Chapter 21

MAC MELVILLE – The JUNCTION – Day 14 - Sunday

This Sunday wasn't going to be a day of rest, I thought, as I got out of bed.

I needed to check on how the techs of the Counterfeit Investigations Division were doing, presumably they would be using the Federal labs in LA, and it could take some time to get a response out of that group.

Then I had to get Sunshine Helicopters organized as I couldn't rely on Gita Fullwood being able to do anything.

After a quick breakfast at the cafeteria, I again borrowed a B200 and flew over to North Las Vegas. I was met at the door by Sgt. Crossley who reported that as the last loaded truck was about to leave, he and his men were no longer needed. He mentioned that Eric Coleman was in the basement, so I went down to see if there was anything else that I needed to do.

Someone had obviously been whispering in his ear, as he was all honey to Jack Crossley and me. Jack hadn't been sworn in as a Deputy Marshal yet, but Eric didn't know that, but a little bird had told him that all Jack's men were Marshals and he assumed that he had a special guard detail.

We arranged that he could call me at The Junction if he wanted anything, and he seemed happy; it had obviously never occurred to him to ask me where I got the original key to open the basement door.

I loaded Jack and his men into the B200 and we were soon back at The Junction.

There I found MP Major Jamie Wilson waiting for me, accompanied by her female Sgt. who was surely one of the largest women I've ever seen. She told Jack to call her Sharon, and they went off together talking duty rosters.

"Let's go and get some coffee," I suggested to Jamie, so we went upstairs to the conference room which was deserted for once; the General and his staff officers were out somewhere.

When we were settled in, under the guise of wondering how she and her men came to be here, I began to ask some discreet questions about her background. I knew she'd helped Chuck during a difficult operation up on the Montana/Canadian border.

"I'm not sure this move to Nevada was a very good one for my men," she confessed. "There seems to be no work for most of them, except for some occasional night security assignments.

"However, the Governor told me yesterday that we would remain activated and stationed here until you no longer needed us."

This was the lead in I was looking for.

"Hmm, I wonder," I began. "You know that the new CS&S Guard Force is supposed to be composed exclusively of former Marine Special Forces personnel; well, in my opinion, we are going to run out of recruits soon, since the number of sites requiring coverage is growing by the week.

"I got Chuck's permission yesterday to ask you if you thought that any of your men, especially the ladies, would be interested in joining the Guard Force Company that will be assigned here at The Junction."

I quickly explained how the CS&S security setup had evolved and where we were at the moment; in desperate need of more personnel.

"There is a drawback," I explained. "While you will discover that the four-man middle echelon teams are all NSA men deployed to CS&S, and the officers like myself are all from the Secret Service, the men are also being sworn in as Deputy Marshals and Chuck will only take volunteers because they may be called out for special operations.

"I personally think that you and some of your soldiers, and especially the women, would make a major contribution.

"Anyway, please think about the proposition; it will need to be cleared with DC, of course, but I see no hangups, and we can talk again."

I left a very thoughtful Major when I went off to check that the Sunshine aircraft had all been taken care of, and that Gita's employees were being transferred to the CS&S payroll. Now that's something I forgot to talk to Jamie about.

She had gone off somewhere when I returned to the conference room, but Kurt was just coming up the stairs with a man who he introduced as Jesse Harcourt. Aah, Gita's guy's brother, I thought. Kurt asked me to join them, so I got us all more coffee.

"As I explained, I'm afraid that Steve Sharp had to go up to Seattle last night," Kurt told Jesse. "I apologize if you were misled. I'm the General Manager of our operations here at The Junction, as we call it.

"Mac Melville here is our Rotary Services Manager.

"Steve, and his partner, Chuck Johnson, when they bought the operation, decided that in addition to the flourishing flying school, they would offer charter services, both fixed wing and rotary. Rather than build these up go through the pains of a new startup, they decided to make some strategic purchases to fill in this gap.

"As you are probably aware, we have purchased Pete Williams' shuttle operation, but that will be managed by Mac, here. Pete, when he gets back from his son's hospital bedside, will operate more in a public relations, customer service role, covering not only our operations here, but also the other CS&S operations in California.

