Chapter 87

I started with the first most important one; the President. At least it was not MTAC - it would be one on one, or so I thought.

The President was in the situation room on a speaker phone with all his staff.

“Looks like your mission was a success. Embedded reporters; now that is some confidence. How long are you going to be there?” the President said.

“It is going to take a few days to clean up this mess,” I replied.

“Frank, Ben - are you in this conference?”

“Yes we are here.”

“My G5 left here two hours ago with VIP prisoners - they are not your concern and best if you stay as far away from them as you can. But - the box that pilot Max Grover is in charge of is. Have your agents carry the box to Robert and help him unravel the mystery the box holds - send your best electronics agents to meet the plane. You have little time before all hell breaks loose and it will lose all value,” I said.

The phones from the VIP prisoners and all the papers on them was in a lead-lined box. I was afraid to pull the batteries out of the phones and didn’t want them tracked, the lead-lined box would stop that. The numbers in the phones and any text messages could speak volumes to the right people.

“When will you be back?” Ben asked.

“I am hoping Sunday but it will probably be Monday. The Mexico operation is a go for the end of next week. My time is limited,” I said.

“I guess you know Congress is coming your way with a handful of subpoenas. The Congressional crying committees have already let everyone know their panties are in a twist. It amazes me how you being just one person can piss off so many people in such a short time,” Troy said.

“Practice makes perfect and I am still learning,” I replied with a laugh.

“What else is new? They may ask a lot of questions, but they are getting few answers. I have told my lawyers to fight every subpoena that does not involve the task force all the way all to the Supreme Court,” I said.

“I have to go - get back to you later.”

The media was wanting another news conference with the French President and now Louis with his cabinet were more than willing to bask in the spotlight. Even though they had wanted to stay away as far as possible, they were now more than willing to be in the media glow. Politics as usual no matter where one went.

Andy - still at the training site - sent updated statistics that I gave when it was my turn to speak.

“With the counts tallied there are a total of two hundred and thirty prisoners. The number of dead - including those killed when the suicide vest was detonated - is at seventy four killed in the two buildings.”

“The number of suicide vests between the two buildings stands at two hundred. There were one hundred and eighty various weapons and an estimated fifteen thousand rounds of ammo.”

“Unfortunately there were thirteen civilian deaths that were trying to halt the advance of the two battalions conducting the raids and thirty civilian automobiles were damaged or destroyed.”

“JBG International Security in partnership with the Pact Countries has to consider this a successful operation. There were several important goals that were met.”

“One was to capture or kill the majority or the terrorists of this cell and with the number of prisoners and dead, I believe we have done that.”

“The second was to stop the attacks that were planned, and with the number of captured IEDs, suicide vests and weapons I think we have done that as well by depriving them of the weapons to carry out future attacks. There may still be lone wolf attacks but this operation has to temporally cripple their abilities for large scale attacks in the region.”

“The third was the collection of information. The swiftness of the attacks meant there was no time to destroy records. We should have wealth of information on the human and weapons smuggling operation and be able to end that for the time being.”

“The fourth goal and one that we failed at was to get the leaders alive. They died in the gunfight or turned the guns on themselves to avoid capture. They carried the real information we needed to their graves.”

“Overall I believe this operation to be a success. Once the prisoners are interrogated and details of what they were planning and weapons evaluated there will be enough information released to the public for them to come to the same decision,” I said.

We had collected all the information we thought pertained to the leaders and left the rest for Louis. The French police and agencies needed something to do to feel they were part of the process. I had stepped on too many toes as it was.