Chapter 190

The outburst by the HLS and FBI men and the fact they both stood up startled Duke.

"Let me introduce myself. I am Eric Roberson HLS, this is Marty Coeburn FBI and Frank Love CIA. You had someone tampering with your aviation fuel deliveries and failed to notify HLS and the FBI as required in National Security Alert Bulletin 1-13-12.

NSAB 1-13 requires any unusual occurrences with fuels, electric or water to be reported to HLS immediately. It was based on intercepted chatter from terrorist groups that plan to begin disruption of utilities and supplies," he said.

"Is there no one in your organization that reads HLS bulletins? If I remember correctly QA County Island Airport is designated as an emergency standby facility and received one of the HLS grants for upgrades to the fuel farm and lighting after 9-11," he said. "And there has been an annual grant since then."

Jason - who had been alerted by one of the staff and was now standing in the door behind all the commissioners - responded, "Yes, the county did receive a 10 million grant from HLS. I was the outgoing commissioner when the funding was received. The funds were put in a special account connected to the contracts for the improvements. I heard a couple of years later the contracts had been cancelled and the money transferred to other feel-good projects of the new commissioners."

Eric asked, "Where have the annual grants been going?"

"I have no idea, my term ended in 2001. Duke and several others hold those positions now," Jason replied.

Duke and Clarence both looked like they had seen a ghost. They both exited almost in a run after, "We will have the Sherriff's office send you everything they have so far."

"They can run but they are not going to be able to run far enough to get away from what is going to come their way. Back to our original discussion, we need eyes and ears on Rochester campus and you can supply the perfect cover in more ways than one," Eric said. "Can we work together on this?"

"You know I have served our country. I know that the fight is coming here. If JBG can help slow them down, we are all in. You have two months to work however many people you want into our system. I do insist that they go through our training to fit in with our people," I said.

Jason came back in after they left, "You know our airport troubles are most likely just beginning after today. Homeland is going to come after the county with a vengeance over the funding diversion and falsifying the certification, and the county is going to spread it around."

The rest of the day was filled with meetings with Cindy and Mark. Then I had a meeting with the Rochester employees. I needed to know what their plans were; get some scheduling started and also how long Courtney and her three would need to be there.

There were ten employees who were going to work eight days straight, take four off and commute back. There were eight that were going to stay and only come back once a month; they were the four couples. They flat out said that if they could find suitable housing they were going to move and take full time positions.

That left two employees who were going to work five and come back every weekend. Luckily, the four couples were not part of the full timers I had hired for KCC; they were on the list for part time and it would be easy changes to remove them.

I wanted to feel them out to see who was going to be the take-charge leader. I needed a supervisor for this group and then I needed a director for when the staffing was filled out.

Mark, Cindy and Jason had been finalizing the applications from Warrington. Dan and Ellie Mays had made the cut without any influence from me. They were in the first group to be interviewed. Jason, Cindy, Ching Lee and I would be flying down to do both groups of interviews.

The finalist would be flown here for training. Hopefully we would have the big plane by then to bring all of them at one time. Holiday East was giving us rooms with two beds for 50 bucks a night, including taxes. It was one heck of a corporate rate. They would be 2 to a room, like it or not. The hotel would be used for the spill-over from the horsey house.

The final meeting of the day was with the six of us girls. I filled them in on the Homeland request and my offer. I explained that in the end we had little choice. Homeland would most likely infiltrate at some point on the hiring, hack our systems and cause us all kinds of grief if I had flat out said no.

On the up side their offer of assistance may come in handy later with the county. I was sure the county was going to come after us with claws. They had already shown their hand with the noise complaint and fuel problem.