"I should add that we have also hired an ex-USAF Engineer, Jack Smith, to run an aircraft maintenance operation from here. We already have the contract to maintain the twenty-four Airbuses that will start arriving tomorrow, and he is hiring, or rather subcontracting the work to an outfit at McCarran.

"Gita Fullwood has suggested that we talk to you and your brother about transferring your operations down here to The Junction where your overhead costs will be significantly lower; but we'd like to explore the possibility of an even closer relationship. We would like for you to consider the position of charter manager, with maybe some responsibility in the financial field, whereas your brother, Rupert, might take up the role of Chief Pilot of charter operations, this implies, of course, that you would be prepared to sell us your current business."

It was quite clear that Jesse Harcourt was hooked, but as he explained, he couldn't desert his brother; they came as a package.

STAR – The VALLEY

It was good having the big bosses here, and we were able to run through just about everything before they had to leave for Seattle at 1000.

When we were finished, Chuck and Steve went off to talk to people. Jimmy came in with young Billie. Jimmy thought that we had things as well arranged as was possible, considering the very short time we had been operating. With regard to the supervisors, he liked Joe Miller, and thought that I had been really fortunate to be able to hire the five Petty Officers. Charlie Hanson would benefit from spending a month at Lutz. This was also true of the other supervisors, as they needed to learn the 'Is it Perfect?' philosophy, but he recommended that Charlie should be the first.

Bert Cheeseman, the Manager/Supervisor I'd inherited from the helicopter consortium was a different matter. I flatly said that I wanted to get rid of him. Jimmy agreed and suggested that I institute a series of monthly reviews and that Bert be told that he would be out unless he put in a lot more effort. He added that on the rotary side, Joy had been impressed with Seb Smith, but that was not surprising, as Tank had already approved his appointment.

I went out to wave our visitors off, then collared Roy Bean, my accountant, to talk about the new Denver passenger route proposal for Mrs. Hamersley which we were due to present to her tomorrow.

When Roy heard what was involved, he happily went off to get his laptop, because he said he had some new software that was tailor-made for this.

When he returned, he talked as he loaded the data.

"You know Sandy Flowers at Lutz, the guy, not his girlfriend?" He asked. "Well, he's turning out to be a real whiz as a programmer. If you add him to the mad mathematics professor and his Cray, you have a most unusual combination. Tiny talked to them about upgrading the computer programs that management uses, so that they are both interactive and pro-active, rather than just reporting tools. They've been designed to search the internet and integrate the most up-to-date information available.

"Anyway, I've got two of their first products here. One is supposed to allow us to fine tune our charter operations; the other is designed to set up and run an airline, and that is the one what I'm loading now. It contains all the published information that the giant Cray could find on the internet about all the US airlines, as well as fuel prices at airports everywhere. This will be its first real test as a method of evaluating the prospects of a new operation."

I handed him the current timetable that Mrs. Hamersley had given me, as well as the details for the CRJ 705, and told him to also run the model for the current Embraer 145s, as well as the bigger CRJ 900s. I pointed out that the 705s had sixty-five of the more roomy 'hospitality' seats, as well as ten of the executive type; would this enable us to charge a premium?

When we finished, we had a set of proposals that I knew would appeal to Mrs. Hamersley.

After the computer was done printing off the sheets I'd need for my presentation, an additional message appeared on the screen. The computer was recommending that for tax reasons, the operation should be run as a Colorado corporation, but also that additional routes from Denver to Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Kansas City should be explored. But that was not all, it also suggested that we set up a maintenance sub-base in Denver and offered our services to the other airport users there. Interesting, very interesting.

Georgie came in next, to tell me that Jennie had been over to the Emery's office near the Oakland docks yesterday, and after giving them a presentation, had arranged a regular weekly freight run over to Cincinnati for one of our -700s. She also told me that because Chuck took Jennie up to Seattle this morning, she wouldn't be able to keep her date with Gordon Trelawny at his hotel. Would I like to go with her instead, and maybe take Bob with us for 'protection'. I agreed, somewhat amused at her assumption that I had a lily-white past; little did she know.

