I made record time getting to the gym. I needed to see what Robert’s top secret file was about. I went straight to his office.

“There are two files; one is the pictures of the dead from Windhoek. I ran them through the facial program. There were at least 20 that came up on terrorist watch lists or Interpol, which was no surprise. Two were from the Rochester group. Hagg Hasmi and Cassem Farooq; that was one surprise,” Robert said.

“The second surprise was that two of them are cousins of Diya Daharr; Careem Al Daharr and Faaz Al Daharr. From what I have been able to find out they left Minneapolis about six months ago,” Robert said.

“Damn, we just can’t seem to get away from that group,” I said.

“We have been doing the same thing that your team has probably been doing with the numbers off Diya’s phone, but most likely a little different. Any active phone we ignored. We learned that from searching for pedophiles when we worked for the criminal task force,” Robert said.

Burt added, “Anyone that is real deep in bad shit – the advanced pedophiles, drug cartels, and the biggies in terrorism – have gone to using burn phones with a twist in combination with the deep web. Part of the communications takes place on the dark web and the rest on the phones.”

“Very few people are skilled enough to deal with the encryptions of the deep web, especially the peons of the groups. So they set up a time for calls. When that time comes they put the battery in the phone, make the call at the appointed time and end the call in less than four minutes, then the battery comes out,” Robert said then he added.

“They know that it takes at least 5 minutes to do a trace on a wireless call if you are expecting the call. When we worked for the state cracking kiddy porn, we were in the process of developing a program that would scan a list of inactive burn phone numbers. It would flag any numbers that went active even for 30 seconds.’

“With enough computer power driving the program it could begin the process of locating that phone. If the call is ended before the computer finished it retains the information and compares it the next time a call is placed from the phone. That way it has a head start on that call as long as the call is placed in the same general location,” Robert said.

“What I am getting at is we pulled all the data off one of the big mainframes and loaded the program along with all the inactive numbers off Diya’s phone. Then we hacked into the Ma Bells, ATT, and Sprint’s wireless system. If they find it, it looks like one of their own or the NSA equipment,” Burt added.

“At 10:00 this morning, 6 of the phones went active within 1minute of each other and did what we think was a conference call. Four minutes later the call ended and the phones went inactive, the batteries were out,” Burt said.

“We think the phone that started the call was Saif. I know it is a wild guess but we are hoping. We will know a lot more every time it goes active if our program works like it should; it all depends on how often they do a call,” Robert said then added.

“When we bought the new servers and mainframes, we did not know all the big programs we would be adding as part of the security department or the massive expansion of the general business programs.”

“In a few months we are going to have to curtail some operations or make another expansion of the IT equipment,” Robert said then he added, “There is really no room to put what is needed in the current IT room.”

“Robert, order what you think we need; plan for 2 years of growth at least. Get it here; I will have a place where it can go,” I replied.

“The names that Vicky gave you, have you had a chance to work with them yet?” I asked.

“No, not yet, Vicky said there was no rush, we were busy working on the phone thing,” he replied.

“That is correct, I was just curious. Stay on the phones, but don’t neglect day to day operations,” I replied.

I went to my office and sent the pictures of the dead to Ben-David along with the three names I had gotten of the two from Windhoek, “What can tell me about these three?”

Then I went to our meeting. I was surprised to see Jake, Kathy, Tony and Janet from the Philadelphia J&J Construction office at the table. I knew why but didn’t think it was going to happen this quickly.

With the purchase of the last C130s, the 737 and now the C5 were going to be a permanent addition plus several more for the Air Force; contract space on the tarmacs was getting critical. Lorrie wanted to put large plane parking to the south end of the super hanger.

Lorrie wanted to expand the tarmac by 600,000 square feet; 400 feet by 1500 feet or 12 acres. It sounded like an enormous amount, but with wing spans of 175 feet and a 200 foot long plane, just sitting on the pad takes up over an acre and a half. They use up three times that making an average turn. A wing hitting another plane takes both of them out of service for weeks or months.

