Chapter 46

We left Morton at 0200 Monday morning. At one point I thought Lorrie and Ching Lee were going to back out of going. Saying goodbye to Sara and Takeo was hard on them and us. This was the first time they would be away this long.

Over the last few weeks they had both pumped enough breast milk ahead for ten days. Lisa, Jason, Mom and Dad were staying at our house to care for RJ, JJ, Sara and Takeo. Mindy was going to stop by to keep them company with her twins.

Saying goodbye to JJ and RJ was tough on all of us; we were going to miss them as well. But they had other things on their mind.

JJ and RJ were excited they were going to spend their days with Grandpa and Pop-Pop. Fishing and crabbing trips were planned along with exploring. Then they were going to look at some new farm machinery at the county fair and also there was the new boat Jason wanted to buy. The list went on and on to keep the little boys busy.

I wondered who was going to give out first - the old fogies or the young guns. I was betting on the old fogies as those two boys were solid balls of energy.

Dad and Jason quickly accepted that they would be accompanied by security when the boys were away from the house with them.

It was 1300 when we stepped out of customs without problems this time. The changes had already been made in the Portugal system. All we had to do was show our US passport and JBG ID badge and we went straight through.

There were plenty of Suburbans for us to get around in. The last two flights to Turkey had dropped off sixteen of them along with tons of other freight for the new training center. The early deliveries had been stored in the hangar at Lisbon International.

Most of it had made the move to the new complex. A lot of it was electronics for the command and communications centers that we had to build at the Pact countries. Two of Roberts’s men had been here almost from the beginning making sure the right cables were pulled to the right places.

It had taken two days to get the big satellite dishes updated and operating. The control linkages were frozen and the motors stuck but persistence had paid off. I was told the command center was close to being fully operational.

That was good news; I was getting leery of using the embassy for so much JBG business. No one had said anything yet but with all the rumored subpoenas I did not want to give Congress anything else to go looking at.

We had to buy space off one of the big communications satellites owned by a telecom giant for the time being. But that was soon going to end - there was a sixty day limit on the contract.

The DOD - in partnership with the CIA and DHS - was launching a new satellite to be stationed over the central mid-Atlantic. It was to aid DOD and other communications between Europe, Africa and the US.

It took some doing but I had bought a communications POD on the satellite for JBG use. I could never find out why they called it a pod. The satellite was one of those that stayed over the same location. It promised instantaneous communication with little or no ping time.

A twenty foot dish was being installed behind the 1001 Summers Lane corporate office to complete the loop. We would still use the CIA dish at Morton and the local cable at office until then.

The local cable was getting unreliable and slow. Robert had done some checking on them. The cable company had far more customers in the area than their equipment and cable was capable of handling with all the new demands place on the internet. To make matters worse, there were no plans to upgrade the local cable.

What they weren’t saying was that they were expecting the new 5G wireless systems to have a big impact on the cable business and were no longer willing to commit the money to rural and small market areas.

With those three we should never lose our ability to communicate anywhere anytime.

We rode from Lisbon International to Loures. It was twelve miles and twenty five minutes from the international airport. When we turned off the road into the drive we had to wait in line to go through the security gate.

Biff was using all the contractors to get all the security people up to speed looking at the people and vehicle checks - more of the OJT ‘on the job training’ so to speak. There were cameras mounted on the archway to look down into the back of dump trucks. There were two more to look at each side of the trucks.

I don’t know if I would have started this level of security at such an early stage in the process, but I was not going to criticize at this point.

Biff met us in the parking area by the command center. “Great to see you again. I am surprised to see all of you. You are just in time to watch the final test on the VCATS and MTAC systems. Rich and Horace say they have all the bugs worked out and are ready to go.”

“The cafeteria is up and running, hot coffee - the way you like it - is in the pot,” Biff said.

I should have known food and coffee were the first order of business for working men and that the cafeteria would be at the top of the list.

With hot cups of coffee we made our way to the command center. It was the original command center used by the Portuguese military with new equipment. Updating it to new equipment that was only beginning to make an appearance when the building was last in use must have been a daunting task for Rich and Horace.

The contractors had done an excellent job. There was big screen similar to the one at the office. The theater seating had been built on a very solid wooden platform and had top of the line executive seating with work space if needed.

Like the home office the big screen was surrounded by smaller flat screens. These were labeled for the Pact countries and would be active as control centers were established in those countries. There was a lot of negotiating left to do before all this could be active.