text:
On Digital Badging, Edge Work, 12 Lessons After 12 Years
Barry Joseph
Category: Edtech
For two years I have worked with my team at Global Kids to highlight some of the best online resources that inspire digital media and learning projects. It has been some time, however, since I made a new post. I am excited to share the reason why: I am now working at the American Museum of Natural History as the new Associate Director For Digital Learning, focusing on on-site, youth-oriented programs.
I look forward to shifting the focus of these posts to highlight the most inspiring online resources I can find about digital media and museum-based learning. Before we make that transition, however, I would like to look back at Global Kids and highlight some remarkable resources Global Kids has released onto the Interweb in recent months.
In the summer of 2012, Global Kids, Inc. launched a beta test of its planned digital badging system. The test was designed to provide feedback on the system to support a fall launch throughout the entire organization. This Global Kids' Badging System is built on top of Learning Times' BadgeStack and is part of a broader badging network within the Hive NYC Learning Network (funded by the MacArthur Foundation). This report, produced at the end of the summer, highlights some of the initial findings (and a shorter version was prepared for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center). What they learned, in summary, was that the badges played a positive role in the development of their summer programs, engaged the youth, and offered them different learning pathways. It provided them with valuable opportunities to name, reflect upon, value, and share what they learned in the program; offered Global Kids unusually rich examples of youth's perceived learning; created a new and useful assessment relationship amongst the organization and the youth served; and collected measurable data about youth's learning outcomes. That's pretty amazing for a beta test run over just four weeks. A great context for this work is provided by the group at Indiana University led by Dan Hickey, analyzing the grantees within the MacArthur Foundation's Badges for Lifelong Learning competition, in posts like this one.
EDGE WORK
A second report released in September focused on the results of their two year-long series of collaborations, which aimed to expand the capacity of civic and cultural institutions to use digital media as innovative educational platforms that engage youth in learning and promote youth civic participation. Also funded by the MacArthur Foundation, The Edge Project was interested in these institutions bringing cutting-edge digital media into their youth educational programs. The project was equally interested in where this type of programming can be a disruptive force challenging the educators and/or the institutional cultural to work on the edge of their comfort level. At the end of the day, they wanted to better understand the following question: How do institutions find their balance working on this edge? Some of the projects hit their marks ("It was incredibly successful"), while others, frankly, failed to live up to initial hopes ("I'd say we barely met our original expectations"). All, however, offered valuable learning to the participating institutions regarding working on their edge points of digital media and learning. The report offers a high level overview of the concept, the partners involved (four libraries, four museums, two youth jails, and one after school provider), and three case studies, or worked examples, of particular edge projects. One of these worked examples also just came out as a chapter in the book The Participatory Cultures Handbook (edited by Aaron Delwiche, Jennifer Jacobs Henderson) in a chapter I co-wrote with Kelly Czarnecki entitled "Leveraging Digital Media to Create a Participatory Learning Culture Among Incarcerated Youth."
Connected Learning has been discussed in a number of places, but I think the best overview has been in a recent piece in Education Week, which did a fantastic overview of what these ideas about learning in the 21st Century look like in practice. And of their main examples was the work done this past summer at Global Kids, in which youth used a geolocative gaming tool to engage their peers in NYC and around the country in a combo scavenger hunt/race addressing issues within the current Race to the White House. As a follow-up to the article, I then did a webinar with Michael Levine, executive director, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop, to address "Teaching 21st-Century Skills Outside the School Day," which is now a video that can be seen at your leisure.
Last but not least, I posted a few final reflections as I wrapped up my work at Global Kids. One was an opinion piece in the Forward about the relationship between adults and learners in a connected learning environment, "Digital Learners Can't Do It On Own," (beware the myth of the self-directed learner!) and another was my "12 Lessons After 12 Years" post summarizing my key take-aways as I prepared my transition, one for each year.
They are, in summary:
1. Youth Care.
2. Youth Voices Matter.
3. New Literacy Frameworks Are the Key To The Future.
4. The Fast Track To New Literacies Is Youth Digital Media Production.
5. Avoid The Myth Of The Self-Directed Learner.
6. Educators Are Still Trying To Figure This All Out.
7. Find Your Edge Point Then Work It.
8. Make Connections: Person to Person.
9. Make Connections: Institution to Institution.
10. Make Connections: A Network of Collaborators.
11.The Workplace Can Be A Praxis For The Change We Want To See.
12. Youth Come First.
Banner image credit: Global Kids
http://www.flickr.com/photos/holymeatballs/7644141192/sizes/z/in/photostream/
September 28, 2020 Introducing MathTalk: Finding Unique Ways to Connect Homes, Schools, and Communities
May 13, 2019 The Future of Childhood Salon on Immersive Media and Child Development
August 20, 2018 The Marginal Syllabus: Supporting Educators' Connected Learning


