Chapter 469

When I turned into Summers Road three hours later, it looked like a truck convention in the right of way, plus there were several cars and pickups parked by the box with Bob and his electrician.

I had stirred up a hornets nest so I walked over to Bob.

“Here is the big boss, now you can talk to her personally,” Bob remarked.

“Ms. Jones; Harry McAlister I want to apologize for a mix-up in our office, it seems that the application for service was assigned to a person who was off for several weeks and then got lost in the shuffle. Before the crews leave today the job request will be completed.”

“If you have any problems at all, please call me direct before stopping in the Washington office. I can handle any need you have from the Cville service center,” he said.

“I try not to get involved with the day to day matters but the feedback I was getting seemed to say Bob was at a dead end, even after talking to you and Mr. Fox and NOT getting positive results,” I replied.

“Thanks for the immediate action; I am sure it will move things along,” I replied before I turned to Bob.

“End of the week we should be done. I have the estimates you asked for in the truck,” Bob said as he handed me a full inter-office envelope.

Robert stopped me in the hall, “They made another phone call today; almost there. Another 30 seconds would have done it. If the computer makes the connections early enough in the next call we will have locations. We are still tweaking the program; we may be able to have recordings of the conversations. It looks like they are using twice a week communication schedule.”

“That would be great, Robert! I’ll take anything we can get,” I replied.

I went to sit in on part of the afternoon meeting. November 1st had come and gone days ago. The day of the Minneapolis investigation I had called East Coast Security to price on multiple purchases of the scanners and other equipment.

Ching Lee and I decided to put that equipment at KCC as a test program. It had taken a lot of persuading to get the College Board to make decisions allowing major changes to the entrances, parking and access to the college. What swayed their decision was that this would be used to set the bar for national standards.

East Coast Security had been there two weeks, working first with Ching Lee and then including Patti and members of Robert’s group.

The goal was to make KCC the model for student safety and security. All the changes were nearly completed. I wanted it done before the students left for Thanksgiving and it would be, with a few days to spare. I wanted to demo the systems to the anti-terror group.

I learned from Lorrie that the second group of former Air Force pilots was at Dover Air Force Base taking the simulator refresher. The second C5 would be ready to be picked up on the west coast when they were finished.

It was a good thing; the agency was using the C5 we had at least once a week and in the two weeks since we signed the contract, Lorrie had already made one flight for the DOD. The one we had was quickly closing in on the next major inspection, at that rate.

I learned that there was a big dinner planned by the girls for tonight. Mom, Dad, Jason, Lisa, Jake and Mindy were going to be there. I wondered what was going on with that.

The last of the men were released from the hospital today; some rehab would make them as good as new. Jenny and Jason were going to interview them individually; something new that Vicky wanted done. It was to be our own after-action report and to critique the fighting, planning and execution, also to have something in writing if things went to crap later.

Having 20 of the men back from Windhoek would work out great with all the new hires coming in. They would have two or three weeks to recover and then act as trainers again.

I opened the envelope that Bob’s estimate was in and looked through all the pages of the pictures with descriptions of the work. At the end was a materials list.

The final page had material costs and labor. I penciled through those numbers, tripled the labor cost and doubled the materials cost. I added a line for a million dollars in air freight charges with another line for motel rooms and food expenses. There were two world wide hotel chains in Windhoek; Marriott and Hilton.

I figured 36 double occupancy rooms at 300 a day should cover that cost and 100 per day per man for food.

“Cindy, would you make these changes and then run me 4 copies, please?” I asked.

Two round trips with a C5 to carry the men and materials and one 737 flight to bring all the men and their personal hand tools back was what made up those charges.

Bob interrupted the meeting, “The utility was done, the generator is off and being removed as I am speaking. The elevators at both the house and gym are fully functional. All of the doors Marcy wanted are in the basement and will be installed by the end of the week. The building over the concrete box will be finished by then as well.”

“You can go down and look around, just don’t trip over cords and tools.”

It was time to take Robert and Burt to the basement for them to decide if they wanted just the computer equipment down there or their office too.

East Coast had installed a retina scanner so we could control who had access to the basement; for now us six girls and Jason. Any ID card would work the elevator from the gym to the office level. To get to the basement required the eye scan and card or a special override code.