Chapter 18

"Damn! That feels good," said Archie. "I didn't think you would be able to do that so long after I got the injury."

"You're as fit now as you ever were," Donnie told him. "Well enough to get back into service if that's what you wanted."

Archie thought about that for a few moments.

"That's a tough one!" he admitted. "I've been struggling to adjust to being out of the front line. Civilian life is ... difficult. It seems flat and boring when you're used to the adrenaline rush of being in a fire-fight."

"We'll understand if that's what you want," Donnie sympathised. "There are no strings attached to my having healed you."

"No, you're picking me up wrong, I haven't decided yet. I am finding it difficult, but somehow I seem to be connected to you. Tell me a little more about what this head of security job involves."

"What you said about the newspaper story is only part of it," Donnie told him. "I want to make sure that Katie is never in a position like that again. There's more however. I own a company and we're just about to expand a major building project. My personal worth is going to rise to over £20million in the next few days and to over £200million within another six months. I guess that could make me a target and we don't have the first idea about personal security."

Archie whistled at the figures Donnie quoted.

"If you're serious about the amount of money, then you're right. You are definitely a target – the potential for a ransom alone puts you and those close to you in the firing line. I wouldn't be able to cover all of this on my own though. What kind of budget would I have?" Archie asked.

"I've got no idea what kind of costs you are likely to run up," Donnie laughed. "Why don't you work out what you think you'll need and then we can talk about money?"

"I know there are a couple of guys from the stick you pulled out of the minefield who might be available," Archie thought aloud. "They're both local lads actually – Davie Lawrence and Mark Petrie."

By the time Archie left, he was already formulating plans in his head and reviewing people he had served with who might bolster a security squad. Costs were also part of his thinking, but the figures Donnie had quoted suggested money wouldn't be a problem.

While Donnie saw Archie to the door, Katie was tapping away quickly on her iPad, linked to the Internet via their wireless connection.

"What you doing?" Donnie asked when he returned to the sitting room.

Instead of answering, Katie asked a question of her own.

"What was the girl's name again? The one from the plane crash?"

"Vivien Dunn," Donnie answered.

"Yes, Dunn, that was it," Katie repeated absently as she pecked away at her screen.

Still intrigued by what Katie was up to, Donnie crossed so he could see the iPad screen over her shoulder.

"Something about the story you told little Alan has been bugging me," Katie explained. "You know, about the McGregors' using other names. I'm looking up septs."

The image on the screen changed to display a wikipedia page for Clan Gregor and Katie scrolled down to a section headed 'Septs'.

"There!" she cried with excitement.

"What?" Donnie asked.

"Can't you see it?" Katie asked. "There – Roy and there Dunn and the other two names Archie mentioned – Lawrence and Petrie – look, there they are!"

Donnie scratched his head as he picked out the names on the screen as Katie called them out.

"But no McStay as far as I can see," he pointed out.

"Didn't you say that those were the McGregors who didn't change their name? Maybe that's why it doesn't appear?" Katie argued.

"So what you're saying is that we seem to be attracting people who are all linked in some way to the McGregor Clan?" Donnie put into words what they were both thinking.

"Exactly!" said Katie.

Carol was pleased by the significant improvement in progress on the building work. The concrete base for the silo was in place and the sides were being poured in sections. The anchors for the growing frames were sunk and they supported the split of each one acre 'layer' into fifty different 'pods'. That allowed a hydraulic system to move them around. The heating and lighting kit was built-in to the underside of each pod, positioned so that they cultivated the pod below. The system would ultimately slide each pod under the static harvester and then shuttle the used pod aside to make room for the next.

Good progress had also been made on drilling the narrow gauge, deep bore holes that were intended to tap into the heat from the Earth's core. That would cut down on the amount of tree energy that would be required and make each silo that much more efficient.

A lattice of steel beams at the top of the silo would eventually allow a surface to be re-instated so the entire thirty-three acres would still be utilised for surface farming and building under the re-inforced domes.

The steel for each silo was being delivered pre-cut and construction was almost like a giant kit. Carol estimated that this first silo could actually be in production within three months.

Donnie sat and watched the celebrations on TV with satisfaction. Glasgow Rangers had just clinched the Scottish football championship, which was the final part of his accumulator as Arsenal had already won the equivalent in England.

At the end of the day Donnie had opted not to split up his bets into smaller stakes after he had found one on-line bookmaker willing to accept the full £10k bet.

"I'm glad I remembered to pay the tax on the bet!" Donnie laughed inwardly, as he now had the funds necessary to ramp things up on the building project. There would also be enough money to fund whatever security operation that Archie wanted to put in place.

The next item on the news wasn't such a happy one for Donnie.

