Chapter 26: Time for bed Tangos

Jamie and the girls landed at Dreghorn and were met by Stuart. While Jamie had been making his broadcast, the girls had completed the task Jamie had set them and he now had a delivery to make. There was another matter to take of first though and Jamie knew he had put it off long enough.

"Stuart, how many of the terrorists do you have locked up here in the guardhouse?" he asked.

"Eight in total. There are two adults who we think must have been part of the original virus attack and six Pakistani teenagers who joined up quickly," Stuart replied.

"Okay, it's time to deal with them," said Jamie.

None of the survivors was calling Jamie 'your Grace' and he was relieved about that. He wanted to remain as normal as possible for as long as possible.

"What do you mean, 'deal with them'," Stuart asked.

"You'll see, come on we need to gather our fellow survivors together," Jamie replied.

It took some time to gather the various groups from around the barracks and get them into the main conference area once more. As they settled down, Jamie went to the lectern at the front.

""Bring the prisoners in front of their jury," Jamie ordered.

There was a pause of ten minutes or so while a group of the teenaged survivors went to carry out his command. The terrorists were marched into the conference room and turned to face the crowd.

"Can I have your attention please? Do any here bear witness to the fact that these people are either terrorists who were probably behind the virus attacks or have been willing co-conspirators in rounding up survivors and executing those who resisted?" Jamie called out.

There were hundreds of shouted confirmations and every hand was raised in the room to show that all felt able to so swear as witnesses.

"Have you anything to say in your defence?" he asked the two men and six teenagers.

His question was met with stony silence and sneers from all eight of the captives.

"How do you find the accused?" he asked the crowd.

There was no wild screaming, no sense of a lynch mob, but the message was clear in the unanimous shout of 'Guilty'.

"So be it. None of the accused denies the charges levelled at them. I have thought long and hard on what it is to have been chosen as King. I think it is my responsibility to take hard decisions, to show leadership. Someone needs to do that. Last night I agonised over one such decision. It was not an easy one to come to terms with and to be honest I'm not sure I'm happy with the conclusion I've come to. That's the nature of hard decisions I suppose.

"What is he talking about you're asking yourselves? Well, here it is, if we continue to be successful in overturning the terrorists we are going to have to deal with those we capture sooner or later. These eight are only the first I have to decide what to do with.

"These people thought nothing of murdering our parents, friends and families. Those who joined them after the virus attack have taken great delight in their status over the rest of us and have joined in executions. I have thought about what their fate should be and have decided. As monarch and Head of State the power to make new laws is entirely in my gift. Today I have decided that Scotland will reintroduce the death penalty. I further propose that those terrorists we capture or who give themselves up should be questioned and then executed.

There was an immediate swell of noise in the conference room as neighbours turned to each other, exclaiming over James' announcements. He glanced at the terrorists and saw that several of the teenagers amongst them looked considerably paler than they had moments before.

"Can you really do that, make new laws I mean?" someone shouted.

"Yes, I can. Now I want each of you to think hard about this. Is anyone uncomfortable with what I plan to do?" Jamie asked them.

"Are we going to execute all Muslims?" one girl asked.

"No, only those that have actively joined the terrorists," replied Jamie.

He waited to see whether anyone was going to raise an objection to the re-introduction of the death penalty, but there was absolute silence in the room as the survivors looked at each other. It was clear they well understood the gravity of what he had decided to do, but none of them disagreed.

"So be it. I need fifteen volunteers to form a firing squad," Jamie said.

He was astonished to see virtually every survivor in the room raise their hands.

"I am going to choose fifteen seat numbers at random. If the people sitting in those seats are willing to play their part then they will join me to form the firing squad."

He paused to confirm that everyone thought this was fair. When no one objected he rattled out fifteen seat numbers and watched as the occupants all rose to perform their duty. The prisoners were marched out of the conference room and taken towards the firing range. The hundreds of survivors followed along behind to act as witnesses.

The eight terrorists were lined up and Jamie and his volunteers checked their rifles. Eight of the rifles had been loaded with blanks and eight with live rounds. Jamie allocated a pair of survivors to each terrorist and they all lay down to steady themselves and take aim. No one amongst them would be able to say for sure whether they were the ones to fire live rounds. That way none of them would know whether they had killed the terrorist they were aiming at. Jamie hoped they could take some small comfort from that. There were no grief counsellors here.

