Keeping a Promise

Ernest Bywater

All rights reserved and Copyright © 2018 by Ernest Bywater

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. All rights are reserved by the author, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Product names, brands, and other trademarks referred to within this book are the property of their respective trademark holders. Unless otherwise specified there is no association between the author and any trademark holder, nor are any expressed or implied. Nor does it express any endorsement by them, or of them. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, service mark, or registered trademark.

Cover Art

The background images are Batlow by Leigh Blackall (top) and Looking East over the Murrumbidgee River near Gumly Gumly by Bidgee (bottom). Both are copyrighted by their creators and their use is allowed by the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike Licence and terms. The cropping, size adjustment, and text are by Ernest Bywater. All rights to the cover images are reserved by the copyright owners.

Other Artwork

The background image for the book in the story is Black Panther - India by Davidraju and its use is allowed by the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike Licence and terms. The cropping, size adjustment, and text are by Ernest Bywater. All rights to the cover images are reserved by the copyright owners.

19 June 2022 version

Published by Ernest Bywater

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Note: Due to the main character and the narrator being Australians UK English is used in this story, except for dialogue by a US character where US English is used in the dialogue and some nouns.

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The title styles in use are a chapter, a sub-chapter, and a section.

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Images

Panther Cover

Manor Grounds

Manor Floors

Manor's Renovated Floors

The images are also available in high resolution at

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ebk8ve052m0c1rs/AACohN7e_x8OuRFrn0EbQ2L6a?dl=0

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Note: In Australia a takeaway café provides food and drink to take away and it also has some seating for people to have eat in meals. We also have a plain café which serves drinks like coffee and light snacks. Also, I'm told US readers should read Alfalfa instead of lucerne, and apartment instead of flat as they are the US terms for them.

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Beginnings

Australian Army Lieutenant Evan Owen is chatting with the US Army Supply Officer after making the arrangements for the supplies his unit needs for their next humanitarian aid delivery protection patrol. When he finishes talking to the Supply Officer he quickly turns to leave, and he walks into Staff Sergeant Anne Eagle who just walked in to arrange the supplies for her own unit which is about to leave with a humanitarian aid convoy. He apologises to her and they start talking. Over the next few months the two see a lot of each other while they're both at the same base in Somalia. Later in the year they're both in the same series of hospitals for treatment of wounds received after Anne's supply column is attacked by a large rebel force and Evan's unit goes to their aid because they're nearby. Anne's injuries are enough to have her medically retired from the US Marine Corps. Evan and Anne spend time together and are married before they both leave medical care. Then Evan is posted out, so Anne goes to live at Evan's unit's home base near Perth, Western Australia.

Anne lives in the married quarters the Australian Army provides for them while Evan is still in the Army. Years later Evan is medically retired from the Army due to his accumulated combat wounds, so the couple moves to live where Evan grew up, near the rural city of Rivers in New South Wales, Australia. They buy land west of the city and start a new life as small farmers. They have a lot of money from their inheritances, their pensions, and special work bonuses. So they don't need to make a lot of money to live on, just a small farm to keep them busy and pay the bills.

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The Farm

There are two farms in a west facing valley, one at the front of the valley and one at the back of the valley. Both have their farmhouses on the south side of the road up the middle of the valley. However, one of the farmers wants to sell his farm and move into town while the other farmer only wants to buy half of the man's farm as well as the farmhouse for his son to live in. The front property has land on each side of the valley entrance and on both sides of the valley road for the first third of the valley while the back farm owns the rest of the valley. The southern ridge is longer than the northern ridge, so the western farm's first fields are outside of the valley. The farmers own both of the valley's side ridges and their reverse slopes as the original boundaries were made by a clerk in Sydney drawing lines on a map many years before the area was properly surveyed. Near the east end of the northern ridge there's a ridge running north that joins the side ridges, it also has steep sides.

Evan speaks with both of the farmers then he works out a deal to suit all three of them. In the end the boundaries for both properties are changed and Evan ends up with a little over half of the farm land of the farm offered for sale and no buildings. The layout of the new farms has the farmer who owns the front property still owning the land across the front of the valley and the entire south side of the valley as well as most of the valley's eastern end and all of the farm buildings while Evan owns the whole north side of the valley and the ridge behind it. The selling farmer is very happy to sell the whole farm, retire, and move into town.

The ridge in Evan's land has the middle third at about forty metres above the main part of the farm with the northern end and the rest of the ridge about eighty metres above the main farm. The middle section is fairly flat and it has a stream that runs out of it to fall and run across the middle of Evan's farm land. Due to the changes with the sale the north-east corner of Evan's property has sixty square metres of land that takes a thirty kilometre trip around the ridges to access it as it's on the other side of the other ridge running north, so he can't really use it.

Anne and Evan live in a trailer on site until the farmhouse is built. Anne works the land while Evan works on the house and buildings. As their first crop they plant a Lucerne crop to help build the soil up.

Evan submits plans for his farmhouse to the local council and then he places 'No Trespassing' signs along his whole boundary fence line. He removes the boundary fences on the land outside the valley and he puts posts with the signs along the fence line. The ridges are almost vertical for about eighty metres on this side so he has no need to protect crops or stock on his side of the fence, while removing the fence lets the next farmer's stock access the stream at the base of the ridge. Evan makes arrangements for the northern farmer to work the bank to mitigate soil erosion in return for the free access to the water and use of the small strip of grassland there, both are happy with the deal. Inside the fences in the valley Evan plants one and a half metre high thorny native bushes to discourage people and stock from breaking through his boundary fence.

When the house plans are approved Evan sets about building the house. Due to the tall bushes on the road boundary fence it's hard for people to see what Evan is doing on the property, thus no one sees how much work he does while he slowly builds his farmhouse. It's even harder to see what's happening after he erects the front walls of the farmhouse. Thus no one knows about all of the underground work he does. They see the piles of earth from the deep foundations he digs down to the bedrock, and the council checks the work after the foundations are put in, but they never see the trench he digs from the back of the house to where the equipment shed will be, or the tunnel he builds in the trench before he covers it over. The house end entrance is done and hidden under the cement slab the council inspectors see on their next visit. While the inspectors think the walls are much thicker than they need to be they do approve them. None of them realise the odd triangular shaped house Evan is building is actually a solid fort able to withstand any attack short of heavy artillery. The equilateral triangular shaped building has a base parallel to the ridge behind the house, so the other two sides have clear 'killing zones' over the valley part of their farm land and the crops.

Instead of paying to have mains power run from the road Evan has two vertical wind generators and some solar panels installed to provide twelve volt power. Since there's no mains water out here he pumps water from the stream, and they've a septic tank installed in front of the house. The house is ready to move into sooner than the council thought it would be, then Evan sells the trailer when they move into the house.

As he works on the house Evan also puts up the equipment shed, so by the time the house is finished and there's grass growing around it the earth over the tunnel is fully settled and he's able to do the rest of the work hidden from sight in the shed. For the tunnel end in the equipment shed he digs deeper and starts a new tunnel going east-north-east. He's into rock within the first few metres of digging the wide tunnel.

Evan builds himself a tunnel boring machine which consists of many impact drills mounted on a frame in a half-circle. When the drills reach the depth of the drill bits he moves the frame back to use a steel bar to break out sections of rock which he puts behind him before he rotates the frame to do the other half, then he repeats for the next section. The further the tunnel goes the longer it takes to get the cut rock out of the tunnel. He often checks the tunnel alignment with his compass and he checks the floor is level to make sure he's going level and straight. After he thinks he's halfway along to where he wants to go he also regularly checks the distance cut. When he has the tunnel at what he thinks is the right length Evan cuts a chamber big enough to stand up and turn around in before he starts to cut a tunnel straight up to above where he thinks the ground level is, based on the height from the tunnel floor. Then he cuts a three by three metre cave. Later he'll cut an exit.

As a change of pace while digging the tunnel Evan also works on the ridges to cut a long metre wide path up the face of the rock to the top of each end of the ridge. Because people see him doing this it explains the pile of cut rock he has growing beside the equipment shed. Both paths start near the back of the house and are made in such a way anyone on them is in the full view of people in or near the house. Once the path up to the eastern end is done he also cuts a path down from that to the middle section, and that path is also visible from the farm area.

Once all of the rock and tunnel digging is done Evan sets up a simple home-made crane on the middle ridge section and he uses it to move all of the cut and broken rock up to there for use in building a dam that looks like a natural rock fall. He's careful with how he uses tinted cement for binding the core of the dam together before he has the entire outer layer made of loose rock dumped in place and walked on until it's stable. Then he builds an obvious set of pipes on one side to show how he's taking the water out of the natural dam so he can pipe it to the house and farm for use. As the dam only uses a bit over half of the width of this area he builds a rifle range on the rest of it so it's out of the way and using land he's unable to use for anything else.

