HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday flew by, there was so much going on. Ching Lee and most of her staff were out west at the two new colleges we had added.

The transition had been hectic but there were only a few bumps in the road. So far none of them had been the result of our people.

The new card systems that East Coast Security had installed had glitches in the systems. Ching Lee had required East Coast to have a tech on site in the contract.

It took the experts almost a day to get it straightened out at each site. The good thing was it happened the first day when there were only a few early arrivals. Once the systems were fixed, complete backups of the programs were made and stored on a duplicate standby server and discs were made to go in our vault.

I took Friday off to help with set up the new training procedures and sites that were going to be used starting Monday. Monday was the first of a double group; 80 instead of the normal forty, made possible by the rooms at the expanded Crash Motel as it was now known.

There were two weeks of 80 and then it would be doubled again to 160 as the Horsey House rooms were put to use. All the RRT we put to use as trainers and they would be busy. We even moved the shooting backstops to Camp Smith so they could help Jamie with the firearms training.

Mid-morning I was called to my office for a SVOL conference call from Rochester. Abdul was with Kelly in the conference room.

“I feel sure you already know Rashid is being deported. I wanted to tell you I am the leader, at least for now. You had said that we could let the artist post again when a leader was chosen.”

“Yes, that is correct. The old agreement still stands, up Saturday morning, down Sunday night and no trash,” I replied.

“We are having a special event in two weeks; would it be possible to put the posters up Friday morning for that one time? I know you worked with Aadam when special things happened,” Abdul asked.

“Yes, that will be OK.”

“Kelly, put it on the daily broadcast sheet for that day that posting is approved,” I told him.

We chatted a few more minutes before I signed off.

I made a note on my pad to fill Ching Lee in tonight on our conference call. I was getting ready to call Frank to fill him in case Clayton Cheeks was still slow at his job, when in walked Robert with a sizable folder.

“Well, I think we have solved the mystery of Aadam Mohamed. Everything is close to what your CIA guy said, with a few differences.”

“Aadam did leave for Afghanistan 10 weeks ago on UAE flight 709. It made a layover stop in the Netherlands before landing in Kabul a day later. There he made several trips to the Pakistan Embassy before flying to Karachi.”

“There is not much on what he did but he spent a day at the Saudi Embassy and a day in a place called Thatta. There were lots of calls made on his cell phone from there.”

The next day airport security video shows him boarding UAE flight 1604 for Saudi Arabia. Again there were a lot of calls from his phone, both to someone in Saudi Arabia and in Rochester.

“He visited Mecca for a day and spent three more days in various places, by his credit card purchases and phone calls. He spent three hours in a call to Kareem Rashid.”

“From there he flew to Jima, Ethiopia and that was where things get dicey. He stayed there a week, it looks like. There were a lot of calls to Rochester and to Kareem Rashid. On Wednesday, there were a number of calls to a satellite phone back and forth in the same area, almost like they were testing the satellite phone. Then his cell phone went offline until Friday at noon. There were two rings and the phone went dead. There was a car bomb that killed 80 people in Jima at noon that day; the phone has not been active since and the satellite phone made the call to the cell. All of us think it was used to set off the car bomb.”

“The satellite phone was active a day later in Kapoeta Sudan and for several days there before it changed location to Kampala Uganda. It was there the day of the embassy attack.”

“It was very active with calls to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia from Saturday until 18:25 Thursday evening when it stopped transmitting. According to the satellite pings it was at 515 Nubulagla Road. I think you know the rest of the story,” Robert said as he handed me the file, then turned and walked out of my office.

Aadam Mohamed had gone to see his family in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While he was there he was radicalized; Aadam Mohamed’s cell phone was used to trigger a car bomb in Ethiopia just days before the embassy attack.

Aadam had participated in some way with the attack on the embassy then answered the call of the attack leaders to participate in a follow up attack on the embassy. He was in the house at 515 when Anton was there.

I had killed Aadam Mohamed and it was not such a bad thing, if he had turned radical. The calls to Rashid from Africa – who most likely was his financier and sponsor – set things in motion for Rashid to replace Aadam in Rochester.

I called Frank and filled him in on the college fence and that Abdul was now the leader.

Frank was not happy; Clayton Cheeks had not reported the events to Frank, even though he was on duty when Abdul and I were talking. Frank and I talked for 20 minutes about Abdul and then his problems with Clayton.

“Give him a little more time. I will put a bug in Kelly’s ear to get him in shape and up to speed fast,” I said.

“Frank, you can stop looking for Aadam Mohamed.”

“Why?”

“He is dead; I killed him.”

“WHAT? WHEN? HOW?”

“He was at 515 Nubulagla Road on Thursday night when it ceased to exist.”

“How do you know this?” Frank asked.

“Frank, you know better than to ask that question. Call Uganda and see if they collected any DNA from there,” I replied.

“It’s like asking the most popular girl in class for a date. You know what the answer is going to be, but you just have to ask again and again,” Frank replied before he added. “Yeah, that’s a good idea; we have his DNA on file,” he replied, “That would confirm it for sure.”

The final call of the day was from General Walton, “I just received a call from Dover. They certified all your men; the plane inspection and test flights were completed Wednesday.

“Have the mechanics and the pilots at Travis Air Force Base 0800 Monday. Send several sets of your big aviation decals; the crew there will put them on for you. Where you are going, we would rather the plane be marked as yours,” the General ordered.

I relayed the information to Lorrie so the arrangements could be set in motion today and all the people informed.

Friday I got to spend another round on the mats with Kathryn; I did much better. We called it a draw so we could quit.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read bt Bob W.