... yet another report of unrest in several of the major cities within Saudi Arabia. With oil wells still alight in troubled Libya and problems in the Delta region of Nigeria, pressure is on the Kingdom to increase its production of oil to help stabilise world oil prices.

The Middle East remained something of a powder keg it seemed, with the Yemen the latest country to see internal warfare on a significant scale. The military were still in control in Egypt, with democratic elections promised within six months.

Food inflation in the UK was also spiralling and when that was combined by fuel prices that were continuing to rise; the ordinary man in the street was finding it very difficult to make ends meet.

"I wonder if dad is still being bothered by poachers?" Donnie wondered.

Long range weather forecasts were predicting record rainfall for the UK over the summer of 2011 and farmers were already warning about failed crops and very low yields. Their view was that this was all going to conspire to push food prices even higher.

The Westminster government's cuts were starting to bite and every trades union was on full alert to try and make life difficult. With pay increases frozen, pensions being attacked and massive job losses, the industrial relations climate across Britain was deteriorating rapidly.

The Police Federation in particular was making much of a 20 percent cut in police budgets. The Chairman of the Federation warned that this would lead to a loss of 12,000 officers on the streets and he linked that to the overall difficult economic conditions, suggesting that a crime wave was inevitable.

The Government's attack on public sector pensions was another flash-point and it seemed that months of strikes by civil servants were in the offing for the autumn.

For Donnie and Katie, another aspect of the Westminster Government's austerity measures was much closer to home. A policy of significantly increasing the fees universities could charge for tuition was absolute anathema to students and they were organised the length and breadth of the country.

Sit-ins and rallies had been organised. Although Donnie and Katie had not participated in any of these protests as yet, they had watched the mass rallies in London that had degenerated into fighting between the police and students. There was even an attack by students on a car containing Prince Charles.

June brought the end of Donnie's first year at Stirling, although for him, it was more like a year and a half as he had worked to amass more credits than would have been normal. That was all part of his plan to finish his combined honours degree in two years of study.

June also brought an interesting conversation with the goddess, one that had Donnie hugely excited.

"Dòmhnall, look at this and listen carefully."

The picture of a huge vessel of some description appeared in Donnie's head. The vessel had a hopper and a strange series of output valves of different types.

"You remember your speech at the SNP fringe? You criticised the party for not investing enough in research. I want you to use some of your new capital money to do just that – to invest in a research project. I want you to find someone who can make a breakthrough in recycling.

"The picture I have shown you is of a vessel that will take any material and reduce it to its constituent parts. Tell your researcher to think about the principles behind a mass spectrometer – that should get them started on the right road. With this device, you should be able to process rubbish and scrap to recover all of the raw materials you will ever need. In a few years time that will be very important and the scale will be about right."

Donnie thought back to the daydream he had let himself play with a few weeks before. He knew that having to import raw materials was a huge factor in economic performance. If it was possible to create something like the goddess described, the possibilities were endless.

A quick check on the Internet told Donnie what the basic principles were of mass spectrometry. Particles were ionised and then a magnetic field was used to separate out the various elements. Donnie could see that the approach was used for very small samples and he guessed that there would be huge difficulties in translating anything like this into the scale Beira was suggesting. But, if the goddess wanted him to do it, he would give it a try.

Archie was able to recruit both Davie Lawrence and Mark Petrie so that Donnie's security detail now had three very experienced former soldiers, one a veteran of the Special Air Service (SAS) in it.

With only three, Archie tasked Davie to be personal protection for Katie, Mark was assigned to the Ardbrecknish site and he himself decided to cover Donnie's safety.

The Ardbrecknish site was a mystery to Archie. He had looked at the drawings for the site and had discussed the expansion plans with Carol. Despite that, he was puzzled by what Donnie was trying to do. His inability to work things out was annoying for someone responsible for security, so he sought out Donnie to try and get some answers.

"You continually describe the Ardbrecknish site as the wheat production site and I've seen the first silo and the designs for how it works," Archie opened, "What puzzles me is the number of silos you're planning and the scale of the other buildings. It almost looks as if you're planning a commune or a compound of some kind."

To Archie's surprise, Donnie's face lit up as if a penny had just dropped somewhere.

"What did you call it?" Donnie asked excitedly.

"Well, a compound or a commune. With the addition of a crèche and a school – as well as all of the living accommodation, it looks to me like you're planning on having a self-sufficient community there."

"Well I'll be..." Donnie exclaimed.

"What?" Archie asked, confused.

"I think you're right. I think that's exactly what we're building, but I didn't realise it before now," said Donnie.

"If that's the plan, then I think I really need to be involved before it goes any further," Archie demanded. "So far as I can see, no-one has thought about security for the finished compound."

"I can see that that would make sense," Donnie agreed.

"What kind of situation should I be thinking of when I'm designing the security?" Archie asked.

