Chapter 48

We were up early, the hotel restaurant was packed. The Paris air show was one of the three biggest in Europe. There were several types of planes we wanted to see. Lorrie wanted to look at all of them.

JBG Aviation was growing; some of our planes were gone for a week at a time and sometimes longer. The economy was good, big business was doing better. There were a few business executives willing to run out and buy sixty million dollar jets for themselves and even a couple willing to go to the one hundred million level.

When the executives or the wealthy chartered a G5 to go on a vacation, most now wanted the plane to be at the airport in case there was a need to leave right away and were willing to pay substantial standby rates. It was also a talking ego point in their social circles, “My plane is waiting at the airport.”

Those talking points created more demand for our planes. It was one reason we were splitting up. The plane needed to be somewhere else next week.

But more were being far more cautious since the auto company executives had been burned by flying to Washington in separate eighty million dollar jets during the auto crisis.

They had been buying blocks of time on our executive jets. Buying a block of time meant that with a five hour notice, a G5 or equivalent would be at the nearest airport stocked with food, drink and a flight attendant to carry them to their destination anywhere in the world.

Now they were wanting more luxurious and larger jets and were willing to pay. Boeing had a division that specialized in converting the 700 series into very luxurious personal and business jets. The sales division was to have several on display.

Another plane we were looking for was something to patrol the South African property. I knew that getting anything like that from government surplus was not going to happen, period.

I had a bad gut feeling Iran was not going to go away peacefully. They were tied in with ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia, Al Shabab and several more. All of those groups were strong and growing in Africa. I just knew Iran would have them cause trouble by raiding the mines and town sooner than later.

Really, there was nothing to stop them in their eyes. Previous policies by our own and other governments had done nothing to their quest to dominate the Middle East, Africa and become a nuclear power. Just about every conflict in the area could be traced back to Iran; especially the ones JBG had been involved in through the embassy contracts.

Russia had been openly supporting them and now with China trying to move into the picture, bad things were coming faster. I wondered if China may have had eyes on a base of some sort in the area.

The first place we stopped was the Boeing display section to look at a new 737 BBJ ‘Boeing Business Jet’; there were three there. Boeing builds the plane with no interior and then they are sent to different companies to install the interior to the customer’s specifications. It usually adds two to three years onto the delivery time and up to thirty million or more to the price.

The three there had been finished out by different companies with different custom interior plans. They were a class of luxury beyond imagination. Two of them even had full sized showers and king size bed.

We liked all three of them but all three were special orders waiting on the customer to pick them up. Or the customer had agreed to allow them to be displayed for one reason or another; usually a fee was discounted. At least we could look and place an order, if Lorrie wanted to wait for five years to get the finished product.

We spent two hours looking at the three planes with the same Boeing salesman that had sold us the 737 200 a couple years ago. Gregory Simms turned out to be helpful.

“There were four 737 BBJ used for sale, one in the Middle East, Dubai to be exact. It was older, a 1998 with a lot of hours. There were two in Europe, one was a 2013 model but not in service until 2015 with low hours,” he said.

A 2016 had just been put in service several months ago and ran off the end of a runway in Sweden, causing considerable damage to the landing gear. There was no way we were interested in that one.

The other was also an older 1999 with lots of hours located in Canada. Gregory was going to gather information for Lorrie next week after the air show was over.

The next planes we looked at were for the South Africa mine airport. There were two that had possibilities; the Air Tractor AT802U looked the most promising. It was US made; in fact, we already owned six as crop dusters. They were tough as nails both in flying and durability.

To add to that Robbie’s mechanics knew how to work on them and we had some parts in the stock room.

Air tractor had a border patrol, light attack, surveillance aircraft version. It was short runway and dirt strip proven with a variety of light weapons mounts for Stinger missiles, Hellfire missiles, Hydra 70 rockets, and mounts for both the mini gun and 50 cal, all of which we could get from our Israel connection.

They could carry hard ordnance of up to 500 pounders, something I would never consider because it crossed all the lines.

The defense version had armor installed around critical areas including the cockpit; some of it was titanium.

We had just finished negotiations to buy six; two to be in the air, two for backup if needed and two for spares. I noticed a delegation a little over a hundred yards away. General Kadar had stayed true to his calendar. His delegation of officials and other IRG officers were by the Euro-fighter plane displays.

I pulled the letter I had worked on - off and on - for the last few weeks. The shrinks had read and suggested changes. Ziva and Sofia had suggested changes as they wrote it in Persian. The letter was ready. It was addressed to the General.

I gave the letter to Ziva to take to the General.

“Make sure on your way back you stay out of the line of sight and get back here quickly, I said.

The letter went like this:

“Hello: General goat humper. I hear you have plenty of experience. Has this experience caused your performance to falter in other areas such as your attempts to complete terror attacks in my country and caused you to lose so many terrorists to me?

General Kadar BJ the Lioness Albert Koons Morocco killed 1 Phil Adams Morocco killed 1 Milles Pike Morocco killed 1 Ahad Byair Iranian sponsored, dead 1 Faaiz Faeq Fahad dead 1 Haamid Muhammad dead 1