Chapter 60

Tuesday quickly became Wednesday and then Thursday, almost as fast as a blink of an eye. Thursday I spent the morning with Vicky reviewing embassy issues. Thursday afternoon I was back with Ching Lee reviewing the progress at Oklahoma State. A few things had been done this week but by end of next week a lot of things will happen.

Jenny had identified ten individuals who had advanced computer skills, either from the military or federal agencies. Yes, we were now getting applicants from federal agencies.

There were several from the DHS and the FBI. When questioned why they were leaving, ‘‘Sick of politics interfering with investigations and preferential treatment for certain groups.” Some things never change I thought.

Ching Lee, Vicky and I were planning on flying back to the college next Thursday. The new people chosen were getting a crash course on facial scanners and the college security program. One of Andy’s drone operators was going there to operate the drone.

The two new drones were bigger and had better cameras. The controllers for them were a two joystick control box. The cameras could be operated one hundred and eighty degrees when the drone was set to hover in a fixed position with one joystick.

Another good thing was there were over a dozen different styles and types of cameras already programmed into its controller. Cameras could be mixed and used at the same time; long range, wide angle, infrared, night vision and a laser pointed homing camera.

The laser homing was a great addition; just put the dot on the object and the drone positioned itself to follow and keep the object in center of the view, all the while still maintaining altitude automatically. With the newest advances in batteries it could maintain station for several hours.

Still there were a lot of things that needed to come together before next Thursday.

Friday I spent the early morning with VCATS with Biff in a conversation that made my decision to fly to Portugal Sunday night. I was planning to leave Monday night for a joint PACT meeting but there were several issues I needed to address first.

Friday afternoon it was spent on VCATS again with Raymond Underhill at Polokwane. The next few weeks were going to be busy there. The first of the three C5 flights carrying the DOD radar was to leave early Monday morning. The flight had been finished out with several of those big tents used in hurricane recovery, along with food, army cots and blankets.

Raymond had been thinking ahead for all the manpower that was to arrive. He had found a sewage truck and two portable bath trailers; one was shower stalls and the other was hopper stalls and porta-potties. They were 300 miles away and JBG paid plenty to get them trucked to Polokwane.

The sewage truck could empty all of them. The sad part was the only thing we could do with it was spread it out in a field several miles away from the town for now. A better method of dealing with sewage was coming. At least it would be better than dung pits at the end of each street.

Manure was manure; all over Asia and in other parts of the world human crap was used for manure to improve crop output. In America we call it sludge; at least we treated it before in was injected into the ground on farm land.

I had read that New York and Massachusetts had a state approved process to dry it out and use it for mulch around your house. I could just imagine the smell after days of damp and wet weather and then stepping in it.

I wondered if the water from the plant could be used as irrigation; maybe we could grow something useful on a few of those desolate acres after manure had improved the soil.

The flight was also carrying twenty men from J&J construction. Raymond had worked to get a majority of the equipment on site. Jake’s men were going to put it in place and test run it, possibly use some of it. Also going were twenty more for the security team.

A second C5 was leaving Tuesday morning with more of the same and 200 cases of MREs (meals ready to eat); not military surplus but fresh from the supplier. This was not going to be a picnic and they were told so up front.

I called all the mates on a conference call to see who was going with me with the change of plans. Jenny still needed to go because of contract changes and additions.