These stunning organic spaces are nestled away in the midst of the jungle which surrounds them.
They have been carefully crafted to merge gently into their natural environment. Each Deluxe Garden View Cottage has a fully equipped semi-open bathroom and possesses a gorgeous terrace lounge embellished with perfect lighting and comfortable Deluxe-Thai lounge seating to accommodate you after a day of exploring and venturing around our beautiful island.
The naturally designed walking paths lead you into the delightful sounds and scenes of an untarnished nature.


text:
Q: Prevent JavaScript Number function from rounding big numbers I have a string value ' 9223372036854775807 '. I use Number() function in JavaScript to convert it to a number value using the following Code
var numericVal = Number(' 9223372036854775807 ');

when i check the value in numericVal, it is 9223372036854776000. How can I get the equivalent value for the string representing the Number?

A: JavaScript numbers are Double Precision Floats; the largest integer that can be precisely stored is 2^53 (9007199254740992).
If you actually need it in a number you have some fun math ahead of you, or you can use a library such as big.js

A: You can compare strings that represent big integers as strings-
a longer string of integers is larger, otherwise compare characters in order.
You can sort an array of integer-strings
function compareBigInts(a, b){
    if(a.length== b.length) return a>b? 1:-1;
    return a.length-b.length;
}

or return the larger of two strings of digits
function getBiggestBigInts(a, b){
    if(a.length== b.length) return a>b? a:b;
    return a.length>b.length? a: b;
}

//examples
var n1= '9223372036854775807', n2= '9223372056854775807',
n3= '9223',n2= '9223372056854775817',n4= '9223372056854775';

getBiggestBigInts(n1,n2);>> 9223372056854775807
[n1,n2,n3,n4].sort(compareBigInts);>>
9223
9223372056854775
9223372036854775807
9223372056854775817

Just make sure you are comparing strings.
(If you use '-' minus values,a 'bigger' string value is less)
By the way,you  sort big decimals by splitting on the decimal point and comparing the integer parts. If the integers are the same length and are equal, look at the the decimal parts.

A: It's seems that your number is greater than 2^53, biggest integer number in javascript which can be represented without loosing precision (see this question).
If you really need to operate big numbers, you could use special libraries like this one: https://github.com/peterolson/BigInteger.js

A: The problem why Number('9223372036854775807') produce 9223372036854776000 is that JavaScript have limited precision (up to 16 digits) and you need 19 digits.
One of solutions might be using of java script big-numbers library:
// Initializa library:
var bn = new BigNumbers();

// Create numbers to compare:
var baseNumber = bn.of('9223372036854775807');
var toCompareNumber = bn.of('9223372036854775808');

// Compare:
if(baseNumber.lessOrEquals(toCompareNumber)) {
    console.log('This should be logged');
} else {
    console.log('This should NOT be logged');
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


CareRef is the first cloud based application created by Christiana Care Health System to serve as a central resource for accessing the latest evidence-based guidelines and pathway of care for clinicians providing direct care to patients.
CareRef will allow for effective communication of clinical pathway guidelines to Christiana Care clinical staff in the most efficient and secure way and will serve as the single source of truth for physicians with governance over how the content is managed and updated over time.
The application is available on both your desktop computer and iOS device.
How can I access CareRef?
Anyone with an 801# can access CareRef by logging in with either their institutional id (801#) or Christiana Care e-mail and password.
The desktop version can be accessed through this link. You will be required to use multifactor authentication. Set up will take 10 minutes or less. If you need assistance with multifactor authentication, please contact the Customer Service Center.
CareRef can also be found in the iTunes App Store. From your iPhone (iOS 7.2 or above), search the App Store with the keyword "CareRef".
From the Christiana Care Intranet, a direct link to the desktop version can be found on the right hand side of the page under "applications". More information can also be found under the Education intranet site.