Donnie's blank look made it clear that he didn't fully understand the question.

"Is the compound likely to be subjected to attack? If so, by what kind of force?" Archie tried to make his question clearer.

Donnie's face went blank once more, but after a few moments it seemed to lose all of colour altogether and he looked at Archie with a stunned expression.

"Archie, could you let me think about that for a little? I really need some time alone just now," said Donnie.

Archie was growing used to his boss's strange ways and simply shrugged and left Donnie to his own devices in the apartment.

"Is that it? Is that what the goddess won't tell me? Is it possible that things are going to get so bad that we have to retreat into a self-contained bunker? What could possibly cause that?" he asked himself.

"You are doing well so far, Dòmhnall. Don't try and get ahead of yourself. Let things play out the way I have planned them."

As predicted by the weather forecasters, the summer months proved to be unusually wet in the UK that year. Torrential downpours falling onto bone-dry ground meant that rainfall tended not to soak away, but instead was gathered by ground contours and turned into flash-floods

Crops were flooded and the lack of sunshine stunted growth. As a result the average harvest of all of the UK's main food crops was significantly down and large supermarket chains had to scramble to try and source key staples from elsewhere around the world.

Importing more food could only lead to a further hike in prices for consumers. Finding alternative sources wasn't always easy either. Donnie watched one news report that described the possibility of a repeat of the 1930s Dust-Bowl disaster in the American Midwest.

... scientists are reporting that cooler than normal temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, combined with warmer conditions in the Atlantic have led to a shift in the gulf stream. That means that the normally moisture rich air from the Gulf of Mexico is much drier – an almost exact replication of the conditions that led to years of drought in the Midwest during the dust-bowl years...

Reports suggested that wheat production across Europe was significantly down too and early monsoons had devastated the crop in the third biggest world wheat producer, India.

Donnie noticed for the first time that news reports were suggesting the real possibility of bread shortages.

"Have things really got that bad, so quickly?"

His continuing work with the First Minister gave Donnie an insight into information that most didn't. Official governmental statistics told a story of extremely weak home production figures, huge losses for farmers (for which they were looking for European/UK compensation) and a bleak outlook for food stocks over the coming winter.

In August, just weeks after Donnie's eighteenth birthday, the unthinkable happened.

... fighting between government forces and protesters in the two holy cities of Medina and Mecca has resulted in the deaths of more than two hundred. Meanwhile, in Riyadh the government tried to appease protesters by actually giving food away, but that didn't stop a mass rally in the centre of the city and an attack on the mayor...

Donnie and Katie had spent most of the summer months helping around the farm and spoiling a happy Rory. Both of them knew that things would gear up again when they returned to Stirling in September so were determined to make the most of the time they had.

They packed a picnic lunch and climbed Craig Bheithe Hill, Rory racing around chasing sticks that they threw. Both of them fed the Collie titbits as they enjoyed the sunshine.

"Has the goddess explained Rory's brand?" Katie asked.

Donnie knew the answer was 'no', but before he could give it, another voice sounded in his head.

"Dòmhnall, I have need of your service."

Donnie heard a plaintive cry from Katie...

"Doooonnnnie!"

Bradford, England - August 2011

"I've transported you to this building site for a reason. There are five people inside this Portacabin and you need to hear what they are saying."

That explained the feel of the material under Donnie and he realised he was lying face down on the roof of a pre-fabricated structure, presumably the Portacabin that Beira had referred to. Donnie strained his ears to hear all of the conversation below.

" ... two most common weak points are. Either the security forces already suspect someone on the team and have them under surveillance or someone reports something suspicious when they're buying the components for the bomb and/or putting them together."

"That's why I've called us together today, Mansoor. Inshallah, we can deliver a memorable lesson to the infidels. Each of you needs to be able to supply a virgin, someone you have only recently converted to radicalism and who has not yet been associated with any of those who have returned to Pakistan for training. These people must be absolutely clean. I have a source of explosives and detonators."

Donnie could hear the excitement that this statement created, as a hubbub of voices followed, with everyone apparently trying to speak at once.

"Quiet! Quiet! One at a time please! Rubel, you first."

"How can you have access to explosives, Ali? Where would you get such a thing?" asked Rubel.

"The prophet provides, my friend. I was asked to take on an honour killing in Glasgow. An infidel assaulted one of the faithful and made vile comments about Islam, all in front of members of the family of the girl this boy is to marry. When I had someone research the background of the infidel, I found that he is in a similar business to myself – construction – but that he has another specialty – demolition. I will take on the honour killing, but before he dies, Inshallah, the infidel will provide the explosives," answered Ali

"Why four? Why do you want four for what you have planned?" asked another voice that Donnie hadn't heard yet.