The week seemed to drag on. All the trial participants were sequestered at the Air National Guard base near Baltimore. The gang leaders were held at a maximum security jail in Baltimore. They were transported to the base each day in a convoy. We talked with Jenny every night.

On Friday morning a car bomb exploded next to the lead vehicle killing the four state police officers in it. The four officers in the second car were in critical condition.

Two cars and six gunmen tried to break the gang leaders out of the armored van. Four died in the attempt. Both cars got away to be found abandoned later.

Jenny called before noon, very shaken and scared to death. The state was building cells in two separate barracks to keep the prisoners on the base and separated. The state had given up on the convoy arraignment.

I talked to her for two hours before she calmed down. I told her to call me any time – day or night – she needed to talk.

I filled her in on the sting that was going to happen Saturday at Dover using Janice and Sly. Ty and Kathryn were running the show and I knew that either of the girls could quickly put Bobby Blackstone in his place so I was not worried.

Janice and Sly were pumped that they would be working for Homeland and with Kathryn and Ty.

I asked if she wanted a couple of us to come and stay as her personal bodyguards for the weekend.

“Please.”

Jenny was staying in a guest officer’s quarters by herself. She called whoever was in charge, only to find out that it would be tomorrow morning before arrangements could be made.

On the way home I stopped by the airport construction site. Tony had kept true to the updated schedule he gave me last week. Two pours had been done for the NE/SW runway. A slab of concrete 50 feet wide and 8000 feet long was down.

I stood at the end of it, looked to the other end and just thought, “Wow”; on paper it was just numbers. Standing there looking down that slab put the immensity of what we were doing into prospective.

The text that he had sent me said, “Everything went great. We are going to pour on Sunday and Tuesday to finish that runway.” That explained the line of tractor trailers refilling the Portland concrete storage tanks at the three batch plants tonight.

Those three tanks needed to be full to do one pour. Tony was ordering the deliveries to start by noon on the day of the pour to make sure there was enough.

I had counted forty as I drove by them and I was sure there were more on the way or coming tomorrow. I counted 50 concrete mix trucks in a row that carried the stuff from the batch plants to the roadway machine.

There were two huge cranes with big funnel looking thing that dumped the mix in front of the machine near the center of the runway and a belt elevator that emptied near the edge. Sometime before they finished I needed to take some time off just to watch this equipment in operation

There were still a lot of J&J people working tonight. They were putting down rebar and welding everything in place on the SE/NW runway and adding the expansion joint material.

The hanger people had started on Tuesday like they promised. They had a couple of cranes of their own and to me it looked like all the main steel framing and girders were erected at our hanger. The pile of materials at the agency hanger was still growing.

The floor had been poured where the maintenance building was going to go. It looked like the water and sewer lines were soon going in. There were two different kinds of pipe stacked in a pile close to the building.

There were wires sticking out of the ground everywhere with flags attached so no one ran over them, waiting on various contractors. The agency had thrown us a hook on that one. When the contract was written they were to have their own electric metered service.

Now they wanted us to temporally monitor usage and then adjust the monthly lease every three months. Off the record Ty had told me they wanted no record of any kind as to how much electric they used there. It was a way to cover up what kind of research and operations that was going on there.

The water tower looked to be finished and waiting for the final coat of paint. There were several large dish antenna assembled on the ground next to it. I wondered if they were going to be mounted on the tower. I needed to ask Tony about those.

I left the site and went to the gym for our nightly meeting and to fill the girls in on Jenny’s request to see who was going with me tomorrow.

After much discussion two of us were going to be with her all the time. Tomorrow morning Marcy and I would either drive or fly to the base. Monday morning we would swap off with Lorrie and Ching Lee and on Wednesday Vicky and Marcy would again be with her. Friday night Lorrie and I would go back over.

We would have to plan schedules differently for the following week. Marcy, Lorrie and I all had meetings that could not be put off.

At six AM Marcy and I were packed, waiting at the gym for a call from Jenny. Ty and Kathryn were there waiting on Janice and Sly to lay out the plans for the sting.

They asked if they could use one of the upstairs offices. Then Ty explained, “We have some paperwork for them to fill out in order to use them and be qualified to testify in court for us if necessary.”

“I told you it was going to come at some point,” Kathryn replied as she smiled.

Marcy, Ching Lee, Lorrie, Vicky and I discussed offering one of the upper guest rooms to Sly and Janice. I had arranged for them to attend KCC on a four year business program on my sponsorship with JBG paying the fees. They lived in Annapolis and dealt with the bridge traffic twice a day then rode right by here to go to the college. That added an hour or more a day to their routine that they could be studying, plus bridge tolls. The girls agreed as long as Jenny was OK with it.

Eric arrived while we were waiting and went into the room to interview Janice and Sly and then plan the sting. With Eric here this sting had taken on high level interest. Normally managers of his level were not involved, from the conversations I had with Ty. I continued working in the gym while we were waiting on Jenny.

Edit by Alfmeister