Chapter 329

Thursday and Friday I was off from KCC and planned to work with both the Rochester SWAT team and the RRS team. Everyone had improved substantially this week. Vicky, Ching Lee and I spent the most time with the Rochester group. They were leaving at noon tomorrow to go home.

Marcy, Jenny and Cindy had designed a nice certificate that could be framed of the advanced training completion from JBG Security. At noon before they left we were going to present the certificates and get pictures. We were going to send certificates back with Capt. Peters for the first group.

Jamie took the lowest scoring of the Rochester men back to the gun club for one more run through to give them the opportunity to improve their scores.

Vicky and I along with several other trainers did the same thing with the rest of the group on the mats. We spent the biggest part of the day working on hand skills and nonlethal take-down techniques.

At three Robert and Burt came in and met with Jenny and Marcy. They had the salary request and an equipment list that they would need if wages and benefits could be agreed upon. I left the negotiations to Marcy and Jenny.

At four, just as we were finishing up for the evening I was standing and talking with Peters and Hamilton when Jake and Bob came in carrying several rolled up blueprints.

"BJ, I know you soon need to be in your meeting but if you have 30 minutes to come look at the compound, there are a couple of things to decide. All the carpenters will be finished tomorrow," Jake Said.

"Compound - I knew you were building something but - compound. That sounds serious," Captain Peters replied.

"Let me change into something warmer and I will be right with you," I said to Jake.

I did the quick strip down and put on the clothes I had worn from the house this morning. That consisted of long johns, sweat pants, my bulletproof vest covered by a sweatshirt and then the shoulder harness and finally a jacket.

I walked back to Jake, Bob and the Captains, "Well, let's go see what a compound looks like. Do you captains want to come along?" I asked.

"I would not turn down that invitation," Captain Hamilton replied.

I drove with Jake in the passenger's seat and the captains in the back. At Morton Airport lane we had to slow to almost a crawl; the blacktop patch just does not work very well in freezing weather and frozen ground.

We followed the road around to the rear security gate where I had to use my ID card to open. We went past the house that we built for Crash that we had yet to come up with a real use, now that he did not want to move back in.

Then it was past the fuel farm and maintenance building that I picked up the new road that led to the compound. I pulled up to the gate and waited as Jake opened a control box and started the generator. Then he opened the electric gate and turned on the lights.

It did indeed look like a prison at night; almost kind of eerie. There was one very small flood light in each corner aimed towards the interior. Some of the buildings had what I would have called antique light fixtures. They were just a flat round disc with a small light bulb hanging from it.

They were so dim they must have been a 5 watt bulb, if they made such a thing. Some of the buildings must have had one inside them. The second floor of the concrete buildings each had one.

All the wooden buildings looked to be completed. I wanted the third world look and I got it.

I took one of those new stream lights like the fire fighters use and we walked and looked at and in each building.

The concrete buildings were still under a plastic tent to fast-cure today's block work. In one of the concrete ones Jake and Bob led us to the second floor and then on to the roof.

"I wanted to show you railings we put up. If you do not want them there, you can tear them down after you have accepted the work and paid us. For liability reasons the engineers insisted they be there," Bob said.

"I am sure that you noticed there was nothing on any of the windows, I think you need something to keep the birds and buzzards out. Bob suggested that we use the thick plastic door guards like you see in the deli sections to keep flies out of the cutting section."

"We can install it on the outside and put plywood on a slide inside to make it more weather tight when you are not using the place. When you want to play war games just slide the plywood out of the way," Jake said.