Patti and I took separate vehicles to KCC again; I was going to be using Marcy’s Suburban for a while. Yesterday’s events cemented the decision that we girls were going to get armored Suburbans ASAP.
I had another new laptop; both the JBG and the state department ones were a pile of ashes in the KCC Suburban. Amy was sending over a new one today. It was a good thing that everything I did on the JBG laptop was automatically backed up to the server every 4 hours. Little data had been lost.
I turned onto Morton Road. I wanted to see the damage to the road in the daylight, plus I never made it to the construction site last night.
Bob already had a crew fixing the potholes. There were dozens of FBI and DHS people in white hazmat suits, combing every inch of the ground looking for more evidence.
I found Bob at the training site. Dozens of dump trucks were dumping the stone to finish out the road. Heaters were still blowing hot air under plastic tents to cure the concrete poured yesterday.
Some of it had already been uncovered and masons were laying block in the heat of the tents. Several of the wooden structures looked to be completed or near completed. The pow, pow of air nailers was rapid fire and dozens of carpenters were cutting, holding or passing lumber.
As I walked along looking at the progress, all of them stopped to ask how I was this morning and made comments about all the burned vehicles in the row.
I took some more pictures of the burnt out vehicles and I did another check to make sure my computers were destroyed. They were nothing but remnants of the hard drives left, all the plastic was melted into a glob.
I stopped by the airport restaurant for another mug of coffee before I headed on my way. The two captains and the Rochester group were there. They asked how I was feeling this morning.
“I am fine. Your guys are going to find out how fine real soon, this afternoon we are going to spend time on hand skills on the mats. You need to rest up this morning, I hear you are going to get another go at the shoot don’t shoot course with Jamie,” I replied.
While I was filling my mug, the TV was replaying all the video from yesterday. Hanna’s interview with me had made the national news circuit. All the opinion speakers were using my interview for material – good or bad. Because of the carnage the police had kept the other two attack sites closed. Hanna Page and JBG were blasted on every TV channel.
As I was leaving a huge all terrain crane was coming down Morton Road. It had eight of the big tires you see on monster trucks. I wondered what it was going to do here but then I remembered that Bob had settled on Jake’s idea of setting the second floor and the roof as a pre-poured slab instead of trying to pour it in place on the four block buildings.
I drove straight to the college, anxious to get a day’s work done in the four hours I was going to spend there. Because of my detour, Patti had beaten me there by a good fifteen minutes.
I opened the door to a packed house; a few students but mostly administrators. There was a big cake on the counter – across the top was “Car Killer,” in red letters. In the center were two pictures; one of last years wrecked Suburban and one of the burnt one from yesterday. I had heard the cafeteria bought one of those computer graphic cake decorating machines that could impose a picture on a cake.
All of us had cake with our morning coffee and a good laugh at my expense. They had all seen Hanna’s news footage so I connected my phone and let them see the pictures I had taken this morning.
The crowd left after the cake. Bob Jackson and Mr. Nobles were the only ones left in my office. I knew a conversation was coming about the Suburban so I tried to head it off right from the start.
“JGB will order a replacement Suburban from our supplier and have our up fitter install the security package on it. I am pretty sure the insurance company is going to balk at paying for it. Almost all of them have no fault no payment terrorism clauses in the policies,” I said. Then I added “I will need the title as soon as you can get it to me.”
“Then you are going to have to take the loss on all those vehicles?” Bob asked.
“Maybe not all of it; there are pages of rules and regulations dealing with terrorism losses after 911 with when and what the government will pay. Something else for the lawyers to handle,” I replied.
When I left at lunch I had the title in my hand and a handful of notes from phone calls that I needed to return before the end of the day. One of them was from the Secretary for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Another o-joy call, I was ordered to appear and testify before the committee a week from Wednesday. It was to be a closed door hearing.
Today was not a good day for anyone to meet me on the mats. I was in one of those moods where I wanted to beat the crap out of someone to relieve stress. It had been a long time since I had been this angry.
