Breaking News

163.

Davis and Saunders get their audience with two of Adleman's lieutenants . Drysdale meets with the Vegas bureau chief of the NAACP and paints some broad strokes about mercenary intelligence assistance. TOM has his conversation with the Senator dangling the political carrot of a party flip AND the allure of inflicting more pain and hardship on the upstart, ungrateful and uncouth escapees from his grandaddy’s plantation. TOM actually has him on record as saying that as a Southern conservative republican his mission statement consists of two primary goals, one, to enrich his constituency, and two, to make life as difficult as possible for the black community. 

Julie is keeping a detailed tabulation on the three phases of Operation Firecracker, providing daily updates. Should we spot a trend or feel that we need to leverage one of the marks for quicker action or, as is the case with the warden, to keep him from letting any kittens out of the sack, this accounting affords the blueprint and historical record. With this many balls in the air, it is sometimes easy to get tunnel vision. 

My impersonation of a retired Marine colonel, currently heading a top-secret drone testing program has the warden a bit flustered. Not so much because he was kept out of the loop, but more because his advice, input and experience in running a maximum security detention facility with a spotless record, zero escapes, should have been enough, he feels, to secure him a seat at the planning table. 

The Queen of Hearts is busy working on the Wall St. hacking device and negotiating with one of the prison guards for his ‘services’. They currently are at stale-mate as he insists on one million cash and Her Majesty is holding firm at seven large. 

With all these gears, cogs and pistons pumping at top end, it is a minor miracle that something, somewhere hasn’t acted as the screwdriver in the works. Both Julie and Harlan, working from the safe and secure Capitol Hill office, act as quality control evaluators, watching every move and documenting the layered nuance in real time. At the end of the day, as they swap shifts to cover the twenty-four hour clock, often the updates feel like newscasts, they anchoring the events, always as ‘Breaking News.’

The momentum we have created is carrying us further and further downstream. The wheels in motion, the flow of the current, the nuts and bolts of the plan itself have come to life, a continually evolving entity. 

And for right now, the evening news on Operation Firecracker is all good.