Late 1996, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent
Harry sat on a low wall on the terrace of the manor overlooking the newly-built aircraft area, smoking a thick cuban cigar. It was a bad habit, along with the amount of whisky he could consume. Unfortunately one of the side-effects of having the tip of a basilisk fang embedded in the bone of his arm was that he couldn't get drunk enough to forget some of the sights he'd come across in Eastern Europe. It had been over two years since he'd even been in Britain, fighting a war for one ethnic group against another on behalf of a collection of countries that regarded themselves as the world's police.
It had been good experience as a soldier, he'd spent hours upon hours learning the martial arts of the Philippines from Nick Zacarias, integrating them into his mix of fighting styles. Learning to live off the land, then the establishing of a military base in Bosnia which now lay under a Fidelius charm. Then the profits were slowly coming in as he, on behalf of the five SAS troopers, sold off a number of the tanks into civilian hands, suitably deactivated, though a few he kept for himself.
A little closer to home, all but one of the fabric hangars on the estate were gone, replaced by a honey-coloured stone barn which, at one end, had a huge door opening out onto the stand, and at the far end inside, a hydraulic lift down to the cellars of the manor which were packed full of his bits of aeronautics, armour and collected small arms. The remaining fabric hangar housed the duty aircraft which he'd occasionally have to dash for when a call went out for his services.
With the musky-tasting aroma of the cigar circulating through his system, undoubtedly killing him horribly, Harry couldn't bring himself to care. He watched as a couple of surplus ex-military construction vehicles trundled past. He was intending some expansion of the estate staff and to facilitate this, had a number of quite elegant timber-framed houses built on one side of the estate with a drive linking them to the main manor complex.
He had indefinite leave until the next time there was a war and contemplated actually doing something about the dead Spitfire sat in a wing of the manor. Along with seeing if Boscombe Down would like to have a look at the handful of 'borrowed' Eastern European MiG-29s and ex-Iraqi evaluation MiG-23s that had been part of his war prizes from the former Yugoslavia.
Stubbing out the cigar and vanishing the remains with a wave of his hand, Harry was just approaching his study when his secretary, or more technically, Victor Dubose the Butler's secretary, poked his head around his door.
"Call for ya boss." said Dick Knight, an appallingly cheerful Cockney with a degree in some kind of business.
"Who?" Harry asked, sighing.
"Some random bird, sounds cute over the blower." he replied.
"Oh for heaven's sake." groaned Harry; "Did she, for instance, give you her name?"
"Something like Nadey Falk." Dick said, horribly mangling the name
"Forward the call to my study." Harry ordered making his way to the door of his own rooms.
Throwing himself into his chair, he eyed the bottle of Drambuie honeyed whisky and the box of cigars as he propped his boots up on the desk. Picking up the phone, he caught the tail end of Dick chatting to the person on the other line.
"Boss-man should be on the other end soon. Just be patient with him, as far as I know he hasn't got laid in-"
"Dick, shut up." Harry ordered, a hint of annoyance in his voice; "I believe I told you yesterday not to speculate about my lack of a love life."
"Shutting up now." said Dick, putting the phone down.
"Why I ever hired that man..." Harry sighed, knowing that on some level it was quite amusing.
"Comic relief?" asked Nadya; "He wasn't the person around the last time I phoned... and apparently neither were you. The man I spoke to, Victor or something said he had no idea if you were still alive."
"My sat-phone ceased working through wear and tear..." Harry said, forgetting to mention that it had been between his body armour and an Dragunov SVD's bullet. "Anyway, how are you?"
"Not bad, after our chat at Fairford I put my head down at das gymnasium and charged at the work. I graduated a couple of months ago with, got straight one grades, like A grades in Britain, the subjects were English, German, History, Geography and Mathematics. Anyway, I nearly encountered you a few years ago. George Roberts who you met at Portsmouth is a retired British Army of the Rhine soldier who stayed back, he taught me to speak native-fluency English."
"I did recognise the voice, but I had to go before I could talk to you. Anyway, not bad grades... and I've always been a bit annoyed that you seem to speak better English than half of Britain's population. And better than I can speak German." Harry chuckled; "So you're still hell bent on the armed forces?"
"You bet." she replied immediately; "I tried signing up for pilot training but a senior officer came and laughed at me. I was two seconds away from forcibly sticking his head up his ass when he left."
"Have you got much flying in?" he asked; "Because sometimes there are back-routes into various armed forces.