It was one thing to be shot at, then escaping a fiery death – let alone have to pay for it. But to have to go to Washington to give a blow by blow because they were too damn lazy to read their own intelligence reports and watch the news that they all liked to be on all the time just pissed me off.
I was tempted to have Marcy bill the DHS some phenomenal consulting fee that you only read about in the papers for my time and travel cost.
I had sent Jamie a text asking how the morning’s training was doing. I also asked her to have them fed on time and at the gym at one for hand skills.
Jamie, Julia and Tammy each had 10 of the RRS team for training this afternoon. They were going to rotate through the handgun, rifle and shoot don’t shoot course.
My plan was to eventually divide them into 5-man fire teams with one of them the team leader and each team having a qualified sniper. I would have to choose the top three to be Squad leaders if I had to put several teams together for an assignment at embassies on foreign soil.
I sent Jamie a text asking, “How is the Rochester group doing?”
“Better than yesterday – they seem more determined today, but they still would not be working for you, YET,” she replied.
I grabbed a light salad from the refreshment stand and sat at one of the tables to eat. Cindy met me at the table. She had more notes for me and I was going to dictate her responses to the handful I had, she could make the return calls just as I could.
My notes were first, then I looked at the ones she had. There was only one that required a decision from me, the others were informational.
Connie Hovater, the presidential candidate who was injured in a protest at the Milwaukee campaign stop wanted an immediate meeting. She had recovered enough to go on the campaign trail again.
“Tomorrow evening if it works for her, 7 PM or whatever you can work out, you have my schedule,” I replied.
The Rochester group made their way in as I was finishing up with Cindy. I could tell by the way they we talking and struggling to walk that they had eaten at the airport restaurant and pigged out. I sure hoped that we were not going to need a mop and bucket after a couple of hits and throws on the mats.
I headed over to the lockers to change into my training gear. As I was walking Captains Peters and Hamilton joined to engage in general conversation about the shoot don’t shoot course they had spent the morning at again. I was interested in continuing the conversation; there was some interesting feedback about the changes the club had done with the course.
I opened both of my lockers; I had two side by side. One to put my street clothes in and the other held my padded training gear. Ching Lee and Vicky joined us; they were going to help me train this afternoon. Vicky had brought me several pairs of gym shorts, tees and sports bra that I needed to wear with heavy training.
Ching Lee, Vicky, and I did what we always did; we stripped off at the lockers. The shoes went into the bottom first, and then I stood, dropped my uniform pants with the equipment belt and hung it in the locker. The uniform shirt was a long cut shirt that covered everything, including the fact that I wore no panties.
The uniform shirt came off next and finally the bullet proof vest to reveal that I was totally naked. The two captains were having a hard time carrying on the conversation. I knew why when I heard Ching Lee say to Vicky, “Ooh – look at them nipples, are you that cold or are just getting warmed up for tonight?”
I turned to look at Vicky then reached out to squeeze one, “Looks like fun to me.”
Vicky responded by stepping up to me and nipple to nipple, “Promises and promises; I’ll hold you to this one.”
“You’re on girl; tonight we are going to wear your ass out,” I replied.
Then I turned and pulled on the sports bra and gym shorts. I finished by putting on the padding we used when training.
The two captains’ mouths were open and needed their brain to direct words to come out and by now all 20 were watching. I decided to prod the captains to resume the conversation. “Peters, what are the changes you think we need to the shoot don’t shoot course to make it more difficult?”
“Difficult? More difficult? You have to be kidding!” Hamilton replied.
“There is a tougher level that you haven’t seen yet. We worked on it last summer and we will finish it this spring as soon as the weather warms up.”
“Lets hit the mats, pick out the first three victims for us,” I said as I reached for the set of realistic rubber training knives we used.
Edit by Alfmeister
Proof read by Bob W.
omg this is great.. please keel the chapters comming
Thank you,, yes still writing every chance i get