After the little ones were in bed we talked about the space problem. There were a few solutions; one was to turn the Horsey House into office space – the down side was to lose all those rooms and have to use the local motels again.

Another was to convert the covered parking garage into office space and make an open air parking lot. It could take months to get the environmental permits for that plus the rest of the property would have to be made into an environmental containment pond – also known as a mosquito incubator. West Nile virus and two or three other mosquito borne diseases had been found in containment ponds in the area this summer.

There was another possibility; Marcy and Lorrie would team up with Jenna and check out tomorrow.
After all the stress of the last few days, the hot tub worked miracles – that and a few wine coolers and buds.
We were up early and it seemed like so was everyone else. The EIT group bombarded my phone with a dozen texts. There were messages in my email to call Louis Boucher before the end of the day.

The MTAC screen had barely warmed up before I was being paged by Ben.

”Three more subpoenas were delivered to the committee yesterday afternoon after the court announcement; one more from the Senate and two from the House. The committees are teed off that Black Bear no longer exists so the new target is you – to get the information they want,” Ben said.

”Are the subpoenas addressed to me as chairperson of the over sight committee or me personally, and when are the dates?” I asked.

”Addressed to you; the dates are next week,” he said.

”I am not going to be at the White House to pick them up before the dates so I view them as undelivered. As you can imagine, I have become extremely busy. I have appointments and meetings in Mexico, France, South Africa and Louisiana, just to name a few. On top of that I’m planning a meeting at the island with no name that offers numbered bank accounts to select people. I want some answers from them or there shall be bodies for someone to clean up when I leave. I have no time for Congress’s BS for the next few weeks,” I said.

I called Marty Coeburn, ”What did your agents find out at Louisiana yesterday?” I asked.

”Four people that worked for Black were involved and arrested along with several brokers. It may take a while to get all the stolen property back,” Marty said.

”Send me the names so they can terminated. Andy and one hundred men in the two CRJ 200s left an hour ago to straighten that place out. Other things are going to be happening all weekend down there. For your information, Pelican Marsh is now named Fort Dean after Ed Dean – my bodyguard who was killed in the Golan attack,” I said.

”Good move – doing away with all old things connected to Black Bear; put them in the history books and move on,” Marty said.

”BJ, pick up the com line,” came over the PA system.

”Black and Bear are here,” the receptionist said.

”Send them to Jenny,” I replied.

Jenny was going to run them through as a new employee, starting by filling out new employee forms, then fingerprints that Roberts’s group would run though the systems, full-face profile for ID cards and facial recognition, retina scan and finally a DNA sample for the file. Finally they would be brought down to me in the command center.

Robert was next with updates; first was Oklahoma City. General Bashir was continuing his daily communiqué with them asking all kinds of questions and offering suggestions. Bashir also chose a different date than Sabir Mahmoud. Oct 26 was the new date. The date carried some kind of special meaning to Bashir or his bosses.

The next update was on the Mexican Petroleum. Robert had assigned someone at Andy’s request to do research on the pipelines and problems there. Along with that was monitoring communications channels. As we suspected, the cartel was handling the sales of most of the stolen petro and collecting royalties from independents they allowed to tap the lines.

No wonder the cartel was not worried if twenty five percent of the cocaine they shipped was seized by the American authorities. The number was always exaggerated to street level sales. You know a good PR campaign at its best when you see one.

Hell, everyone with a brain knew that everybody that touched the junk quadrupled their money. That was why the drug business was so lucrative. Throw the lawyers into the mix; there was money for everybody.

With the petro tapping, the cartel was making fifty thousand a day – way more than the manufacturing cost of the drugs that were being seized. They were happy to see the news reports of seizures; it was only a little money.

They knew as I did, it was just a feel good ego trip for politicians, the same politicians that the lawyers were donating millions to.

Robert promised that in a week or so they would have enough data to narrow down the area where most of the calls and orders were coming from.

The next update was on France. General Bashir had ordered the cell in France to begin planning for multiple lone wolf attacks in France, also on the 26th. To top it off, he wanted them nationwide – not just in Paris.

That meant that the wolfs would have to be dispatched several days before the 26 to get them in place for nationwide attacks. Time was beginning to run out for Louis to get his people to make a decision. Time was needed for logistics and planning.

It was two in the afternoon in France when I initiated the call to Louis. I had just opened the conversation when there was a knock on the door and Cindy announced that Black and Bear were with her.

I motioned the two to sit off to the side and changed the conversation over to French.

”The powers have decided that they want JBG to carry out the raids. I am to work with your teams to get them the heavy troop carriers and other logistics as they need,” Louis said.

”We shall begin advance planning and keep you in the loop. For your information, this has to be done before Oct 23 and there will need to be increased surveillance before then,” I said.

”I take it your intel is picking up chatter,” Louis said.

”That is correct, the 26 th has some kind of special meaning that we don’t know the significance of yet. They are also planning a mass causality attack in the United States on that day,” I said.

Just as I closed the call, Mexico’s President Martinez paged on VCATS; that conversation I had in Spanish.
”Good morning President Martinez, I’m glad to hear from you. How can I help you?” I asked.

”I like this system of communication you have chosen; it adds so much more to the conversation. What I had called about is we are going to have all the documents prepared sooner than expected. They will be ready for signatures on Wednesday, if you are able to come and sign them,” he said.

”Yes we can do that. Is 10:00 a good time?” I asked. His response ended the call.

It was now time to talk to Charles Black and Milton Bear.

”I see you have survived the first few hours of the JBG experience. This is one of the levels that your ID cards will not give you access to, at least for a while. There are others.”

”This is the command center that gets mentioned in the news from time to time. From here we have communications with all JBG security groups worldwide, including the college security groups.”

”The small screens to the left are security cameras of the 35 colleges that we supply security to. College security reports to Ching Lee. There are four major malls that we also supply security to and they also report to Ching Lee.”
”All the other screens are of our Embassy security teams. There are one hundred and eighty embassies we supply security for. Embassy security reports primarily to Vicky.”

”All security personnel in the past have trained at Fort Smith for both divisions. That is changing; the European and Middle East groups will be training at Fort Adams in Loures Portugal, our European training and command center.”

”The Africa training and command center is at Fort Polo near Polokwane.”

”Your former training and command center – Pelican Marsh – has been renamed to Fort Dean. It will be our Southern command and training center, giving us options for the south-west and Central America.”

”We have active operations going on in three different locations as we speak,” I said.

”Let’s go for a ride,” I said as I called security to meet us at the front door.
We went to the gun club first.

”Give James your ID cards,” I said to the pair.

”James, issue them the JBG Glock, holster of their choice, four thirteen round loaded clips, a box each of forty cal ammo and a handgun lock box,” I said.

“Ten four boss,” James replied.

”The Glock is to be on your body or in the lock box 24/7, with no exceptions,” I said.

After they were equipped, I carried them to the gun club indoor handgun range. I placed an upper torso silhouette on the system and stopped at thirty feet.

I emptied the thirteen round clip in rapid fire and punched the button for it to return. All thirteen were hits; seven in the heart and lungs, mouth, nose and eyes; the rest in the forehead.

Jamie Weston was standing watching. ”Jamie, teach them how to shoot, call me in an hour when you are finished so I can finish today’s tour,” I said.

I went back to Morton and to meet with the girls for lunch. Marcy had texted me earlier.

Edit by Alfmeister
Proof read by Bob W.