Chapter 553

The night was quiet followed by breakfast as a low-keyed affair. I was in my office at 0730; it felt good not to have to make the run to Washington. It allowed me to do something that I had only been able to do sporadically for the last six months.

I started down the list of embassies, video conferencing with our security team leaders at each and doing it by the time zones. I wanted to speak to the day shift supervisor. All of them were startled to find me on their VCATS screen instead of Vicky.

Vicky had kept transcribed notes of all conversations in the files for each location and if I still had questions, I could pull up the video of the original conversation from the storage servers.

In past conversations I had planned to visit embassies that Vicky or I had concerns about; then came the task force and - with an exception or two - those visits were put off. Now it could be put back on the burner, and would be as soon as Lorrie and Mindy had their babies.

I had picked out the first group of countries I was going to visit by noontime; Portugal, Spain, Israel, Egypt and Morocco. I Intended to leave on a Sunday and be back the following Sunday.

Portugal and Spain were first because they were on the outbound leg of the flight and we would need refueling. The other reason was that my security teams there had been making comments about the number of visitors who seemed to get special access, with an unusual number getting visas or seeking asylum at those embassies.

The security supervisor at each embassy was encouraged to report any concerns to Vicky using the little black book code. It was a way that we were in the loop for potential problems. They were concerned enough that they put it into writing and I was going to follow up.

Israel was on the list for several reasons, mainly because I had promised Ben-David that when I was in the area I would make a visit to the Mossad training center. The thing that I really wanted to see firsthand was the anti-terrorist training they did.

The Mossad ladies we had hired worked with me every chance they could get. It took a while; in the beginning I could only fight with them a few minutes before they bested me. Now I could hold my own for a lot longer, but I soon was exhausted and they could beat me.

It took me a while to figure out why; they never stopped training! When they weren’t doing assignments they were training like tomorrow was the day of the battle of the century and it showed on the mats and firing range. They had unbelievable stamina under pressure.

Andy had made Ziva one of the snipers after just one day on the range, shortly after we hired them. With the Barrett M99 50 cal sniper rifle she could put rounds in a Mason jar ring at a twelve hundred yards one right after another.

Me, I liked the M40 sniper rifle in the corps but at JBG we used the Remington match grade 308. Most of the guys who carried the title of sniper were good to a thousand yards with it.

Ben also said there was a group of his friends that he would like me to meet; Ben promised me they would give me an a tour of the front lines where terrorist attacks were happening almost daily; that tour included some of the most historically significant places in the world since the beginning of history.

Egypt was listed because the security there had the same complaints as Portugal and finally Morocco, because none of the executives other than Jason had been there since I was there after the attack that killed two of my employees; a follow up visit was way past due. The plan was to go the week after Lorrie delivered.

After a lunch with the girls it was time to see Robert. Tiam had been busy over the weekend and this morning posting over a dozen times. None of them were directed towards Jaed.