Morning came early along with an early breakfast. Takeo and Sara were eating solid food and were nearly feeding themselves. I was missing so much with them, even though I spent as much time with them as possible. Vicky and I tried to contain our smiles as they were feeding themselves. Getting their food onto the fork and into the mouth was still a challenge at times.

            They went back to the residential area with the kids to look at JBG things and take care of business while a sitter looked after the kids. I went to the Oval Office to begin my day. There was already a stack of notes on my desk, some with red post-it notes, meaning they were at the top the list of importance.

            One was for a meeting with Eric and Marty with Mike from the FBI electronics lab. Mike had been in the original task force as the FBI representative. Marty put him in charge of the unit after I arrested Ormond Patel.

Mike had reestablished the reputation of the FBI’s IT lab as the best in the country. Of course, that was second to JBG’s EIT group but that is my opinion. But then again, Mike had been getting a lot of guidance from Robert and Burt when he had problems.

Eric, Marty and Mike were in the kitchen hitting the pastries or waiting on the chef to finish a breakfast sandwich request. I finished looking over all the notes that were on red post-it notes, made a few calls then went to the kitchen looking for them.

I walked in on a conversation that had grown by several more people. General Ingram was discussing how and when the military was to pick up all the ammunition that the agencies had collected.

One of the problems was that a lot of the ammo was soft point or hollow point that could not be used on the battlefield, that meant it could only be used for live fire training.

The military was going to get all of it. The weapons themselves and body armor was a different story. Much of the body armor was not military grade and had been personalized for the wearer’s preferences.

I understood all that and I would not want to wear used body armor myself unless it was a life-or-death emergency. It was one thing if you knew how it had been cared for, cleaned and handled. At JBG, body armor was assigned to the individual and had their name on it.

But it was a shame to throw away millions of dollars worth of equipment on a whim. Yet to send it back to the manufacturer for inspection was cost prohibitive and time consuming, especially when you added the phenomenal cost of government labor. Then there was the cost of shipping.

The M16s and the MP5s were going to the Army and Marines. The hand guns were to go to various law enforcement groups based on an as needed and by request. The FBI was going to handle all that. Many small police agencies were still using decades old revolvers and could use the upgrade.

Mike finished a conversation he was having on the phone.

‘’Madam President, we are making good progress deciphering all the texts and emails. The new computer programs that Robert and your EIT teams developed are speeding things along,’’ Mike said.

‘’The way it looks, we are going to be able to have a timeline of people and events – both text and e-mail – from the beginning as they became involved. You are going to be surprised at the scope and sheer numbers of people that had signed on to the cause. They were really close to finalizing their plans and agreeing on a date to begin,’’ Mike said.

‘’Your group wrote one hell of a program to do all this, apparently it was something they had been working on for a while. You must be paying them quite well. We offered both of them double the agency top level money and they both laughed at us,’’ Marty said.

‘’Quite well and I know you can’t touch the benefit package they are getting,’’ I said. I also did my best to hide my smile.

Andy, Robert and Burt were the three highest paid employees at JBG. I knew the FBI could not even come close to what we were paying them. And then there was the benefit package.

I went back to the work on my desk, after all the other things I still had to prepare for the Asian economic conference I needed to go at the end of the week.

I was going to leave Wednesday night, be there Thursday morning for the two -day conference and fly back Saturday. I had a day and a half to get everything done that I needed.

None of my mates were going, they had plenty to do for JBG. Many of Marcy’s plans were coming together with February into the books. Marcy and Vicky both would deliver in the next ten days if Ma Nature stayed on schedule.

All of the stock-holder’s meetings for the corporations Marcy had controlling interest in were in the three weeks, after the anticipated delivery date. I hoped she would be up to the pressure that was coming her way.

She had been working for two years to get JBG into this position. The business change and the financing from Thimble Shoals Bank was the final ace to make it work.

I knew there were a dozen legal teams making sure each step was legal. Legal teams that were the best in corporate takeovers, hostile takeovers and forced mergers. Jeanna was running herd on them, utilizing her bank’s corporate lawyers and others.

Even so, I was expecting fireworks from all sides as each as each meeting came to a close. I was also expecting Congress to go from ballistic to unprecedented levels, let alone what all the alphabet agencies would try to do. But I had plenty to worry about other than that, I was pretty sure Marcy had all things covered.

Another thing the girls had decided on was to expand the office space at the gym by finishing out the second floor, making it all offices while leaving twelve feet of clearance around the climbing wall. They also decided to expand the offices at the Horsey offices.

