Chapter 8

I passed the beer around and we got into some serious discussions. The first thing was to put someone in charge. We all decided that Frank should be the C.O., with Gary as 2^nd in command. Both of them had experience in dealing with hostages and knew the ins and outs.

We were going to need 5 people in D.C. for the take down and transfer. Frank would rig his telephone and Snelling's so he could intercept the call to the cab company. He was also going to bug his phone for about a week to monitor any phone calls to see if we were at risk from something unforeseen. He would also drive the cab.

Bob was going to be an "extra passenger" who would administer the sedative.

Butch was going to drive the ambulance and Dave was going to be the scout to make sure we were not followed or detected.

Frank could supply the cab and ambulance and Bob would supply the drugs and gurney. The medical monitors would be on the plane and he would be hooked up as soon as he was loaded to make sure there were no mishaps.

Gary would be our pilot. He would be in charge of disguising the plane with phony numbers and delivering everyone. He made a suggestion that we not use Dulles, but use a General Aviation facility that did not have heavy traffic. Seeing that it was a weekend, there would be enough civilian traffic that they wouldn't stand out by themselves, but not heavy enough to attract authorities.

After the captive was delivered to the plane, the ambulance would be returned to a repair facility, which "lent" it to Frank, the cab would be returned to the garage that "lent" it to us and Dave would pick up Frank and Butch and bring them to the plane. Since they would need time to get back to the plane and sitting on the runway with a patient would be suspicious, they decided to take off and then land at another airport. That way, they could file a flight plan with the first airport. The second airport would just assume that a flight plan was filed elsewhere and not worry about it.

Bubba was going to supply us with new cell phones and hook-ups that would be trashed after the operation. He would also install a scrambling device on each so there would be no translatable interception.

Immediately after transfer to the ambulance, he would be stripped and his clothes would be discarded. His brief case, cell phone and anything else electronic would be discarded, except for his laptop. That would be put into a lead lined case and brought here. We did not want any chance of any electronic signaling device being around. His luggage would be scanned for any device because it would be necessary to have that for him to use in Chicago and we would need clothes to put on him for his delivery to Chicago.

Frank went back on his link and found the hotel Snelling was staying at in Hawaii. Somehow, he got into that hotel's computer and got a list of reservations and their computer card number for the week he would be there.

"Now, let's do a bit of detective work." He ran a trace on everyone, listed and then tried to tie them to Snelling. After about two hours he told us it didn't appear that he was meeting anyone. None of their telephone numbers appeared on Snelling's telephone bill.

"Well, since he only paid for his ticket, he isn't taking anyone either." Bubba said.

Frank turned to Bubba, Earl and myself. "You three will need to be busy around here. You need to have the video set up so there is no place in the basement that is not covered. We also need a high quality camera for the video record we are going to make of his confession. Also, we need several copies of that tape.

Bubba stated, "I've got a state of the art video editing set-up and could reproduce as many tapes as you might need. The editing machine also has an audio enhancing feature in case the recording was not as good as we want. That way we won't have to get him to repeat it.

Gary said, "I have noticed a lot of crows around here. Now I know there are crows all over the place, but mostly in the Midwest. If we want to disguise our location, we need to eliminate that noise."

I told him "I didn't think they could be heard downstairs, but we could check."

"Well, he needs to hear some kind of noise. I know he will be trying to identify where he is."

Frank looked at Bubba. "Could you rig up a sound system to play continuous noise of some kind?"

"Sure, no problem. What kind of noise?"

"How about we have harbor sounds?" Gary put in. "If he thinks he is around some port, it would help rule the Midwest out."

"Well, I have several contacts that will provide any kind of tapes you can think of. The problem is, we will be here for 6 days and that is a lot of tapes."

"How long do the tapes run?" Gary asked.