Chapter 47: INT OPS

Bettina was subdued the during the rest of the tour of the facilities, but Lisa bounced right back and got into everything. I noticed more than one fond grin directed her way by the guys, and figured out that Lisa would probably have more than one father-figure in her life. All good in my opinion.

I noticed that Daise and Alina seemed to be very intimidated by the high obstacles on the obstacle course, looking up at the wooden structure with some trepidation. Well, not to worry, the whole idea of the course was to build confidence in their ability to handle themselves as well as in the team to look after each other.

Once we had toured all the various facilities close to the barracks, we returned to the Lodge for lunch. The food was excellent as usual, the conversation mostly light. Just as we were finishing, I got a call from Gill, Roy's ex-wife, to tell me that the doctors had given permission for Roy to leave the hospital as long as he promised to spend time in bed recovering at home. I was very happy to hear this and immediately told Gill that I would prefer her to bring him and their daughter out to the Lodge to stay for as long as necessary. Gill seemed relieved by the offer, and said she would discuss it with Roy. I felt pretty confident that they would be out to stay in a couple of days.

When I got off the phone, Daise and Alina made noises about spending some time hanging around the pool, and a lot of the rest decided that was a good idea. It wasn't long before we were changed and lying on loungers at the pool-side. I made no bones about the fact that I thought this was a fantastic opportunity to admire the sleek, sexy forms of the females in their bikinis.

We'd been there about an hour and a half when Gerrie arrived. I noticed his Harley arriving, no-one could have missed the noise, and knew he'd be out to join us once he was settled.

"What was that?" Alina asked in response to the noise.

"Gerrie is a Harley Davidson Motorbike fanatic," I told her. "There are lots of people who buy new bikes now and think that they are some kind of heroes because they own one. Gerrie is different. He really knows and loves the bikes. He has one that he rescued from the scrapheap. It was a World War II vintage bike. When he got it, everything was either rusted solid, or rusted away. He took it apart and not only rebuilt it, he actually recreated the whole thing. Building the engine from scratch. If you have a few weeks spare, ask him to talk about his bikes."

"I'll give that a miss, I think," Alina laughed.

"Actually, Gerrie is really shy. He probably won't even talk to you unless you get him talking about his beloved bikes."

Gerrie appeared about twenty minutes later and pulled up an outdoors chaise-lounge next to me. I introduced him around, but he greeted all the others perfunctorily before focusing on me.

"Rupert," he began earnestly, "I've been hearing all kinds of crazy things. If half of them are true..."

"Probably less than that," I interrupted. "Let me summarise what has happened for you." I gave Gerrie a concise summary of the events and actions of the last few days, starting with my contact with Daise. Gerrie listened, as he always does, with total concentration and without interrupting once. He was a really scary guy to deal with in some ways. He had an eidetic memory and could recite conversations verbatim from twenty years back, which was probably why he had never been married. Most women don't like their husbands to be able to recite chapter and verse of their words from the last argument they had had. Gerrie was interested in information. He was the perfect military intelligence NCO, able to collate and analyse vast amounts of data in his head. He was ran the computer systems of a major insurance company as his day job, but he had been allocated to a Commando after completing his National Service and worked as the Intelligence Clerk in their OPS Room at the beginning. It didn't take the Int Officer long to discover his talents though, and he was soon the senior NCO responsibile for Intelligence for the Unit, collecting information from members of the Commando when they reported for duty and branching out more and more into an intelligence collection role. Within five years, he was invited by the Police and all the other Army Units to brief them on a regular basis. He consistently refused a commission though, claiming that he liked to actually work for his pay.