With the C5, the 737-700, the two Bombardiers, the 4 C130s and with the new contract adding as many as 4 more C5s coming in the next year or two – depending on Congress – our tarmac was just out of room. If Congress continued to press the Air Force to reduce transport planes and our performance exceeded expectations, we could get more.

Those were some of the details that I had missed while I was in Section 12; five planes was the target number. JBG had to maintain crews to have them all in the air at one time. The crews had to pass flight simulator test semi annually. The Air Force would do major inspections and major repairs, other minor repairs were on JBG. I hoped that Marcy realized that minor repairs could still cost millions on a plane that size.

The Air Force would guarantee that there would be 5 international flights each month – one for each plane and crew – to maintain readiness requirements. It was a cost plus the normal add on that we received with other federal flights. I sure hoped that Marcy and Lorrie punched the numbers right because it sounded like a high-cost low-profit or losing proposition to me.

The process was started several days ago with soil bore testing and I assumed a report was in order for tonight.

This was the first report. There were 12 inches of topsoil to be removed. It would eventually be carried out to the low spots in the farm field. There was no winter wheat planted this year in half the farm, just a cover crop that the Bay Plan was paying for.

The dirt under the topsoil was the right combination of sandy gravel; it could be run through the concrete plant without washing, just screening it to get any rocks out that were too large. When it went into the batch plant, more stone would be added as needed.

The plan was to remove the topsoil with bottom loading pans to get to the good dirt. Then use big excavators with GPS and laser controls to maintain the proper depth and 100 ton end dump trucks to pile the dirt by the plant. The concrete had to be 30 inches thick and have heavy rebar in it. Tony was going to dig an area the size of a maximum pour and then move on to the next one.

Dig it and pour hopefully would eliminate a 12 acre mud pit if the weather went sour. The shore had no hurricanes or tropical storms this fall. It was actually on the dry side for this early in the winter. If the pads could be put down before the winter rains, the drainage system could be installed, even in fall rain and mud.

To speed up the pour process, he was going to contract all three local concrete suppliers to deliver additional concrete those days.

I listened to the rest of the reports from the girls. Lorrie had flights every day this week for the 737 and six flights for the Bombardiers, plus other flights for the G5s. The agency had another flight for the C5; it was another clandestine flight to Thailand. It was a busy week for the aviation department.

Marcy was busy with car and truck acquisitions for the rental fleet; ours and the utilities we leased to. The fleets were budgeting new equipment, almost 1000 units just for the utilities alone. Then there were the auctions to dispose of the old equipment. Everything was moving forward and that was the best we could hope for.

Jenny and Jason were in the process of hiring the additional Special OPS people that Andy wanted. Even the four from Israel were still interested. It did not make their day when I told them that we needed 160 more for the South American embassies.

Amy had sent me the approval email while I was on the way home. These would be the standard pay, not hazard pay that the African employees were receiving.

Ching Lee and her group were still busy with the new equipment at KCC and working out the bugs with the new employees there. Patti was still on her honeymoon, due back on Monday. Ching Lee was spending her days there this week.

We had just finished up when Bob came in and followed me to my office. I went through the pictures of the damage to the embassy and residence.

“I need cost and time frame to repair with 75 men and a materials list to repair both buildings,” I said. Then I added, “If I can get it approved, then we can talk about the logistics.”

“Will the basement be done on the schedule you indicated a couple weeks ago?” I asked.

“Everything but the transformer,” Bob replied.

“Who is the person you have been talking with?” I asked.

“The manager Harry McAlister and the engineering supervisor, Ken Fox,” Bob replied.

The local utility had been merged, taken over and merged again several times in the last few years. The latest merger had made the regional corporate office in DC just a few blocks from the White House. If I had time tomorrow I would make some noise.
Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.