Balance of Power Shifted

by Karl, Victor

  As we came into the main area, the two women were behind the counter putting out some light hors d'oeuvres of broiled goat cheese on a bagel crisps and a combination of portabella mushroom, mozzarella cheese and roasted red pepper with a touch of balsamic vinegar. A rich bottle of Merlot and a nice Chardonnay were already open waiting for customers. “Look what wandered in I announced.” Mary looked up and said “Donny great to see you dear.” Fiona was looking at me for introductions so I said, “Donny, this is Ms. Paschel. Fiona this is Donald.” Fiona came around the counter and shook hands with Don saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person. Mike has said good things about you and I can’t wait to sit down later with you.” “Pleasure is all mine and I have to say working for Efficio would be like landing a job with the New York Yankees, so I hope I can acquit myself well.“ Don said this with the right touch of humility and excitement.

  Dinner was easy conversation but did delve into business on occasions, which I was guilty of to allow Don to absorb the fact that Efficio was no ordinary company and security would be paramount in all areas of the company including the areas that we were targeting for Don. You could see his eyes go round and a certain level of awe displayed regarding Fiona’s role when Jeremy and I talked about the helicopter pilot in the Fish Island attack and where he and the copter had gone to.

  Fiona had done a fantastic job on dinner and I made a big fuss saying so, which was echoed by everyone else. The dessert was nothing short of fantastic. Not only was it delicious it looked like it came off the cover of Bon Appetite magazine. After the plates were cleared, which everyone help do, Fiona decided to go downstairs to where it had all started, the first floor lab. Here she would go over the job responsibilities with Don and let him tell her what he could do to make the job a success. Jeremy, Mary and I just sat back in the deep cushions of the big sectional and sipped our drinks. Mary was sipping a little wine, while Jer and I opted for a 20-year old port. Mary let it out of the bag that she and Jeremy were finally going to become grandparents. Sharon, the eldest of their two kids was three months along and was married to a great guy, who was also a Major in the Army and considered a real up and comer. It was sad that they were in Germany for two years. Mary, however, was ready to go wherever to be with her daughter when the time came. I toasted them and you could see real joy in their eyes as they talked proudly about her and the future of being grandparents. This was a side I had never seen from Jeremy before and in a way I could see Fiona and I much like them a long time in the future. I laughed when they compared their son Davis to their daughter who appeared to be at complete ends of the spectrum from his sister, however they were definitely proud parents when they talked about him being on active duty and serving two tours in Afghanistan as part of Special Forces.

  It took about forty-five minute, but eventually Fiona and Don came back upstairs. Mike for once you did good. Mr. Shintone is the man we need. He is a wealth of information and has already made some terrific recommendations. He has also accepted the position and can start in two weeks. We will be collaborating extensively for all our locations not just for the trucking, but all the logistics of the site. He will also get to hire any staff he needs to bring us up to speed and has recommended hiring a Jenny Reynolds from a local trucking firm. He says you know her and could vouch for her. Looking at Donny, I said “Jenny from our sparring club?” “One and the same” he said. We communicate on a regular basis especially if I need some specialty trucks or long-term truck rentals. She ended up marrying that guy Craig, you know the one…” he paused seeing me shake my head no and also because Jeremy also stepped in to help me by congratulating Don on the job and telling him that they would see a lot of each other.

  I thought we had gotten away with it because Fiona did not react. We decided to wrap up the evening and everyone said thanks. Then I put my arm around Fiona and told her what a wonderful dinner it was then gave her a full kiss, you should have seen the look on Donny’s face. It was priceless. Fiona caught this interaction but did not say anything. Five minutes later, we were cleaning up and she gave me the low down on Donny. Apparently, he impressed the crap out of her and she could not wait to tap into his knowledge and have him take a few things off her plate.