Evan lays a tinted cement floor along the tunnels to make them flat before he builds the entrance areas at each end, along with security covers for the tunnels. Then he cements over the equipment shed floor to hide his bolthole access. Once this end is fully finished Evan goes around the ridges to check on his far corner land. While there he takes exact GPS and heights above sea levels readings with top electronic positioning gear. Later he uses the same gear to get readings above the equipment shed entrance to the tunnel and at both ends of the tunnel at its level before he gets a set of readings from the corners of the cave he made. The floor and location isn't as perfect as he wanted, but it's all within his land and is a close enough location to be workable because he only has to enlarge the cave a little before he makes an exit for it.

Two months later Evan has a single door sized concealed exit for his bolthole cave. Using this tunnel and exit means he can be very far away from the farm in a fraction of the time anyone would expect it was possible to be, all due to the local topography.

Now he feels safer, due to having an escape route, Evan sets about working the farm properly. He's thankful he had so much money in bonuses from his special work to be able to pay for everything he's done.

About a year later Anne gives birth to their son, Llewellyn Evan Owen to whom she gives a Navajo name of Mountain Mist. She uses a Navajo name based on her own Navajo name of Light Mist as Evan isn't a Navajo so she can't give her son a Navajo name after his father's name.

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Life is good for the Owen family with both Anne and Evan teaching Llewellyn everything they feel he's capable of learning. This includes the use of the house's built-in defences when he's old enough to be able to use some of them, especially the heavy weapons Evan installed just after the last council inspection of the building.

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The Apartment

Another security measure is to purchase a three bedroom apartment in Rivers under Anne's Navajo maiden name of L. M. Eagle and setting it up to be fully self sufficient in any sort of emergency that may occur. They choose an apartment because it's easier to hide the lack of daily use while a house with a low activity level would appear to be abandoned.

Most of the apartments in the block are expensive as the apartments have good views of either the city or the river which is beyond the row of old single story houses across the road from the apartment block. The unit they buy is about half the price of the rest as the block runs east-west with the river to the north while the city is to the south and the unit they buy is in the south-west corner of the lowest residential level with a view of just two ground level car parks and the commercial buildings on the other sides of the car parks. The levels above this apartment have a view of the city over the other buildings while this one is too low to see over them. The ground level of the apartment block is the garages and the guarded main entry for the building. While most of the apartments have three metre by twenty-four metre long garages the Owens are able to save more money on the purchase by selling their big garage space and buying a three metre by twelve metre garage behind the entry area that has an interior access. When the apartments were first sold the buyers were allowed to choose which of the garages they wanted to buy for them to use with their apartment. Since then the latest owners of the two single car garages have been seeking to change to the larger garages because they want the extra space that's available in them.

The apartment is in need of renovations, which Evan does. Due to the city having a history of losing power during major floods of the river Evan decides to put in back-up power of solar panels and wind turbines on the two patios as one faces south and the other faces west. He installs security screens with insect mesh across all of the patios and windows because there's evidence of people breaking in to the apartments via the patio and windows. He replaces the windows with tinted double glazed windows to minimise heat transfer. He also installs new lights and appliances to run on the new twelve volt solar system or the converter he puts on the mains power line. Then he installs a large water tank to provide some water if the mains water isn't working during a flood.

Investigations show the worst flood in the city would have had about a metre of water in the garage. When he builds cupboards in the garage Evan has open storage for the first metre and a half off of the floor to ensure any important stored items aren't in the water in a bad flood.

The doors to the garage and the apartment are replaced with security doors that look like the others, but they have a steel core. A radio control activated door opener is put on the garage tilt-a-door so they can open it without getting out of the car when they visit the apartment.

When all is done the apartment is very secure, able to be lived in for some weeks with no city provided utilities, and it belongs to L. M. Eagle; so there's no obvious links to any member of the Owen family. Thus it's a secure hiding place and safe house for them, if they ever need it.

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The apartment is stocked with food with a very long shelf life so they don't have to worry about replacing it too often, although they do rotate the food to the farm for consumption on a regular basis. Later they also set up an ordering and delivery service from one of the local stores for grocery and household items where they can order and pay for them over the Internet. The account is in the name of L. M. Eagle and it's paid from a trust bank account debit card in the same name.

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They make a point of visiting the apartment at least once each month to check on it, to check the supplies, and to clear the mail box.

The family appreciates having a place they can stay in overnight in the city if they need a place to rest up for some reason, usually after a late night show. So it does get some good use over the years.

When Llewellyn is thought to be old enough to go to activities in the city by himself, via the bus or the train from the town, he often uses the apartment to change clothes as well as checking on it and clearing the mail box while he's there.

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Early Teachings

From when Llewellyn is three months of age Anne is teaching him to speak English, she spends a lot of time working with him on language skills. When he starts to try standing up she teaches him how to cushion a fall and how to fall without getting really hurt. As he grows older both his parents teach him all they can that he's intellectually or physically able to do. Thus they start him on reading as well as basic martial arts before he starts at preschool.

Both parents work with Llewellyn to learn the three languages they know: English, Persian, and Navajo. They work with him so much that he has a very good command of all three of the languages before he starts kindergarten, but he isn't yet perfect in Persian and Navajo. Later, Mrs Irvine visits the farm three days a week to teach Llewellyn to sing, and she also teaches him to speak German. The language lessons continue until he's fluent in all four of the languages they're teaching him.

The early training with martial arts skills means Llewellyn is well ahead of his peer group in regards to motor skills and balance before he starts school. He's also very much more aware of his surroundings than the other school students due to such training from his parents. This is due to the tracking and recognition skills training Anne gives him from three years of age. The training Llewellyn receives from Anne is more in line with the old Navajo ways than the modern educational ways, due to the early ages he starts to learn things at.

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When Llewellyn starts at kindergarten his father gives him a special set of eye glasses and a badge to wear at all times. Evan carefully explains about the need for Llewellyn to not let people take photographs of him for any reason, and to wear the badge at all times as it records everything in front of him to help if there's a problem. Evan also explains he's not to tell anyone about the badge or the special glasses which go darker as the light increases as well as the small gems in the fancy frame sparkle all the time to make his face hard to see in photographs. This is for Llewellyn's future protection. Another part of the security is for Llewellyn to not be at school when they take the annual school photographs.

The frames of the glasses aren't very thick, but they aren't as thin as the frames of most modern glasses are. However, the lenses are large wrap around types that cover the whole of the eye socket, thus they also provide good protection from the weather. While some kids make fun of the fancy looking glasses they soon stop making jokes about the glasses when they see he doesn't respond to their taunts. Also, on bright days the other children see how the glasses darken to reduce the light getting into his eyes while they also block the wind and rain to protect his eyes.

As Llewellyn grows older his lessons are expanded, including more of the languages, additional martial arts skills, plus the use of hand guns and rifles. As he grows older new glasses with more extras are purchased from the same special store. Part of the problem is the physical limitation on the amount of material in the frame to put the fancy extras in, so as his head grows larger the frames are bigger and they can hide more in the frames. When he's nine years old the glasses have padding around the ears plus a camera looking behind him is in one arm, and it displays an image on the inside of one lens. This takes a lot of time for Llewellyn to learn to use it properly with normal vision without becoming disoriented by the double view, but it does mean no one can sneak up on him from behind. The other arm of the glasses houses the rechargeable battery to power the camera and display unit. It has to be recharged twice a week.

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During Llewellyn's early years Anne instils in him the USMC value of being Always Faithful while his father adds the Special Air Service value of Who Dares Wins. Both of this parents add the value of Maintaining the Team and many other values they have, but these three are ingrained core values of Llewellyn's psyche before he starts at preschool. When his mother starts to teach him the USMC code of Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome his father reinforces the concepts as another major part of his core attitudes. They both also teach him to work hard, keep his promises, to dream big, and to know anything is possible if you work at it hard enough in the right way. He also learns many things take more work and time than others do, if they're to be achieved. He also learns to plan.

The farm, family, and life goes well for several years.

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Family Changes

Eight year-old Llewellyn Owen stands beside his father, Evan Owen at the head of the grave of his mother, Anne 'Light Mist' Owen, nee Eagle. Until her death Anne was the cornerstone of their family. Now the family's anchor is gone, leaving both the father and son lost at sea while they deal with their grief. Both are too strong for their grief to destroy them because that's not their nature and Anne saw to that in her final days, but this is a major loss for them.

The graveside service comes to an end with one of the honour guard handing Evan Owen the US flag from his wife's coffin. While accepting the flag he thinks about when he first met Anne and their life together as they bought and built their farm west of the NSW rural city of Rivers. He was always amazed at how well Anne transitioned from being a Marine to being a mother and farmer.

