'It rather sounds as if we have another problem,' said Colonel Urwin as sirens wailed over the base.
'Don't include me,' said Wilt. 'I've got problems of my own like trying to explain to my wife what the hell's been happening to me the last God knows how many days.'
But the Colonel was on the phone to the guardhouse. For a moment he listened and then turned to Wilt. 'Your wife a fat woman with four daughters?'
'You could put it like that, I suppose,' said Wilt, 'though frankly I'd leave the "fat" bit out if you meet her. Why?'
'Because that's what just hit the main gate,' said the Colonel and went back to the phone. 'Hold everything...What do you mean you can't? She's not...Jesus...Okay, okay. And cut those fucking sirens.' There was a pause and the Colonel held the phone away from his ear and stared at Wilt. Eva's shouted demands were clearly audible now that the sirens had stopped.
'Give me back my husband,' she yelled, 'and take your filthy paws off me...If you go anywhere near those children...' The Colonel put the phone down.
'Very determined woman, is Eva,' said Wilt by way of explanation.
'So I've gathered,' said the Colonel, 'and what I want to know is what she's doing here.'
'By the sounds of things, looking for me.'
'Only you told us she didn't know you were here. So how come she's out there fighting mad and...' He stopped. Captain Fortune had entered the room.
'I think you ought to know the General's on the line,' he announced. 'Wants to know what's going on.'
'And he thinks I know?' said the Colonel.
'Well, someone has to.'
'Like him,' said the Colonel, indicating Wilt, 'and he's not saying.'
'Only because I haven't a clue,' said Wilt with increasing confidence, 'and without wishing to be unnecessarily didactic I'd say no one in the whole wide world knows what the hell's going on anywhere. Half the world's population is starving and the overfed half have a fucking death-wish, and'
'Oh for Chrissake,' said the Colonel, and came to a sudden decision. 'We're taking this bastard out. Now.'
But Wilt was on his feet. He had watched too many American movies not to have ambivalent feelings about being 'taken out'. 'Oh no you're not,' he said backing up against the wall. 'And you can cut the bastard abuse too. I didn't do anything to start this fucking madhouse and I've got my family to think about.'
Colonel Urwin looked at the sporting print hopelessly. He'd been right to suspect the British of having hidden depths he would never understand. No wonder the French spoke of 'perfidious Albion'. The bastards would always behave in ways one least expected. In the meantime he had to produce some explanation that would satisfy the General. 'Just say we've got a purely domestic problem on our hands,' he told the Captain, 'and rout Glaushof out. Base security is his baby.'
But before the Captain could leave the room Wilt had reacted again. 'You let that maniac anywhere near my kids and someone's going to get hurt,' he shouted, 'I'm not having them gassed like I was.'
'In that case you better exercise some parental control yourself,' said the Colonel grimly, and headed for the door.
Chapter 23
By the time they reached the parking lot by the gates it was clear that the situation had deteriorated. In an entirely unnecessary effort to rescue their mother from the sentriesEva had already felled one of the men with a knee-jerk to the groin she had learnt at a Rape Resistance Evening Classthe quads had abandoned the Wilts' car and, by dusting the second sentry with pepper, had put him out of action. After that they had occupied the gatehouse itself and were now holding the Lieutenant hostage inside. Since he had torn off his uniform to escape the ammonia fumes and the quads had armed themselves with his revolver and that of the sentry writhing on the ground outside, they had been able to isolate the guardhouse even more effectively by threatening the driver of an oil tanker which had made the mistake of arriving at the barrier and forcing him to offload several hundred gallons of fuel oil on to the roadway before driving tentatively into the base.
Even Eva had been appalled at the result. As the stuff swilled across the tarmac Lieutenant Harah had driven up rather too hurriedly in a jeep and had tried to brake. The jeep was now enmeshed in the perimeter fence and Lieutenant Harah, having crawled from it, was calling for reinforcements. 'We have a real penetration situation here,' he bawled into his walkie-talkie. 'A bunch of leftist terrorists have taken over the guardhouse.'
'They're not terrorists, they're just little girls,' Eva shouted from inside, only to have her words drowned by the Alert siren which Samantha had activated.
Outside in the roadway Mavis Mottram's busload of Mothers Against The Bomb had gathered in a line and had handcuffed themselves together before padlocking the ends of the line to the fence on either side of the gateway and were dancing something approximate to the can-can and chanting 'End the arms race, save the human' in full view of three TV cameras and a dozen photographers. Above their heads an enormous and remarkable balloon, shaped and veined like an erect penis, swung slowly in the breeze exposing the rather confusing messages, 'Wombs Not Tombs' and 'Screw Cruise Not Us' painted on opposite sides. As Wilt and Colonel Urwin watched, the balloon, evidently force-fed by a hydrogen cylinder, shed its few human pretensions in the shape of an enormous plastic foreskin and turned itself into a gigantic rocket.
'This is going to kill old B52,' muttered the Colonel who had until then been enjoying the spectacle of Lieutenant Harah covered in oil and trying to get to his feet. 'And I can't see the President liking it too much either. That fucking phallus has got to hit prime time with all those cameras.'
A fire truck shot round the corner past them and in a jeep behind it came Major Glaushof, his right arm in a sling and his face the colour of putty.
'Jesus,' said Captain Fortune, 'if that fire truck hits the oil we're going to have a body count of thirty of the Mothers.'
But the truck had stopped and men were deploying hoses. Behind them and the human chain Inspector Hodge and Sergeant Runk had driven up and were staring wildly about them. In front the women still kicked up their legs and chanted, the firemen had begun to spray foam on to the oil and Lieutenant Harah, and Glaushof was gesticulating with one hand to a troop of Anti Perimeter Penetration Squad men who had formed up as near the Mothers Against The Bomb as they could get and were preparing to discharge canisters of Agent Incapacitating at them.
'For fuck's sake hold it,' yelled Glaushof but his words were drowned out by the Alert Siren. As the canisters dropped into the roadway at the feet of the human chain Colonel Urwin shut his eyes. He knew now that Glaushof was a doomed man, but his own career was in jeopardy. 'We've got to get those fucking kids out of there before the cameras start playing on them,' he bawled at Captain Fortune. 'Go in and get them.'
The Captain looked at the foam, the oil and the drifting gas. Already a number of MABs had dropped to the ground and Samantha had added to the hazards of approaching the guardhouse by accidentally-on-purpose firing a revolver through one of the windows, an action which had drawn answering fire from Glaushof's APP Squad.
'You think I'm risking my life...' the Captain began but it was Wilt who took the initiative. Wading through the oil and foam he made it to the guardhouse and presently four small girls and a large woman came out with him. Hodge didn't see them. Like the cameramen his attention was elsewhere, but unlike them he was no longer interested in the disaster taking place at the gates. A canister of AI had persuaded him to leave the scene as quickly as possible. It had also made it difficult to drive. As the police van backed into the bus and then shot forward and ricocheted off a cameraman's car before sliding off the road and onto its side, he had a moment of understanding. Inspector Flint hadn't been such an old fool after all. Anyone who tangled with the Wilt family had to come off worst.