"Quite a bit, I sold my glider for a fair bit of money and found a man with a French-built Messerschmitt '108 which he told me that I could have if I paid for the removal. It wasn't in great condition but I've spent most of my glider cash on getting it flying. I quite often spend a weekend mucking around with it, going around the country." Nadya commented; "What do you mean 'back-routes'?"
"Hmm... I'll have to drop in at some point. I've actually got leave until someone decides we need to start another war, which is nice." Harry commented; "What I mean by back routes is that, for instance, how close are you to Mr. Roberts?"
"Legally, he's my guardian and the closest thing I've ever had to a father." she asked with no little sarcasm.
"Indeed." Harry mused; "If he were to legally adopt you, and if he's retained his British citizenship then you'd be entitled to such citizenship yourself without the residence in the country stipulation... and therefore membership of the armed forces." it wasn't actually quite like that, but he was interested to see her in a fast jet after having dug up her pilot's license examiner's notes. After all, he had quite a few aircraft and only himself as a pilot.
"Well, I'm going to be at Celle Air Base in three day's time, it's half-civilian, half-military. If you can wrangle an invitation to land, and wrangle an aircraft... let's say a Supermarine Spitfire..." Nadya hinted.
"Ugh, actually that aircraft is sat at the back of my garage awaiting me taking the engine off, making sure there is no debris damage, replacing the starter motor, replacing the forward fuel tank, uninhibiting the engine and putting it back on the aircraft, which I haven't got round to."
"Do you have a working aircraft?" she asked.
"Yah, though I haven't actually flown it in a couple of years, I had it run up earlier so I need to fly it anyway." Harry shrugged; "It also has a back seat, so if you want a ride..."
"I might take you up on that."
Late 1996, Ravenscroft Manor, Kent
Harry, having been thrown out of his bed at an ungodly hour by even his standards due to some pretty nasty memories coming to the surface again, ate and headed down to the cellar. Lined up in a smart row next to the hydraulic lift up to the barn, with all the necessary equipment were the off-duty duty aircraft. His collection of working F-4 Phantoms numbered three, as did his collection of F-105 Thunderchiefs, one not serviceable yet, one on duty in the fabric hangar and one by the lift. Then his Super Sabre and Mirage 2000 were also by the lift. Armaments for those were kept in a magically reinforced bunker at the far end of the cellar.
Parked further down the cellar were the jets which had yet to be pressed into service. Several souped-up F-101 Voodoos, a Starfighter, Swedish Saab Drakens and Viggens, former Indonesian Avon Sabres and an English Electric Lightning, as well as further Phantoms he was simply hoarding for the sake of hoarding. Then there were the working hobby aircraft, the Sea Fury and the two Dominican Republic P-51 Mustangs he'd bothered to unpack from their crates.
Ignoring them, he headed straight for the row of hobby aircraft that didn't work. Next to a sinister-looking Saab Viggen and a pocket-rocket English Electric Lightning there was the Spitfire that he was intending on working on. One of the bits of kit he had was a brilliant toolkit supplied with Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlins, and though not all, most of the tools were interchangeable. Opening it up, Harry began the laborious process of fixing the Spit.
He began opening up the panels around the engine nacelle before dragging over the small crane to take the weight of the propeller and mechanism as he slid it off the drive shaft before preparing to release the engine from its mounts and lift it out.
Taking a deep gulp of coffee, Harry sighed in satisfaction. He'd taken the Spitfire out onto the stand and fired it up after a full engine removal, starter motor replacement, re-affixing of the engine and connecting up all the fuel lines, hydraulics and other pipes. Taking a look around the rest of the equipment, he made a mental note to contact Saab and see if they'd mind doing up his Draken and Viggen, two of the most evil-looking jets ever to leave a factory. Otherwise, he had a few Eastern Bloc jets, but those were in the custody of Boscombe Down, though they let him fly them when he was in the country.
Then, reduced to monolithic parts, stacked around the far end of the cellar was an Avro Shackleton MR.3. The Viper turbojets and the Rolls-Royce Griffons sat on trolleys. The fuselage lay on a set of specially-made supports, with the wings, tailfins and planes sat against the wall. It was a knackered old machine, but the galley still worked and for that little he still kept it, and eventually might get it going.
Contemplating what to do, Harry considered flying over to the ancestral fortress in the Cambrian Mountains and poking around Charlus Potter's collection. Old Man Potter had been a highly paranoid man after the end of the Second World War. He'd seen how Germany had rebelled under the sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, resulting in the Second World War, after which, he watched as the Anglo-Russian alliance fractured. Over the next thirty years he built up a private army along with the equipment for them, from fighter aircraft to old tanks.