When the service comes to its end Llewellyn's two grandfathers direct the father and son to the cars to go home, as they're still a bit stunned at their recent loss due to cancer. Anne's father, John 'Gray' Eagle, flew in from the USA for the funeral and he'll be flying home in a few days. John isn't well, so he prepares Llewellyn for his own anticipated death within the next year or two as he says, “Mountain Mist, I will follow your mother and her mother into the next life soon. When I do, stay here and look after your father. Your name and records are in the tribal records so you can contact them for all of the latest identity documents on a visit to the States when you're older.” He hands Llewellyn a tribal ID card in his tribal name while the boy simply nods in reply to the instructions.

Later that night both of Llewellyn's still living grandparents speak with him about him having to take a bigger role in the daily life of his family and how his father will need to find another wife, with his help.

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Several months later the news of John Eagle's death reaches Llewellyn and Evan Owen. The next week the mail has some papers for Llewellyn about the trust fund John Eagle set up for him, along with the details of the trustee and how Llewellyn can access the funds when he wants to.

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Just over a year after Anne's death Evan meets a woman he likes, Mary James, and they marry a year later. David Owen, Evan's father, dies of a stroke two months after Evan's wedding; he dies happy to know his son remarried. After his father's funeral Evan tells Llewellyn about the local trust fund he has in his mother's name and how his inheritance from David Owen is now part of it. The information includes the name of the public trustee and how Llewellyn can contact him about the funds.

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Legally, Llewellyn is too young to have a direct say in the control of either of the trust funds, but both trustees tell him they will listen to what he has to say about the management of the funds, and they set aside a monthly allowance for living expenses he can draw on when he wants to. Llewellyn is sent debit cards he can use on the two accounts, but he leaves the money in the accounts and he tells the managers to reinvest most of it until he says he needs it. He does like the idea of having one of the trust accounts in Australia and one in the USA, thus he doesn't have to move money between the countries if he buys items from the USA on the Internet, like computer games and parts, or for future travels to the USA.

The money in the Australian trust is more than enough for the interest received each year to pay for all of the costs of maintaining the apartment and to provide Llewellyn with a modest income for his personal use.

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A New Family Member

A few months after Evan and Mary are married Mary is pregnant. A few days before their first wedding anniversary Gwen Lilith Owen is born on March 15th, only a few weeks before Llewellyn turns ten years of age on April 5th. It's a happy event for the whole family. However, Mary has a problem with Gwen's birth and they both stay in the hospital for several days after the birth.

The first time Llewellyn visits the hospital is a few hours after Gwen's birth that morning. Evan and Llewellyn arrive about lunchtime to find a nurse having a hard time getting Gwen to accept the bottle of formula for her lunch. Llewellyn walks over to look down at Gwen, smiles, and asks, “What's up Gwen? You should be drinking.” When Gwen turns a little in response to the noise he adds, “Nurse, why don't you let me have a try at getting her to drink?”

The nurse has been trying for fifteen minutes and is getting a little bit frustrated, so she smiles at Llewellyn while saying, “You may as well get used to doing this now, as I'm sure you'll be doing it very often later.” It takes a few minutes for her to show Llewellyn how to support Gwen properly and to set him up in a chair.

Once all is set Llewellyn has Gwen cradled in his arm with her head on his shoulder while he holds the small bottle of formula to her mouth. Gwen sucks a little, screws up her mouth and turns away from the bottle. Evan sees the response and asks, “Is that a formula for lactose intolerant babies?” The nurse shakes her head. “Both Llewellyn and I had a big problem with lactose intolerance when we were first born. Do you have any suitable formula on hand, or do I have to go buy some?”

“We have some. I'll get it,” is the nurse's reply as she hurries out of the room. While they wait Llewellyn talks to Gwen and plays with her hands with the fingers of his free hand. A couple of minutes later the nurse is back with a new bottle of formula which she hands to Llewellyn while saying, “Here, try this!” When Llewellyn gets the teat into Gwen's mouth she immediately sucks on it for a taste, then starts to suck in earnest. The nurse smiles and says, “I'll get another bottle,” and she leaves the room.

The nurse returns with another three bottles of formula just as Gwen is finishing off the first bottle. She hands one to Llewellyn and he places it at Gwen's mouth. She starts sucking on it straight away. In only a couple of minutes Gwen finishes the second bottle. The nurse explains to Llewellyn how to burp Gwen while she places a cloth towel on his shoulder. So he stands and he walks around the room with Gwen on his shoulder as he rubs her back until she gives a couple of small burps.

When Evan takes Gwen from Llewellyn he talks to her for a moment before laying her down in the bassinet beside Mary's bed. While Evan is doing that Llewellyn is watching the nurse have a similar problem with feeding the new born baby of the woman in the other bed in this room.

The woman in the bed looks sort of familiar to Llewellyn, but he can't place her or put a name with the face. However, he does ask, “Nurse, do you want me to try with this baby as well?”

The nurse looks up at Llewellyn and smiles as she says, “You can't do any worse than I am. I even have the lactose intolerant formula, but she won't take it from me. This is Alice and she's only a few minutes older than Gwen is.”

The two quickly change places. When Llewellyn is in the chair with Alice snuggled into his arm and shoulder he looks down at her as he says, “Alice, you need to drink this milk formula so you can grow bigger. Now get busy with it, please.” The baby seems to respond to his voice, and when he places the teat to her lips she starts sucking. In next to no time Alice finishes the two small bottles of formula for her and Llewellyn is walking around the room as he burps Alice. While that's happening Mrs Irvine walks in, looks at what's happening, and smiles.

Evan glances at Mrs Irvine and says, “Good afternoon, Heidi. I think these two are a bit young for you to teach them to sing. However, it would probably make life easier for everyone if you can.” They all laugh at the idea of a tuneful song instead of a wailing cry from the babies.

Mrs Irvine replies, “It would be good to have them singing at this age, but I've come to see my daughter and granddaughter.”

Llewellyn smiles as he hands Alice to Mrs Irvine to hold.

A little later Llewellyn eats his lunch on the drive back to school, and he gets back just before the start of the first class after lunch.

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After school that day Llewellyn goes to do some shopping before he goes to the hospital. Thus it's nearing 5:00 p.m. when he arrives at the hospital to visit with Mary and Gwen.

When he walks into their room he finds another nurse having trouble getting Gwen to feed, so he asks, “Is that the lactose intolerant formula?”

The nurse looks up as she says, “Yes. Both of their charts are marked for it. However, I can't get either girl to drink.”

Llewellyn smiles as he says, “Here, let me try.” The nurse shrugs her shoulders, so they change places as Llewellyn talks to Gwen. He's hardly set in the chair before Gwen starts to suck on the bottle of formula. The nurse is very surprised about the response. In a few minutes the two small bottles of formula are finished and Gwen is being burped.

Mary is sitting up in the hospital bed. She looks very tired, but she smiles while watching Llewellyn feed Gwen, and she grins when he hands her Gwen to hold before he goes to feed Alice.

Feeding Alice is a repeat of the exercise with Gwen. No sooner is he settled in the chair with Alice and the bottle than she's busy with her meal. Mrs Helga Weeks smiles when Llewellyn hands Alice to her to hold after he burps Alice.

Evan gets caught up with a problem on the farm so he's very late when he comes into visit Mary and Gwen while also picking Llewellyn up to take him home for the night. Just before they're ready to leave the nurse comes in to feed the girls and she has trouble getting them to accept the bottle of formula. Again Llewellyn takes over the task of feeding both of the girls, and they both feed very fast for him while all of the adults slowly shake their heads in wonder at this oddity.

Early the next morning Evan takes Llewellyn into the hospital in time for the morning feed. There's a repeat of last night's feeding with both of the girls refusing to feed for the nurses but accepting the same bottles from Llewellyn.

While driving to the school Llewellyn and Evan discuss the feeding issue, and they decide on a course of action. At the school Evan calls Mrs Irvine to discuss their idea, and she agrees. Evan then signs an authority for Mrs Irvine to get Llewellyn out of school to take him to the hospital for the lunchtime feeding for the girls and then return him to school. The schedule is for Evan to take Llewellyn to the hospital for the morning feed then to school. Mrs Irvine will get Llewellyn to the hospital for the lunch feed then he'll walk to the hospital to be there for the afternoon and night feed times, and Evan will pick Llewellyn up to take him home. On the weekends Llewellyn will stay at the hospital all day. In the time between the feeds Llewelyn does his homework and other studies.

Most of the time the nurses change the nappies on the girls, but the first night Llewellyn is there on the new schedule the nurse has him do the nappy changing for both of the girls. He does many more after that.

