Marching Out

In London they were putting out the early editions of the London Standard on the station bookstall, the sales stand had just been fitted with the headlines poster.

'Terrorist's Bankers closed down after under cover operation by combined law enforcement Agencies!' On the London evening newspaper stand.

I bought a London Standard to read later on in my journey, I knew that I'd be chatting with George on the stretch from London to Birmingham but after that, I expected to wave him goodbye as he took the first train to Glasgow and I took the seven o'clock train. I also planned on buying an evening paper in Birmingham and another in Glasgow. I'd use the jobs sections of each paper to see what the job opportunities were like as well as house prices and rental options in the three cities.

George and I were on the platform at Birmingham together, I would have something to eat in a restaurant close to the railway station while waiting for seven o'clock to roll around when an announcement came through the platform speaker system. "Due to signalling problems North of Birmingham there will be a slight delay to all services to the north."

"So Victoria, what are you going to do while you wait for the seven o'clock train?"

"I'm going to find somewhere for dinner...better than eating curly sandwiches on the train at four quid a time."

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"Can you hang fire for a minute while I talk to someone about what's going on with my train?"

I nodded my head. George walked straight past the information desk, he was challenged as he tried to go through the 'Staff only' door, he flashed an ID card and wandered off in the direction of the station master's office. He was back in the station foyer in just ten minutes, he took my elbow, "What kind of food do you like the best Vicky?"

"What about your train?"

George looked all around to make sure that no one could hear him but me, "Just between you and me, they aren't expecting anything to go beyond Liverpool tonight but they don't want to let anyone know just how bad things are until they're sure. I've got a letter for both of us transferring out tickets to the ten o'clock train in the morning, guaranteed seats in first class for both of us. The morning trains will be standing room only all the way to Scotland and as soon as the news breaks, the local hotels will increase their prices to about double and will all be full in minutes."

We walked to the railway hotel and as we stood in a six person queue at the reception desk George said, "Some people are already in the know, this party are civil servants from the Scottish Government, they were heading for Edinburgh on my train but they got a call from their office in Scotland telling them to overnight here in Birmingham."

"But you said that you were going to Glasgow not Edinburgh!"

Same train, just south of Glasgow the train splits into two, the front heads off to Edinburgh and the rear to Glasgow. Even though Glasgow is on the West coast and Edinburgh is on the East coast, they are only thirty miles apart in reality."

We shuffled up to the reception desk, George said confidently, "Two single rooms please."

The receptionist checked his computer, "I'm sorry sir, all I have left tonight is a double room."

"Is that with twin beds?"

The receptionist shook his head.

George turned to me, "You take the room Vicky, I'll sleep in the railway station's waiting room."

"That's just silly, I'm trained to make the most of what I have, we're both adults and if you try anything I could probably break your neck before you get the chance to break my hymen!"

I realised from the shocked look on George's face that I'd overstepped the bounds a little and I blushed.

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"Are you saying we should share the double bed?"

I nodded my head.

George signed for the room and I carried my own suitcase to the room.

We ate dinner in the hotel's restaurant and as we ate we watched a constant stream of people being turned away from the hotel looking for rooms for the night.

"Apparently there's a pop festival in Glasgow at the weekend and the start of the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh so they're expecting around half a million people to head north in the next few days."

Dinner was lovely, I had a bottle of wine to myself and George had three pints of beer. We put off heading for our room until ten o'clock but, like the elephant in the room, it had to be tackled...and tackled head on.

I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed and George was at the door talking through it. I hadn't actually locked the door and I got the strangest feeling as I stood just two inches away from George, two thin layers of plywood with a cardboard egg-box filling separating us as I stripped totally naked.

"Vicky...earlier...in the reception...you mentioned that you could break my neck before I got close to your hymen...were you being serious...are you still...you know...a virgin?"

I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I was blushing bright red all the way down to my nipples, I responded with a simple, "Uh-huh!"

