Section F: The Arse-Kickers

Chapter Fifteen

Given their apparent destination was all of about three minutes drive from the hotel, Fields would normally have queried the point of employing a chauffeur-driven luxury SUV for the trip. Having now acquired some experience of SHAP's largesse, however—not to mention the baking heat waiting just inches from the air-conditioned, leather-clad cocoon in which he and Peregrine now reposed—he decided to save himself the bother.

Some twenty or thirty metres away from where they'd pulled up, secure behind high steel-meshed fencing topped with barbed wire, a single building shimmered in the haze. A large building. A building that glittered and dazzled in the blazing sun, bedecked with all manner of antennae and dishes and other assorted...things, things that rotated or flashed or moved in excitingly intricate ways, things Fields did not recognise, other than with the instinctive recognition they were things that did important stuff. High-tech stuff. They just looked like those kind of things.

All of which should have served to make the building an impressive sight. And probably would have, if not for one obvious and unavoidable fact—the building was a shed. A big-arse shed, as Peregrine might have put it, but a shed nonetheless.

"So," said Peregrine, "I guess no prizes for guessing why she's called Shed Girl."

"Guess not," agreed Fields, nodding absently as something else caught his attention—a disturbing something. "Um. Is it just me, or does that car near the gate look a bit like this one?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it does." The X7's serious German window tinting granted Peregrine the luxury of peering over her aviators. She did so. "I mean, apart from the being burnt out and upside down things, it looks exactly like this one. But hey, don't sweat it." Grinning, she gave her partner a friendly poke in the midriff. "Probably just  a coincidence."

Fields was a big believer in coincidences. In his experience, a healthy chunk of the stuff people attributed to fate, divine intervention, ancient aliens or whatever their mystic higher power of choice might be, came down to coincidences. Try as he might, however, he just couldn't believe in this one.

"Maybe. But just on the off-chance it's not, what do you think the odds are that SHAP are fast learners and maybe fitted this baby with some armour plating?"

"Dunno," replied Peregrine, nodding towards the gate which, with smooth and silent precision, was gliding open in apparent invitation. "But it could be we're about to find out. Either way, you know what they say—shed happens. Ha!"

****

"And you really think it will be safe?" The New Zealand PM hated the hint of entreaty in his voice—the whining tone that had crept in these past few days. Just a couple of short weeks ago, back in those now distant-seeming halcyon days when imps were things in story books and dragons were confined to B-movies and board games and the world made at least some kind of sense, he'd been a man of confidence, a man in control, a man riding high in the polls and full to the brim with bluster and braggadocio and bonhomie.

Now? Now, he was a man on the edge. A man whose very country seemed to be slipping away from him. A man who could look back on recent former so-called 'problems' such as misbehaving ministers and cabinet leaks and balancing the budget with nothing but the warm glow of fond nostalgia. And he was, in particular, a man badly in need of at least a little win to chalk up on the political scoreboard. For his own sanity, if nothing else.

"Yes, Prime Minister." The Chief of Defence nodded vigorously, and for just a little longer than the PM thought quite necessary. "Now the Americans are on the scene, I'm quite confident our little problem will soon be well in hand. I mean, have you seen all the guns and helicopters and stuff they've got? Brutal."