  Once we were done, we sat down to catch our breath on the couch. “So” Fiona said, “what was that look Don gave you when you kissed me. “He thinks you’re hot and have a sexy voice” I teased. When he got here, he mentioned he wanted to look good for you since you sounded nice on the phone and then one thing led to another and by the time Jeremy and I were done, you were hot Ms. Paschel. He had no idea you and I were together until I kissed you.” Even though she punched me and called me a jerk, you can see that all women liked attention like that. “By the way Mr. Carter, who is Jenny and why did you and Jeremy go out of the way to distract Don from talking about her?” Damn, I would never be able to put anything past her. He then tried to explain the whole relationship to her. He explained how Jenny had used him to get back at a boyfriend, but Fiona did not offer me any mercy which carried through the rest of the night.

  I took a commercial flight back to Newark and let Fiona take the Clavis jet to fly into the Gulfport-Biloxi airport and drive to Gulf Port Mississippi. Fiona was going to meet with the contractor who had been modifying an old marina and boat storage facility off of Captain James McManus Drive that had essentially been put out of business since 2005 from Hurricane Katrina. This site had better access to I-10 and could easily serve the southwest and southeast and provide a corridor up the middle part of the country. At the last minute, she had found this facility and abandoned the Louisiana project due to tougher transportation issues. She also felt good about bringing in business to this town, which was still in need of some economic stimulus. Distribution wise, it would still be a challenge to serve the middle part of the country including Detroit. Sean and Steve had not yet figured out a way to match the composition of seawater and they were still dependent on drawing water from the sea.

  For Fiona the drive from the airport was calm. It was a beautiful sunny day and the Clavis team had a limo waiting for her at the airport and the same two security pros who had accompanied her and Mike to California. Gulfport was an interesting town. There were many new buildings and bridges and the streets were alive with activity. Fiona who had looked at the pictures of the devastation from Katrina was amazed that such a change could take place. Very impressive she thought. As they turned on to Captain James McManus Drive, she congratulated herself on hiring Dinh Dat Bao a second-generation Vietnamese contractor. Bao knew everyone and was able to help Efficio get all permits in record time. His crew had been together for years and only worked on one large project at a time. Fiona was glad that Mike had agreed to her suggestion to handle additional areas of the company and she was learning more about construction and local governments that she had ever thought possible.

  The car was about a block from the site and it seemed that every worker in the area was on lunch break. There were a row of lunch trucks sporting all kinds of cuisine including dirty water dogs, Tacos and even a Kabob place. Looking at her watch, she saw that it was 12:15 and lunch was definitely in full swing. Pulling into Efficio’s newest production site, past about 15 or so vans and pickups, they parked in a side lot that was paved with crushed oyster shells. As soon as the car pulled to a stop, a man walked out from the shade of the building and met Fiona as she exited the car. “Ms. Paschel it is so very good to see you again” he said and offered her his hand to shake. She warmly shook his hand and was always amazed to see how young he looked. Always smiling, the forty-year-old Bao did not look a day over 30.

  Bao was excited to show Ms. Paschel the work progress from just a few short weeks. First, he escorted her to the Gulf side and showed her where the manmade lagoon that ran between their property and the adjacent one started at. Bao knew that this feature was one that had attracted her to the site. Part of the lagoon ran under Captain James McManus Drive so they passed
by all the workers sitting along a shaded fence as they crossed the road. Boa described how many cubic feet of mud they had dredged from the lagoon to get the depth to about ten feet deep.

  Looking at the entrance, Fiona admired the beauty of yachts and fishing boats riding high on the water with the sun’s rays reflecting heavily as the ripples caught them. “Now let’s go look at the intake port for the pumps,” Bao said. Following him back across the road and back onto the shell parking lot she was mildly distracted by a large white cargo van that pulled right into the warehouse area that Bao had exited upon their arrival. My security detail seemed to focus on the activity and one of the Clavis guards started to head over to the van to check them out. He had taken two steps when two men hurriedly walked out of the building and headed back to the road. Even though it looked like they were trying to stroll casually, they were walking twice as fast as normal. The guard closet to the building must have sensed danger because he quickly turned and yelled get away from the building and stated to run Fiona’s way. Fiona, maybe just a little slow on what was going on, saw the expression on the face of the Clavis security guard coming her way, and was just turning around to see if there was any cover nearby, when a massive explosion ripped through the air. A shock wave picked her and Boa up and tossed them away from the building, bouncing them once off of the shells before depositing them in the lagoon.

