Chapter 01

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”