Chapter 415

The day was quiet for the most part. Near noon Robin, Phil and Bob came to see me. I wondered if they were having second thoughts now.

“Is there anything that we need to do to prepare for the trip?” Robin asked.

“You need to get yourselves in good physical shape. You are going to have close to 60 or more hours in airplanes in just six days with a double dose of jet lag. The jet lag is going to be bad as well as 14 time zone changes in the same period of time. It will make adjusting hard.”

“The truck ride from Entebbe to Kampala to Nimule is six to seven hours each way plus the unload time. And that may have to be done two days in a row, depending on how people come through with donations,” I replied.

“Bob, I know you know how to shoot but I would like you to go to the gun club and qualify with one of our company Glocks. You just never know when you might have to pick one up and use it in that part of the world,” I said.

“What about us?” Phil asked.

“Maryland law says you have to be 21 to buy, but you can take hunting and gun safety training,” I replied.

“I have already had hunter safety and hold a hunting license in Kentucky. My Dad and I went pheasant and deer hunting all the time. I was a better hunter than he was; I killed more deer. It always made him upset,” Robin replied.

“Maybe you should go deer hunting with my Dad. He goes a lot and I know there are deer where he goes but he never gets one,” I said.

“Ask him if he would like a hunting partner, I miss the outdoors!” she replied.

“What about you, Phil?”

“I’m not into guns - never shot one - but I will come to watch just for the heck of it.”

“I have seen you compete at sports. I bet if you did some trap or skeet, you would fall in love with it,” Robin replied.

“We have both at the gun club, that can happen but he needs basics first,” I replied.

I received a text from Lorrie that the refueling was completed on schedule. I breathed a sigh of relief on that one; I’m sure it was like falling off a log to the pilots but I still worried something would go wrong.

I also worried about revolutionaries, terrorists and radical governments shooting the plane down. To say some of the territory it was flying over was hostile would be putting it mildly. It was flying established commercial routes and it was silver and that was a good thing.

It was almost three when Marcy called. She and a couple of her administrators found the two trucks in Washington and the two trailers like the ones destroyed in Delaware. The drivers were carried to Washington to pick them up and then they were driving to pick up the trailers.

The decal shop we used was making up new decals to put on the trucks. Federal law and the dot inspectors looked for the identifying name and numbers on road side inspections.

Soon all trucks would have electronic driver logs, weights, inspection, insurance and cargo information that would be transmitted to the weigh stations and portable enforcement as the truck neared the sites.

The inspectors would know if they needed to flag the truck in for closer scrutiny or let it go by before it ever got there.

Marcy had called the auto shop that services the MAAR cars to remove that and the GPS equipment from the trucks. One more thing that was boxed up and given to the driver to be installed later.

Luckily both trucks were tagged in states that the tags could be transferred to new trucks with a phone call, a credit card and insurance numbers. Marcy paid off the remaining loan balance on the wrecks. The titles were coming to her.

It was an expensive lesson. The two trailers would be scrapped and the tractors would go the truck auction in Wilmington. Next time the takeoff would either be from the other end of the runway, or we would get the police to stop traffic on the road for five minutes. We had been lucky that this had not happened before with the C17 and the 787 takeoffs in the last month.

I was just about to leave when I got a cryptic email from a friend abroad on my State Depart Email system. It was a request that I immediately forwarded to Robert after removing all the gibberish and things that I did not want him to see and added TOP SECRET in the subject line. Top secret meant that it was strictly between Robert and me.