Chapter 340

The training of the response team continued until Friday afternoon, including a revised hostage rescue. Hanna and her cameraman participated again. Not because it was newsworthy but because I wanted video to critique the training and to document the training improvement.

To my surprise Victor showed up to watch the hostage rescue. I had new thermal images from the agency hangar in the back to work with. The agency was always evaluating new equipment and procedures and more than willing to use it.

Special agent Kevin Parks was the manager of the agency hangar and research team stationed at Morton Field. After the Atlantic 709 issues had gone away, Hanna's station ran the rescue clips again in a different news slot; Kevin had seen them.

Friday morning when we were loading the chopper for rescue training, a Gator made a bee line from the agency hangar straight to me.

"Are you doing another rescue?" Kevin asked all excited.

"Yes, it will finish up the training for this group before they ship out Monday morning," I replied.

"Can you hold off ten minutes to let me get a drone high? I have some equipment I want to test with real time live action," Kevin asked.

"Can I get a copy of the video for training purposes?" I asked.

Jake was doing the pyrotechnics effects and I was going to help him so I could learn. I needed to learn because Howie and Jake were soon going to be gone most of the time. Howie Crafton was the member of the RRT who had the explosives license. Howie had already ordered enough blasting caps and other toys that were locked up in the armory.

Howie was in the second chopper as part of the roof assault team. Then this afternoon he was on one of the ground teams. This was one of the changes for this group; they were going to get to experience both ground assault and aerial assault.

Since there were no Rochester guys to be bad guys, I had to be creative. That meant that Vicky, Ching Lee, Mark and several guys from the aircraft shop got to be bad guys. Vicky and Ching Lee were pumped at being bad guys.

Another thing that Ching Lee and Vicky were going to do was get wild in the second run through. They were going to don double hearing protection and a helmet so the flash bangs would not bother them and heavy coveralls. They were going to stay out of sight under the stairs and surprise the group after they worked past them.

While we were critiquing over lunch, cardboard boxes and other debris was going to be put into the concrete building to play with their minds for the second run through. I called Kevin and gave him a time for the second run to get the drone in the air.

The first run went smooth - the second was a totally different outcome. Ching Lee and Vicky tagged (killed) the entire aerial team and two mechanics tagged three of the ground assault team.

I was concerned as hell at first with the outcome of the second then I realized why. They were complacent; this group had been the bad guys when the Rochester group went through. They thought they had it figured out but they thought wrong.

I learned more than they did, there would be no more cake walks in this part of the training. I was going to be a lot harder on the next group. Big changes were coming for this part of the training. This group would go through it again very soon.

I was extremely upset with myself for not thinking the project through. Bob's Construction was coming back as soon as I figured out what changes were needed. I just hoped the RRT would not need this skill any time soon and would get several trips through the training.

Friday afternoon the RRT was sent home to be back at 6 AM Monday morning with their baggage for a minimum stay of 3 weeks in Morocco.

The weekend was quiet as it could be with two newborns in the house. Mom and Lisa were still spending a lot of time with us. We did not mind - it gave us the time to spend together and spend in the gym that we all needed.