Chapter 65

It was Thursday when work started, after hours of sleep and overcoming jet lag. It would take hours to be filled in on everything we had missed.

The C5 had landed this morning. I had the crates unloaded and placed in the secure hanger for the time being.

There were four bays left in the basement next to the tunnel exit that were general storage; basically junk. We took an hour to sort through it and place the good stuff in one bay; the rest went into the dumpster.

Bob’s Construction was going to place a double layer of 3/4 plywood on the floor to protect it in three of the bays today. The plan was the forklift would place a crate in the elevator in the gym and the small electric forklift in the basement would carry the crate into the bay.

Dad’s old farm truck could bring six crates at a time. I still did not know how many the C5 had carried on the return trip.

Then we girls could unload the crate, stacking the bars on the floor. This way, we would be eliminating as many people knowing about the gold as possible. The crates would go back to Polokwane filled with freight for them.

Maybe I was over enthused but I thought the six of us should be able to empty two or three crates a night.

The important things were front and center. All the alphabet feds wanted a meeting with all of us and Curtis Warren in Washington on Monday. I wondered what the hell that was all about.

General Bashir had gone crazy, sending as many as fifty messages a day. I had been right that they were testing different communication methods to see if anyone would bite. Now loaded with false confidence that his systems were secure, he was communicating daily with the terrorist groups.

The Virginia massage parlor and strip joint that sent the threat about me was given new contact info. It was only a stroke of luck that the EIT group had been monitoring the site to catch the change. The code was sent in a one line code and link that was not repeated.

He was even assigning each site their own web address and direct codes on the IRG servers in the intelligence headquarters. His reasoning was if one site got hacked the others would be safe.

General Bashir even went as far as to load a new ‘Tools of Terrorism - How to kill Infidels with lone wolf attacks’; it was an IRG produced training video and guide book to homemade explosives and other usefully deadly things.

As soon as the feds decoded the messages it would give agencies everywhere something new to look for.

Bashir was being assertive and gambling; I needed to be cautious but not overly cautious.

Robert was back from his trip and wanted to hack the system to download everything in the IRG servers.

‘‘I am afraid they will catch it and shut down their systems. I don’t want to lose our access,’’ I said.

‘‘They have encouraged the sites to use the tools. I will hack one of the strip site computers, dog leg the link and then back hack into the IRG intelligence servers from it,’’ Robert said.

I nodded OK, ‘‘Use one of the systems that cannot be connected to us,’’ I said.

Ching Lee and Andy had given Oklahoma State the shakedown, starting with the Chancellor. The sad news; General Bashir had forced the cell leader Sabir Mahmoud to pick a date for the attack. The last week of October was chosen.

The good news was Ching Lee and Andy left a soft opening for the cell to find and to exploit and they did. Sabir was giddy in describing what he had found in the communications with the General.

With Frank Hammonds on board, Andy designed a series of small changes to take place that would result in a pincer to contain their attack when they started, trap them in one area and prevent any retreat.

I was intrigued as Ching Lee and Andy explained it and showed the area on one of the grid maps they had made.

At 1300 a call was sent to my phone from the switchboard.

‘‘Ambassador Jones, my name is Juan Pedro Garcia, I am the President of Mexican Petrol Company. Mexpo is the largest oil producer in Mexico in domestic production and has wells in the Gulf of Mexico.’’