Before he could give the order to fire, one of the Pakistani teenagers broke down and cried out that he would co-operate. Jamie halted proceedings and called for the boy to be brought forward.

The youth began to blurt out details of where all of the other survivors were being held and how many terrorists and co-conspirators were active at each site. When his outpouring ran down and he was simply looking at Jamie with fear in his eyes, Jamie gave the order to return him to his spot in front of the firing squad.

"You can't do this, I've told you everything. You can't kill me!" the youth screamed.

Jamie felt his nerve starting to slip in the face of the frightened teenager pleading for his life, but he hardened himself and lay down to join the others. Sixteen SA80 rifles pointed towards the terrorists, waiting for Jamie's command.

"Ready. Take aim. Fire!" he called.

The US intelligence agencies were already poring over the electronic 'take' from Cheltenham. The terrorists who had been caught before they released the virus in the US had been interrogated and although they hadn't given away much, one thing they had disclosed was that the operation had been code-named 'Bird Song'. The fact that the woman who had originated all of the calls had referred to herself as Bird Song was being seen as a sure indication that she was the leader of what was going on in the UK.

The locations where the calls went to were also looked at - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham - and analysts suggested it was a fair bet that there were terrorist cells in these cities. The duration of the calls had not allowed their technicians to triangulate and accurately locate the cells, but they had pinpointed Bird Song's position and it was in the heart of London.

The content of the calls was also examined microscopically by CIA analysts, but the only points of interest they highlighted were Shafiq urging Assam to find some Trident nuclear missiles and the reference to the possible numbers being trained by the terrorists. Frantic activity was set in train to identify whether there were likely to be any missiles stored at the Faslane base.

All this intelligence was shared with those who 'needed to know' and within hours it was being shared with President Bush. His advisors suggested it would be worthwhile to continue to simply monitor the network to see whether they could pinpoint the locations of the other cells. Once the question was answered about missiles at Faslane they could decide whether to send in the Special Forces teams already in the UK.

Some enterprising expatriates were not simply sitting back and accepting what the US and Canadian governments were doing. Their desire to return to the UK was strong and these were determined men and women.

One group had secretly managed to make their way past minimal perimeter security at Fulton County Airport, near Johnstown, New York. Leading the group of twelve was Don Falls, an executive with ExxonMobil, the integrated oil and gas company. Don, originally from Edinburgh, had been one of a party of eight who had just taken off from JFK airport when the US imposed the ban on international travel. He had been travelling in the company's private jet, a Bombadier BD-700, en route to Aberdeen in Scotland.

Air traffic controllers had ordered the jet to land at the nearest airport available and that had been the little public airport at Johnstown. Don knew there was a good chance that the jet, fully fuelled, would still be sitting waiting for some enterprising group to try and use it to reach the UK. He had gathered a small number of his friends and the company pilot and put his plan to them. All of them had agreed immediately that they would try and take the jet.

Getting into the airport had been surprisingly easy and the little group's excitement grew as they began to believe they were going to succeed. The airport had a single runway and the Bombadier was still standing exactly where it had stopped to allow its passengers to disembark. No one was hanging around; it was straight up the stairs and into the Bombadier, the pilot wasting no time in going through his pre-flight checks.

Inside the jet there was seating for up to sixteen passengers and Don and his friends took seats, strapping themselves in for take-off. When the plane's wheels left the tarmac all of them cheered - they were going home.

Their excitement was short lived. Since 911, the US military and the Air Force in particular were ever vigilant. Within seconds of the Bombadier taking of, a flight of F16 Flying Falcons had been scrambled and they raced to intercept the jet. With each of the deadly fighters bristling with missiles, the Bombadier's pilot accepted realities and announced over his intercom that he was taking the jet back down to the ground. They had been airborne for barely eleven minutes.

In hindsight Don would kick himself for not thinking about the US Air Force. Others were more successful. All along the US and Canadian eastern seaboard boats and yachts of all descriptions were trying to escape navy and coastguard detection, as they tried to sneak out into the Atlantic. The American news media lapped it up and their helicopters actually hampered the efforts to stop the expats from getting away.

Like everyone else in the US, Sir David Manning had watched some of the news coverage of his countrymen trying everything they could to get back to the UK. He shook his head at some of the images showing small boats and their owners risking their lives to try and cross the Atlantic in such flimsy craft. The courage of these individuals re-inforced his determination to do all that he could to change the President's policy.