They keep the schedule until the mothers are ready to go home ten days after the birth of the girls. For the last few days before they leave the hospital Mary and Helga are helping with the feeding. Llewellyn gives the girls the first bottle and their mothers feed the girls the second bottle. There is a small issue the first time this happens, but the girls soon settle down to being fed by their mothers.

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Llewellyn and Mary spend a lot of time with Gwen, and they both work at teaching her to talk while they look after her. In an odd twist of fate, due to their other duties and despite the time Llewellyn is at school, Llewellyn ends up changing more of Gwen's nappies than either of her parents, which is an activity greatly appreciated by Mary. Llewellyn also ends up feeding Gwen more often than his father does, but not as much as Mary does due to the many feeding times when Llewellyn is at school or in transit. Also, both families babysit for each other in their homes.

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Unwanted Visitors

The first sign of trouble is on the last Saturday of September the next year when Llewellyn goes up to the rifle range with his twenty-two rifle. He's walking through the brush on the top of the eastern part of the farm ridge when he sees three men near some boulders on the western ridge above the house. When Llewellyn looks through his rifle's scope he can see one of the men has a rifle with a very good scope while another has a spotting scope like the ones he's seen at the local rifle range near town.

Llewellyn moves into better concealment while he gets out his two-way auto-encrypted radio to talk to his father who he can see on their tractor working the field in front of the house. Each family member has a radio for communication while out of the house. Llewellyn activates his radio and says, “Lion to Panther, snakes at twelve o'clock high. Over.”

Evan says, “Panther to Lion, received. Can you interdict? Over.”

“Lion to Panther, probably. Will try. Out.” Even if the men have a radio covering the oddball frequency these radios use Llewellyn and Evan doubt they have the ability to auto-decrypt such short messages if they picked them up, nor understand the code if they can decrypt them.

Llewellyn sets about getting organised between two rocks to provide some cover for himself while he watches the three men set up on his side of a large rock as they look down into the field. Once Llewellyn is set up he practices moving from one man to the next in the way his father taught him to. While doing this he isn't thinking about the men and what his actions will do to them, as all he's thinking about is protecting his family from these men who mean them harm. He knows they're trouble as they have guns and they did not come through the front gateway.

The sniper is set and he turns to speak up to the man with the spotting scope when Llewellyn is ready to fire. He aims for the back of the sniper's head and fires. Llewellyn shifts to the man with the scope as his head comes up at the sound of the rifle shot, Llewellyn aims at his face and he fires again. Llewellyn moves to aim at the third man who's turning to run to the other side of the large rock. Llewellyn aims between his shoulder blades and fires again. The third man pitches face down to the ground and lays there. Only then does Llewellyn move back over the other two to check on the results of his shots. The sniper is lying still on the ground with a lot of blood near his head while the man with the scope is lying still beside the rock with blood on his coat and shirt. It looks like all three shots were on target and the twenty-two calibre hollow point rounds did the job by breaking up on impact to do serious damage inside the targets.

Llewellyn activates his radio and says, “Lion to Panther, all three down near the rock above the west corner of the house. Over.”

Evan replies, “Panther to Lion, acknowledged. Will go and check. Keep an eye on them until I get there. Out.” Llewellyn stays still and watches the three men until his father walks up to them about twenty minutes later. After checking the men Evan gives his son a thumbs up sign so Llewellyn can go home while Evan checks out how the men got to where they are.

On his walk home Llewellyn realises just what he did and he feels sick about having killed them. Until he thinks, They came here to hurt us! So it's all their fault they died. I wonder how Dad will get rid of the bodies?

After he checks their pockets Evan looks for and finds where the men scaled the backside of the ridge. From the equipment there he thinks one of them must have been a skilled rock climber. He can see where their car is parked on the side of the road that crosses the end of the valley. Deciding to use their car to dispose of them he takes their guns and walks back down off of the ridge.

Back at the farmhouse Evan gathers his family together and says, “I'll go bring their car around and after dark we'll drop the bodies down to load them in the car. I'll leave them all at the town tip. They all had Makarov nine millimetre pistols while the sniper had a Dragunov sniper rifle with an excellent scope and one of them had a Kalashnikov AK seventy-four fully automatic assault rifle. The weapons scream Russian, but they all had US style dental work. No identity documents on them at all. I'll damage the guns beyond repair and leave them with the bodies so the police can chase them down.”

Mary asks, “Evan, do you suspect this is part of your past catching up with you that you warned me about?” He simply nods yes in reply.

Later, when Evan leaves to get the car Llewellyn takes a rope and pulley with him when he goes up the path to the western ridge area. Llewellyn has on latex gloves when he collects the climbing gear from the other side of the ridge before he ties the pulley to a branch of a tree close to the edge of the ridge. He then uses the attackers' long rope to tie one end around the first man before using the pulley to lower him down the side of the ridge now that it's dark. Mary wears gloves when she undoes the rope and tugs on it so Llewellyn knows to pull it back up. By the time the third man is lowered down Evan, wearing a black paper coverall for use with dangerous chemicals, is back with the car. With the last man down Llewellyn lets the rope drop free instead of pulling it back up. By the time he's back at the house all is ready for their trip into town with Mary driving their car and Evan driving the sniper team's car. The trip to the town tip is fast and they leave the car, bodies, and guns there before driving into Rivers to have dinner out after Evan changes his clothes.

The work of lowering the bodies down the cliff is within Llewellyn's physical abilities because he's very well muscled from helping with the work on the farm, so he's a lot stronger than most people would expect from his build and age.

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While in the city they check the apartment is fully stocked, and they also provide some extra supplies in case they need to use it soon. Most of the extra supplies are baby supplies for Gwen.

The next day Evan burns the black coverall and the gloves they all wore while Llewellyn takes a trip through the emergency exit to check all of the gear and confirm the system is ready for immediate use. He gives it all a full check, including the electric motorcycles. He finds it's all ready to go at a moment's notice. As he does this he worries that he'll need to use it while praying he doesn't have to use it at all.

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During the next week Evan buys and installs more wireless cameras to give a better coverage of the road across the end of the valley and the road along the middle of the valley. He also sends some enquiries out to people he knows in the intelligence community. Then there's nothing any of them can do except live their normal lives while they wait to see what happens next.

Evan also checks with the family solicitor that the way they changed the farm ownership when he married Mary will leave Llewellyn in full control of the company that now owns the farm should anything happen to both Evan and Mary. He's reassured the government can't take over control of the company or its assets due to how it's been set up.

In case there's a need to be disguised Mary tells Evan and Llewellyn to stop having haircuts and to let their hair grow out from the short back and sides they normally wear. Within weeks the hair is near collar length, so it shouldn't be long before their hair is much longer than people are used to seeing them wear. During this time they usually wear a reversed baseball style cap with the peak down their necks and their hair inside the back of their shirts so people can't see its length. Thus few people know how long their hair is getting to be.

The school promotes the wearing of headgear as protection from the sun, so they don't mind the students wearing caps and hats in class as long as they don't block the view of the front of the classroom of the students behind the wearer. Thus the way Llewellyn wears his cap is allowed in the classroom while those with wide brim hats have to take them off their heads when sitting in the classrooms, except those in the back row of seats. This helps to conceal his growing longer hair.

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Surprise! Surprise!

On the Friday night of the last day of school in December the Owen family decides to stay at home as they know many other people will be out on the roads having a Friday night out or leaving on their end of year holidays, and the Owen family doesn't want to get mixed up in the heavy traffic. It's just after 8:00 p.m. when the security system alerts them to a vehicle on the road at the end of the valley. They aren't worried until it alerts to another vehicle, so Evan gets up to check the camera's view.

After he checks a few cameras Evan says, “Battle stations. It looks like a major assault group,” while he switches cameras to try and get a count of the number of large buses with the car and van driving along the road. When they reach the valley road they turn off their headlights as they turn into the road. So it's very clear they're up to no good.

As per the training Evan gave them Mary and Llewellyn go to their combat posts. Llewellyn stops to put on his chest carrier before he picks up the now twenty-one month old Gwen and straps her into it. She likes it when he carries her around, so she simply giggles at the extra contact.

Mary goes to her station on the west wall, activates the monitors on the wall to show the camera views of the house and the farm, releases the locks on the steel covers for the windows so gravity drops them into position while the house sign covering her combat post drops to clear her gun port. She opens the cupboard covering her gun, extends the pedestal up, and swings the gun into position. Now she can see all around the farm on the monitors and she can bring her gun to bear on the area of her responsibility. Then she puts on her body armour.

While strapping Gwen into the carrier Llewellyn continues to his post at the rear of the house. He puts on his body armour, sits in his chair, flicks switches to bring up his monitors, and he activates the defences he's responsible for, then he waits for the enemy to start the action.

