Chapter 416

Thursday morning the C5 returned in time to be loaded by noon. The pilot group went home and the maintenance group stayed to check out the post flight inspection list. Lorrie’s text said it would take the rest of the day for that.

The day was a drag at KCC. I did text Vicky and Ching Lee to get them to check on more food to carry to Nimule. I was late on that one; there was already a hundred thousand pounds of soups and supplies donated from several different companies on the shore in one of the hangars.

When I stopped by Morton Field, all the crew from the C5 was gone. Major Culpepper was sitting in the restaurant drinking coffee.

“How did my guys do? Is there anything I need to cover with them?” I asked.

“Really good job; they are a very dedicated group of individuals. I hear we are going to South America tomorrow 0500.”

“That’s right, fly down and back,” I replied.

It was a great evening; hot tub, boys and my mates. We went to bed early; we wanted to see the C5 take off again, was the excuse. From all the moans, it was really just an excuse.

We were at Morton at 0430. Major Culpepper was strolling towards the plane with a go bag, a big coffee mug and whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Lorrie handed Adam the refilled cash bag. At 0500 the C5 was rolling coal from the south end of the runway and was already a couple hundred feet in the air when it went past the terminal building.

This time we made it home in time for me to cook breakfast. With the dishes in the dishwasher we were over in the office at seven.

At 0730 Karen called to say that I had several visitors, “The one that speaks for the group is Ambassador Hagen Abelman,” she whispered into the phone.

“Give them a visitor’s pass and send them into the gym; I will be right there.”

“Ambassador Ableman, it’s good to see you. Welcome to my little part of the world. Let’s take the elevator and go upstairs to the office.”

The ambassador introduced me to his three associates, who were Israel intelligence officers; I read into that Mossad officers. They each were pulling a large travel cart on wheels.

“We have a mutual friend in Africa who suggested that you may be able to make good use of what we bring. Did you have time to get the things the email suggested?” Officer Ben-David asked as we were making our way to the EIT office.

“Yes, my men should have it set up per your instructions,” I replied.

After the introductions, Officer Ben-David said, “This is going to take several hours to get set up, run through then test. I will call you when we are ready to demonstrate and use.”

I took that as a polite way to tell me and the Ambassador to get lost for a while. I started with Marcy and we made the rounds through the office and a tour of the gym to watch some of the training that was going on. We finally ended back in my office where I got an in-depth lesson on Middle East politics; and the things that were going on behind the scenes.

The things in real life were a lot worse than were being broadcast in our media. In between conversations, we both had to deal with texts and calls. One of those texts I sent was to Frank, “Send me the file you have from Uganda with the 515 information.”

It only took seconds for the reply, “Why?”

“Working to build my bucket,” I replied. A few minutes later the file arrived in my e-mail; that I then forwarded to Robert.

We spent over 30 minutes talking about the American embassy there, the transfer to JBG security that was going to happen in the next few weeks and the difficulties we could expect.

I made a mental note to go through and hand pick my employees going there and to make sure they could speak Hebrew and the local Arabic dialect, if at all possible.

Israel was one of the areas that there had not been a decision yet as to if they were to get a chopper.

“We are ready for a live test and you’re the guinea pig,” Robert said as he was standing in my office door. With Robert’s entire group and Vicky there, the explanation and demonstration began.

First was the description of what was installed by Ben-David, “This system is several different systems linked together. The first computer has the bucket - as you named it - from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. There is some on Americans if they travel abroad.”