Chapter 189

An hour later I was stepping off Marine One at Morton Field. The press pool had rented all the rooms at the Holiday Inn East. They had rented twenty cars from the MAAR rental counter at Morton. There was now a roped off area for the media to stand in whenever I arrived.

They were no longer wanting me to get out of sight if they could help it. At least several of them were to follow me around. They even went as far as setting up a system to alert one another by text. It was an unusual agreement among rivals. They staked out Morton, the gym and the house.

The media had filed several court challenges that my White House was denying reasonable and proper access to the media. There were insufficient news conferences along with insufficient access to the President. The public has a right to know - they argued in court that the freedom of the press trumps all other rights and secrecy needs of the government.

I was left to move around from the gym to the house by the tunnel and of course, I could be carried out in one of the blacked out Suburban from the parking garage. My mates traveled around in the blacked out Suburban, usually in convoys of thee.

We went over to the gym via the tunnel. My mates were going to work out with me before we were going to have dinner. Vicky and Marcy were going to do light doctor-approved exercises.

Ching Lee, Jenny and Lorrie had agreed to a hard work out with me. They jokingly said my ass was getting wide from too much sitting in the padded chair.

We had originally planned to work out for an hour. The Secret Service agents with us wanted to prove how manly they were. We worked out two hours before they decided they had enough. A hot shower and dry clothes and I still felt good - sore but good.

We had a nice supper courtesy the Secret Service’s chef. It was easy to see why the agents that were assigned here were gaining weight. After such a workout we elected to eat light.

My mates wanted to go back over to the offices for a private talk about things they had been working on. There we could shut out the Secret Service agents and not be bothered by others.

I was educated for two hours on all the things they had been working on, from the Cameroon security agreement that they had signed and progress on the oil deals. The oil deal on Jeanna’s joint venture had one well pumping oil now. Ten more would be pumping before the end of the year.

The South Africa gold and diamond mines just kept producing record amounts. They were trying their best to keep the amounts from the public eyes. Right now there was a backlog of getting the gold shipped to Morton because all the C5s were busy with military contracts and Iran.

I suggested that rerouting a couple of the empty C5s to Polokwane on their way home might help. Marcy said it would take three to take care of the backlog.

Damn, I thought - that was three hundred tons! I wondered how much more the basement second room would hold. It seemed like I had been away for years instead of just a few months. I was worried about that much gold being stored in Africa, considering all the things going on there now.

Things took a different turn in the conversation - they told me what they had been doing with all the questions and research over the last few weeks. I listened while they talked. My mates brought out all kinds of research and legal documents they had prepared in case they were needed.

As usual when they wanted to do something, they had supporting information. As usual they were right with their intuition - it was just a matter of timing and commitment to a decision after a few more things. With Iran on all burners, now wasn’t the time and they agreed to putting a temporary hold on the issue.

We had a great evening making up for the time apart. The time together tonight was only a start; we were spending almost all next week together.

Saturday morning we went to the gun range and were followed by the media group tagging close behind. First was the handgun range. Even though the Secret Service tried to keep them back, they were crowding while citing the court ordered access. My mates and I blasted their eardrums by running fifty rounds through our Glock.

Then we moved up to the M16s and fired one hundred rounds each. It didn’t take long before we switched to the three shot burst. James Clown from the gun club came over and brought me one of the new dual drum one hundred round magazines to try out. It was a new and improved design that was touted as being jam proof.

We had dozens of the older ones that always seen jam up unless you were doing the three shot burst. It was full and all that needed to be done was to snap it in the M16, cycle the action and pull the trigger. At the firing line I flipped the selector to full auto. It ran all one hundred rounds without a jam.