"Damned it...erm...is it a religious kind of thing...or is it a life choice kind of thing...or, is it more of a...lack of opportunity kind of thing?"

I pulled my scarlet 'Boy pants' on...that's not pants belonging to a boy, it was a style on knickers, bikini brief length in the body of the knickers but with inch long legs, quite tight legs, not like French knickers. They were very thin but heavy weight silk material...it was a kick back against wearing army issue knickers for almost ten years. I'd bought a matching camisole top, no bra under it, I was so fit and so muscular that I didn't need to wear a bra even while going over an assault course...of course, as in every aspect of life in the army, they had rules on the wearing of a bra for female soldiers and a bra was part of that uniform.

I opened the bathroom door, George was wearing boxers and nothing else, I looked straight down at his boxers and he looked from the tops of my legs and up to my breasts, my nipples popped out like the pressure valve on top of a pressure cooker.

George launched himself at me and what followed was something akin to a display of unarmed combat, my camisole top came off in a second and I did a hip throw on George, he sailed onto the top of the bed and bounced like it was a trampoline and he ended up on his knees on the other side of the bed. The fight moved up a gear and I ended up ripping his boxers into shreds. He was strong, he was very fit and he was very well skilled at unarmed combat but I was stronger, fitter and I taught men most of the moves he was trying on me and after thirty minutes I allowed him to pin me down on the bed on my back.

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He struggled to get my tight 'Boy-pants' off so I had to help him by lifting my left leg so he could push my knickers off over my left ankle without breaking our kiss and as soon as my knickers were off, I was impaled on his cock and he went off like an energiser bunny fucking me.

He was very fit and proved it by fucking me at a frenetic pace for over an hour.

There was a little blood to prove that I had been a virgin but not much, not half as messy as I'd thought it would be.

I slept with another person for the first time in my twenty-six year long life and found it very difficult, every time he twitched or moved in the slightest I opened my eyes and looked at him, looked at his naked body. We'd put so much effort into our fucking that we hadn't bothered to rescue the duvet from the top of the wardrobe where our earlier battle had left it and so I could see all of his body as he slowly turned in his sleep.

There was a knock at the door, I assumed that it was housekeeping wanting to clean up our room. I found George's shirt on the floor and pulled that on as I opened the bedroom door a crack, "Hi, what do you..."

"I'm sorry Miss, I'm looking for George Campbell, I was told that this was his room."

I looked over my shoulder, George was still sleeping, he was still naked but at least he had his back to the door.

"This is his room but he's sleeping...could you wait..."

"I'm sorry Miss, I only need him for a moment and I've seen him naked many times before."

George woke, he introduced me to his friend as Kelly. Just Kelly, nothing else.

George and Kelly went into the bathroom together and George took a shower, partly to clean the stale sweat from our fucking off of his body but also so that I couldn't hear anything through the bathroom door.

I did hear that there was a DCS Bishop waiting for George at Birmingham's Edgbaston Police Station and that Kelly would wait for George in his car in front of the hotel.

I sat, still wearing George's shirt as he dressed, he left his shirt until last.

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"How did they know that you were here?"

He picked up his phone and shook it.

"You told them?"

"No...GPS in my phone, they always know exactly where I am, even on leave they always know where I am..." George lifted his phone close to his mouth, "...and what I'm doing...don't you Kelly?"

As George hadn't pressed any buttons on his phone and he hadn't made a call, I had to assume that his phone had its microphone open permanently and there was a possibility that every word we'd said to each other, and every gasp and groan of our rather hectic sex session last night had been listened too by George's handler. I'd suspected that he was under cover, either army or police. So, I'd had sex for the first time in my life and instead of it being the private and personal thing that I'd always expected it to be it was probably being broadcast...'SHIT!'...there was no clock in the room so George had used his phone as a clock, it had been propped up on the bedside table all night, if George's people could open the microphone remotely, they'd be able to open the camera as well.