Before he leaves the security post Evan activates all of the on-site and off-site recording systems for the cameras, including the house ones which shows everything except Llewellyn's combat post and the area between it and the emergency exit. Thus all activity will be recorded.

Due to the now two metre high bushes it's not possible to see what's on the valley road from ground level, but the cameras on the roof have good views. All of the Owen family watch their monitors as they show the in-coming convoy move down the road. The buses stop on the side of the road and spread out along the whole of the front of the farm. The van stops just before the bridge over the farm stream which is right before the farm gateway while the car goes just past the gateway and stops on the east side of the bridge. Men get out of all of the vehicles except the van, which has some communications dishes rise from the roof with a few of them pointed at the house. All of the people are clearly wearing body armour while those from the buses are heavily armed for combat.

The Owens all watch the monitors as the men dismount from the fifteen buses and form into five groups. One is near the gateway while the others spread out with two groups along the fields on each side of the gateway. They open the under bus storage to get out more weapons and some ramps which they start to set up against the bushes. Evan says, “Those buses look like they carry fifty or so people each and they're forming into five groups of three bus loads. That means they have five companies of about a hundred and fifty each. I'd say someone decided to go with overwhelming force for a quick action. Do nothing until they either shoot at us or they get halfway across the field or they start with the electronic warfare or I say to open fire.” While Mary and Llewellyn both acknowledge their orders Evan gets set behind the gun he now has ready for him to use on his area of responsibility.

Contact

After a few minutes of preparation the troops are ready to go up the ramps and jump into the field or to charge in the gateway. The officer in charge of each company checks his men, gives a hand sign to another officer, then the signs go up the line until one man turns to the two men beside the car without rifles and he speaks to them. One of them replies, then the commander of this mercenary battalion speaks into his radio. On the issue of the executive command the officers signal the men to go and the troops charge up the ramps. At the same time the men in the van activate their electronic gear to stop phone and Wi-Fi signals in the area.

In the farm they watch as the men charge in the gateway and up the ramps to jump into the field, then the cameras providing views via encrypted Wi-Fi instead of cable go off-line at the same time Llewellyn shouts, “Radio interference. I'm engaging.”

Llewellyn has a slight delay while the section of roof in front of his gun slides down the roof to free the remote control M230 chain gun to fire its 30 millimetre explosive shells. The slight delay means he opens fire at the same time as his parents open fire with their M134 7.62 millimetre machine guns. While the M134s have a lot higher rate of fire set at 2,000 rounds per minute the 600 round per minute M230 does a lot more damage due to being a larger round with an explosive shell. While they provide a surprising and devastating fire they only have 2,000 rounds for the M230 and 10,000 rounds for each of the M134s. Llewellyn knows the guns are illegal for them to own and they had to be smuggled in, but he never asked his father how he got them or their ammunition.

While Evan and Mary open fire on the troops already in the fields by sweeping across them Llewellyn opens fire on the car because the gun he controls is mounted in the apex of the roof and it has a clear field of fire into the road. He sweeps his fire across the car and the three leaders before he swings to blow apart the van and its gear, then he swings his fire along the line of buses to destroy them and kill as many of those waiting to go over the ramps as he can. Reaching the west end of the line he swings his fire back along the line of bushes before moving back to target the buses on the far side of the gateway.

When the defenders open fire one of the officers already in the field is fast to give a shouted order of, “Those with rockets take out those damn guns.” Some men stop to swing the packs of M72 rocket launchers off of their backs to fire them at the house. Only one in every twenty-five man platoon is issued with five of the rockets, so only the few who are still alive and have made it into the field can bring them into action. Their first rockets hit near their targets but do little damage. Naturally the Owen adults redirect fire at the men with the rocket launchers.

About two minutes into the battle Llewellyn's gun is hit and put out of action by rockets, so he follows his orders and he gets ready to leave.

Close hits near to their gun ports have also wounded both Mary and Evan. When Llewellyn calls out his gun is out of action Evans shouts back, “Now your mission is to take care of your sister until she can take care of herself. Take my knives and go, get you and Gwen out of here!”

At the same time Mary calls out, “Bye, son. Look after your sister.”

Llewellyn promises to look after Gwen while he goes over to take his father's boot knives and he puts them into his low leg pockets, then he goes to and opens the emergency exit's entry point. As he goes down the ladder he shuts the entry behind him as they can quickly open it when they leave, but it's hidden if there's a problem with their escape.

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Escape

On reaching the bottom of the entrance Llewellyn lies on the flat cart set there, he places a hand on Gwen's head to stop her raising it, and he turns on the electric motor to send the cart down the tunnel to the equipment shed. Once there he gets off the cart and turns the control to the position to send it back as he knows it'll turn off at the other end. He then opens the catch to lift the last floor section to give him access to the lower tunnel before he goes down the ladder into the lower area, then he pulls the floor back into place before he lies on the flat cart in this tunnel. Again he holds Gwen's head and he turns on the electric motor to run the cart along this much longer tunnel. A beep sounds when he feels the cart slow down as it nears the end of the tunnel. When it stops he gets off of the cart and he sends it back to the start in the same way as he did the first cart. He climbs up the tunnel into the cave. There he moves Gwen to the child car seat set in the back of the bike pod with the seat before he checks on how the battle is going via the notebook computer in this cave.

While he went as fast as he could all of the travel still takes time, so a few minutes have passed since Llewellyn left the house. The scene he sees is Mary's gun is damaged and she's dead near it. Evan's gun is also damaged and he's obviously wounded, but he's still fighting by using the modified Browning Automatic Rifle he has. A check of the farm shows the fields are littered with dead attackers. He watches as a rocket hits the inside edge of the gun port and his father is killed by shrapnel.

A grief laden eleven year-old warrior watches the screen as the enemy troops move in on the farmhouse. Llewellyn uses the notebook computer controls to send signals to activate the last of the farm's defences. Bottles of Liquid Petroleum Gas in some cupboards and in the roof cavity open to let their contents flow out as he unlocks the front door. He watches as troops move up to the building and open the front door. When the first attacker walks in the doorway Llewellyn sends the signal to ignite the gas, to set off the rock mines, and to ignite the thermal charges inside the house computers.

The senior officer still alive is standing in the gateway surveying the scene when he sees most of his remaining troops fall as victims to the exploding decorative rocks as the house goes up in a huge ball of fire. He turns to the Sergeant near him while saying, “Get all who are still active to check if anyone else is still alive. This is too much of a SNAFU, so leave the dead, leave the equipment, and we'll withdraw with all who're alive.” He gets a nod in reply before the man moves off to do that. Turning to a private he says, “Check to see if any of the buses still work, and we'll load up as soon as you find one to get us out of here.” The private also nods and leaves. While still a military unit this mercenary group doesn't follow all of the usual military protocols, especially when in the field.

Several minutes later ten fit men and nineteen wounded men are in the only undamaged bus as they leave the area just over twenty minutes after they arrived there. While shaking his head one of the sergeants says to a mate, “Simple take down of an ex-soldier by using overwhelming force, they say. Then they send us against a damn fortress. Over seven hundred and thirty dead, including the clients and the van techs. Who the hell did they send us after?” His mate just shrugs in reply as neither of them know who the target was.

Llewellyn packs up the notebook computer before he puts it in the pannier then he opens the hidden door to leave the cave. He moves the electric bike out of the cave to under the overhanging rock, closes the cave door, puts his helmet on, gets in the bike pod, and he rides away while vowing to complete the last mission his father gave him: to take care of his sister until she can care for herself.

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Evasion

As he rides across the fields on the diesel-electric motorbike with the composite pod enclosing both the rider and the passenger Llewellyn goes slowly with the diesel engine off to keep the heat signature low. Only the small window area at the front and sides allows any heat in or out, and due to it being double glazed with a vacuum gap between the panes the transfer is very slow. Thus the bike's heat signature is more like that of a small animal than it is a vehicle or a person. When they tested it the heat bloom matched that of a fox in the field, so Llewellyn doubts anyone who spots it with an infra-red scope will think it's a person or a vehicle.

When Llewellyn reaches the outskirts of Rivers he turns on the lights to lower the risk of being stopped by the police, and he starts the diesel motor to recharge the batteries. He stops in a side street near the older business district, lowers the balance wheel to park the bike, opens the side door, gets out, puts the helmet on the small fuel tank, puts on a cap, checks his glasses, gets Gwen out of her seat, and he puts her back into the chest mounted carrier he has. After writing a long note of instructions on his writing pad he locks up the bike and walks to the main street to go to one of the Automatic Teller Machines to withdraw his daily maximum of a thousand dollars cash. Then he walks to the front door of the family solicitor's office where he slips the note under the door before walking up the street and turning into a side street. He smiles as he makes his way to the bike via the back streets and lanes. He knows that section of main street has several security cameras on the shops along there and the ATM will have recorded him, so there's now clear evidence of him being in Rivers on foot around 9:00 p.m., well before he could've walked there from the farm via the normal roads. Thus they'll initially think he wasn't at the farm at the time of the attack.