We had added a two-story wing to make it hotel rooms for all the training that was taking place. Then after we took over Black Bear, the first floor was changed to office space. When the Secret Service demanded rooms they were paying for half of the second floor as motel rooms.

Marcy and Lorrie had bought the lots that bordered on the south of the Horsey property and were now going to add four two-story wings to the south side of the Horsey building. Each wing was going to be two hundred and fifty feet long and all offices.

Marcy’s argument was the towers were not going to be finished for four years, possibly more. She wanted as much of the management operating structure of the businesses she was taking control of moved to Summers Road as soon as possible.

Marcy wanted to sell those corporate headquarters soon, to recoup millions while commercial property was still in demand. That demand was pushing prices to the record highs Marcy was wanting to take advantage of.

By eliminating all the executive portion and the stockholder’s portion that would no longer be necessary, operational control could be moved to Summers Road. In the process, it would be substantially downsized.

There were thousands of employees in each of those companies in those two areas and they would be eliminated along with many others who would probably not relocate.

The permits had finally been approved and Bob’s Construction was the general contractor on the project, along with using dozens of subcontractors. Parking was going to be a real issue until JBG decided on a three story covered parking garage to get the most efficient use of every square foot of the property.

I could see one massive managerial fiasco in the making. I sure hoped that Marcy saw and planned for all the potential problems and ‘fun’ with the unions she was going to have to deal with.

Pushing all that out of mind, I went back to work on presidential things.

I finished reading the expert opinions on each of the agenda topics for the summit. Then I added my thoughts on the side margins and sent it to be put in the pile of information that was to be loaded on Airforce One.

I closed down the Oval Office for the day and went to the residential area of the Whitehouse to be with Vicky, Lorrie and Ching Lee. We talked JBG business while we were waiting for the kitchen staff to get dinner ready in the dining room.

I learned that Jenny had called the medics to come over to the house to check on Crash. He was having difficulty breathing. This was the second episode in a month. The gave him an oxygen mask and the problem went away. Another trip to the doctor was on tap. Doc Burns had given him a couple of prescriptions that the girls were making sure he was taking by the directions.

Marline was beside herself. She truly loved old Crash. Crash was one hundred and two. Roger Dalton – his old lawyer – had passed last year at one hundred and one. Crash had outlived all of his friends and high school class. The older group of survivors from the Korean War from the local VFW met at the Morton restaurant once a week for coffee and lunch.

Crash made most of the lunches and Lorrie or one of her assistants always wired Crash up because war stories always became a topic before the group ended the day. I wanted to hear each and every one of them. One of Lorries clerks put the words on paper and transferred the tapes to DVD’s for me.

Crash knew the end was coming and had Jenny write him a new will and final instructions. We knew what they were because they had not changed since we had known him, although he did leave a sizeable amount to Marlene.

He still had a lot of money from war bonds when the government decided to close them out and made everyone cash them in. He regularly bought savings bonds for decades that he had converted to cash a couple of years ago. The local bank had placed the money in CDs for a higher return.

Wednesday, I did a news interview; it was one more thing I was going to have to do on a regular basis. The news group was screaming I was not giving them fair access to my administration people and there was that ‘Right to know’.

I had spoiled them by giving them so many news conferences as chair- woman of the Terrorism Task Force. It seemed that I was always giving a news conference as many terrorists were busted and arrests that the Task Force was making. Now it was biting me in the butt.

As if that wasn’t enough, Carl Esham wanted to get started on the fund raising for the congressional elections and the few senators that were in the mix this time around.

New faces needed to be elected and he insisted that we needed to get started. Two years would go fast, and the waters needed to be tested with the new faces. He had taken my challenge to heart about electing more like-minded Congressional people.

He had already started the interviewing and investigation process. The new faces would be the most investigated candidates ever. Social media would be thoroughly investigated as well as all the college organizations they belonged to. Candidates from certain colleges would be unacceptable.

There would be no more hidden criminal records and no more hidden problematic past histories on social media. And no more mistresses or mad divorced spouses or alcohol problems!

Once chosen, they would go on payroll and to public speaking classes and then a new policy training program that we had discussed. There would also be dozens of training debates and news conference training.

There was a list of organizations they would have to join and be aggressive, so they would be in the public eye.

All that was scheduled to start after the babies were born.

Edit by Alfmeister

Proof read by Bob W.