Chapter 3: The final leg

Shafiq gazed out of the window of the white house, down the hill to the harbour of Oran. She and her team had arrived in darkness, but now the sun was up and she could feel its heat already beginning to build up. The house was nestled just below the cliff that formed the natural anchorage, a cliff that rose to a peak on her left as she gazed out onto the Mediterranean Sea. The rock was arid, dry, with some low growing brush along the clifftop. The village proper was further back atop the higher ground above the cliff.

She picked out the low warehouses and the grain silo that hedged the harbour's edge. It was easy to count the fishing trawlers and smaller pleasure cruisers that were tied up inside the man-made breakwater that ran for over four thousand metres and virtually enclosed the harbour. The water was a clear Mediterranean turquoise blue and she knew that, come nightfall, she and her team would be boarding two of the trawlers to begin the final leg of their journey to the UK.

Her nerves made her fidgety and kept her on edge. She knew the voyage would be a time when they were at some risk, the UK fishery protection ships could easily pick them up if they spotted anything that looked suspicious or out of place. Shafiq had been assured that the trawlers were fully licensed to fish in the areas they were headed for and that there was no reason for anyone to question why they were there.

She continued to return to the window throughout the day, staring at the narrow winding road between her and the harbour, as it followed the contours of the Algerian coastline. Oran had several jetties piercing out into the harbour and Shafiq absently watched the cargo ships being unloaded by the dockside cranes. She wished the waiting was over, this was always the most difficult part, the most nervous time for her.

At last, as darkness fell with the suddenness of the Mediterranean, she roused her team and ran through the arrangements for contacting each other once they made landfall in Scotland. They gathered together and observed prayers to the prophet before silently following their guide down the slope towards the harbour and the trawlers that awaited them.

It was almost an anticlimax as they boarded the boats and one by one the trawlers nudged their way out of the harbour and into the open sea. They saw no one and raised no interest at all. At first there was nothing to see, but gradually they became aware of the lights along the Spanish Costas, the tourist hotels and apartments a seemingly endless, gaudy display of western waste and greed.

The trawler Shafiq was on sailed Southwest down the Mediterranean Sea, heading for the narrow straights of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic. The captain swung his vessel round, steering almost directly Northward. She could see little in the darkness but Shafiq had studied her maps well and knew they would run parallel with Portugal and up past the Bay of Biscay.

She made her way below decks and unslung the small rucksack she had carried, placing it on one of the narrow bunks in the cabin that would be her home for the next six or seven days. How long would depend on the winds and tides. Shafiq felt a momentary sense of vulnerability. She was heading into what she believed to be 'enemy' territory and she was unarmed. All weapons had been left behind in the house in Oran, as it was considered too risky to have them on board the trawlers. The Al Qaeda cells in the UK would provide them with handguns; weapons that couldn't be traced back to the Middle East.

Shafiq crawled into the bunk and pulled a blanket over herself. The amount of nervous energy she had used up throughout the day now took its toll and she immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.

Jamie had avoided IM'ing his sister for the past couple of days, believing that he was already getting too deeply into the mire. He was conscious of Laura continuing to look at him oddly when they were close together and he hoped against hope that he not completely ruined his relationship with her.

Three days after his last MSN session with her, his memory of the detail was beginning to fade and he felt he had dodged a bullet. When Laura called to him from her room, he thought nothing of it and walked in to see what she wanted.

"Jamie, I'm trying to finish my computing homework, but I'm really stuck with some of these problems. Could you help me please?" she pleaded with him, a pout on her lips.

"Sure sis, budge over and let me see what you're stuck on," he replied.

Laura wheeled her computer chair sideways a little to her right to leave some space for Jamie to pull up the chair that stood in the corner of her bedroom. Jamie wondered why she had shuffled to her right as that put the mouse too far away from him to reach comfortably. When he sat down on the chair he began to go through the various questions Laura said she was having difficulty with. He had to reach across her to scroll down with the mouse and as he did so he happened to glance to his right.

"Shit!" he thought, "now I know why the little minx moved to that side."

Women's clothes button up on the opposite side to men's and by moving to her right, Laura had ensured that Jamie would be able to see right inside her blouse. She had loosened the top three buttons and the blouse gaped slightly, giving a tantalising view of the swell of her right breast. Jamie gulped and tried to keep his eyes off of Laura and on the computer screen instead.

"Is she doing this on purpose?" he asked himself, "god, I didn't think she would go through with it."

Jamie couldn't help himself. When Laura leaned forward slightly, pointing to something on the screen, he knew her blouse had fallen open a little more and the gap drew his eyes like a magnet. He could now see most of her right breast and as Laura got slightly more animated in her frustration to solve the problem he watched as her little pebble-hard nipple was exposed to his view.

The moment seemed to be frozen in time. He heard a quiet moan and realised it had come from him. Laura looked towards him so see what was wrong and he hurriedly glanced away from her chest and looked once more at the computer. His cock was rock hard in his pants and uncomfortably constricted in its current position.

"Jamie, what's wrong? Don't you know the answers to these problems?" Laura asked innocently.

"Um, yeh. They're pretty basic sis, I'm surprised you can't answer these without help," he managed to reply, letting her know that he suspected she had set him up.