  It seemed like it took minutes for her to orient herself and get to the surface and by the time she did, she had already swallowed some salty gulf water. It looked like Armageddon when she surfaced. There was fire and smoke everywhere she looked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bao floating about 10 feet from her. Swimming over to him, she put an arm around him just below his chin and did a sidestroke to an aluminum ladder just a few feet way. As soon as she got to the ladder, she assessed Bao’s injuries. There was a lot of blood, but his only injury seemed to be a large laceration on his forehead. He even opened his eyes as she was checking him out and started to cough up a lot of water. A few feet above me I heard my name behind called and could barely make out the face of both Clavis guards as they called it. “Here we are guys, down here on the ladder.” “Thank God” one of them said and she heard “damn this is just like being back in Iraq.” After a quick discussion, they opted to drag us up from the lagoon onto dry land. Once I got up there, it was even worse than I expected. We had no more production site and most of the vehicles that were parked in the main lot were tossed on their side and in flames.

  While we were sitting by the lagoon, a number of the workers were carefully working around the perimeter. When Bao saw them, he started asked if they knew if anyone had been hurt. Based on all the reports, it looked like there were only minor injuries from flying debris that had peppered the area around the building and a consensus that lunchtime had saved a few lives. A few minutes later, police and rescue crews surrounded the site, and that is when Fiona borrowed one of the guard’s phones and called Mike.

  At almost the same time as the attack in Mississippi but in Pacific Standard Time, Yasser looked over at Murad and said, “There is no way we will be able to get past the guards at the gate and close enough to the buildings. We will have to follow plan B that is to ram the gates, park the van and hope the Allah allows us to get away before the bomb explodes. Yasser looked a little closer at the gates. Their training had them focus on where the two gate doors come together as the weakest point, however this gate was different where it opened by rolling away from the guard house into a cement wall on the other side. Yasser figured that the point closest to the guardhouse would be the weakest and they should be able to blast through it at 50 miles an hour. Accelerating the van onto to road leading to the plant Yasser maintained 25 miles per hour as not to attract attention. He saw one of the two guards look up and then casually down. Great, Yassir figured they must have not looked like a threat, so at that point he floored the vehicle and reached 50 miles per hour just before they hit the gate. Yassir’s last thought, as the van hit the gate and abruptly hit zero from 50 miles per hour was ‘shit, I don’t think that worked.

  The centrifugal force launched him through the windshield and he hit the panels of the gate so hard that his head turned into bright pink pulp due to forcibly being wedged through a six in gap in the gate panel. The crude, but potentially deadly bomb made of diesel fuel and nitrates exploded on impact, but due to the force of the crash and based on the same physics that acted upon Yassir’s head the materials for the bomb were separated and it ended being more of a dud. Murad had put his seatbelt on, but the crash had caused the 50-gallon barrels of diesel fuel to break loose and crushed his entire seat forward leaving him a little more than a stain on the dashboard.

  The Clavis guard closest to the gate had looked up at the last second to the roaring sound of a V8 motor and a white van hurtling towards where he was standing. Throwing himself backwards and yelling for his partner to hit the deck is what saved their lives as the whole building shook and alarms sounded all around them. Standing up he surveyed the carnage and realized what had happened. After thanking God, he also thanked the Clavis engineers that had designed this facility. Obviously, and not known by the attackers, the gates and the gate pins where made of titanium. As the gate closed, titanium posts push back up into the gate and as it closes at the guardhouse side, the same pins come in horizontally and lock in place. There is nothing short of a tank that could get past that gate when it closed fully.

  The guardhouse was a beauty of technology and built to withstand a direct mortar round as well as 50 caliber bullets, which is probably why they were still alive. Clavis had taken all their experience around the globe at protecting embassies and high value targets and had incorporated it into the security on this site. Just then, the guard house phone rang which he answered and began explaining what had happened to the supervising guard located inside the plant. A few minutes later the supervisor was calling the Efficio headquarters to report directly to Ty.

