Chapter 04

Panther: Shadow Soldier

During the Second World War the Allies launched their main counter attack against the German military on June 6th 1944. Operations started during the night with the main activities occurring at dawn. When you compare the landing sites in Normandy, France, to all of the occupied countries in Europe the D-day landings were a flea bite on the continent. However, the flea bite grew fast until the war was won. Evan Owen’s grandfather landed in Normandy and he often spoke about some of the events and what followed, but not all of it. He often spoke about how small it was to start with and how fast it grew once they got ashore.

Knowing how significant the D-day landings were to WW2 was a key factor in Evan having his book to be released on June 6th of the year after his death, if it was released. So, at 12:01 a.m. on June 6th the publisher’s website changes to have the homepage show the promotion of the latest release and availability as an e-book. It also announces the print copies are available in stores around the world. Many copies of the book are sent by courier for delivery to certain people by 09:00 a.m. on June 6th.

The dark grey cover with black text and the image of a black panther standing on a tree branch looks very menacing because the panther’s eyes seem to be glaring out of the cover at the person looking at it. The cover’s middle half is the image of the panther on a tree branch with the large text of ’Panther:’ taking up the width of the cover’s upper quarter and a second line of ’Shadow Soldier’ in a slightly smaller font is the same length of the cover width as the top line. Near the bottom of the cover in a much smaller font is the author listed as ’Colonel Evan Owen.’

Responses

Rivers, Australia

On the morning of June 6th Llewellyn is eating his breakfast when the doorbell rings. He checks the security camera and he sees a courier driver with the security guard on duty, so he goes to the door and opens it while leaving the mesh security door shut. He knows the guard so he greets them both with, “Good morning. What’s up, Declan?”

The security guard, Declan Murphy, replies, “Jack has a package for you, Lew,” while waving at the delivery driver. The fact Declan knows Jack is reassuring that he’s a legitimate delivery driver, but it doesn’t say much about the validity of the package itself.

Llewellyn opens the door, signs for the package on the delivery list, and looks at the plastic satchel before asking, “What’s an easy way to open these things?”

Jack says, “You’d be surprised at how often we get asked that question by people who don’t get a lot of them,” as he hands Declan the clipboard with the signature sheet with his left hand while his right hand is opening a small pouch on his belt and getting out a pair of blunt end scissors of the type used in the schools. Jack takes the satchel back, holds the top end, shakes the satchel, then carefully cuts a corner off of the top before looking into the satchel. Satisfied with what he sees he slips the scissors into the cut and proceeds to cut the top of the satchel open while saying, “I thought I felt a sheet of loose paper in it. So I had to make sure I didn’t cut that up on you.” With the top open he reaches in to pull out the paper, hands it to Llewellyn, has another look in the satchel, then he starts cutting down the side of the satchel to make it easier to remove the large object stuck tight in the bottom of the satchel. He puts the scissors back in the pouch before he reaches in to pull out a book to hand to Llewellyn while saying, “That’s an interesting title. I may have to look into getting a copy of it.”

Llewellyn looks up from the sheet of paper he’s reading to say, “If an e-book will do you they cost a lot less than the print version and can be bought from their website.”

“That’s good,” is Jack’s response. “Mind if I keep the envelop as it has the website on the return sticker?” Llewellyn just grins as he nods yes to the request. Jack and Declan leave as Llewellyn shuts and locks the front door again.

Returning to his breakfast Llewellyn sits down then he opens the book to start reading it. When asked about the visitor at the door he says, “A courier delivering a copy of Dad’s book that was to be printed if he was ever murdered. It’s released today. It should tell me why someone went to so much trouble to kill him, and why he half expected to be attacked. From what I can see on the cover summary he was involved in a lot of black operations that could have adverse political repercussion for some people in the USA.” Naturally there’s a lot of talk around the table about what the release of the book and what the information’s publicity will mean for Gwen and Llewellyn now it’s out there.

Canberra, Australia

Retired Brigadier Roger Harris of the Australian Army is leaving his house at 07:00 a.m. on his way to work as a civilian intelligence analyst for the Australian Department of Defence. While he walks out to his car a courier driver walks up his driveway with a satchel in his hand. Roger signs for the satchel, unlocks his car, puts the satchel on the passenger seat with his briefcase, gets in the car, and he drives away to get to work at his usual time.

