‘I’m about finished down here, Ron,’ he said. ‘How are you going?’
Milne had reduced the airfields to rubble and destroyed every plane he could see; two helicopters managed to get up and he blew them out of the sky before they could get a shot off. Behind him now, Schofield Army Barracks was a smoking mess of smashed APCs, HUMVEEs, M2–A1 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M1 Tanks and burning buildings. Scattered everywhere were the bodies of dead soldiers and wounded screaming with pain.
‘Yeah, I’m done,’ said Milne, picking off a remaining AA–V7 amphibious assault vehicle. ‘Let’s head for New Caledonia and give the French a serve.’
‘One for the Rainbow Warrior,’ said Brian.
‘Yeah,’ said Milne. ‘See how the Frogs like getting blown up for a change.’
New Caledonia was a doddle from Hawaii; Brian drank half a bottle of mineral water and they were there. There was nowhere near the same naval presence as Guam or Pearl Harbor when they arrived at Noumea; a couple of frigates, some patrol boats, a minesweeper and a destroyer. But sitting in the harbour, large as life, was the pride of the French fleet. The 50,600 tonne nuclear aircraft-carrier Admiral Duperre. Ten Rafale M and fifteen Super Etendard jet fighters were neatly arranged along its deck, next to six AS 365F Dauphin and four NH 90 helicopters.
‘The aircraft-carrier’s mine,’ said Milne.
‘Please yourself,’ said Brian. ‘I’ll watch for a moment then knock the rest off.’
Brian hovered back from the harbour and watched as Milne flew above the aircraft-carrier, tilted his disc and sent a full-power DV straight into the Admiral Duperre’s flight deck. It looked like someone had chopped the ship in half with an axe, before it erupted in another huge explosion similar to the John Wayne. Burning planes and helicopters tumbled through the air, falling and exploding all over the harbour. Brian watched the massive fireball subside into a thick cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky for a moment, then clicked AMI on two and started picking off the other ships. When he’d finished, Milne joined him and they strafed anything they could find. It didn’t take long and the harbour was a burning ruin.
‘Well, I think that might do them,’ said Milne.
‘I think so,’ agreed Brian. ‘Where to now?’
‘France. We’ll sort them out around Le Havre and put the Brest naval shipyard at Brittany to the torch.’
‘The quickest way would be straight across Mexico,’ suggested Brian.
‘Yeah. It’ll be dark when we get there. But the discs pump out enough light. We’ll just follow the coast till we find what we’re looking for.’
‘After you, big daddy.’
They climbed to maximum height then took off at top speed for Europe. The sun was going down when they got to Mexico and when they came over the Bay of Biscay it was dark. They reduced speed and came down lower. Brian didn’t have a clue where he was as they followed the French coastline; all he could make out through the clouds was the criss-cross glow of small towns and cities and ships’ lights moving slowly up and down the foreshore.
‘There’s Brest down there,’ said Milne, ‘in that big bay.’
‘I see it,’ said Brian.
‘Le Havre’s further up the coast on the other side of the Channel Islands. We’ll sort these mugs out first then give the other joint the once-over.’
‘After you.’ Brian followed the white glow of Milne’s disc down to a hundred metres or so above the water.
Fortunately there was a strike at the shipyards and it was closed. But it was well lit-up and Brian could make out huge cranes jutting out over the docks and ships everywhere; some half completed, others floating at their moorings. He clicked AMI on two and, almost shoulder to shoulder with Milne, started blasting everything in sight. The fireballs and explosions were even more spectacular in the darkness. Pieces of burning metal were flying through the air like rockets while huge cranes crashed down in great swirling clouds of sparks, smashing all before them as they tumbled and splashed into the harbour. Brian bombed and strafed everything in sight, from ships to warehouses, tugboats to old wooden piers. It was getting like a game in a fun parlour now, lots of flashing lights and muffled noise. The only difference at night was you got in closer and flew through fireballs while more flying wreckage bounced off the disc. Finally the shipyards ceased to exist, so Milne led them on to Le Havre.