I unbuttoned George's shirt so he could finish getting dressed. We kissed and he fastened his tie, "I'm guessing that with the pop festival going on so close to Glasgow you may have difficulty finding a hotel room, here's my mother's address in Glasgow, you just have to tell her you're a friend of mine and she'll give you a bed for the night. It would be really nice to catch up with you again once the police are finished with me."

I couldn't give George my address, I just didn't have one to give him.

I caught my train, my nice comfortable seat in first class. The man across the aisle from me nudged his companion, "Check the news feed, Google News has just come up with a siege in Birmingham, a gunman is hold up in a restaurant in Edgbaston with hostages."

I looked over, I must have gasped because the man turned his phone towards me, "Bloody marvellous, CNN is streaming live camera footage from outside the restaurant but there's sod all from the BBC!"

I saw the five man squad, all in black combat fatigues with Kevlar helmets and gas masks moving in on the side of the restaurant.

"The BBC knows better than to show a stream like that, if the gunman's got a smart phone he'll see what they are doing, in that kind of operation, surprise is the best weapon the army has..." I tilted his phone towards me a little more and saw blue flashes on their sleeves, "...at least that's blue troupe...so the bad guys can't actually see what's coming."

"What do you mean?"

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"Blue troupe are the backup, Red troupe will be doing the shooting and they're probably on the other side of the building."

"Oh...really...you know a lot about this kind of thing do you?"

"I probably taught them how to shoot during their basic training."

He looked shocked, "Are you in the SAS?"

"No...and if I was I'd never tell anyone...not even my family would know but those guys didn't start out in the SAS, they started as regular recruits and that's where I spent the last nine years of my life."

There was a cloud of smoke erupting out of an upper window as the glass popped out into the street.

"Well, it's all over, that was a 'Flash-bang' going in from the other side of the building courtesy of red troupe, anyone holding a gun in that restaurant is dead by now."

There was a series of pops on the small telephone's speaker.

"They're using a telephoto lens and are about a kilometre away from that restaurant judging from the time delay from the flash of the grenade and the sound reaching the camera."

There was thirty minutes of pontificating from the CNN anchorman running through the various options of what all the action in that few seconds could mean and then Google News switched from the CNN feed and went to the BBC, a police officer was standing in front of the camera to be interviewed, the literal across the screen below his face stated that he was Detective Chief Superintendant Bishop of the Birmingham Metropolitan Police.

"Three gunmen with eight hostages were trapped in the restaurant behind me, as the hostages were all elderly people with medical issues it was decided by Cobra, the Government's security committee, to end the siege as quickly as possible. All three terrorists were shot dead by members of the SAS and only two of the hostages suffered minor injuries during their rescue."

"Chief Super. Peter Day of News International, were the gunmen given the opportunity to surrender?"

"We spent an hour trying to make contact with the gunmen but they refused to pick up their phone to talk to us. We believe that the three terrorists were making preparations to detonate a suicide vest inside the restaurant to kill or maim as many of their hostages as possible so the decision was taken to send in the SAS to end the hostage's ordeal as quickly as possible."

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"Helen Cooper Independent News, you said that no contact was made with the suspected terrorists...how could you possibly know what was on their mind to send in your assassins?"

"For security reasons we can't divulge what information we had or how we used that information. Standard operating procedure in these circumstances is for warnings to be shouted out as our men go in to the building and the only people that are targeted are people standing and holding weapons. The two wounded hostages were believed to have been wounded by the terrorists; my information says that as my men entered the building the terrorists started shooting at their hostages, trying to kill them before they themselves were captured or killed."

"Helen Cooper Independent News again sir, how can you be so certain that the hostages were shot by the accused men and not by your assassins?"

"I have two reasons to believe that the hostages were shot by the terrorists, the first was that I was watching the body-cam feeds from the soldiers entering the building and the fact that an 'AK forty-seven' rifle leaves a much larger wound and the bullet passed through and exited the hostages bodies, our nine millimetre tumble rounds are designed to enter the body and then stop inside to prevent bystanders being injured by our bullets."