When Roger walks into his office he places his briefcase on his desk, picks up the scissors from his desk, and he opens the satchel to see what’s in it. He removes the short letter advising him he has a complimentary copy of the book and how e-book copies can be bought. Frowning at what little is in the letter he removes the book, looks at the cover, turns it over to read the synopsis on the back, then he sits down while opening the book to the contents page. After a few minutes he slowly shakes his head as he reaches for his phone and dials a number from memory as he now has a very important call to make.

Washington, D.C., USA

At 06:15 p.m. EDT on June 5th Major General Peter Smith is sitting at his desk in the Pentagon in the USA reading a report on the results of an operation while he makes a few notes on the pad beside the report. His wife is away visiting her parents so he’s working late to get a lot of work done to enable him to spend more time at home after she returns.

A special cell phone in a pouch on his belt rings. He quickly reaches for the phone because only nineteen people around the world know the phone’s number, and if they’re calling on it what they have to say can’t be good news. When he answers the phone he hears a very familiar voice say, “Peter, Roger Harris, ring me at work a.s.a.p.,” and the line goes dead. Peter slowly returns the phone to its holder while thinking about the call. Something important has happened that needs urgent attention, but not urgent enough to ignore basic security. Usually matters that come over that phone are so urgent security isn’t as important as speed.

Peter picks up the handset for his desk phone and starts the procedure to place a call to Roger Harris’ office in Canberra, Australia, via the US Embassy in Canberra. The call will go encrypted to the Embassy and then on the local landline to Roger’s office. This is to minimise the chance of it being understood while going over the satellite communication system to Australia. It’s assumed several people will be listening in on the satellite communications, but the encryption should stop them from knowing the content of the call. While waiting for the call to connect Peter looks at the clock, works out the time difference, and he decides Roger has called him as soon as he got into his office. This makes him wonder what it’s about.

When the call is made and greetings are done Roger says, “Peter, do you remember the attack on Colonel Owen last year?” After getting a confirmation in reply he adds, “At the time we both expected him to talk from the grave with a delayed release of information. Well, it’s now out as a book available in print and as an e-book.” He goes on to give the full details of the publisher and their website. Roger adds, “The site has been live for eighteen hours with print books on sale in Europe for the last nine hours. This is already out there so it can’t be stopped. You need to get hold of a copy and start checking files. One good thing is the book gives us Owen’s codename of Panther, if that tells you anything.”

Peter groans as he replies, “Yes it does! It also explains why he was able to cut up the mercs so badly. Panther has been out of our system for about fifteen years, but the troops still talk of his actions and skills with a lot of awe. It was said Panther and The Pride team could do miracles, and they often did. I’ll get a copy and see how bad the security leak is.”

After a few more words they hang up and get on with their work. Peter’s work just had a major change in direction as he turns to his other computer to access the internet, this is not on the main Pentagon network in any way as it has a link to a separate system just for unclassified work like this. After paying for and downloading a copy of the e-book he reads the cover synopsis, the foreword, the contents page, and he skims some of the chapters before he calls the duty desk to order the Duty Standby Staff to be called in to do some urgent research work.

When his staff arrives Peter puts them to work getting all of the files for The Pride team, the files for the codenamed staff in the team, and the files for the twenty-six operations mentioned in the book as well as the files they have on anyone else mentioned in the book. This is relatively easy work as Evan included an extensive index in the back of the book which lists all of the people and operations. It’s clear he expected this to be done at some point, so he made it easy for them to do it.

The staff gather all of the files they can find and they start going through them. While some staff are making notes about the file contents others are busy finding out what else they can find out about the people who are listed in the book. The staff work late into the night while they go through it all and prepare summaries.

A lot of disturbing information results from their work, which is all noted to be given to the General in the morning. Knowing he’ll have some hard meetings in the morning Peter goes to sleep on the pull-out bed in the couch in his office after he briefs his staff on what he wants them to do. The staff will go home and sleep when they’re finished, but he’ll be going into long meetings with what they give him, so he’s getting what rest he can right now.

Later in Washington, D.C.

Mid-morning of June 6th a group of people from various intelligence agencies are gathered in a high security room within one of the USA government buildings in Washington, D.C. Most of those present were at the meeting held following the attack on the Owen farm, there are a few people who replaced some of those there at the other meeting and some extras, including Major General Peter Smith. The President’s Intelligence Advisor looks at the others present before he turns to the Director of the CIA to ask, “What have you found out about the people who attacked the farm in Australia to kill Colonel Owen?”

