Directive RIP

  *

  The dark carriage had finally been cooled to a comfortable temperature by the desert night. Furn was sleeping soundly. There was a machine gun on the floor beside his fold out crypt-bed and a pistol somewhere under the covers - he would not know where, for he was such a restless sleeper that a gun that began under his pillow could finish up around his ankles. It was not something he liked to be made aware of, so he had thrown the gun in almost as an afterthought. But he could have used it now, for he was being awoken by a gun barrel pressing against his forehead. His eyes opened to its heavy touch and a cold shiver ran through him. He could only see the silhouette of the person behind it, but any hope of this being DC paying him a romantic visit ended with a dark, deep voice.

  ‘You were snoring,’ said the man.

  Furn swallowed down his beating heart and replied in a calm, steady voice, ‘I was dreaming about putting a bullet in your head.’

  There was a booming laugh. ‘You sound like my wife. Especially now that I’ve come back to Australia.’ The gun quickly retracted from Furn’s head. ‘Don’t worry,’ the man continued. ‘I would never have taken the shot. With that hard head of yours, I would be too afraid of the ricochet.’

  Furn placed the voice and laughed despite himself. It sounded like Breeze was back to his old self, though there was a little more French accent in the voice. Furn sprung up in the bed, the figure standing over him a barely traceable outline.

  ‘Breeze? Is that you?’

  ‘Sure. Do you think I’ve come back as a ghost?’

  ‘No. Ghosts might be scary, but they’re not insulting.’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly the kind of ghost I would want to be.’

  ‘Weren’t you in France?’

  ‘Technically, but I wasn’t there long. We’re moving on Skidmore. The Red Line Files has been planted with a tracking device and the pings are coming in loud and clear. It must have been on board your helicopter on the journey out here.’

  ‘A tracking device? Disguised as a bookmark?’

  ‘In the spine.’

  ‘Was that the plan all along?’

  ‘Yeah, to intercept a rogue.’ Breeze shone a flashlight into his face. ‘Ready to go?’

  Furn cringed away. ‘It’s not the comforts of the rail carriage that would keep me here, but there’s a neighbour with a machine gun who might make me think twice about wandering out there in the dark.’

  ‘Unless she sleeps with a gas mark on, that won’t be a problem. I dropped a little snooze gas into one of the wall cracks.’

  ‘How long will she be out for?’

  ‘At least till morning. I’d say she’s set for a good sleep in.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate. I think she may have joined us. She didn’t seem to have any loyalty for Skidmore.’

  ‘Are you sure about that? Zulma Pei is not the only person who can mess with someone’s head. Even if she is a nice looking girl with a machine gun. But of course it could just be my own head that’s been messed with. A bullet in the back did not do much for my trust issues.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll notice the difference, but it’s good to have you back anyway.’ Furn sprung up out of his bed to an electric lantern and his pile of discarded clothes. ‘Have you been in the neighbourhood long? I can’t say I saw you hiding in the bushes.’

  ‘You should’ve looked up. There was some serious state of the art surveillance hovering around. The same generals that send Colonel Skidmore Christmas cards have been sending us satellites and drones to spy on him.’

  ‘Afraid of their own dirty work?’

  ‘They should be. There was a general not so long ago who dared get a little too curious as to why a top secret poisons facility would be hidden away in a desert and tried to reroute a satellite to take a look. Not a good move as it turned out - not if you’re hobby is skydiving. As high up as twenty thousand feet may be, there wasn’t enough time for the good general to put the pieces of his parachute back together again.’

  ‘A visit from the Sapiens?’

  ‘No one was charged. Which won’t worry us, for we are not the kind of police that make arrests.’

  Furn finished his dressing by gathering up his guns. ‘Aren’t we going to Green Fields with at least the pretense of making an arrest?’

  ‘There may be some handcuffs in the helicopter, but I’m not carrying them.’ Breeze stepped away with his mobile phone. ‘Two minutes to extraction,’ he said loudly into it.

  He was first out of the already open door. Furn watched his form and murmured, ‘You’re moving better than the last time I saw you.’

  ‘It only hurts when I laugh,’ replied Breeze, ‘which hasn’t been a problem for a while.’ He strode into space, away from the carriages without any discernible care for his surroundings. Furn supposed it might take some more recuperation before a healthy wariness of bullets returned. He, on the other hand, had enough wariness for both of them, especially when it came to stepping out in front of DC’s carriage: he figured her for a light sleeper, even with a room full of gas. The helicopter swooped in for a rapid landing and the dust was once again thrown into a maelstrom. This time, however, it did not taste so bitter; it even tasted a tad sweet. Riley was hanging out the side of the helicopter with a sniper rifle in hand and a pair of night vision goggles on his head. He freed one hand to aid a decidedly stiff Breeze inside the cabin. Furn also lent a hand, pushing from behind, before jumping in himself. The helicopter was then away, ascending like the most gut wrenching of elevators.

