Chapter 468

When I finished with Bob, business was over for the night. A light supper and 30 minutes in the hot tub with a cold beer hit the spot. The stress of today was gone.

In big tee shirts, we lounged around in the living room with the boys. They were crawling, standing, taking a few steps and baby talking with an occasional word plain as day.

I woke up with Lorrie in my arms, her blue eyes staring at me and her comforting touch. I had had a restful night; the first in a few days. It was the start of another busy day.

On my way to Section 12, I met up with Troy; his face still looked bad.

“Have you made the morning call to Ambassador Reddick? I would like to sit in, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“I am going to, as soon as I get the coffee started,” I replied.

I made the 0700 call to Andy.

“Good morning Boss! How are you doing today?” I asked.

“I have had an interesting morning; the British ambassador Chad Stoddard stopped by and stayed most of the morning. I am glad I eves-dropped on some of your ambassadorial meetings as your body guard. It paid off in the conversation; at least I did not start any wars, as you like to say,” Andy replied.

“I used words that I have not used since college classes; maybe those four years were not such a waste after all,” Andy said with a laugh at the end.

“He and Ambassador Fauntroy are close friends and have been having quite a few conversations since the attack. Both wish you well in your current position. Oh, by the way; Fauntroy is anxiously awaiting your next trip,” Andy replied.

“I had faith in you or I never would have suggested you to take the position. All I have heard is good comments,” I replied.

“Bob’s Construction has all the damage pictures, is working up a price and then there are bureaucratic procedures to go through. I have no idea how long this is going to take,” I replied.

“I will let you know and I will talk to Amy Lockerman about getting you access to diplomatic cables and terror warnings for the time being. I suspect you are going to be there at least 8 weeks, unless other arrangements for Ambassador Eaton are made,” I said.

“I have a meeting with Namibian officials in an hour to review their police response and get an update from their investigation. After several days of prodding, they have agreed to meet,” Andy replied.

“The Secretary of State has been requesting an audience with their Ambassador to the UN, but so far they are refusing,” Troy said.

“We were able to find enough things to temporarily fix both roofs. It rained last night and no water got in; the guys are happy. They have cleaned out some of the debris in the residence and some of them are bunking over there. It makes things more manageable and cuts down on the tension,” Andy replied.

After a bit more talk I closed the window; the room was filling up with my team members.

“Are you making any progress with all of this?” Troy asked, nodding his head in the direction of all the prints and tree graphs.

“Yes, but I’m not sure it is going to be in time to stop the next attack by Saif, wherever it. It has been three weeks; I’m expecting Saif to do another bombing any day now,” I replied.

The morning for the number guys was spent with number searches, names and dead ends.

After a series of calls, Andy had his own login and password for diplomatic cables and alerts. After a two hour VCATS course on how to use all of it, Andy was in ready to go.

While the rest of the guys and gals were playing with numbers, I pulled up the Google Earth maps - the fancy government version. And then I pulled up the maps of a couple of big colleges and then the college web sites.

I wanted some ideas on how to approach putting scanners and other security enhancements at colleges. I already had plenty of ideas at the colleges covered by JBG.

The first one I looked at was right here in Washington and it was a doozy. It would take major changes to entrances and access roads to begin to improve even basic security. None of the JBG colleges were anywhere near this complicated. The immensity of the task I had undertaken was beginning to set in for sure.

After lunch things picked up or went sideways, with the group running all the numbers, they finally figured out that all those active numbers went nowhere and there was no need to chase them.

“So you are telling me that we are at a dead end on all the information collected out Diya’s phone?”

That was when I posed the hypothetical question, “If I take and buy a burn phone, make calls on it and take the battery out of it, they show up as inactive. A week later I put the battery back in and make another four minute call; there is no record to show that that the phone was active at all?”

“You have to be watching the number to see it go active and to be able to do anything. Four minutes is not enough time and Ma Bell is not going to let you tie up their systems waiting,” Wayne replied. Wayne Thompson was the DHS member of my team.

“In a change of direction - for a few minutes - I have more pictures from the terrorist attack for you to run through your ID program. Run it on the big screen,” I replied as I sent the folder with pictures of the dead from Windhoek to Emmett.