Burning for Revenge Read Free Page B

chased away the clouds, and left a sky that glowed. The temperature was cool but not cold. We'd had a lot of rain lately, quite a few storms. They leave the air so clean and clear. They wash the dust away and let the stars shine. But I don't think I've ever seen it as bright as it was that night.
    If I were looking for symbols, maybe that was another one. The stars were so many different colours. Mostly shades of white of course, but some tinged with blue, some with red, some with yellow or gold. And others, a few, burning a strong red. When the Slaters had their Japanese friend visit a few years back she told me they were lucky to see a dozen stars at night in Tokyo. Well, I don't know how many we saw that evening. In places they were so bright they became one shining stream of light.

    Radio reception was good at first too. Colonel Finley sounded more relaxed. I guess the war must have been going a bit better. I don't know, maybe he'd just had a second helping of dessert. Maybe he'd been promoted. Maybe he was happy to hear our friendly voices. He'd probably been sitting around the office saying "Gee, can't wait to hear from my little buddies again. I miss them, you know. Might send a helicopter to pick them up."
    We had to be careful what we said of course. When we were back in New Zealand Colonel Finley told us to assume the enemy was listening whenever we used the radio. He told us to be "brief and circumspect." Col and Ursula said the same thing. I've never figured out exactly what circumspect means but it wasn't hard to guess.
    Homer did the talking. He just said we were going out into enemy territory, but not specifically to look for the "Dirty Dozen"—which is what we'd nicknamed the missing New Zealand soldiers. We had no real hope of seeing them again, unless it was by luck. If they were still alive we were sure they wouldn't be in this area. Stratton maybe, but not around Wirrawee or Holloway. The best we could hope for was that they were prisoners, and of course they'd be in a maximum security prison, not Wirrawee Showground.
    The nearest maximum security prison was Stratton, as we well knew, and it mightn't be open for business any more. It took a hell of a pounding during at least one Kiwi air raid that we'd experienced. The air raids might have meant the end of Stratton as a place to lock up dangerous criminals, like us, or the Kiwi soldiers.

    So we told the Colonel we were heading in a different direction, to do whatever damage we could. He didn't sound quite so relaxed when we told him that. In his usual dry formal way he said: "Anything you do will be appreciated. If they have to move one soldier to your district in response to your activities, then that's one soldier less to fight in the critical areas. Is there anything we can do for you?"
    It was a pretty illogical question, as there wasn't much he could do from way back in Wellington. But Homer grabbed the chance. "A lift out of here would be nice."
    Colonel Finley actually sounded a bit guilty when he answered. "Don't get the wrong idea. We haven't abandoned you. We will get you out, but we just can't do it right at this moment. Don't give up on us though."
    I think we all cheered up a bit when we heard that. But a moment later the reception went crazy: static and whistles and chainsaw noises. Homer started trying to call the Colonel back but I stopped him. The sudden loss of the signal and the weird noises on such a clear night scared me. It made me think that maybe one of our fears was justified: maybe they were monitoring us. I got him to turn the radio off. There wasn't any point anyway. It was good to hear a friendly adult voice—nice and comfortable—but there was nothing else we could say to him. Not much else he could say to us, either.
    We left pretty soon after that. We'd done our packing. Lee took the radio, wrapping it in plastic in the little emergency pack that he carried around his waist. I watched him, half smiling. He was