Le Havre wasn’t as big, but it was spread out. There didn’t appear to be that many ships in the harbour and at an adjacent airfield it was hard to separate the civilian planes from the military. There was a cruiser, two destroyers and a guided missile carrying frigate docked on the right. Milne took out the cruiser with one DV and Brian annihilated the others with a burst of five smaller hits each.
‘We’ll give Marseilles a miss,’ said Milne. ‘It’s a bit hard sorting out the wheat from the chaff at night. And I don’t feel like blowing up a liner full of poor old farts in the middle of a world cruise.’
‘No. Fair enough,’ agreed Brian.
‘So we’ll zap over the channel and I’ll put a quick rocket up MI6’s arse.’
‘Mind if I watch?’
‘Be my guest. Have you got any good photos?’
‘Heaps.’
They were across the English Channel and following the Thames into London in minutes. Spread out a kilometre beneath him, Brian couldn’t believe how big the city was; the spider web of lights seem to go on forever. Brian expected it to be raining and drizzling, but there was just a thin cloud cover drifting across the city from the west. In the moonlight, the Thames looked like a wrinkled black ribbon as it snaked under bridges and meandered past the lights and buildings along its banks. Brian noticed Big Ben poking up amongst the lights when he heard Milne’s voice.
‘It’s along here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Past the Houses of Parliament.’
‘I can’t see a thing,’ said Brian
‘There it is. Down there. Near that bridge.’
Brian dropped altitude and hovered behind Milne in front of a huge cream and black concrete monolith spaced with tall windows. The office buildings were squared off at the rear, overlooking semi-circular ones at the front. It was well lit up and faced the Thames over a row of trees, with tracts of empty land surrounded by fences and cameras separating it from the buildings on either side.
‘So that’s MI6?’ said Brian. ‘James Bond might be in there somewhere.’
‘Maybe,’ replied Milne. ‘See how he likes this for a vodka martini.’
Milne moved up to the building, put AMI on two and levelled the spy agency with twenty DVs. From Brian’s position, the building seemed to explode and implode at the same time. Lumps of concrete and glowing metal girders collapsed in on themselves while shards of glass rained down on the river like glittering hail.
‘Bloody hell!’ said Brian, watching the smoke rising up above the rubble as the flames reflected garishly in the muddy waters of the Thames. ‘I reckon Mr Bond’s vodka martini was definitely shaken not stirred after that.’
‘Yeah. Bad luck about the twist of lemon,’ said Milne. ‘All right. Let’s get out of here.’
‘Where to now? Home?’
‘Yeah. We’ll go back the way we came. But we’ll slow down on the other side of Mexico and fly at around a kilometre over the ocean. I reckon we might pick up a few jet fighters.’
‘Okay, Sawi. Let’s hit the toe.’
Milne took them straight to thirty kilometres then they tore off across the Atlantic. They crossed the Bahamas and into Mexico, then slowed down and lowered altitude two hundred kilometres west of Baja. They weren’t there very long when they picked up forty-three jet fighters off the USS Lake George steaming out of San Francisco: twenty F–15E Eagles and twenty-three FA–18 Hornets. In minutes the sky was thick with ATA missiles and cannon fire.
‘The rotten bastards,’ said Milne, as two missiles skipped off the disc’s gravity vortex. ‘The least they could have done was ordered us down. Okay, Takatau. You take the
Hornets, I’ll take the Eagles.’
‘Are the Hornets the single-seaters?’ said Brian.
‘Yeah,’ laughed Milne. ‘I’ll give you the easy ones.’
Milne was right when he said Brian could forget playing pass the parcel next time he came across any jet fighters; there were ATA missiles going everywhere. Some bounced off the disc and careered harmlessly away before they ran out of fuel and fell into the ocean. Others would lock onto a fighter and if the pilot couldn’t pull off an evasive manoeuvre, he was shot out of the sky by friendly fire. Brian slipped in and out of the fighters like a terrier; behind them, above, below, side on, strafing non-stop. At one stage he hovered and rolled around in a circle sending up a wall of DVs. The American pilots flew through the wall of spinning, destruction vortexes and found their jets blown out of the sky from under them. Some parachuted safely, others weren’t so lucky. The sky was that thick with bullets and DVs they couldn’t avoid them as they floated helplessly above the ocean. Before long the dogfight was over, and all that was left of the fighters was any fortunate pilots floating in the ocean.
