Bush Snipers. Greg Pius
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children they applauded and laughed.
One little boy called out,
"Is he shocking shelled like my Dad?'
Shakata did not need to check to see who spoke, he recognised the voice. This boys father had been caught in the middle of a government bombing raid back in the city. All his father's mates had been killed. His father had survived but was mentally disturbed by all the death he had witnessed. One of the many sick rebel fighters being sheltered by families secretly in the refugee camp, this father did not even regognise his own six year old son. The boy was hurt by his father's refusal to hug him, as he used to do before the war.
Shakata quickly answered this little voice,
"No Simon. Mister Fitzgerald is not shell shocked. He is just resting here with us for a short break."
Seeing the confusion on Flint's face, Shakata explain once he had settled the children down outsidse his tent. He had them all sit down on the grass and get out their tablet computers. These were given to them by UNICEF, a United Nations agency that helped children in refugee camps. Then he got the girl Zaheer to lead the children in their Mathematics drills. This was the prize for coming first in the daily race. Zaheer had not lost a single race that month. It was now getting hot, so all the children wore shorts and sports T-Shirts. The race was long but Zaheer showed no signs of fatigue and/or heat stress.
Shakata drew Flint to a nearby tree, he covered his mouth with an open hand and spoke very softly.
"Look Flint you are the most wanted man in this country. The government has you as number one on their black ops hit list. No surprise there really, you have been there since the sports stadium shooting. The shopping mall bombing has also been blamed on you as weel. But lately they became convinced that you killed Machel."
Flint copied Shakata in covering his mouth with an open hand. He was always soft spoken but his voice was very deep. So he deliberately kept if to a little bit above a mumble,
"I wish I had killed Machel. That basta... (remembering the children he cut himself short).....I mean he was a traitor. Machel was doing everything in his power to torpedo the peace talks. He was in on the train bombing, the conference bombing, he organised that stadium shooting not me and he organised the hospital attack. I know all of that for a fact!'
Shakata looked impressed. He nodded as if it made perfect sense to his way of thinking. Then he whispered,
"I guessed someone was behind all those events. The timing was just to neat to be a list of random acts of terrorism. But even if you show the rebel alliance security people this evidence it won't save you. They now know that Cain Flint killed Shabata. You are a dead man either way. So lets kill off Cain Flint and replace that identity with Thomas Fitzgerald. You are ex Sinn Fein now, thats prounced Shin-FAYN. Its celtic for "Ourselves" some interpret it wrongly as "WE Ourselves". Your family comes from the Republic of Ireland. You were born in a little hamlet jus outside Shannon airport in souther Ireland. Joing Sinn Fein when you were sixteen, you were sent to Belfast during the troubles. When Sinn Fein decomissioned all its soliders you could not return to a civilian life. You were told to leave Ireland. So you came to Australia. Here you got a refugee entry into university. When the war broke out you signed up for the rebel rifle corps. But you took a bullet in your left hand. Unavle to hold a rifle for long periods, you now are seeking work as a security officer."
Flint stared at Shakata astounded at this wealth of detail. No cover identity he had ever got from Bill Han came with such provence.
"How in the heel did you get all that so fast?'
Shakata once more smiled into Flint's face. He said wirly,
"Impressed the great Cain Flint have I. Well ther's one for me."
Flint tried to win back the initiative by sternly saying,
"Don't get cocky. Answer the question."
Shakata now seemed to get maudlin when he replied,
"The real Thomas Fitzgerald was my best friend at university. We were mature aged freshers together. He showed me things about heavy drinking that I could never have imagined possible. Every Friday night he would drink beer heavily for four hours. When the university pub shut, we drove to the bottle shop where he got two dozen bottles of beer. At the time we were sharing a flat. By the next morning he had finished off every bottle. I would have to put up with his wild Irish music, played loud, all night. If the neighbors ever complained, they only did it once. Tom was a angry and violent man. But he was the best friend I ever had and I loved him."
Picking up on the past tense of that last sentence, Flint inquired,
"How did he die?"
Now Shakata seemed to relive a moment of horror.
"You remember where we first saw each other?....Well that is also were I last saw my friend alive. He was blown up by a government bomb. It should have been me. The stupid fool pushed me down and lay on top of me. I felt his body go rigid and then limp."
Flint heard the pain in Shakata's voice he volunteered this offer,
"Look if you prefer that I use another identity I will understand."
But Shakata started shaking his head before Flint even finished speaking. He said firmly,
"What better way to honor the life of my best friend than to let you use his identity. Besides they will check you out throughly. Your new identity must be fool proof."
Flint had one last quibble,
"But won't they talk to people who knew the real Fitzgerald?"
Shakata shook his head before saying in a sad tone of voice,
"Apart from his family in Ireland and his old Sinn Fein cronies, almost all of those who knew him here died in that bombing raid near our student flat."
Flint could not help falling for Shakata's verbal ambush by asking,
"You said 'almost all' didn't you?'
Shakata replied in a sneaky tone of voice,
"Yes only one person from our group survived, But he won't rat you out, as they say in the movies."
Not being Shakata's intellectual equal, Flint fell into the snare when he said'
"Why wouldn't he? I don't know him do I?'
Shakata sprang the trap shut by replying,
"Well lets just say that you only meet properly toady but he has a great first impression of you."
Slow but not dumb, realization now dawned on Flint's face. So he said,
"Then the name is Tom Fitzgerald but most people call me Firey Fitz."
Laughing (more for the sake of the watching children than at Flint's poor attempt at humor) Shakata replied in a loud voice,
"Welcome to our refugee camp Mister Thomas Fitzgerald. Better known to his friends as Fiery Tom! The children will now show you