The Director glances around the table before saying, “The FBI found out one of those involved was the Deputy Director of Personnel. They went to arrest him but found he’d been murdered when they got there. They’ve now started an investigation into a possible penetration of their own organization. We have located a few more people who appear to have been involved in the rogue operations, mostly through the attack on the children outside the Courthouse. Everyone we’ve identified has either died or disappeared on us. We’re still trying to find out if there are more of the rogues within the CIA.”

The President’s Intelligence Advisor waves toward Peter as he says, “I think Major General Smith has some information that can help with the investigations in all of our agencies.” He turns to Peter to say, “Tell them what you’ve found out, General.”

Peter lifts up two very thick files while saying, “This file is the activity file for a special black ops team called The Pride. The code-names of the team members were big cats and the team leader was called Panther. The team was the best we ever had. They always delivered. As you can see, we sent them on a lot of operations as theses files only have a few pages of the action summary in them.” He puts those down to lift up five much thinner files of about one finger in width as he says, “These are the full operation files of five of those operations.” He puts those down to pick up a few sheets of paper which he starts to slide across the table to the other people present while adding, “This is a list of the three people we think were behind the attack in Australia, it’s based on these files.”

The others all pick up and look at the list of three very important people in the current US political structure. All three are second or third generation powers from very rich families. One goes to speak, but stops when Peter holds up a book titled Panther: Shadow Soldier while he says, “This book is the response from beyond the grave of Colonel Owen. In it he states these twenty-six operations all involve matters likely to have an adverse affect on the political careers of some of the people involved in them. He states when he wrote the first draft he had over fifty files that were in that category, but the people of concern have either died or are no longer politically involved, so they’ve been removed over the years. In the book he gives a very good account of the operations and he includes full colour images of all of the operational documents. My staff and I did a spot check of each of the files and what we saw in the files matched the papers in the book, except for the five files I have here. In those there is very little that matches the information about who was involved in the operation. The people on the list I handed out are the only people in the five files who are part of our political structure today. All three appear in two or three of these files. We’re checking all that we can on all of the ops listed by Colonel Owen, and a full check of each file. We already know these five files have been altered some time in the last six years...”

The General is interrupted by the Director of the NSA asking, “How do you know the files have been altered in the last six years?”

Peter says, “I was getting to that,” as he holds up a form. “All of the government forms have a number and name, but the most used ones are often referred to by only their number on the top of the form. The form number is also printed in the bottom corner of the form so it can be easily read while stacked on a shelf. Today I learned, from my Admin Sergeant, the number in the bottom corner also has a code which gives the version number of the form and there are form lists that tell you which is the current version and when it started to be used. By checking the list you can know which is the current version. Any little change to the form results in a new version. So when a form went from having ’Sex: M / F’ to having ’Gender: Male / Female’ on it a new version number was issued. With a lot of the forms the version number has the year it was introduced as part of the number. The forms in these files are ones issued within the last six years, and over a decade later than the operation occurred in.”

The NSA Director says, “Thank you, General. I never knew about the dates or version numbers, but it does explain how you know the file has been altered. It also means the version by Colonel Owen is accurate. As we now know who we need to be looking at because of the links between the issues we can start investigating them and their associates with a lot more care and in much more detail.” The meeting moves on to discuss the problems associated with an in depth investigation of the people on the list, as well as their powerful associates.

With his current task finished Peter collects his files, puts them in his briefcase, and he leaves the room as he doesn’t need to be involved in the current talks or decisions.

Note: During the next few days Peter’s staff confirm the other files are accurate and what they can confirm from other sources matches what Evan Owen has in his book. Thus confirming the altering of the five files Peter mentioned at the meeting.

Later Still in Washington, D.C. that day

Elsewhere in Washington, D.C., eight rich and powerful men are in the home of the most powerful of the group sipping whisky while having a meeting following a well cooked lunch. With the meal over they’re all sitting in the secured den with the door locked so they can now discuss the business which has them meeting today. They feel free to speak their minds here because of the electronic security systems they have in place to ensure no one listens to their talks.

The father of the youngest man there looks at the son of the Senator who’s the most powerful man there as he says, “I told you we should just leave the man alone. Now it’s all out in the open, anyway.”

The man spoken to replies with, “As the files say something different we can simply say he’s lying.”