Laura ignored him and leaned forward again towards the screen. Once more Jamie's eyes were drawn to the flesh that was revealed. He could feel beads of sweat break out on his forehead and his mouth was suddenly very dry. He returned his attention to the screen and quickly worked through the answers to the questions Laura had claimed to be having difficulty with. He stood and turned away from his sister, trying to hide the lump in his trousers from her as he hurriedly tried to exit the room.

"Oh, thanks big bro!" Laura cried and leapt up to give him a hug.

As her arms went round his neck and her body brushed up against his, he thought he might faint with embarrassment. He managed to disentangle himself and quickly left her room. He didn't see the broad smile on Laura's face as she thrilled at the effect her little display had had on her brother. She waited thirty seconds and then crept down the hall and pressed her ear to the door of the bathroom she shared with Jamie. Laura heard her brother grunting and she had a good idea what he was doing in there.

She rushed back to her room closed and locked her bedroom door and lay back on her bed. Once again her exhibitionism had made her very horny and hearing her brother masturbating, probably with thoughts of her in his mind had her hotter than ever before. She knew she would need to do something to alleviate the intense feelings between her legs.

She unzipped her jeans and pushed them and her panties down her thighs until her fingers could easily access her sex.

"Oh boy, my pussy is absolutely drenched," she thought, "I can't believe I did it, I really let my brother see my boobs. Oh this is so hot, his cock - oh I love that word, it's so nasty - his cock was rock hard and so big."

Laura's memory of the look on her brother's face as he stared inside her blouse at her bare breast and the lump that had formed in his trousers, the lump she felt up against her stomach when she had hugged him, fuelled her arousal and she frantically rubbed her little pleasure button.

"Oh god, oh god, I wonder if he's thinking about me as he's playing with his big cock right now?" she thought.

That thought kicked her feelings up another couple of notches and she nipped her bottom lip between her teeth as she rubbed herself faster and faster. She imagined herself dropping her hand to feel the hard bulge in Jamie's trousers. She imagined she was with him in the bathroom and it was her hand that was rubbing his cock. That was enough to push her over the edge. Laura felt the biggest climax she had had in her life wash over her in great crashing waves and she gasped out loud, unable to stifle her moan of pleasure.

The team heading for mainland Europe had split into their two sets of three as soon as they reached the warehouse in Hakkan, just over the Iraqi border into Turkey. They would travel though Turkey, cross the Bosphorous at Istanbul and into Bulgaria. Romania and Hungary would be next before they passed through Austria and into Germany. The entire trip would be around two thousand miles, with their ultimate goal Frankfurt, and they would be cooped up in the hidden compartments the whole time.

This kind of smuggling was used to ferry drugs and even people into Europe. The compartment couldn't be very big otherwise customs officers would be able to detect something was amiss. That meant each group of three would be living virtually on top of each other. They had food and water with them and containers and zip-lock bags to take care of their human waste. The estimated time for the journey was thirty-eight hours and each individual was enough of a fanatic to think nothing of spending that length of time in these conditions. If that was what was required in order to strike a blow at the West then so be it.

Aboard the two oil tankers that carried the team targeting the US, each group of three had been allocated a cabin away from the rest of the crew. The captain expected them to perform low-grade manual labour throughout the voyage and the team members were grateful for something to take their mind of what lay before them. As well as putting in a full shift like the rest of the crew, the fanatics also used the huge deck space of the tankers to maintain their peak fitness. They ran races against each other and performed a dizzying number of press-ups, squats and crunches.

The real crewmembers knew better than to enquire who they were and what they were doing aboard. The less they knew, the better and perhaps ignorance would keep them safer too. Food was delivered and left outside their cabin door so they didn't need to mix any more than absolutely necessary. All of their allotted tasks kept them isolated from the rest of the ship.

The next week was one of torture for Jamie and absolute delight and wicked pleasure for Laura. Every time their parents were out of the house she never missed an opportunity to tease her brother somehow. He had been treated to a view down her open blouse as they shared the chore of washing up dishes in the kitchen sink. She made sure to bend over in front of him frequently as she tidied up the sitting room, and she had even dropped her towel as she passed him in the hall coming back from her shower. That had been the most erotic moment of Jamie's young life so far. Laura stood like a statue for some seconds, dressed only in her little cotton panties, before she gasped as if in shock and quickly covered herself up.

Jamie had tugged himself three times straight with the vision of his sister in his mind. Laura was just as bad and her own actions and Jamie's reaction had her constantly aroused and wet every time she exposed herself. Jamie had completely lost his urge to try and restore his sister to the way she was, his hormones overriding his concerns and the frequent sight of Laura's beautiful little breasts too tantalising to give up. He had also begun to put Laura's own advice into action and she was totally unaware of what he was doing.

At every opportunity he made sure to indulge in gentle touches. When he was passing her a bowl or a cup he would let their hands brush against each other. When he stood behind her at her computer, as well as looking down her blouse, he covered her hand on the mouse with his own and guided the cursor round the screen. His other hand would be lying gently on her shoulder. Laura missed what he was doing, but it was having the subconscious effect that she herself had predicted it would when she had chatted with Highlander.