At the bike Llewellyn places Gwen in her seat, swaps the cap for the helmet, and rides off. A few minutes later he's at the apartment's garage, so he hits the remote opener and he enters it as soon as the door opens up enough to do so. Once in the garage he stops the bike, dismounts, closes the garage door, slides the heavy duty bolts into place, and turns off the power to the door opener and radio activator. He turns the bike around to face out before he gets Gwen out of her seat, he unloads the gear from the panniers, and he goes up to the flat after locking up the garage.

Once in the apartment with the entry light on Llewellyn locks the door then he turns off the card reader and number pad to stop the quick access from working. He turns the temperature up to a comfortable one from the low maintenance one it's normally at. Gwen wakes up while he sets up the notebook computer, so he prepares a meal for her. When she finishes eating he starts a fun educational video on the television so she's happy doing a bit of learning while he edits the video recordings of the attack and he types up a report of the attack based on the edited video.

When he's finished with the account of the attack on the farm from the video records he uploads the video to a special website, then he attaches the report to an email his father prepared years ago, and he sends the email to his father's Irish publisher with the code to decrypt the file his father sent him many years before. The arrangements his father made will have the publisher decrypting the older file, add the report he just wrote, and then publish the book. It'll include the link to the website with the video clips of the attack. What Llewellyn doesn't know is the email also goes to a lawyer friend of his father's in the USA who will now carry out the instructions Evan left with him years ago. Llewellyn also sends an email with the video clips attached to the family solicitor, William Dunn, asking him to copy them on to the police and other authorities while restating his wishes in the note about Gwen's and his future.

Another email Llewellyn sends is to the contact he has for a Navajo genealogist living in Window Rock, Arizona, to locate members of his mother's family he can ask to be a guardian for Gwen and himself.

As Llewellyn sends the emails on their way he's thankful for the software his father loaded to automatically bounce his Internet activity through several relays and a mix of virtual private network connections around the world. The email component of the program also has the ability for Llewellyn to select a number of exit points so he can choose where to make it look like the email originated. The system makes the time delays longer, but it also makes it almost impossible to trace back due to the number of links and the many location changes it makes. The email to Will Dunn is set to appear as if it's sent from Bendigo, Victoria, to make it look like Llewellyn and Gwen have left the state of New South Wales.

With all of his immediate duties done Llewellyn checks on Gwen. He's been so long she's ready to sleep again, so he shuts everything down and he takes Gwen to the master bedroom where he places her on the bed. As he lays her down he smiles at this king-sized bed with tall ends attached to it. Due to the bed having tall sides fences it looks more like a giant crib with low sides than it looks like a normal bed without any sides, which is the idea. The large bed allows room for Gwen to move about but not fall off it, unless she finds a way to crawl over the side rails. With the apartment's temperature on a comfortable setting they don't need to have any sheets or blankets over them while sleeping.

Llewellyn prepares himself for the night, and he gets onto the bed. Once he's lying down Llewellyn thinks about their parents and the events of the last few hours as Gwen snuggles up to him and she goes to sleep. While he's glad so many of the attackers are dead he's very sad about his parents being killed, and he cries himself to sleep.

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Reactions

When the shooting starts both of the other farmers in the valley look out their front windows to see what it is, then they get their families into safe places with their houses between them and the shooting while they call the police to report the battle. Being a Friday summer night with a lot of the extra holiday traffic on the road the police are very busy with lots of other activities in the area, so they have trouble breaking an officer free to drive out to the valley.

Because the call is about many people shooting the responding police car has its lights and siren on, but it still takes nearly half an hour to get to the valley from the other side of the nearest town due to it being one of the most hard to get to locations in the district. Thus the fight is over and the living mercenaries are out of sight by the time the police arrive. What the officer sees on the road makes it clear he needs a lot of help, so he reports the details of what he can see, makes a quick check for anyone still alive, and he waits in his car on the edge of the battlefield.

Based on the two citizens' reports and the description of the site from the first officer on the scene the police shift commander phones the Area Commander at home to report the incident, because it's too major for him to deal with as a regular incident. The result is another series of phone calls for half of the forensic staff in the Police Command Area to attend the site to start documenting things and the other half is put on notice to attend in eight hours to relieve the first group. Also, a strong request for aid is sent to the nearby military base for soldiers to help with moving the weapons and the bodies.

It's another hour before all of the help is on hand at the site with a set of portable generator powered area lights so they can see what they're doing and they can start to process the scene. The police photographers photograph everything in the road while they take care not to disturb anything, then the soldiers take all of the weapons and ammunition off the dead and the road to place it all in a truck they have before the police forensic officers check the bodies. After fingerprints, DNA samples, and facial photographs are taken by the police the soldiers place the dead in body bags and load them onto another truck. The only pocket contents any of the dead have are cigarettes and cheap lighters, so they're no help with identification. After enough of the bodies on the road are removed all of the vehicles are processed by the police. Since all of the dead wore lightweight gloves the police see no reason to bother with checking the buses for fingerprints, but they do check the car and van when they get to them. After each vehicle is checked by the police an Army truck takes it away to be kept at the military base for now, as it's the only place in the local area where so many vehicles can be in one location and kept secure.

Once the road is clear the clearance teams move onto the farm to deal with all of the dead in the fields and on the farm entry road. When they do that some more soldiers get busy using metal detectors to check the road area for any shrapnel or bullets. Due to the large numbers of finds the police decide not to list and process them, so the soldiers simply dig them up and put them into boxes to be taken away as part of the site clean up. The same is done when they're able to move into the fields.

When access to the other farms is possible a police officer goes to get a statement from each of the farmers, but they don't bother with any from the rest of the family members as they know the farmers have little to tell them other than when the shooting started and finished.

There's so much work to do by the police and soldiers the dawn is on them as they finish processing the last of the attackers and prepare to go check out the farm buildings. Due to the way the burnt out farmhouse looks they know no one is alive in it, while there's nothing of note in the other farm buildings. During the night the police and soldiers on site have all been replaced with new workers, except for the Police Area Commander who feels he needs to stay until they finish with the site.

From the initial quick check of the farmhouse the police know the two adults are dead in the front room, but they now need to check it properly to locate the remains of the two children who live there. However, they're puzzled when they're unable to find any indication of the children being there, despite the neighbours confirming the children were seen at the farm at dusk. Once the initial photographs and checks are made soldiers are sent in to remove the large weapons and ammunition as well as to check for more explosives and ammunition. The specialists take time to check it all and clear out the little remaining ammunition they find.

When the soldiers are loading the remains of the weapons from the farmhouse onto the back of a truck one of them says, “How the hell did a local small-time farmer get hold of two mini-guns and a chain gun?”

The Warrant Officer supervising them says, “He wasn't always a local farmer. Colonel Owen could get anything he wanted.” The soldiers are surprised to learn the dead farmer was an Army colonel.

The Police Commander asks, “Colonel! Warrant Officer, when?”

The Warrant Officer turns around as he says, “I first knew Evan Owen when he was a Lieutenant fresh out of the academy. Soon after our first action he was transferred to the Special Air Service Regiment and I lost contact. A couple of months ago I ran into him in Rivers and we talked over old times. About fourteen years ago he was medically retired due to accumulated wounds. He was a colonel when he retired. He must have been on a fast promotion track to make colonel so fast. From what he didn't say I gather he'd been in a few special ops he couldn't talk about. If he thought anyone might be after him he'd take action to protect his family. It sure looks like he was right and he took the right actions for their protection, maybe just not enough of them. But, then, who'd expect anyone to send a battalion of mercenaries at someone in rural Australia. They must have wanted him real bad to spend so much to get to him, Sir.”

“Thank you, Warrant Officer, that helps me to understand this event a bit better. Now to find the remains of the children.”

“They're alive and well, but not here, Sir.”

“Why do you say that, Warrant Officer?”

He smiles as he says, “Colonel Owen was too smart to build a fortress without a back door, so where is it? I can't see it. The kids must've used it to get away. I'm not sure when they left, but they weren't here when it ended. The Colonel was fighting a rearguard action to cover their escape, that's why his wife was here. I'd say she died first and he stayed to inflict as much damage as he could after that. He would've made sure the kids got safely away.”

“Hmm. I hope you're right! I hate finding dead children.”

