.
On arriving at Swanbourne Barracks, Dulcet stood nervously at attention before Regimental Sergeant Major Mitchell Blair, special operations; the intelligence CO’s warnings still fresh in his mind.
Blair couldn’t believe what he was looking at when Dulcet arrived. He lacked the physical condition of a top line soldier and his black framed glasses added a goofy appearance. After scrutinising Dulcet's orders, he figured that this skinny kid had upset someone in authority big time, while his haggard look and his means of transport confirmed Blair’s suspicions. Blair continued his search of Dulcet’s papers and soon the reasons became evident for his reassignment to the SASR.
This is the legendary hotshot kid who’d outfoxed intelligence and someone’s getting even with him, Blair smirked to himself. Maybe this kid is deserving of a chance after all.
*~*~*~*
Dulcet quickly adapted to the Special Air Services Regiment team. After an initial period of proving his mettle, the regiment had adopted him into their way of doing things. They treated him well and he soon found his niche. Under Mitchell Blair, Dulcet quickly established his merit, planning operational strategies that not only made the soldiers’–or operators' as they preferred–duty easier, but had saved many of their lives. The operators affectionately called him Twig and although he hadn’t been through the gruelling SAS training regime, he was considered one of their own.
*~*~*~*
Mitchell Blair had joined the army in the seventies as an eager seventeen year old, a born soldier. He came under the watchful eye of his drill sergeant at initial training and was quickly singled out as a candidate for the prestigious Special Air Services Regiment. After completing the gruelling three week entry course and special forces training, he was the youngest soldier to earn the right to wear the coveted Sandy Beret. He became one of the elite brotherhood, signified by the dagger emblem overwritten by Who Dares Wins.
The brotherhood were a steely group of ultra fit, highly trained and motivated commandos, with a well respected reputation among the soldiers of other nations. It remained a secretive unit that could be deployed at a moment’s notice, deep behind enemy lines and into the world’s deadliest trouble hotspots. Their wives and families, unaware of their deployments, could, and did, expect their men to disappear suddenly for many months at a time, without notice. They knew better than to ask about operational deployments.
That was against the rules.
The Sabre Units of the Special Air Services Regiment were committed to their mates' survival as well as their own, while dealing a deadly blow to the enemy. Outside of the unit, the brotherhood never spoke of operations or their involvement in special forces. They were simply part of the army community, doing a tough job.
By the end of his seventeenth year, Blair, along with a small band of Sandy Berets, had been deployed into Vietnam to help protect and evacuate the Australian Embassy staff in Saigon, just before it fell.
They were also to help move refugee children out of the war zone, in an operation now known as Operation Baby Lift. Loading the young into a waiting C130, Blair guarded the back of his best mate, Cookie, as he tirelessly snatched up Vietnamese babies and children and loaded them onto the waiting aircraft. Just as the operation was coming to a close, Cookie’s highly focused gaze rested on a family running towards the C130. As they got within a hundred yards of the plane, a loud explosion ripped through the parents, sending them flying helplessly into the air and into eternity. Cookie and Remo, another of the Sandy Berets, hastily ran towards the frightened, injured children.
"NO!..." Blair yelled after them, but it was too late.
He watched his best friend, Cookie, and Remo fly into the air as another explosion tore into them and rocked the ground, while clouds of dust and dirt blocked Blair’s view of the gruesome scene. The C130 was already turning around to take off and the crew called after Blair.
"Leave them. They're dead."
*~*~*~*
Throughout his career, Blair had been deployed into Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other hotspots. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for outstanding performance and bravery under adverse conditions, along with a string of other citations. His peers respected him and his tough, no-nonsense leadership abilities, ice cold in highly tense situations, made Blair a natural choice to lead the regiment when the position became vacant.
Through all the years as a highly decorated special forces operator, the hardest job he’d ever encountered was to try and answer the questions of Cookie's wife, Deanne, without divulging classified information. She had cried profusely, full of hormones, having just given birth to their first child. To make things worse, Cookie had been dishonoured by the army for disobeying orders, when he went after the distraught children dazed by the explosion; a decision Blair didn't understand, but he was told in no uncertain terms to back off when he challenged his superiors.
Cookie had never seen his child.
Dulcet's knock startled Blair and forced him out of his morbid thoughts.
"Yes, sir?"
"Talk to me, Dulcet. What have we got?" Blair demanded.
*~*~*~*
Chapter 5
Peter Brandon's white hair, beard and torn clothes gave him the appearance of a hobo. As he wandered through the Supreme Court Gardens, he constantly peered over his shoulder as if being hunted by some unseen foe. People began to stare at his appearance and his strange behaviour, until someone saw the butt of a rifle.
"He's got a gun!" someone panicked.
People began to dive for cover as they kept watch on his movements. Somewhere, hiding behind a bench, a woman was on her mobile phone, talking to the police.
Brandon panicked and began running up the stairs and out of the gardens, along St Georges Terrace, towards the town centre. He ran across a busy intersection against the traffic lights and was nearly run down by a car; the near miss causing the driver to lean on his car horn and yell abuse at the crazed figure. Outside the Citibank building, he stopped, as if frozen by fear. Police cars and sirens were coming towards him, closing down his escape route. He glanced at the front of the Citibank building and came to a quick decision.