Monday Patti and I rode together to KCC. I was glad to be back at the college for a couple days in order to have a break from politics. I was wrong on that count.

I expected to see Bob Jackson and Mr. Nobles sometime this morning but not in the office when I walked through the door. Not only were those two there but the professor from the political science class, the professor of the media communications class and the professor for the current affairs class.

I answered questions for two hours from Bob Jackson and Mr. Nobles after I agreed to participate in a question and answer session for the political science class and the media class, whatever the reason for, I was wondering.

Then I thought about getting Jenny and Marcy to come sit in. Both of them had been on national TV for the three hours and had more personal interaction with the candidates and the media groups than I did. They could share way more than I could.

Jenny and Marcy arrived at lunch, Jenny with the double stroller and the boys. It was three when we finished with both classes; it seemed like after a thousand questions.

Bob Jackson and Mr. Nobles stayed through both classes and asked questions. There were also questions about my call from ZNN Sunday. Bob Jackson was surprised to learn that JBG had made the initial arrest of the arsonists and turned them over to the county police department.

At noon today the Montgomery County police department announced the arrest of Marla Snoops and Julio Barns for arson, conspiracy to commit arson, and traveling across state lines in commission of a felony.

Eight others were charged with conspiracy to commit arson, attempted arson and traveling across state lines in commission of a felony.

Our nightly meeting was late getting started because we had to wait for Lorrie to print off a bundle of documents. She had spent all day on conference calls. While we were waiting I glanced over a report that Brook Haywood had dropped off on her way home.

Robert and Burt had expanded their surveillance of the African continent, mostly by following one lead that that connected to another. They had hacked all the computers connected to the terrorist, including the Prince, and downloaded all the contacts.

Slowly over time they were placing a very sophisticated spy program into every contact from those computers. The program did not transmit until the computer had been online several minutes and then only when it was directed to from Robert’s spy program.

The report that Robert had printed out and translated from a series of email messages indicated that in a month to six weeks there would be another embassy attack in Africa. This time the target was the US embassy at Kampala Uganda.

The intent was to capture the staff and ambassador and hold them for ransom, executing one individual every 4 hours until the ransom was paid. Then they were going to execute the rest of them after they received the ransom money.

The group was confident that the US would pay after all the reports coming out of the Middle East that we were now negotiating with terrorists and paying big money to get captives and hostages back. Apparently there was a lot more of that going on than was making the news cycle.

The embassy at Kampala was not under contract to JBG security. Yet – but if the budget was approved it would be. I sent an email to Robert to investigate the threat in detail. The least I could do was warn Victor when I had credible facts and details.

Lorrie passed out several reports. The L100-30 in France was given a clean bill of health by Lockheed’s inspection team. It was out of date on a lot of maintenance items and needed its certificates renewed.

The air frame had 5,000 hours on it. Lockheed’s standard specification was that the air frame had a useful life of 60,000 with proper maintenance. There was a lot of life left in the plane.

Lockheed would fly the plane to its Canadian plant and do all the checklist items then install the in-flight refueling plumbing. They would then upgrade the radio package to the same package as our two C130s and the C130 they were 0 timing, plus install the latest radar, repaint the plane to JBG colors for 3.25 million and have it completed by June 15.

The Florida owner of the plane wanted 10 million CASH for the plane. All major businesses wanted nothing to do with cash transactions of that size.

First, no bank was going to give you that much cash without notifying the federal alphabet soup agencies. The feds or state agencies would be waiting to seize it when you walked out the bank door as drug money or money laundering and you would never see it again.

We had the cash so no bank would raise flags on our end. The plane owner would be the one to have to answer questions when he tried to do something with the money. It made no difference to me once we had the ownership papers to the plane.

The other C130 was in the Lockheed Canadian plant getting a 0 time overhaul and was also scheduled to be completed by June 15, had an asking price of 25 million and that was with remanufactured engines. It already had the refueling plumbing in place. This was going to be an easy decision, I thought.

Lorrie never stopped for us to discuss the planes and handed out another memo, this one was from UPS accepting the submitted contracts for the hangar they wanted to rent for their Air Freight sorting site, without changes. The hangar door needed to be changed from a center hinged aircraft door to traditional garage door used for trucks, in this case six in a row.

It also confirmed the daily round robin freight run from Charlotte/Douglas to Morton Field by JBG. They wanted to sign the contract in two weeks and the flights to start June 30th.

The next two memos Lorrie handed out were from FEDLX and NEDHL overnight. Both wanted an immediate joint meeting and negotiations for the same service that UPS was getting. Both wanted daily flights from Charlotte/Douglas to Morton. That meeting was scheduled for Thursday.

NEDHL also wanted a daily flight to originate from Morton Field to Scranton PA where they had a second air freight hub for the Northeast. Whoever said there was no such thing as corporate espionage did not know what they were talking about. It was just too much of a coincidence for the top three overnight companies to want the same thing at the same location, just days apart.

The next memo was from the agency; they were also working on the budget for next year, the same as the State Department. The contract was to be extended, even though there still were a couple years left on the original contract with an estimated 25% increase in flights and a 10% annual increase in fees.

Frank said when we set up this deal that the agency would keep the two planes busy, but I didn’t think this busy.

Now was as good a time as any to tell the girls about the State Department’s budget and JBG security expansion. There were possibly 40 more embassies – 21 of those were high risk – with expanded staff including choppers and Armored SUV’s.

Victor now wanted to pull all the state department security out of the high risk embassies and for JBG to furnish the complete security package. That would mean that 41 embassies would have an average of 25 JBG employees and a couple at 35.

That budget had made its way through committee at both House and Senate levels today and was now part of the big budget. The four Senators on the intelligence committee that I routinely testified in front of had locked JBG into a no bid contract by upgrading and extending the existing contract.

After agreeing to provide the security for the debate and the fact that it went off so smoothly with the best ratings of all the debates, the two senators on the committee had pushed things in our favor.

A long discussion followed with us agreeing to buy the L100 by using the money from the gun safe. Marcy would start the financing request through Jenna and would start negotiating with Lockheed sales on the other C130 in Canada. The question now was would the two be enough.

To complicate matters, how many choppers would have to be added for the new embassies and how soon? I needed those numbers sooner than later, I thought.

Training was in full force tomorrow; the rapid response team was departing to six different embassies in South America tonight with the trainees arriving back mid morning.

Jack was giving the three lady chopper pilots check rides and signing off today. Next week’s training rotation would include three embassies where we had choppers.

Edit by Alfmeister
Proof read by Bob W.