One of the other fathers says, “Won’t work. They already know the files are different and that they’ve been recently changed. Whoever did it used the current forms as they didn’t know to use old forms or they weren’t able to find any of the older forms. We don’t know which of the two options applies in this situation. I doubt anyone expected such a minor detail to be of any importance.”

They all groan about that error before they go into a long discussion about how they can save the political careers of the three younger men in the meeting from being totally destroyed by their involvement in some politically contentious operations two decades earlier.

After three hours they come up with a plan of how to deal with the public relations nightmare they’ve created. Their first attack will be to raise the book in the next Senate meeting and to attack Owen as a traitor.

In the US Senate

A few days later, at the start of the next sitting of the US Senate, one of the Senators at the house meeting requests an opportunity to address the Senate about the recent publicity concerning the book by Colonel Owen. He’s not publicly a part of the group affected by the book and none of his family are mentioned in it, so it makes sense for him to raise the concerns about the book.

When he’s given approval to speak the Senator says, “I do not know if what is in the book is true or not, but I question the veracity of any man who betrays his trust by revealing secret information about his work. This Colonel Owen has broken his oath of secrecy.”

The current Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Personnel Sub-committee requests, and is given, approval to speak on the point raised. He stands and says, “I agree wholeheartedly with the position stated by the previous speaker on traitors betraying their trust. However, it does not apply in this case. When I became aware of the book and its contents I raised that issue with the relevant people in the Pentagon. I was informed that Colonel Owen was a brilliant strategic and tactical officer who was on loan to the US Army from the Australian Army. While he had made and signed an oath of secrecy about matters of Australian security he has never signed such a document concerning US matters and he was never asked to do so. Since he’s not a US citizen and he was never asked to keep the matters secret he has not broken any trust placed upon him. Thus he can not have committed any treason against the USA. Another point to keep in mind is in the foreword of the book he states how he’s concerned some people will seek to kill him so he can’t later tell about their many misdeeds. He goes on to mention there were originally over fifty such operations he was on and it reduced to those in the book due to other things happening to those involved. He said one or more of the people in the listed operations arranged for his murder, so the book is his attack at them for doing so. His operational file mentions nearly two hundred operations he was involved with, but only this small number are mentioned. He has not betrayed any trust placed upon him and has tried hard to identify his killer or killers while also keeping silent on everything else he knows. I’m also informed the files on the operations have been examined and there’s evidence several have been recently changed while independent sources support the accounts by Colonel Owen. So, in a way, he has assisted us by pointing out people are altering our official records for their personal benefit.” He sits down while all present think on the situation.

With this opening attack so solidly knocked down the Senators from the group involved choose not to continue with their attacks on Evan Owen because it just blew up in their faces and made the situation worse.

As a result of the release of the book many people do many things, both publicly and privately. Three political careers hit hard stumbling blocks and they have no choice but to not stand for more senior positions in the upcoming election. Even just trying to maintain their current seats has one of them lose his seat and the other two only just keep their seats.

The good news for Llewellyn and Gwen is the powers behind the group have the men stop trying to find out what the children may or may not know because it no longer matters. Thus Gwen and Llewellyn can get on with their lives, which go well for some years to come.

Interlude

Self-defence Skills

From the moment Llewellyn was able to stand on his own two feet his parents were teaching him how to take a fall without being hurt and how to roll away from trouble. As he got older and developed more muscle control and balance skills they taught him the self-defence and combat skills they felt he could handle. When his grandfathers were visiting they spent a lot of time with Llewellyn teaching him the combat skills they learned during their time as career military members. His mother’s father also taught Llewellyn the tracking skills, field-craft, and war-craft of his Navajo ancestors. After his mother’s death his father continued to teach Llewellyn about the many combat skills he knew, as well as the basic tactical and strategic thinking he may need in a combat situation.

When Gwen was born Evan started a similar program with her, which is taken over by Llewellyn after their parents are murdered.

Due to the custody arrangements and concerns those after Llewellyn and Gwen may take Alice by mistake Llewellyn spends time teaching Alice what Gwen already knows, and then he teaches them both what he feels he can safely teach them in the way of self-defence skills. This is due solely to his concerns about them being able to learn the skills. In the training all three receive they’re taught to use all of their skills and power to disable or kill an attacker as fast as possible by hand or with a knife. When they’re old enough they also learn how to use rifles and handguns.