  Furn, sitting down to a scene of guns, backpacks and mountain bikes said, ‘Was Skidmore the target all along?’

  Riley slipped off his goggles and nodded. ‘Our biggest target yet. Too big for the Red Line Files. Which is just as well considering he would right now be reading about himself. Instead, all he is doing is nibbling on some bait.’

  Furn noticed Breeze’s hardened expression and wouldn’t have envied anyone being caught in this particular trap.

  Riley crouched between them. ‘Twenty minutes to the drop off point, so pay attention. Especially you, Furn, ‘cause you’ve been out of the loop.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m getting that feeling.’

  ‘We’ll have a ten kilometer bike ride into Green Fields and with the quality of terrain we’ll anticipate it taking at least an hour. No roads, no tracks. Our informant tells us that access is always made by air, flying low to avoid radar, and all staff are blindfolded on approach. That, and more invasive steps, is how Skidmore has managed to keep the facility so secret. We suspect that there may only be a half dozen people in his inner circle who are privy to Green Field’s exact location.’

  ‘But now we know,’ said Breeze menacingly.

  ‘Let’s not get too carried away with what we know,’ replied Riley. ‘We have an informant who has sketched the layout of the facility on the back of a napkin. Any surveillance more high tech and Military Intelligence is likely to find out about it. There’s a lot that can still go wrong.’

  ‘Is the informant reliable?’ queried Furn. ‘After all, it might turn out to be us nibbling on bait.’

  ‘I think he is, if only because we are offering him a better promise than Skidmore’s: new passports for him and his family and financial backing to create a new life in a city of his choice – oh, and no five years of service and the almost certain prospect of a violent death along the way.

  ‘An informant who happens to be a member of the Australian Foreign Legion?’

  Riley nodded. ‘It wasn’t easy. Military Intelligence has their identities hidden deep. It took a teenage computer hacker facing jail time to get us a name. Getting the soldier to turn was the easy part. And I sense getting him to return the favour to Skidmore of a bullet in the back would not be too hard either. Regrettably, however, he had been sent with the rest of the legion to Borneo on the hunt for Zulma Pei. At least, with any luck, he will get us close to her as well.’

  Riley swung across to the backpacks and doled them out
to Breeze and Furn. ‘Getting close to those two, as you can imagine, does come with hazards. In Skidmore’s case, it’s all that poison he’s so obsessed with. The informant tells me the Green Fields garden is a real piece of work. Apparently even the hay fever will kill you. And doing the gardening is nothing short of suicide - not unless your gardening gloves were produced by NASA.’

  ‘That’s what’s in the backpacks?’ asked Furn.

  ‘That’s right. Full body suits. With antidotes in the side pockets. Lots of antidotes. But if it is true, Skidmore has developed his own line of poisons, they might prove the last thing you ever taste.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ came the call from the pilot.

  As his two charges went through the contents of their backpacks, Riley added, ‘You’ll notice those protective suits don’t come with matching Kevlar body armour and you may also notice there are no antidotes in the side pockets for the lead of a bullet, so keep your wits about you. Even in a high tech facility of death such as Green Fields, a good, old fashioned bullet to the head is still the thing you’ve got to worry about most.’

  ‘Got it, captain,’ said Breeze. ‘And that works both ways.’

  ‘Sure does. And I’d imagine you two genius detectives may have figured out by now that we aren’t actually working for Colonel Skidmore. You may be even wondering who we are working for.’

  Both Furn and Breeze halfheartedly shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘Well, I know better than to clutter your heads with too much detail,’ continued Riley, ‘suffice to say there were some generals alarmed at how powerful the head of Military Intelligence had become - perhaps, too powerful even to stop. That is the mission they have entrusted me with. And now we will find that out: whether he can be stopped.

  ‘So, all that chasing after scientist’s brothers was just a ruse?’ queried Furn.

  ‘We were what we had to be. At the beginning, useful allies to find out what he is capable of, and determined enemies once we knew.’

  The helicopter banked sharply to the left, levelled out and slowly began to descend groundward.

  ‘Drop point,’ cried the pilot.

  The three passengers hurriedly gathered up their weapons, backpacks and mountain bikes. Breeze led the way to the door and called back to Riley as he scanned the desert night, ‘So, do these generals of yours have names?’

  ‘On a job like this, of course not,’ replied Riley, stopping beside him; he planted his mountain bike on the rocky floor. ‘But the generals are happy, however, to give the job a name: Directive RIP.’