Chapter 20: The tide starts to turn

Jamie was dog tired by the time he landed the Lynx back at Skibo. Once more the three girls waited in the reception area to welcome him back. Laura seemed far more at ease this time when Debbie and Christine hugged and kissed him passionately. Her position with Jamie was assured, of that she had no doubt and now she just smiled at the antics of the other two girls.

The girls had waited for him before eating again and he joined them to wolf down some instant mash and tinned burgers. He brought them up to date with everything that had happened and the girls grew excited at the thought of nearly five hundred survivors now on their side.

Jamie excused himself to go and check his mail for the first time today. He made his way wearily upstairs to the honeymoon suite and sat at the desk where his laptop was waiting. He fired it up and waited for the operating system to do its business. He clicked on explorer and then pulled down his favourites and clicked on his Yahoo link.

His first port of call was the UK account, to see whether he had any more survivors to pick up. He was disappointed at the prompt telling him he had only three messages. While the volume was poor, the impact of the messages was something else.

He saw the e-mail address trevor-p-stevens@yahoo.co.uk and clicked on it first. Trevor's message made him groan out loud. How many knocks were he and his country going to have to suffer? Laura entered the room as she heard his groan and looked over his shoulder. She too gasped as she read the short, terse message.

Jamie felt a responsibility and he hit the back button and searched for Captain Mexford's e-mail message. He clicked on reply and typed a message to Trevor Steven's captain.

The second message shouldn't even have been in this account, as it was clearly from the US President and Jamie had asked everyone in the US and Canada to use his original e-mail account so that this new one would be uncluttered. It was typical of the view he was forming of this man that in his arrogance he felt that request didn't extend to him. Jamie clicked on the message to open it, Laura still peering over his shoulder.

Laura clearly finished reading the message before her brother and she couldn't stop herself.

"Why that pompous, arrogant asshole!" she cried. "Who does he think he is?"

Jamie laughed at her reaction.

"Only the President of the most powerful country in the world sis," he replied, "but I agree, he is arrogant, isn't he?"

Jamie closed the message and scrolled down to the third message in his inbox. This one was from gaz457@hotmail.co.uk. He opened it and was once more surprised by what it contained.

Laura saw that Jamie had grown quiet and depressed by the content of this last e-mail.

"What's wrong Jamie?" she asked him.

"Well, don't you see? It sounds as if there is another terrorist group working in Edinburgh. There are more of them. How are we ever going to take them all on? Maybe the President is right, maybe this is too big for us to handle on our own," he replied.

"We just need some of the expats to come back and once Captain Mexford returns we'll have support from trained men," Laura said, trying to cheer him up. "What does Alba gu Brath mean?"

"It's Gaelic for Scotland the brave," he told her.

Jamie closed Gaz's message and saw that he had received a reply already from the HMS Vengeance.

Opening the message he received yet another hammer blow. The fact that Laura had just used the Vengeance as one of their hopes for the future made it worse.

"That's the last fucking straw!" Jamie bellowed.

Laura jumped back at the sudden violent outburst. She watched as Jamie called up the President's message once more and hit the reply button.

He minimised his yahoo account and called up the software so he could upload the messages between himself and George Bush to the web site. Once he had achieved that he told Laura that he was exhausted and was going to turn in. He apologised for not having the energy to make love to her, but she was secretly relieved, as she was still sore.

They washed and brushed their teeth before snuggling together in the four-poster bed. Laura was content with his arms round her and they both fell asleep quickly.

07:12, 21 August

The next morning Jamie was up and about early. He planned to take the survivors from Inverness to Fort William and get them settled there. He would also stop off at the barracks once again to load up with more hardware for the town. He had a quick breakfast with the girls before heading out to the Lynx.

His head was mulling over an idea that he had woken up with and it brought a smile to his face. He had asked the girls to work on part of the idea but he would need some technical help as well. He hoped there was at least one person in Fort William with the nous to do what he wanted.

Loading up the helicopter was a far slower job without help and it took him several hours. Next he took the opportunity of making the hop to the Air Force base to refuel the helicopter. Once he completed the refuelling, he took the Lynx up and headed towards Fort William. The armaments didn't leave any room for people so he decided to make the trip to the Drumossie Hotel later. Moving the survivors there would take a number of trips he knew, so it looked like being another busy day.

It didn't take him long to reach Fort William and he looked down on Neptune's staircase as he set the Lynx down in the same car park he had used the day before. Stuart materialised and waited for him to shut the helicopter down. A few others also gathered round and Jamie press-ganged them into unloading the helicopter.

"Stuart, I've had a couple of ideas, but I need some help. First off, I think it would be useful to do a skills audit to find out what the people here in the town can do to help us. I'm sure there will be lots of people with at least a fundamental ability at something. The second thing is what gave me the first idea; I need some technical help with another idea. Can you try and find me someone who is a bit of techno-geek?" Jamie asked.

"Consider it done," Stuart replied. "I've already identified someone who is a wiz with anything electronic or computer based. What do you need him for?"

When Jamie outlined his plan, Stuart couldn't help laughing out loud.

"Oh man, I've got to come with you for that. I wouldn't forgive myself if I missed out. When?" he asked.

"I've got to bring the survivors here from Inverness and that will take two trips. If you could have your technical wizard gather what he needs we can do it after that," Jamie replied.

Stuart was still grinning like a fool at the prospect of what Jamie was planning. He went in search of the teenager who would do the work required, while Jamie started up the Lynx once more for the first trip to ferry the other survivors.

Jamie had dropped off half of the survivors from Drumossie and was heading back for the remainder when he saw something curious below him. A blue saloon car was heading slowly up the A82, just a few miles outside of Inverness. He could see blueish white smoke coming in great billows from the exhaust and he guessed the car was being driven too fast in a very low gear. That gave him an idea who the driver might be.