Chapter 49

Morning came early along with an early breakfast. Takeo and Sara were eating solid food and were nearly feeding themselves. I was missing so much with them, even though I spent as much time with them as possible. Vicky and I tried to contain our smiles as they were feeding themselves. Getting their food onto the fork and into the mouth was still a challenge at times.

They went back to the residential area with the kids to look at JBG things and take care of business while a sitter looked after the kids. I went to the Oval Office to begin my day. There was already a stack of notes on my desk, some with red post-it notes, meaning they were at the top the list of importance.

One was for a meeting with Eric and Marty with Mike from the FBI electronics lab. Mike had been in the original task force as the FBI representative. Marty put him in charge of the unit after I arrested Ormond Patel.

Mike had reestablished the reputation of the FBI’s IT lab as the best in the country. Of course, that was second to JBG’s EIT group but that is my opinion. But then again, Mike had been getting a lot of guidance from Robert and Burt when he had problems.

Eric, Marty and Mike were in the kitchen hitting the pastries or waiting on the chef to finish a breakfast sandwich request. I finished looking over all the notes that were on red post-it notes, made a few calls then went to the kitchen looking for them.

I walked in on a conversation that had grown by several more people. General Ingram was discussing how and when the military was to pick up all the ammunition that the agencies had collected.

One of the problems was that a lot of the ammo was soft point or hollow point that could not be used on the battlefield, that meant it could only be used for live fire training.

The military was going to get all of it. The weapons themselves and body armor was a different story. Much of the body armor was not military grade and had been personalized for the wearer’s preferences.

I understood all that and I would not want to wear used body armor myself unless it was a life-or-death emergency. It was one thing if you knew how it had been cared for, cleaned and handled. At JBG, body armor was assigned to the individual and had their name on it.

But it was a shame to throw away millions of dollars worth of equipment on a whim. Yet to send it back to the manufacturer for inspection was cost prohibitive and time consuming, especially when you added the phenomenal cost of government labor. Then there was the cost of shipping.

The M16s and the MP5s were going to the Army and Marines. The hand guns were to go to various law enforcement groups based on an as needed and by request. The FBI was going to handle all that. Many small police agencies were still using decades old revolvers and could use the upgrade.

Mike finished a conversation he was having on the phone.

‘‘Madam President, we are making good progress deciphering all the texts and emails. The new computer programs that Robert and your EIT teams developed are speeding things along,’’ Mike said.

‘‘The way it looks, we are going to be able to have a timeline of people and events - both text and e-mail - from the beginning as they became involved. You are going to be surprised at the scope and sheer numbers of people that had signed on to the cause. They were really close to finalizing their plans and agreeing on a date to begin,’’ Mike said.

‘‘Your group wrote one hell of a program to do all this, apparently it was something they had been working on for a while. You must be paying them quite well. We offered both of them double the agency top level money and they both laughed at us,’’ Marty said.

‘‘Quite well and I know you can’t touch the benefit package they are getting,’’ I said. I also did my best to hide my smile.

Andy, Robert and Burt were the three highest paid employees at JBG. I knew the FBI could not even come close to what we were paying them. And then there was the benefit package.

I went back to the work on my desk, after all the other things I still had to prepare for the Asian economic conference I needed to go at the end of the week.

I was going to leave Wednesday night, be there Thursday morning for the two -day conference and fly back Saturday. I had a day and a half to get everything done that I needed.

None of my mates were going, they had plenty to do for JBG. Many of Marcy’s plans were coming together with February into the books. Marcy and Vicky both would deliver in the next ten days if Ma Nature stayed on schedule.

All of the stock-holder’s meetings for the corporations Marcy had controlling interest in were in the three weeks, after the anticipated delivery date. I hoped she would be up to the pressure that was coming her way.

She had been working for two years to get JBG into this position. The business change and the financing from Thimble Shoals Bank was the final ace to make it work.

I knew there were a dozen legal teams making sure each step was legal. Legal teams that were the best in corporate takeovers, hostile takeovers and forced mergers. Jeanna was running herd on them, utilizing her bank’s corporate lawyers and others.

Even so, I was expecting fireworks from all sides as each as each meeting came to a close. I was also expecting Congress to go from ballistic to unprecedented levels, let alone what all the alphabet agencies would try to do. But I had plenty to worry about other than that, I was pretty sure Marcy had all things covered.

Another thing the girls had decided on was to expand the office space at the gym by finishing out the second floor, making it all offices while leaving twelve feet of clearance around the climbing wall. They also decided to expand the offices at the Horsey offices.