Chapter 17

The Secret Service chefs planned a great meal while we were working in the gym basement, so we were well fed. After supper I played with the boys for a while and held Sara and Takeo.

I spent the evening in the living room with my family after the kids were in bed. It was finally quiet enough for us to talk about upcoming events. We were going to Deep Water Cay and Low Island for vacation for the last two weeks of February. On Low Island we wanted to see all the improvements that Marcy was paying for and to look at the two new rental units that had been built on the Cay.

The first Thursday of March we were going to Texas for another fundraiser for the party. I was applying pressure on the party chairman to find and fund quality candidates to run against the remaining liberals in the congressional race in two years.

When we returned from Texas, we were stopping at Cleveland, Tennessee. Jason had set up a wild hog hunt for all of us on property owned by Glenn Gibson. It would be the fifth time that Jason had hunted wild hogs there, the first four had been with Dad.

Glenn’s daughter Shannon had been shot in the terrorist attack at Warrington College. In discussions at the hospital the topics had turned to bootlegging and wild hogs in the area.

We were sending the four RVs that JBG owned along with the four that the GSA owned. Previous presidents had used the GSA supplied RVs for cross country campaigning. We were staying four days at the Gibson farm in the RVs. With the bootlegging, hog hunts and farming, Glenn had several acres turned into a full service RV park. We would be the only group there those four days.

Commercial wild hog hunts had turned to be as profitable as farming and bootlegging for Glenn. He was smart by continuing bootlegging and now was dumping some of the mash out to attract the wild hogs and limiting the commercial hunts to no more than one a week. He was still selling excess corn to the markets and the dried mash - eventually called brewers grains - to feed mills to be mixed with cattle, chicken and hog feeds.

The second week of March I was going back to Russia to celebrate another milestone in the disarmament treaty we had worked out for three days. President Orbatch was then coming to Washington to do the same for our end of it.

Marcy and our legal group had a dozen days in March and more in April scheduled to go to stockholders’ meetings of the companies she was looking to take over. Without a doubt, it was going to be a wild media month.

Saturday morning started off with tons of interruptions. The Secret Service was moving into the area in force. I learned they had twenty rooms in the Island Hilton. There was a steady stream of them coming and going with more than one meeting in the garage along with a steady parade for coffee and goodies from the kitchen.

Special Secret Service Agent Earle Gardner was over the Secret Service detachment assigned to Summers Road for the day shift today. He assigned an agent to be in the guard shack with the JBG guard, another to be inside the gym and another to act as elevator operator. That saved me from assigning more JBG to do the same thing.

I really wasn’t concerned until I looked out the window to see a 48 foot Coast Guard patrol boat tied up to our dock behind our boat. If I didn’t know any better, it was looking like it was going to be way longer than Wednesday before I was back at the White House.

Verizon was back at 0700 working on the bugs in the added phones. By 1000 they had everything fixed and working. I guess they needed the Saturday overtime to motivate them. They got a day’s overtime pay for working three hours. They did install several more wireless routers and wireless boosters in the basement.

Baltimore Office Supply was done by noon, taking care of loose ends. The temporary offices were ready for Monday. My mates met me at the refreshment center for a light lunch. After lunch we went to the gun club for a couple hours to practice with our Glocks; it was the first time I done any shooting in over a month. I was rusty with the first clip, putting rounds everywhere but where I wanted them, but quickly improved. By the end of the two hours I was back to putting the rounds in the center of the bulls eye as well as I always did.

It was a good thing the pistol range was indoors - it was getting colder and the wind was picking up, a storm was blowing in off the coast. We rode back to the office in the Beast and into the garage. When we were out of it the driver drove it back to the gym and into the garage where it was kept under lock and key and guarded.

The chefs were working on supper, but it was still a couple hours away. My mates went to take care of the kids and I went to the command center to get updates from the Pentagon group, NSA, and CIA. It would take an hour to go through all the intelligence. Troy followed with a handful of notes.

‘‘You know you are off today and I’m sure there are plenty of ladies looking good in the gym,’’ I said.

‘‘You are right! There are plenty of ladies over there but there is plenty of competition, every Secret Service agent not on duty is trying to impress all of them,’’ Troy said.

In the command center Troy was beside me and Vicky was taking notes for me. It was one of the things we forgot; I needed someone to take notes for the official record. Those people would not be here until Monday. I would have Connie transcribe Vicky’s notes into the official record.