Language Skills

Due to the circumstances of living with Mrs Irvine and Mrs Weeks all three of the children are taught German as well as English, both to speak the language as well as to read and write German. Naturally this takes a few years to teach the girls, despite the older three being fluent with the language. The teaching to read and write takes longer than to teach them to speak and understand spoken German. Once all five are fluent in the use of spoken German Llewellyn starts to teach the others how to speak Navajo and Persian. Naturally this takes a number of years before they’re all fluent in the languages, and then a few more years to learn to read and write the languages. However, they do learn all three of the languages.

Due to learning the other languages the three children are a lot faster than their peers in learning the intricacies of English. Thus their use of English is well ahead of what they’re learning in school, due to the extra studies done at home and before they start school.

Other School Studies

One useful aspect of the way both of the girls spend so much time with Llewellyn is they sit there and watch him doing his homework, thus he takes time to teach them some of the material he’s studying. This also means he often has to teach them some of the basics they’ll later learn in school when they start. This gives both of the girls a good head start on their schooling. When the girls start school themselves the three still sit at the table working on their homework together, so Llewellyn continues to tutor them on all he can.

Security

When the girls start going to school Llewellyn arranges for them to get and wear the special glasses he wears to disrupt photographs of him. Thus all three end up not having useable photographs being taken.

More Changes

Gwen’s Guardianship

After Llewellyn becomes Gwen’s legal guardian on his eighteenth birthday they continue the existing living arrangements because no one wants to change them. They’re all happy with the ’family’ arrangements. They may not be a legal family, but emotionally they are a family.

Schooling

When Llewellyn finishes high school at eighteen years of age he starts a part-time accounting and business management diploma course at the local Technical and Further Education College (TAFE) near to the high school because both of them are near to the primary school the girls go to. This enables him to walk with them to school and home after school as a continuing security measure.

As the course he’s doing has a lot of on-line modules Llewellyn is able to do those parts of the course at home at night. Thus, while he attends the in-school classes part-time he does finish the full four year diploma course in three years at TAFE.

Llewellyn finishes his TAFE course the same year the girls finish year six. That year he turns twenty-two and the girls turn twelve.

Shopping Problems

The week before Christmas Llewellyn’s family is out shopping, mostly for Christmas presents. After putting some shopping into the SUV the family crosses the road on their way to a speciality shop near the end of the shopping area and the start of the business offices. The next street used to be where it changed, but the several small shops between the shop they’re going to and the corner are now becoming a three story office block as the commercial office area expands into the retail area.

When Heidi and Helga enter the store the children are still ten metres behind them because they stopped to buy drinks at another store while the ladies continued on to the shop. Most of the stores along here have awnings over the footpath, but the last few shops don’t have awnings. Thus the sun shines down on the pedestrians, and so does the rain in wet weather. Due to the lack of wet weather protection the stores at this end of the street don’t get as much business as they used to because many of the modern shoppers won’t venture into the rain or hot sunshine despite the savings they could get shopping in those stores.

Llewellyn has good peripheral vision and he’s very aware of what’s going on around him. So when he sees something moving fast in the air to his right and ahead of them he turns his head to get a good look at it, and he sees a long crane boom with a heavy load, which is expected at a worksite of a large building. What isn’t expected is seeing the way the crane boom is rapidly moving forward over the building as he’s used to seeing them move very slowly. When he hears whistles blowing on the worksite he thinks there’s a major problem of some sort so he grabs the girls and runs back the other way while shouting, “Run away, falling crane.” Many of the people hear him, look up, and also start running away from the area while others join the people rapidly leaving the area just because they’re running away. It’s herd mentality at it’s best, because they see the others are fleeing a danger they also flee the unseen danger.

Behind the fleeing people is the sound of tearing metal and crashing masonry while various types of shrapnel rain down on the street and the cars. Two shops up the road Llewellyn pulls the girls in close to the wall of a shop while thinking, We should be safe here as the load can’t fall this far and any shrapnel will be further out from the wall. In this he’s proven right.

When the sound of the rain of building bits ends Llewellyn looks at the scene down the street to assess the damage, and he’s not happy to see the store front of the shop they were heading to bowed out and damaged. He can hear sirens, thus he knows the emergency workers are on their way and there’s nothing he can do to help them, so he leads the girls into a nearby eatery to get a snack while they wait to hear how things are.