After supper that evening, I changed into a business suit to look more like the type of businesswoman who would stay at a smart hotel like the Cadogan. When Bob was ready, off we went in Georgie's car. She briefed us on Trelawny on the way. He was from the Land of Oz (Australia for those of you who don't now) who had been over here for a number of years. His American wife had left him three or four years ago, and now he was reduced to casual pickups in the Cadogan's bar to satisfy his urges, or so his pilots said, but she'd heard that he'd had very little luck lately.

When we got there, Georgie pointed our quarry out to us. He was sitting at the bar, and I sent the two of them over to a corner table, while I walked right over and slid on to the stool next to the one that Trelawny was now rather slumped over.

I signaled for two beers from the bartender, and then just stared at Trelawny until I got his slightly bleary attention. I hoped he's not too far gone for what I want.

"Well, Mr Trelawny, I'm sorry that Jennie Sanders can't be here," I told him. "But I'm one of her work colleagues and she asked me to come and make it up to you."

He started to look interested, and I decided that I wanted to pump him for a lot of information,.

Before long, he was pouring all his woes into my receptive ear. How he'd swapped half his G-5s for faster G550s, thinking that this would be a popular move, but his steady customers had flatly refused to pay any extra and his capital was steadily leaching away because he'd been forced to take the 550s on expensive short term finance leases from those wretched sharks in St Louis. Then the blasted CS&S people had come along and undercut even his cheaper G-5s rates. He just wanted to go back to Australia and work with his brother, but the man wouldn't want to know him if he returned home with a ton of debt.

This had me thinking; he looked a beaten man, and I was sure that Bill could renegotiate the G550 leases; it had to be the same people from whom he got his really favorable deals.

"Right, Gordon," I told him. "I'd better introduce myself. I'm Star Jeffries, the CS&S General Manager here, and I'm your fairy godmother tonight. If you come out to Spring Field in the morning, I'll buy your business at appraised price and even take over those really expensive finance leases of yours. If I do that, it should allow you to go home with some capital so that you can buy into your brother's business. Think about it. I'll see you tomorrow, at 1000 sharp."

As I gathered the others, I looked back to see the man actually starting to sit up straight.

CHUCK – The VALLEY and SEATTLE

Spring Field to Tacoma Narrows Airport where Dewey said we were being met at 1100 was only an hour's flight in our special -700, so we all had a leisurely breakfast, then the others had a good look around the mansion. I thought Lisa would be interested too, but I saw her on her cell out on the terrace, animatedly talking to someone on her cell. She'd looked a little worried yesterday, but I hadn't tried to find out why that was.

I waited for her, and she came back into the breakfast room shortly after, looking relieved.

"Can you tell me what's been worrying you?" I asked, with a smile.

"It's the two girls," she said. "June and Louie. I wanted to bring them with me, but they said that Betty needed them, and could they please stay, as they were having so much fun. Buster said he'd look after them, but I'm still not happy about leaving them. They are trying to carry on in as normal a way as possible, and do a full day's work, but they are both still 'fragile' as the shrink called it."

I'd been wondering about this, but I was concerned to see Lisa so unhappy.

"Between Buster, Betty, and Brandy, I'm sure they will be well taken care of," I tried to soothe her. "Have you seen the old General's vintage aircraft collection?"

We strolled up past the stables where we found Fran and John Huff, and borrowed his keys to the special barn at the rear.

We were both fascinated, and decided that Star's idea of re-housing the collection for the public to see was a really good one. I think we could have spent the whole morning there, but Seattle called.

As we left, Lisa remarked that we have to get an AV-8B like those she flew during Desert Storm.

Everyone else was ready when we got to the aircraft. Jennie was there too, and was clearly happy to be going back to Seattle, the city where she had learned her trade. Or was it better to call it a profession? I'll have to ask.

When we had reached our assigned altitude, Dewey said that he wanted to talk about what he hoped to achieve today, but it was probably going to take longer than that, so he had sent a message to Bear in Honolulu that we would be with them on Tuesday.