I lost my view of the screen at that point, the man opposite me had lost interest and had moved on to look at a little on-line porn so he turned his screen away from me and pushed his ear-buds jack back into his phone.

We were approaching Liverpool but on the outskirts we stopped, the train's manager announced that they had been stopped by a red signal and would resume the journey as quickly as possible.

There were a few people who were getting off at Liverpool and they were griping that they could walk home from where we'd stopped if they would only open the train's doors.

We'd stopped just short of a minor road that had a level crossing and the other side of the lane there was a large meadow. I wasn't really taking much notice of what was going on, the crossing gates had been closed to stop cars going in front of the train and what was holding my attention was the driver of a van was talking to the train driver, he was protesting that the gates had been closed and they should have been left open so he could get to his farm.

I saw a shadow on the ground, it was a 'Lynx' helicopter shaped shadow and it was getting bigger as it passed by the side of the train. The helicopter however couldn't be seen from the train on either side which meant that it was flying directly above the train and getting lower and lower as it passed above the train.

'Someone could get a box of Milk Tray chocolates out of this if they aren't very careful!'

I pressed my forehead against the window and looked ahead of the train. I watched the 'Mat-black' helicopter land in the field ahead of the train, its wheels touched the grass and the helicopter took off again without the wheels even leaving a dent in the grass of the meadow. Someone had exited the helicopter on the blind side and they were professionals.

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I watched the helicopter as it set off towards the Irish Sea, there was no mistaking a Lynx helicopter, even if it was all black with no markings on it, no badges or insignia, no identifying marks or numbers of any kind. A Special Forces wagon, capable of over two hundred miles an hour, the fastest helicopter in the world, it was also the only helicopter in the world that could fly upside down, not for extended periods but it could loop-the-loop to avoid missile attack.

The train jerked into motion and we rolled past the parked van slowly. We only got up to about half speed before we started to slow again for the platform at Liverpool's central railway station. A hand rested on my shoulder, "I think that this is my seat madam!"

I jumped out of my skin but pulled myself together, "George, how the hell did..." I stopped myself asking George how he'd caught up with the speeding train. I just moved over to the other seat and let George sit next to me. We exchanged a passionate kiss and I looked at the men across the aisle from George, they knew something was out of the ordinary going on but they hadn't seen the black helicopter landing just ahead of the train.

I whispered, "What about the debriefing?"

George smiled at me, "Standard forty-eight hours cooling down period, they're coming to Glasgow to interview me the day after tomorrow."

Once in Glasgow I walked with George towards his mother's house, I stopped at the first hotel we came across to see if they had a room to rent to me. They didn't have any rooms that were vacant and wouldn't have one for at least a week. They even checked on-line for me, a central booking agent run by the Glasgow chamber of commerce, they had up to date information from all of the hotels in the Glasgow area and they couldn't offer me a hotel room within a twenty mile radios of Glasgow.

"Come on, my mother will make you welcome, you can stay at her house until the pop festival is over, Glasgow will be awash with hotel rooms then."

We got to George's mother's house but she wasn't home, the wall planner in her kitchen showed that his mother was at Betty's house.

"Oh that's great, we can kill two birds with one stone, you can meet my mother and my Aunty Betty at the same time, they'll love you and if you're worried that I'll make a nuisance of myself if we're living under the same roof, I'm sure that Betty will let you stay with her."

George phoned a taxi to take us to his auntie's house. We approached his auntie's house from a service road at the rear and from there through the back yard rather than a garden. We went in through the kitchen, the back door left unlocked which surprised me a lot.

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"Hi Betty...mum, it's only me with a friend!"

Two elderly women mobbed us in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. George's mother was over the moon that he'd actually managed to get home, "You don't have much of a tan, I'd have thought that Cyprus would be very sunny at this time of the year!"