Chapter 14

Wednesday morning the attorneys from the Justice Department were in the federal courthouse arguing the case for the unemployment reductions. The court on Monday dismissed the injunction letting the cuts proceed. The unemployed workers union immediately filed an appeal to the next higher court. That hearing was today.

It was late in the afternoon before the hearing and arguments finished. At 1600 the three-judge court ruled that the actions by Congress to cut the program were within bounds of its constitutional authority and denied the appeal.

The only place left to go was an emergency appeal to the supreme court. The court refused to hear the case effectively ending it. It was a little victory of the many battles to come.

My routine had taken a more normal look after the inauguration. That was a breakfast with whatever family had stayed over. If there was anything that the intelligence group thought was important it was in a sealed folder placed on the desk by the entrance to the living quarters for me to carry to the cafeteria to read while waiting on breakfast.

My clean coffee mug was always by my place on the table with a pot of coffee. If there was no sealed folder, the reports would be on my desk placed in the order of importance by Connie. The first four were ordered by CIA, DHS, FBI, and the Joint Chiefs. They were followed by other agency reports.

Connie also kept a full week’s schedule of my meetings and appointments - leaving an hour a day open for the unexpected - in an open notebook on my desk. Every morning the previous day was removed, and one added for a full seven day look at my calendar.

The table that I had placed in the Oval Office on that first day was still there and still being used as it had then. There was a folder for every meeting scheduled for the day with previous meeting information, reports and proposed agenda and possible talking points.

If the meeting was with people I did not know closely, there was a picture of them with background information.

I kept a phone log of all my calls in and out and the time they were placed. All the calls that came in on the landline phone were recorded and transcribed with the recordings destroyed when they were twenty - five days old. If they were kept thirty days, they had to be sent to the permanent archives.

Everyday on my JBG email Robert and Andy sent me the daily updates and intelligence and happening in the world of JBG. I used VCATS to communicate with the rest of my mates and the boys.

I was pleased to read in them that two more central American cartel drug lords had been captured and their manufacturing destroyed. Doc Burns had had the drug lab up and running for six months and was now fully staffed. In an average month two thousand drug samples were logged in for testing.

It was results of those tests that led to the arrest of the latest two cartel drug lords. The testing narrowed down the locations of the labs and origin of the ingredients.

The Doc was making a special trip to Matador for interrogation before any information became worthless. Vicky had locked down the numbered accounts in Pirates Bank.

With the cartel drug operations retreating and getting closed down and Iran out of the drug business, drugs were getting harder to find for the peddlers. China, India and Pakistan were trying to replace the cartel. But the seizure of two container ships for carrying illegal drugs to the port of Los Angles and one in New York put a big damper on that.

In the past the DEA and the DHS usually just seized the junk but with prodding, they seized the ships. The ships were unloaded and more containers were found containing drugs destined for different ports the ships stopped at. The seizures were working its way through the court system.

Now the junkies were turning to homemade designer drugs. They were presenting a different problem for law enforcement. Restrictions were placed on some of the ingredients for the homemade brew including removing them from the shelves or requiring signatures and valid ID’s like those needed for purchasing cigarettes.

Other things were back to normal again - Somalia was heating up again. The war lords had cooled off in the area when I was pounding Iran and while all the forces were there. The civil war and all its atrocities were on again. Without the Iranians funding them, they had resorted to piracy again.

The JBG fast ships had so far intercepted several attempts to pirate tankers. As with all terrorists, they changed to a more profitable line. Attacking small fisherman - stealing their catch, their fishing scows and throwing them overboard leaving them to drown.

The poor fishermen were defenseless; very few had radios to call for help and even fewer had weapons. Their only recourse was to fish closer to shore where there was a chance of escaping into the coves and of course, fewer fish for the dinner plate.

The same was true with the civil war in the Sudan. The refugee camp was getting a few victims of the fighting and then there was the women and children making their way to the camp to escape the fighting and trying to survive.

JBG had finished off another group of rebels crossing into northern Nigeria near the border with Chad. That was the third group of raiding parties in the last month.

With things looking up with infrastructure and oil production, the Emir Bello wanted another meeting in Washington and meetings with JBG about building several outposts near the Chad border where all the problems seemed to be. Andy had been discussing the possibility about doing just that. The meeting was in four weeks.