Chapter 434

Wednesday morning we put our people in place for a test run to see how fast students could go through the scanners and equipment. The last thing we needed was to create long lines that could become targets.

It did not take long to find out that we needed to make changes to that part of the plan. Even with 6 ladies running the x-ray machines at the test entrance, lines were forming.

Those lines would be easy targets for a suicide bomber; they are going to be nervous, scared, possibly under the influence of drugs, possibly wanting to get it over with as soon as possible. Who knew what went through their mind in those final seconds before they pushed the button or what made them choose a particular spot to do it.

I was sure they had been repeatedly told to get into the biggest group possible to take as many as possible with them on their journey.

A quick change was made; we decided to let the thermal images determine which students would be scrutinized closer.

We collected 10 hunting knives (blades longer than 4 inches) and three handguns. Since this was a trial run, I collected their drivers licenses and told them they could pick them up after class. I did not know for sure what the policy of this college was, but I was pretty sure those items were banned.

I called the DHS guys to have them run the serial numbers on the guns and to see if they stolen or registered to the students or their parents. If they were registered to other individuals, it would be decision time. I was hoping that they could run ballistics in the short time we had them.

The changes we had made worked for today - would they work for tomorrow with the larger crowd?

I went back to the office to do one more check to see if any information had changed and was disappointed that there was nothing new.

After supper Ching Lee and I helped the night crew make the final changes that all of us had agreed on. Other than the normal night skeleton crew, all of us turned in early.

At 4:30 AM all of us met at the local Bob Evans breakfast restaurant; there were almost a hundred of us. The complete RRT team, the DHS and all the part time employees who were working today made up the group.

Even the first group of DHS came along with Len Zimmerman and their attitude was gone. Eric had called last night asking if I would allow them to come back and participate, “OJT,” he called it.

‘On the job training, ‘ been there and done that and it usually involved mistakes. This was no place for mistakes. They were going to be assigned with four of Andy’s toughest men; team leaders who would make them walk the line and take no bull.

With the extra DHS men Andy assigned the four to the roof of the building with M16”s to join the eight men he had already assigned there.

They had one instruction and that was to stop the car bomb as far from the building as they could. Along with that instruction there were limitations and exceptions; be as reasonably sure as possible that the vehicle was terrorist and limit collateral as much as possible. Len was standing with me as Andy gave those instructions and nodded his approval.

The agents almost fainted when Andy opened the storage locker and handed them a 60 round magpul rotary magazine for their M16 and several 40 round magazines.

“They won’t let us have anything like that on our operations,” one of them said.

“This is not one of your operations; I march to a different drummer. When the decision is made to start shooting I don’t want you to stop until the vehicle is stopped. By the way, Eric said that all our equipment has to go back with us; you get to play with it, not keep it,” I replied.

I did not tell them that I had four of my best men on the ground level with Stingers to be used as the last line of defense to keep any vehicle out of the building. Neither Len nor Eric knew that - if they did, they would be livid. Stingers violated all the rules if they were used domestically.

Speaking of Stingers, the four that were here were the last of those we had. Kampala had put a hurting on our inventory. I wondered if it was best to ask Frank for more, or should I leverage Ben-David for a supply? I had a feeling that Ben David would supply a lot of things that would give Eric and Frank severe indigestion.

Everyone was in place and now it was a waiting game. I hated waiting games; the mind was a terrible thing when one was waiting with something like this. It created a dozen more scenarios and made one question everything we had prepared for.