  The attacks on the production plants became a trifecta when, at the New Gretna plant, a white van idled at the security gate for the facility. A guard was talking to the driver who handed him a manifest for a delivery from a machine and tool shop, which matched the logo on the side of the van. The guard had just told the driver and his companion that he had to search all vehicles before they entered the plant. The driver caught the eye of his companion and as the guard moved to the back of the van to open the rear door, the passenger who had slipped out his door met at the rear. The guard was mildly surprised but then was shocked as the stranger pulled a gun and pointed it at his head. The stranger in a slightly accented voice said “you will tell your partner that everything is alright and to open the gate.” The guard positioned himself at the rear of the van so that the gunman was shielded from view as he called out “Toby, please open the gate for these guys, everything meets our ‘checklist’. Toby hearing their danger word ‘checklist’ immediately hit the alarm button alerting the guards inside the plant that there was a problem.

  The driver saw a change in posture of the inside guard and figured they knew something was suspicious. Arming the bomb, he exited the vehicle and as he walked past the rear of the van, he shot the guard in the chest, and yelled to his partner, “They are on to us” and took off at a run down the road. The guard inside saw all this and was thinking how screwed were they when the bomb detonated. Now this bomb was of the same design as the California one, but had not been jarred ineffective by the massive forces invoked when the other van slammed up against the gate. It left a 25-foot wide 10-foot deep crater and evaporated the guardhouse. The shock wave of the bomb had enough force to damage the front walls of the plant that were a 100 yards away and took out any glass in the vicinity. The supervising guard had been closely monitoring the events at the guard shack since the alarm was sounded and gasped out load when the van detonated and uttered, “May God rest their souls” knowing two of his men had just perished.

  Mike had a relaxing fli
ght home and landed at 2:30 PM at Newark Airport. It was his custom as well as everyone else on the plane that as soon as the wheels touched down the cell phones came on. It took a minute or two for the iPhone to turn on and sync up with the cellular signal and then another minute for voicemail, emails and text messages to start rolling in and roll in they did. Mike new something was wrong as soon as the messages started floating in. The first message was from Fiona saying she had landed and to have a good flight and the second was also from Fiona and Mike’s blood went cold through his veins as he heard her short summary of what happened and that she and everyone were fine. Feeling relieved and mad at the same time he listened to the third message that was from Ty. He was listening to Ty’s message a second time and was so distracted that he walked right into a couple of flight attendants walking towards the baggage claim and ground transportation area. Clearing his head, he tried to make sense of what this all meant. To him it was clear that someone wanted to stop or slow Efficio’s ability to roll out Electricus for whatever their purpose was. Mississippi is out of commission, but California and New Gretna should not skip a beat. The security measures Clavis had designed and implemented had really made a difference, however he was sick to his stomach thinking about the two dead guards. When was it all going to stop he thought to himself?

  Coming out of the secured airport area, he saw Ty waiting for him. He escorted Mike to the car saying virtually nothing until inside the vehicle. As he started to fill Mike in on additional details, Mike was dialing Fiona. Raising his hand to pause Ty, he listened to two rings before Fiona answered. As soon as he heard her voice his own voice started to crack as he asked “ are you all right, where are you now and…”at that point Fiona took over the conversation and slowly but firmly said “I’m fine Mike, except for few scrapes I’m in good shape and everyone else here is in good shape also. I have things under control here and I’ve already given Bao permission to start rebuilding this site as soon as we can get permission to do so. I plan to be home by 9 PM tonight so I’ll see you then.” Mike finally got a word in an said, “great honey take care of yourself and come on home but you should know that your site was only one of three hit today, and two Clavis lives were lost at New Gretna.” There was a shocked gasp on the other end and Mike said softly “it could have been worse babe. I will fill you in when you get home to the base tonight. Love you.” “Love you too” she responded and hung up.