At our Thursday night meeting we brought all four of the homeless girls up for the meeting. We brought up the four so there would be no appearance that we were trying to divide them.

From all appearances, they were each others support group. They did everything they were told to do and more, but immediately were together if they had idle time.

We had reached a partial decision; we were going to do it in steps. Step one was to make the job offer to Joni and Paula and see how that went before moving on to step two. Jenny was working on step two behind the scenes.

With them sitting at the table I began with a general conversation.

“Is everything going good for you; up to your expectations now that you have been here a couple of weeks?”

After looks at each other Joni replied, “We are certainly better off than we were and we thank you for that. Are you telling us it is time to move on?”

“No, not at all; we were wondering if you and Paula were willing to take on more responsibility,” I replied. Then I added “Lorrie’s aviation division has a lot of flights coming up and she needs flight attendants, if you are interested,” I replied.

“What will we need to do?” Paula asked.

“First will be CPR and First Aid training, and that can happen tomorrow. In fact, we want all four of you to take it because someday you may need it. Then to the outlets to get you the uniforms we approve for flight attendants,” Lorrie said.

“Flight time pay is double what you are getting and pays overtime,” Lorrie added.

“What is flight time pay?” Joni asked.

“Flight time pay starts when you arrive at the airport for a flight and ends when you return, unless you are on an overnight flight; in which case a motel room, meal and overnight allowance will be provided. The pay resumes when the return flight resumes,” Lorrie responded.

“I think I would like to try that; it might be fun,” Paula replied.

“I think I would like to do that too,” Joni replied.

“OK, that is what we wanted to hear. Here is the paperwork that needs to be filled out, job application, power of attorney to get a copy of your birth certificates and Social Security cards. Then we need to get both of you Maryland driver’s licenses so we can get you passports in case any of the flights go out of the country. Start filling it out and we will help you through any problems,” Jenny said.

“I might not be able to get a passport,” Joni replied.

I opened the report, circled the shoplifting charge and slid it to her, “Because of this?” I asked.

“Yes,” Joni replied.

“It should not be a problem, we have friends in high places if it is,” I replied.

An hour later all the paperwork was done. First thing that had to happen was getting a Maryland drivers licenses for them; without the license there was no way to get passports and a license was one the required documentation to navigate the new DHS airport security.

For Paula it was easy; she still had her NC driver’s license in her possession. A trip to the DMV was on tap as soon as we acquired the documents for Joni.

We were sending someone to MVA every few days. Jason usually went; he still knew a lot of the people there. She could go along with whoever went and make the change. Marcy had already given them an address for their first paycheck.

It was Paula Craft, 1001 Summers Lane, JBG Building H, Apt 1. State law required a physical address on a pay stub or other official paperwork when applying for a license or a change of address. To help smooth things along with more official documents, Jeanna had already started checking accounts with debit cards for Joni and Paula.

Friday, Cindy and I worked on the schedules for the next two months of retraining for the embassy personnel. I wanted as many of them done by June as possible. From June to September the plan was to concentrate on the college security personnel while the colleges were on summer break. Then we would switch back to the embassy personnel.

I had initially planned to hold over the ones brought in from the colleges for the debate to do the recurrent training while they were here. After giving it further thought, with so much terror activity going on plus college shootings and now demonstrations against the traditional political process on college campus, I wanted them back to the colleges as soon as the debate was finished.

I was looking forward to Monday; the 10 ladies who had applied for security jobs with the first posting for the rapid response team were due in that morning.

Roseanne had returned calls to all fifteen; five of them had other jobs that they did not want to leave or had found boyfriends and were no longer interested.

The 10 who did still want to try out for the job were the cream of the crop anyhow – in my mind – for what I wanted. All were former military, all had been at least sergeant rank, all of them had been in the sandbox like me and all of them had tried at least several times to make it into larger roles. They had tried to get into either in Special Forces with the Marines or the Army Rangers only to never get a fair chance.

Lorrie was going to be ecstatic to find out that three of them were pilots certified in Blackhawks. That was going to be a big plus for the entire RRT to be able to have several assigned pilots as part of the team. It would be easy to train them to fly the 407s if we needed them. Jack would check them out in their second week.

Monday evening I was going to carry them to Lawmans supply for the same style of uniforms that we had purchased for the men. One set black and one camo, with good boots, bullet proof vest, a shoulder holster and belt holster for the Glock we used, along with all the other goodies that went on a belt.

Andy gave an update at our meeting on all the preparations for next week and the debate. Lorrie reported on the preliminary condition reports on the L100-30 in France. They looked good enough that we recommended getting Lockheed to do an on site inspection and generate a repair list with pricing. The current plane owners had some strange payment request that would suit us to a tee.

We went home feeling good about things. I carried Robert and Burt’s latest report on the protest groups to read when things were quiet.

The weekend was good to us; the boys were sleeping just a little longer each night. Another few weeks and they may be sleeping through the night. Jenny was back to her normal sleeping habits until the boys cried.

We were finally back to our regular sleeping routine, swapping partners every night and both weekend nights with our regular partner. Everyone just seemed to be a lot more relaxed.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.