Chapter 36: Born of Frustration

A few months passed. Quickly! Too damned fast for Michael's liking.

He had too little time with Dee'rah. Too little of the languid, relaxing, laid-back sort of time they both craved. He was putting in fourteen and sixteen hour days, supervising training, reviewing flight exercise results, approving an increasing level of operational orders and deployments.

Dee'rah and Lyn'na-ra were leading the squadron women all across Canada and into Indonesia, reviewing site applications and setting up healing centers. The fledgling orphaned and abandoned children's center near Toronto hadn't diminished at all. It was growing at a huge rate as the need for a residential children's healing center became known across Canada, and throughout the former UK dominions. Terminally-ill children from shelters and orphanages were arriving daily from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. All were welcomed, of course, but the workload was crushing. Volunteers were desperately sought and trained. Those who did well were offered permanent employment. Plans were already in place to expand into a network of children's shelters under the UNESCO and UNICEF organizational structure.

The US pilots from the ill-considered F-18 strike attempt against Penticton proved to be an especially thorny problem. Not from the men, or from their families which had simply packed up and driven into Canada to join their husbands. The fact that a team of Interdictors flew an overhead watch helped. One hare-brained attempt by Border Patrol agents to intercept and turn the families around was stopped before it began. A recovery team sent to investigate the overdue agents found them alive but stunned unconscious, sitting in their dead vehicles. Technicians at the towing garage found the vehicles' circuitry blown and melted. The radios and hand-held digital gear was melted junk. That later caused an operational memo to be circulated through the Border Patrol field offices, advising against missions that might involve contact with alien forces.

The problem with the pilots involved the unrelenting campaign of retaliation against them and their families by US operatives. Three different attempts were made to infiltrate special forces attacks against the Penticton facility. All were intercepted and captured by Eric's Peacemaker rangers. Questioning revealed that their prime objective was to capture or, if that failed, to silence the six pilots with extreme prejudice. The captured teams were not treated as guests. They were remanded to the Canadian defense authorities to face lengthy prison sentences.

General Buzz Mikelsen and Michael met with the men and their families.

"Hey! You guys do understand that this crap has to stop before somebody gets hurt, for real?" Michael asked.

"Yeah ... it sucks," Jones said. He still had the quickest mouth of the bunch.

Group leader John Evans glanced at Jones, but quickly smiled. "Yeah, it does ... it sucks, big time. What do you, our gracious hosts have in mind?"

"Give us a Jonesy ration of crap, Lt. Cdr. Evans, and General Buzz here will cut off your supply of free Canadian whiskey!" Michael retorted.

Evans threw both his hands up, and exclaimed, "No! Not the free whiskey!"

"Okay, here's an idea. We can't keep you guys here in Canada where Stinson's goons have an on-going obsession with sneaking their teams in to spoil your day. And I'm pretty sure that none of you want to learn a European language right soon. Besides, it's starting to get a little crowded around Geneva, what with all the recruiting and training activity there. So ... have you flying gonzos and your happy families ever considered how great the skiing and fishing and schools and shopping are in New Zealand, the land of the Hairy-toed Hobbits?" Michael asked.

And so, they relocated to a nice suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, on the north island. And as a group they came to comprise the Southern Hemisphere Operations Squadron of Interdictors, the space/air arm of the Peacemaker Forces.

When the CIA reported this development to President Stinson, he was not happy.

Michael and Dee'rah had enjoyed a rare weekend together in their apartment at the Masi'shen Embassy in Geneva. Both were glowing with the soft after-effects of time spent with love and laughter and nothing more serious than what amazing new European cuisine to try on their next outing into that premier city.

"I never dreamed such amazing foods existed," Dee'rah sighed.

"I had a clue, but I don't care what the French say. You'll never get me to choke down one of those damned snails!" Michael laughed.

Dee'rah rolled over and jabbed him hard on the shoulder: "They are a rare delicacy!" she retorted.

"They're a damned slimy garden pest!" he answered back.

"Ahhh ... to have the choice, and the leisure time to enjoy it!" she sighed again.

"Well, it ends in the morning. I've got something to ask your father, and I'm not really sure how it's going to go over. On a scale of one to ten for 'floating his boat, ' I think my proposal will rank right in there with lead-lined life jackets."

"Tell me," Dee'rah said.

"Okay. You've seen how we've cranked up the press campaign against the Stinson government. All of the video footage, the documents, the statements, the witness interviews ... all of it. Nothing held back ... well, except for the Canadian F-18 thing. That's been pretty much confined to high-level diplomatic insults and shouting matches of the most secret kind," he explained.

"Yes. And the reaction from the American public has not been what you expected?"

"Yes and no. Yes, if the average American had a voice, it would be what we expected. They're seething. They're damned near ready to revolt. But Stinson has got the lid clamped down so tight that there's no outlet for their anger. They can't touch anybody in Washington who counts. So, that's where the 'not as expected' reaction factors in. I, or we, thought the Stinson gang and the Congress critters and the Supreme Court hip-shooters would resign in shame. Instead, they've linked arms and locked down the whole damned nation!"

"Really? They can do that?"

"It seems so. They are the law. They decide who and what gets prosecuted. They have a tight grip on the armed forces, the military. Remember that Stinson sent half of their senior generals and admirals off into oblivion for not agreeing with him. The only ones left are either in his pocket or are they're so intimidated that they crap their pants whenever a shadow pops up behind them. The military is rigidly controlled from the top down. The entire officer corps, top to bottom, either obeys or gets shipped out or gets 'disappeared.' So there's no hope there.

"The States are powerless, really. Their only armed strength lies with their National Guard units, and those were federalized and locked down hard, under DHS and Patriot Act rules. As for the state police, the sheriffs, the city police forces, they've never been a barrier to federal oppression. At the next level up, the local and state courts, they've been completely by-passed. Anything to do with the feds gets tried in federal court, usually five or more states away from where the accused lives. There's no longer such a thing as a jury of one's peers. Federal juries and federal courts are cherry-picked to sympathize with federal indictments.