Chapter 279

Wednesday morning was the last morning I would be driving to KCC for a couple of weeks. After the Thanksgiving holiday I was training for two straight weeks at the gym again. Then it was back at KCC for a few days then more training at the gym. The second group from Michigan and Minnesota were to be at the gym on Monday.

I did have the days off between Christmas and New Years but had to be back at KCC for the first Monday of January, for the start of the second semester.

I finished out all my pending paperwork and work schedules until I would be back mid-December, including who was to be acting supervisors for each shift. Patti was going to do most of the day shifts.

At eleven I went to the cafeteria to have Thanksgiving dinner with the staff. So that the security people who were working could partake, I had split the lunch break so they all could enjoy the great food.

As I was sitting eating I had a hair-chilling feeling on the back of my neck, the kind that when it happened in the sandbox it told me a firefight was going to happen soon.

Then I had a vision. In this vision i had a revelation that this was going to be my last winter at KCC and with the coffin in the vision I knew it to be so. For it was me in the coffin this time and not a blank face I used to see in the sandbox. The coffin was waiting to be lowered into the vault on a lush green hillside; a spring or summer funeral. I shrugged it off and finished lunch.

After the very filling lunch that would require several hours in the gym to work off, I drove home thinking of all the things I needed to do in my office at the gym.

I was back at the meeting table. My mates and Jason had been going through the stack of folders Frank had left last night.

Marcy had taken my security discussion to heart. First thing I noticed, she had swapped out our laptops again. All of us had the same type of laptops. There was better pricing in quantity and Marcy saved every nickel she could and choked poor old Lincoln at every chance she could. She bought dozens at a time to get the get the biggest discount she could possibly get.

As I walked to take my place, I noticed that the light indicating the wireless had been turned on was now dark. On top of that there was a carton of new thumb drives on the tabletop and every computer had one installed. The indicator was blinking that the drive was in use.

I had to laugh as I took my normal seat. There was a bold-typed sheet explaining a temporary electronic computer security policy until a formal policy was put in place, and how to send information direct to the thumb and not store it on the laptop hard drive.

Jason, Roseanne, and another clerk from Jason's team had the Black Water employee files; they were scanning the pages with portable desktop scanners. Jason noticed my questioning look and walked over to me.

"I have loaded our personnel program onto these laptops for this project. All the data is being saved on those thumb drives. When we are finished, all the data colledted from the thumbs will be saved onto one laptop as an HR master until the security changes you discussed last night have been fully implemented. Then I will put it on the secure mainframe," he said. Then he added "Some of these people are getting really good salaries but they also have some exceptional credentials. They are assigned in some horrible parts of the world," he replied.

Marcy was looking at the logistics folder, "BJ, I have started a pad with questions we need to ask Frank. There are 100 armored SUV's being billed to the State Department. Ten of the sites have two and the rest have one."

"There are also 6 Bell 407 helicopters and 4 with some kind of designation I think are military. The designation will not come up on a search. They are written into the terms of the contract. The question is, can the agency work with the bankruptcy judge for us to buy the lot or are we going to have to scramble to buy them on open market?" she asked.

"If we have to buy them on the market there is going to be a long lead time for them to be built. Although a contract for 100 may move the order to the front, it will still be a long time," I replied.

Lorrie added, "Low hour Bell 407's are plentiful from my research. I can't find anything on the others. Add that question to the list. What are they?

"Have you called Jeanna about financing?" I asked. "Based on the numbers you have?"

"The contract called for fixed monthly payment from the State Department with 'Extras' and Black Water had some wild administrative add-on charges," Marcy replied.