Incarna

16 - Episode 5 Captain Jim

Captain Jim came awake with a start, one hand already on his FN FiveSeven and the other on his emergency button. “Fuckin phone,” he swore coldly as his mind cleared and he realised it was his office phone ringing and not some end of the world nightmare come true.

He worked the action of the FiveSeven, dropped the clip out and reloaded the ejected cartridge into the clip. “Gotta stop doin’ this” he chastised himself. “You maybe special ops old son but the cops wont take kindly to you sleeping with a military pistol!”

The FiveSeven was his favourite. Small, low recoil, easy to use and it went through body armour better than anything else. He’d seen shitheads get knocked down by 9mm or a 45cal and start firing from the ground where they had fallen. One video he’d been shown was the most frightening. Martyrs training with body armour and taking hits from live 9mm Brownings or Glocks and learning to fire from the ground with broken ribs, shoulders or whatever.

Some hadn’t moved after being knocked down and they had been martyred on the spot. Being told that if you died you went straight to the open legs of a houri in paradise was more than enough for many repressed young men with more testosterone than brains!

Jim shook his head as he put the FiveSeven into it’s case and locked it. Australian gun laws were some of the strictest in the world and hence gun crime was rare. Captain Jim Ploughwright was licensed to carry it, but not the sleep with it. The suburbs of Canberra were not a war zone.

He grabbed his phone and thumbed the screen. A single message from Dozer his 2IC, Big screen NOW. Jim pushed the on button of the remote without lifting it and the screen came to life with screams and explosions. There was a lightning flash and then a sonic boom and the last tank in a russkie column slumped to the road its engine demolished its near side suspension ripped off.

Jim stared at the panic as rebels in make shift uniforms fired into the air while screaming one word over and over, Sirin! His russian was shit house but he could make out that word. He grabbed the remote and brought up the menu and found the translator. The words that could be made out flowed across the bottom of the screen.

Argh, fuck me dead, he thought, that’s it then, world war threes about to begin!

Jim looked at his phone and pressed the dial icon, “tell me this isn’t happening Dozie! This is some shit b grade movie you woke me in the early hours to watch right?”

Dozer ignored him and ploughed straight into describing what Jim was seeing. “We were just running final software checks on the ASLAV upgrades when this came through.” Dozer said coolly. Jim knew that tone of voice so this was as serious as he thought. Dozer only spoke like that in combat situations. Jim loved his team and had made their coming with him into Five Eyes Special Ops part of the conditions he agreed to join. They all benefitted from the pay increase of course but Jim needed his most trusted men with him if he was going to head up this on the ground investigation. New ASLAVs were one thing, the right blokes in them was more important.

“Any intel on the source?” Jim asked expectantly. If they’d been able to pickup anything from anywhere such a large scale use of the penetrators and hallucinagenics would have been detectable in Ukraine.

Not even an ant’s fart! The Russkies have put jammers all over the area. Maybe some of the high end yank gear may show something but …”

“Go on Dozie, what is it mate!” “I reckon the fuckers picked this target because their gear wouldn’t show up!”

“Yeah, agree, makes sense. If they’re that smart they won’t pick monitored targets which is why there’s been no more desert interventions since we moved the sats into place!”

Dozer talked him through the scan they’d run and the lack of even a trace of any sort of vehicle that could carry such penetrator type weapons. “Do we have any boots anywhere near there that could go and collect samples?”

Dozer pulled up another window and a list appeared. “We’ve two capable with the current air crash invetstigator team. They’re giving the MH17 site one last go over before they declare it clear.” “Righto, call em in and get em over there yesterday. I want blood and soil samples, and metal fragments. And samples of any dust that looks out of place!” “Righto Jim, done,” and Jim watched the email window disappear off Dozers screen.

"Seeing as you don’t need me, Im grabbin’ another couple of hours, see you at eight.” “Righto boss!”

Jim fell back on his bed, his mind reassessing all that had just transpired. Bugger it, there goes the weekend with the kids, shit. He stopped himself reaching for his phone to text his dearly deserted wife, as she liked to call herself. He nearly hadn’t taken this Five Eyes job. He’d been due to rotate out of active duty and take on a training role for the next generation of commandos, but the money was very good. They had talked it through for hours and come to a mutual decision. Take it and every precaution possible. If he got himself killed she’d murder him!

Service wives always developed the weirdest senses of humour. Watching your husband go off to war does that to a woman!