‘Okay,’ said Milne. ‘Let’s sort out the aircraft-carrier and the support vessels.’
‘You want the carrier?’ asked Brian.
‘No. It’s all yours.’
Through a barrage of ship-to-air missiles and a hail of Phalanx anti-aircraft fire, Brian flew down, clicked AMI on three, then squeezed the trigger and watched the Lake George erupt over the ocean. There was another massive fireball, more billowing black smoke and the ship went down with all hands in less than a minute. Brian looked around at a sea of flames to catch Milne take out the remaining support vessel, a fuel tanker. It was crammed with gasoline and the explosion was almost incomprehensible. The fireball alone was over a kilometre wide and the noise as it went up was astonishing, even sitting inside the MeG 21.
‘Holy fuck!’ said Brian. ‘What about that.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Milne. ‘Aviation fuel’s sure got a kick, hasn’t it?’
‘Reckon,’ said Brian. ‘So what’s doing now?’
‘I reckon we’ll call it a day,’ said Milne, flying up alongside Brian. ‘I could do with a cup of tea and a sandwich back at the temple.’
‘Me too. All right if I take this silly bloody mask off?’
Milne waved from inside his cabin. ‘Sure. But shit it looks good on you.’
‘Smile for the camera,’ said Brian, and took a photo of Milne. Brian removed his mask, gave his hair a toss, then soared up behind Milne to thirty kilometres and they headed back to Lan Laroi at top speed.
President Clooney was in the Oval Office wearing his favourite blue pin-stripe suit, matching blue tie and his most comfortable black cowboy boots. Apart from that he was in a very unpleasant mood, shaking his head with indignant disbelief. Seated in front of him in their sober suits and brogues were the usual five men in the President’s inner Cabinet, plus the President’s Press Secretary Arlene Tandiero, wearing a smart char grey pantsuit and a grey silk shirt. Everyone had just watched Milne’s message for the second time. Except for the President and Attorney-General Joseph Arnold no one took it seriously and there was concealed bemusement at Milne’s message. Arlene Tandiero was barely managing to restrain her laughter.
Clooney scowled round the Oval Office after switching off the TV. ‘Am I hearing and seeing right here? This turkey Milne and his allies. The goddamn Loo Noo, or whoever they are. Have got the balls to declare war on the United States. And our allies. The French and the British?’
‘It certainly appears that way, sir,’ said the Director of the DEA.
‘And they refer to me, President of the United States, as the evil one?’
‘That’s what they’re calling you, sir,’ said the Secretary of State.
‘Damn their eyes,’ Clooney cursed. ‘Who are these freaking Loo Noo anyway? They sound like some weight-loss milk drink.’
‘No one’s heard of them, sir,’ said the Attorney-General. ‘But going by their rhetoric, they’re obviously Muslim terrorists.’
‘Muslim fuckin terrorists. Jesus H. Christ!’ exclaimed Clooney. ‘Where do these goddamn towelheads think they’re coming from?’ The President glanced at some notes he’d written, that were sitting on his desk. ‘And what’s this drop kick crap? What are we talking here? Football? And who’s Edgar Head? And Chief Seppo?’ The President’s eyes searched the room. ‘Edgar Head. Is he in the FBI? And Chief Seppo. What’s he? Chipawah? Shawnee? Sioux? I’ll bet he’s some lazy boozed-up Apache from my state. How did the Indians get in on this anyway? Don’t they know that’s friggin anti-American? Treacherous sonsofbitches. You can never trust those redskins.’ CC glared around the Oval Office. ‘Well, come on. Don’t sit there like a bunch of goddamn cigar store Indians. I want some answers. Talk to me.’