They all think their own thoughts about the situation while they get on with examining and cleaning up the site. By lunchtime they know the children aren't in the farmhouse; but they can't find another exit, despite being sure there is one. The Police Commander finds that reassuring as it also means the bad guys didn't find it. However, he is puzzled about it because they can't find it with all of their people searching for it.

While it's clear there was a major fire in the building all of the thick walls and the floor are intact, which makes the police wonder about the fire itself and how it happened. The roof is destroyed and fallen in, but after removing all of the damaged steel roof panels they realise it won't take much work to make the house liveable again.

The soldiers are still busy removing spent bullets and cases from the fields so the place is still a crime scene, thus an officer is left on site after the forensic staff finish with the farmhouse and leave.

When the Police Area Commander returns to the station he has to give the news media a briefing on what he knows about the event. Only then does he get to go to his office and check his emails. Then he learns more about the events on the farm that night, and he's relieved to know the children are definitely alive and well. However, he still doesn't know where they are nor how they left the farm.

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In the USA

In a high security room within one of the USA government buildings in Washington, D.C. a group of people from many intelligence agencies are gathered mid-morning on the Sunday immediately after the attack on the Owen farm in Australia. The President's Intelligence Advisor looks at the others present before he turns to the Director of the CIA to ask, “The attack in Australia, what did you think you were doing?”

“I didn't think we were doing anything! What happened was not an approved operation. However, it has raised a lot of questions and issues. As much as I hate to ask for it, I'll need help from the NSA, FBI, and others to sort it out.” They all look on in shock as this man is well known for refusing to let anyone else look into what the CIA does. “It's still early in the investigation, but there are some major issues that need to be resolved. The biggest one is we've evidence of a rogue group within the CIA that includes people in many divisions at high levels. We lost an expensive surveillance van, several techs, a case officer, and the station chief; yet the only official records show them all being at the Embassy for the full weekend. The tech team leader kept printouts of all his work. That's against orders, but it has helped us because in his office cupboard we found copies of the orders he was given for 'Operation Bunyip.' Yet we have no Operation Bunyip, and never had one. Checks of our computer records show that, and a review of the file number showing on the print copies refers to some refurbishment work at the Embassy. The data is the same for each of the weekly back-up copies of the records. However, the Langley tech I had checking the records also checked a mid-week copy they made just prior to doing some major equipment upgrades. They did the copy so they wouldn't lose anything if there was a problem. That copy shows an Operation Bunyip with that file number as the removal of an important contract assassin living in Australia. The copy has no record of who created or approved the operation or who created the records. One of the more obscure log files shows the computer entries were made by a person with Deputy Director level access and approved by another with the same level of access, but not who they were. That log simply records the access level checked for each data entry. To make matters worse is we now know the target was a retired colonel in the Australian SAS, but his official record shows he did several years on detached duty with the US Army, yet there is no US military file on him at all.”

Everyone else at the table has a shocked look on their face because this is a major concern. To do what they're being told happened means a large group of very senior people were involved in the deception. That problem is bigger than the one created by the fiasco in Australia.

The Director of the FBI turns to his aide to quietly give him some orders which has the aide racing from the room. The rest of the group start discussing how they'll deal with both of the problems. It's a long talk, so they're still at it when the aide returns with a folder to hand to his boss who immediately opens it, he looks at it, and he gives his aide more orders which has him leaving the room again.

When there's a short break in the discussion the FBI Director says, “I think this is a lot bigger than we realise. For various reasons we often get tasked to investigate people for security clearances. My aide just checked our files for an investigation on this Evan Owen. While there is no record in the computers the check of the physical file cards turned up this file I have here. The only document in the file is a checklist of the tasks carried out to conduct the investigation and at the bottom is the notation of him being approved for clearances at the highest level asked for. However, what is odd is it's the only document in the file. The request, the lists of people spoken to, the copies of the records checked, the final letter of the approval to the requesting organization are all missing. In short, the file was sterilized by someone at a high level. I've only seen one file like this before, and it was for a member of one of the special covert operations 'Ghost Groups' directed at the highest levels of authority.” That causes a lot of concern for them all, due to what it implies about someone wanting to eliminate past special operatives.

A little later the aide returns and goes to speak to his boss, but is told to tell them all. The man shrugs and says, “No one currently in the records department knows what that group of two dozen files is about as they haven't been active for over a decade. I spoke to the retired head of records who was there for decades prior to retiring five years ago. He told me the section of files I mentioned, all of which are like the one I brought the Director, are what they call 'Codename Files.' The person was investigated, assigned a codename, and all of the records except that one document were moved to the new file with no other record kept.”

One of the older members of the meeting groans before saying, “Shit! A colonel in a codename group means he must have been a team leader. We haven't needed such teams for a long time, but the few I know about were responsible for performing some military miracles. They made most of the Special Operations Forces look like raw recruits. No wonder they sent such a large force, and then he almost wiped them out. But who sent them, and why? What did they hope to achieve?”

The Presidential Advisor looks up as he says, “The why has to be he knows something about someone very important and they're going to all lengths to see the information never surfaces again. But who is it that they have such tendrils into the CIA, and how did they know who to go after? I see this will need a lot of work by everyone to resolve.”

One of the other members looks up and grins as he says, “From what I saw about how the farm was built and defended I think Colonel Owen was a master tactician and strategist who planned well. So he likely left a little gift to be made public if he was murdered. If so, then he may well send us a message from the grave to limit the search a lot. The down side of that is he'll be airing a lot of dirty linen when he does. However, it'll have to be over a decade old since he's been inactive that long.” All of the others groan at the problems they foresee such a revelation causing.

A little later the meeting breaks up and each goes on their way to find out what they can about the incident and its causes.

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In another part of Washington a lawyer is contacting everyone he knows in the intelligence community to find out what he can about the attack at the farm so he can start suing people for the wrongful death of his now deceased friend who was a client, and his friend's wife's death. He learns a lot, but not everything. However, it is enough for him to start to prepare the papers to sue the US government agencies involved.

The lawyer eventually gets an ex gratia payment from the CIA of five million dollars he puts in a trust account for Llewellyn and Gwen Owen.

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Legal Affairs

Will Dunn very rarely works on weekends and he tries hard to limit evening work. However, he often checks his work emails of an evening and a weekend. On the Saturday morning after the attack on the Owen farm Will checks his emails, and he finds one from Llewellyn Owen with a short summary of the events of the night before which includes a list of instructions confirming what he put in his note and some attached video clips with a request to pass them along to the police.

After viewing the video clips Will forwards them to the local Police Commander as he has his direct Police email address. Then Will goes to his office to collect the written instructions, so while he's there he checks the security camera recording and copies it. He smiles when he sees the recording shows someone Llewellyn's size with a child in a chest carrier but the person's face is obscured by the flashes of the reflected lights from all of the gems on Llewellyn's glasses. While in the office Will does the paperwork he needs to lodge with the Court on Monday morning so he can carry out Llewellyn's instructions. He then spends the rest of the weekend relaxing with his family and doing chores at his home.

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Will is at the Courthouse early Monday morning so he can lodge the various applications and forms as soon as they open the doors. While not the first in the door as someone else beat him there, he is the second and he hands over the papers for the various matters he needs to have dealt with by the Court. He does request an urgent hearing on the custody hearing for Llewellyn and Gwen. The Court Registrar adds the matter to the List for the Court today.

When Magistrate Murphy enters the Court the first matter on her list is the Owen Custody as an urgent item. Magistrate Murphy reads the few papers on the matter, looks at Will, and says, “Mister Dunn, I don't see any response by the Child Welfare Department here. Why is that?”

“Your Honour, I'm acting on behalf of the children based on the wills of their parents, the last verbal instructions the parents gave the children, and the instruction of Llewellyn Owen given on Friday night. I've no idea of what the Child Welfare Department wishes to do on this matter, and if this application is approved they need not waste any time with it,” is his reply. He checks some papers and adds, “Also, Your Honour, I doubt the Child Welfare Department will be able to provide a placement acceptable to the children and in line with the wishes of their parents due to the ages as Llewellyn is almost twelve years of age and Gwen is almost two years old. All in the family wish them to stay together at the same location until Llewellyn is eighteen years of age and he's able to take over his sister's guardianship from then until she turns eighteen.”

Magistrate Murphy looks at Will before checking a few things in the many law books around her bench before saying, “I wish to hear what the Child Welfare Department has to say before making any orders. I'll put this aside while the staff contact them to get an officer here. We'll come back to this matter when the Child Welfare Department officer arrives. When they do arrive you may wish to speak with them first to reach an agreement to simplify the matter.” She puts the papers to the side while talking quietly to the Clerk of the Court. Will picks up his papers and leaves the Court at the same time the clerk goes to have the Child Welfare Department notified of the matter before the Court.