His grandson was only adding to it as various air forces around the world continued retiring Second and Third Generation jet fighters plus his illicit acquiring of enemy equipment.
Eventually, having downed one cup of coffee and made another in the galley of the Shackleton, Harry headed out to the firing range at one corner of the estate. It did not bode well if he lost any of his skill with a gun, though that was unlikely after years of living and breathing with one at hand at all times. He grabbed a box of .45 ACP and his favoured practise pistol as he didn't like to cause undue wear to his prized Kimber M45.
Late 1996, Bradbury Lines, Hereford
Sat at the bar of the Sergeant's Mess at Bradbury Lines, Harry, Jock, Bill, Jack and Nick sat and chatted over glasses of the Scottish honey liquor, Drambuie. They had all been surprised when the reclusive Filipino had fitted in so well to Section Five after a great deal of time relegated to training duties, but after a while getting reacclimatised to combat missions, he'd begun to be a part of the team.
"And anyway, this girlie cop asks me 'what, do you think you are some bad-ass SAS covert operator'. She shouldn't have stopped me and not expected me to be an utter bastard. So, I decided the best way to dent her ego was to be truthful." Nick finished his monologue.
"Talking of girls, anyone in your life Harry?" asked Jock.
"I thought I made it abundantly clear after you dragged me to that Virginia Beach nudist place that girlfriends are for people with social lives and that social lives are for people without anything useful to do with their time." Harry rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his Drambuie; "Damn, look at us, reduced to sitting around, getting plastered when we ought to be doing something. Jack, you've got the deployments memorised, is there anything interesting going on?"
"Nothing really, The Suits don't want us in Ireland because they think we'll upset the peace process by gunning down any IRA member we catch." Jack yawned; "Ah come on, cheer up, it can't be long before we decide we don't like Saddam for the nth time this decade and we can go and kill him. Boss, you've got the intelligence reports, anyone in particular that's likely to piss us off?"
"Saddam's still killing his own people with chemical weapons, Sierra Leone's a fucking mess,the peace talks over the Former Yugoslavia are horribly unstable and I'll be too if someone doesn't pour me another one." replied Harry; "Anyway, I'm going to speak to the boss, see if I can get a while off, I haven't had any proper leave in a fucking age."
"Have you still got that open offer to join the Reds?" asked Bill.
"Huh, good point." Harry commented, accepting another glass of Drambuie; "They'll be finishing their season and preparing to head out to Akrotiri for the winter. Would be pretty nice, I'll see if I can get on the team."
"I'd hold out on that." said a voice from the doorway, causing the five SAS troopers to spin around and Harry to draw his Kimber M45 in a lightning fast move; "Woah, hold it boys."
"You really haven't got the fucking idea of this place have you?" Harry growled, lowering his pistol from pointed at the head of the new SAS Commanding Officer.
"I'll learn." he shrugged; "But right now I've got minimal use for you lot, but a few postings have come through that myself and Lander at MI5 have agreed on. Potter, correct me if I'm wrong but are you F-15 and '16 qualified?"
"Mhmm, directly after the Gulf War I went over to America to Nellis and the USAF Weapons School." Harry nodded, sitting back down and pouring himself another glass of Drambuie; "Full combat qualification on the 'Hog, the Eagles and the Viper. I also brought my Phantom out and got a couple of the old guys to show me over the combat skills for her. Plus I managed to get familiarisation on most of the other aircraft which I did during my free weekends."
"That would explain this." grunted the new 'Lion'; "There is an immediate posting for you lot to Israel for a stint of training, then Potter, you've been posted to Jagdgeschwader Seventy-Three, Steinhoff, at Rostock-Laage, pack your shit. You're going to be flying the MiG-29 boyo."
"I flew a number of times in mock combat against Steinhoff before he passed on." Harry noted absently; "How long's the posting in Israel going to be?"
"Couple of months, until the end of November. Then Germany for twelve months from the commencing of training operations in January." was the reply; "McCabe, when he's in Germany, you're going with him as intelligence analysis on the aircraft type which the RAF want desperately. Apparently you've both flown Red aircraft."
"Yup, we've flown MiG '15s, '17s, '19s, '21s, '23s, '25s and '29s, mainly ones we stole off the Yugoslavs, the Iraqis and the Somalis." Jock said, smirking around a cigar; "What about the other three of us, we're a team."
"After Israel, you three are going to be dispatched for training by and to train the Deltas at Fort Bragg while the other two play with their new aeroplanes." said Lion.
"Okey-dokey, now shove off." Harry grumbled; "I can still remember my name and that annoys me."