The five men shuffled in their seats then all eyes fell on Arlene Tandiero. She adjusted the papers she was holding and straightened a non-existent crease in her suit.
‘Sir,’ she started, aware of the others staring at her. ‘I went out with an Australian journalist for some time. Before he was sent home. And they have this way of talking at times, in rhyming slang, sir.’
‘Rhyming slang. What’s that? Some kind of poetry?’ said Clooney.
‘Not quite, actually, in that sense, sir,’ replied Tandiero. ‘Sir. Seppo is short for septic tank. It rhymes with Yank. So Chief Seppo — would be you, sir.’
Clooney’s eyes narrowed. ‘Keep talking, Arlene.’
‘And Edgar Head, sir. Well. They often say going for an Edgar, instead of going for a shit. It’s like … Edgar Britt. Rhymes with shit — sir.’ Clooney’s nostrils flared. ‘And sir. Drop kick. Is short for drop kick and punt. It rhymes with …’ The Press Secretary stood up clutching her papers. ‘Sir. Do you mind if I leave the room for a moment?’
‘That might be a good idea,’ seethed the President.
‘Thank you, sir.’ The Press Secretary hurried from the room closing the door quietly behind her.
Clooney waited till she was gone then glared furiously around the Oval Office. ‘You mean to tell me that dope-smoking fuckin Aussie commie sonofabitch has just called me shithead on world TV?’ Nobody said anything. ‘And I live in a septic tank?’ Still nobody spoke. ‘And the people running the Pentagon. They’re nothing but a lot of cunts? All on prime time TV?’
The Secretary of State nodded slowly. ‘I believe that’s what he said, sir.’
Clooney exploded. ‘That’s it. Go to DEFCON five. Initiate plan B. Execute condition fuckin red.’ Clooney banged a fist on his desk. ‘I want this dumb fuck’s ass. I want his body swinging on the White House lawn. I want that douche bag little island nuked so it glows in the dark. I want to fly over there in Air Force One and piss on the ashes. Edgar Head. That cocksucking sonofabitch. When I …’ Unexpectedly pagers and cell phones started going off all over the office. The phone on President Clooney’s desk lit up like a jar of glow worms and started ringing off the hook. ‘What’s going on?’ said Clooney. ‘Is there an earthquake?’
The Secretary for Defense looked up urgently from his cell phone and nodded to the phone on the President’s desk. ‘Sir. It’s the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sir. Admiral Penrod Machonicie. Sir. We’ve just lost the Clarke.’
‘We’ve what?’ said Clooney.
‘Sir. Pick up the phone and put it on speaker, sir.’ The Director of the CIA reached over and did it for the President as a wide-eyed Arlene Tandiero came running back in the door.
‘Mr President,’ came Admiral Machonicie’s strained voice over the phone.
‘Penrod. What is it? What’s all the kerfuffle?’
‘Sir. We’ve just lost the Clarke. The John Wayne. The guided missile carrier Ridgefield. Three destroyers. Submarines. Support vessels. Hundreds of aircraft …’
‘What do you mean lost?’ barked Clooney. ‘You’re talking about ships and planes here, Penrod. Not a bunch of fuckin car keys.’
‘Th
at’s what I mean, sir,’ said the Admiral. ‘Lost. Sunk. Destroyed. Our defence facilities at Guam have been wiped out. Operation Sea Stinger and everything else is on the bottom, sir.’
Clooney looked at the incredulous faces around him. ‘You mean the goddamn Lan Laroians have attacked us?’
‘Yessir. It’s horrible, sir. Casualties could be in the thousands, sir.’
‘What the fuck?’ Clooney’s jaw dropped with disbelief. ‘What about our goddamn satellites? Didn’t they pick this up? We’ve got ships and planes out there. What the fuck’s going on, for Chrissake?’
‘Sir. We sent up a squadron of Tomcats. And they were all shot down,’ wailed the Admiral.
‘Shot down,’ yelled Clooney. ‘How?’
‘It was an ambush, sir. There were two of them.’
The Ultimate Aphrodisiac Page 33