About an hour later one of the Child Welfare Department officers arrives at the Courthouse to handle the matter, and she talks to Will about Gwen and Llewellyn. Will shows her the instructions he has and she says, “We have no facilities or families we can place the two together so they'll have to be split up. There'll be no problem with a placement for the girl and we should be able to find a place for the boy somewhere. I'll also get our preferred public trustee down here so you can hand over the parents' assets for them to manage.”

Will isn't happy with her manner or the quick way she disregards the wishes of the parents and children, so he simply says, “I guess we'll have to see what the Magistrate has to say on the matter.” The woman glares at him before she turns away to call the public trustee they use.

A few minutes later both are back in Court and the Clerk of the Court tells Magistrate Murphy both parties are in Court, so Magistrate Murphy brings the custody matter back to the bench. It's soon clear there is a need for a proper hearing that needs to be heard today.

Magistrate Murphy looks at both parties for a moment before saying to the clerk, “Please check how busy Magistrate White is today. See if he has time to hear this matter today.” The clerk leaves to check on the other magistrate sitting today. She soon returns and talks to Murphy who looks up and says, “Magistrate White has time to hear this case today, so this matter is being passed over to him in Court Three,” as she hands the papers to the clerk. All involved with the case move to the other Court.

About fifteen minutes later Magistrate White has the Custody papers and is reading them. He looks up and asks for both parties to state their positions, which they do. He then summarises them by saying, “Mister Dunn, you are asking for custody of the children simply because this is what the parents have in their wills and what the boy Llewellyn has said. The Child Welfare Department claim a legal obligation for custody under the laws of this state. I am prepared to listen to a renewed application by you after you are assessed by the departmental staff. In the meantime the children will have to be cared for by the department. They also ask for control of the parents' assets via a public trustee, so you'll have to make arrangements to transfer them over.”

Will slowly shakes his head before asking, “Will Your Honour issue an order that the children be kept together in the same household?”

“No. That is an administrative issue for the department,” is the reply.

“Then, Your Honour, I advise I will be appealing this and also raising it with the Family Court of Australia as well as the NSW Appeals Court. As the executor of the wills of both Evan and Mary Owen I wish to know why the Department and the Court feel the need to have a public trustee manage the small amount of their personal bank accounts which have a combined value of three thousand and two hundred dollars.”

The public trustee stands as he says, “It's my understanding the two parents owned and operated a farm worth a few million dollars as well as their life insurances.”

Will shakes his head no while saying, “They operated the farm which is owned by a private company neither Evan or Mary had ownership in, and the company is the main beneficiary of their insurance policies as they were the main employees of the company. The policies do have an amount of ten thousand dollars for each adult for each child with terms for the insurance company to hold it in trust until the children turn eighteen. So the money isn't able to be transferred to anyone until then.”

Magistrate White writes on the papers then says, “Since the value of the parents' assets doesn't warrant the management by a public trustee they'll be left in the hands of the executor to manage as a small trust for both children. The executor will be allowed to provide the children with a small allowance each as he judges fit, and he may not levy any charges on it beyond the standard executor charges set by the state laws.”

The welfare lady has a very smug look when she turns to Will and asks, “Where are the children so I can collect them now?”

Will has a huge grin when he replies with, “I've no idea. I haven't been in physical contact with either child for over a month. I have video evidence they were at the farm when it was under attack on Friday night because there is a shot of Llewellyn carrying Gwen when he took some knives from his father's boots, plus I've video evidence of him being at my offices about an hour later when he slipped a note under the door, and I've an email from him that was sent four hours later which appears to have been sent from a public access Wi-Fi network in Bendigo, Victoria. So it appears Llewellyn has a way of moving about very quickly, and I've no way to contact him as I have no cell phone number for him. How you find him and get hold of him is up to you. Meanwhile, I'll be carrying out his instructions to the best of my ability. Also, you have to serve him with the Court Orders before you can force him to comply, and since it seems he may be in Victoria, if he hasn't moved on, you need to get their courts to help you as well. His email did say he was going into hiding until he has valid Court Orders stating they'll stay together, Court Orders that the Department is unable to break.”

Neither the Child Welfare Department officer or her friendly public trustee are happy with the situation as it stands. However, it seems to Will the Magistrate is having a hard time not laughing at how Llewellyn is working to see he gets what he wants, despite the bureaucrats.

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Chasing Ghosts

The attack on the farm is national and international news over the weekend, and due to that the custody case on Monday is also big news. Thus Llewellyn knows of the court case result via the news on Tuesday when he reads the on-line newspapers for Rivers. He decides to add a bit of confusion factor to the search for him.

Llewellyn sets up one of the family tents in the corner of the bedroom then he sets out sleeping bags and other things inside of the tent to make it look as if they're camping out. He places some objects behind the tent and he shines lights on them to make it look like the shadows of trees. The last touch is to set the notebook computer up facing a digital camera with it open to the news of the day on one of the Adelaide newspapers. With Gwen sitting in his lap both of them and the notebook are facing the camera when he hits the remote button to take a photograph. Llewellyn has a big grin when he sends Will an email thanking him for his efforts so far and reiterating his earlier instructions. He attaches the photograph and sets the email to show as being sent from a public Wi-Fi service in Wakefield, South Australia. Llewellyn is sure the authorities are checking the emails from him, so he hopes to confuse them as to his exact location.

When the email arrives Will immediately shows it to the police officer waiting in his office in case Llewellyn contacts Will. The police make a copy of the photograph while noting where the email originated. The officer asks Will, “Does the boy know much about camping?”

“Yes, he knows a lot about camping as well as a lot of bush craft. The family often went camping for weekend holidays,” is his reply while he thinks, Surely Llewellyn knows the police will be checking my emails. So why did he send the photograph. It's only when the police start talking about having to check camping grounds and public park lands does Will think, I bet he's doing this to mislead them about his circumstances and where he is. If so, how is he doing it?

Will goes to have his lunch in one of the nearby eateries he frequents while the police officer calls the information through to the welfare people and they start action to expand the search for the children.

While Will is eating the owner walks over and asks, “How goes things on the Owen front, Will?”

Looking up at the man Will replies, “Red, I'm sure you know what's in the papers this morning,” and he gets a nod in reply. “Well, late yesterday I lodged the appeal and the request for a Family Court hearing on the matter. Just before lunch I got an email from Llewellyn sent from Wakefield in South Australia. It has a photograph of him, Gwen, and today's Adelaide newspaper showing on his computer as evidence it's new with them sitting in his tent in a campsite.”

Red laughs as he says, “I served with Evan and I helped him train his boy in evasion techniques. While I've no idea on how he did it there's a few things I can tell you about his situation based on the photograph. He's holed up somewhere he feels is real safe, and he's not moving around. He's not living in a tent, and he's not at any campsite. I'd bet he's set up in town somewhere waiting for things to come out how he wants them, and he has an escape route set up if they do manage to locate him.”

Will looks at Red with very wide eyes before he smiles while saying, “Damn! I'm sure you're right. Where do you think the next email will be from?”

“It's way too easy to close off and check traffic into and through the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Since he's trying to make it look like he's travelling in a vehicle of some sort he'll probably set it up to look like he's headed to Queensland via Birdsville or Broken Hill, but it will depend on the timing to the next email. In the next few weeks he'll set up to show as if he's in Queensland, Canberra, and New South Wales.” The two men laugh and talk a bit more while Will eats his lunch.

When Will returns to his office he learns there's a nationwide alert out for Llewellyn and Gwen with a notation they're likely in a car or van and may be camping in public parks and campsites. The alert includes notes about them having gone from Rivers to Bendigo to Wakefield and may be headed to Western Australia. There is no longer any effort to look for the two children in Rivers or the surrounding areas. Another aspect of the search that makes Will laugh is when they look for any photographs of Llewellyn as his face can't be seen in the photograph he sent.

During the first few days they learn there are no school photographs of Llewellyn at all. Then they find the few photographs of him at private events have his face obscured by light due to the fancy glasses. They fall back on having one of their artists prepare what they think will be likely results based on the driver licence photographs of Evan and Mary as they're told he takes after his mother. Will easily sees all of their attempts are way off the mark because Mary is very different looking to Anne and Llewellyn takes after Anne more than Evan. What is also an oddity is everyone who knows the young boy well enough to describe him accurately goes out of their way to give the police a description that matches one of the faulty images the police artist comes up with based on Mary's photograph. Thus, having a faulty description of Llewellyn also confuses the issue. It seems everyone who knows the family well are on Llewellyn's side in this and are helping him in the best way they can help him.

That was a preview of Keeping a Promise. To read the rest purchase the book.

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