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Gov. Larry Hogan ended months of speculation and wrote Baltimore City off the map when he killed the Red Line commuter rail project earlier this month. But that's not the end of our efforts to read the transit tea leaves. Another period of wondering seems in our future after Hogan told WBAL radio's C4 show that his administration is working on alternatives to the Red Line.
On the show, Hogan claimed he hasn't heard any ideas since shelving the $3 billion east-west commuter rail from Woodlawn to Bayview.
"So far we've heard a lot of complaints about 'We didn't get what we wanted' . . . but we haven't heard a single suggestion or an alternative. . . Our department is working on it," he said, according to the Washington Post.
Maybe Hogan is referring to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's assertion that the city had no Plan B for the Red Line. Being faithful readers of transit news, we've seen a couple of alternatives, so let's quickly review.
For one, Hogan's lieutenant governor, Boyd Rutherford, suggested that rapid bus service is "the way to go" in Baltimore, according to a Baltimore Business Journal report. Rutherford said he liked the idea because bus routes can be reconfigured.
The Right Rail Coalition has also offered a commuter plan that's $1 billion and one downtown tunnel cheaper than the Red Line proposal that Hogan nixed. Back in the fall, state reps said Hogan's people have seen the plan.
Seems like there are a few starting points.
MTA is a state agency. Its not the cities job to come up with alternatives. Eight alternatives were explored as part of the nearly $300 million spent as part of the federal vetting process. Red Herring plain and simple.
So there has been a 12 year, $288M process to investigate, analyse, and rank 12 separate alternatives from doing nothing, to making efficiency "tweaks" to existing bus service, to SIX different Bus Rapid Transit options (are you listening Boyd?) and 4 Light Rail options.
The result was, the most cost effective system while providing the ridership throughput desired was option 4C, the plan we currently have.
Additionally, environmental studies have already been conducted, community buy-in secure and, once the finalization on Federal funding was submitted in 3Q 2015, construction could begin by spring.
The moment to analyse alternatives is at the beginning of the process, not at the end.
Hogan shut down the Red Line website so NO ONE could review these and many other documents related to the project. That way, he could continue to lie to Marylanders.
The Governor must be aware that several alternatives to the Red Line were already explored — and rejected — as part of the original federal vetting process. Those alternatives and their rankings were included in the project's Environmental Impact Statement, which used to be on the Red Line's project website, but that has been taken down.
MTA estimates the cost of the Right Rail Coalition (RRC) Alternative to be up to $1.5 billion more than than RRC's estimate, not including an additional $300 million for a streetcar system to serve Harbor East, Fells Point, Canton, Canton Crossing and Greektown/Highlandtown. MTA estimates the cost of the RRC Alternative to be $2.6 billion to $3.3 billion compared to the RRC cost estimate of $1.755 billion.
• No validated travel demand forecast of the RRC is available, but the population within a 1/4-mile radius of the RRC stations is 49% less than the population within the radius of the Red Line stations so MTA expects ridership to be significantly less than the Red Line.
• Because the RRC Alternative differs substantially from the Red Line alignment several years of engineering would be required to achieve the same level of development as the Red Line. Consequently, the project would forego the current federal funding recommendation of $900 million and would be subject to annual cost escalation of three percent, or $54 million per year.
We need a network, not a line!
For a fraction of the cost we could overhaul the entire regional bus system including Rapid Bus corridors, regular on-time bus service, and a refillable fare system. This is what cities across the US and the Word generally provide to their citizens. Why not us?
No one is looking at a system, it is all special interest transportation. Harbor East, Fells Point, Canton… can we be that oblivious the the rest of the city including the 300,000 who don't have transit choices and for whom an upgrade might make a life altering difference? The current disparity between the wonderful light rail and circulator serving Central Baltimore and the rest of the MTA system is second only to the educational disparities between central Baltimore and the rest of the city.


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text:
What is Click-to-Run (C2R)?
In my previous two posts, I described the Microsoft Installer (MSI), as well as Application Virtualization (App-V), and now it's time to talk about Click-to-Run (C2R). Click-to-Run is actually an installer stub, streamer, and command line technology, based on Microsoft's App-V technology, and is currently used for the delivery of Microsoft Office ProPlus products. Traditionally, up to Office 2010, Microsoft shipped Office as a solution based on the Microsoft Installer technology. While most people remember installing Office via the included 'setup.exe' on a disc, this actually executed MSIs in the background in order to install the software. As of Office 2010, Microsoft has been supporting two different versions of Office, that leveraged two completely different installer technologies: MSI and C2R.
The first C2R solution was used for Office 2010 Home and Student, Office 2010 Home and Business, and the short-lived Office 2010 Starter editions. What makes C2R so special? Microsoft describes it as follows:
Office Click-to-Run products use streaming technology that is similar to watching a video on the web. When you watch a video on the web, you can watch the first part of the video before the whole file is downloaded. Similarly, you can start using Office 2010 before the whole suite or product is downloaded
This is only one of the many benefits of the Office C2R solution however, and while being able to "start fast" is incredible, being able to "single patch" or "version control" is probably even more impressive. Along with the C2R versions of Office, Microsoft also did away with the complexity of the Office Customization Tool (OCT), and replaced it with a client-side OfficeC2RClientexecutable, as well as a new, streamlined, and very cut-down, Office Deployment Tool (ODT). Now, admins can quickly generate an XML file, download a 2.5MB installer file, and then install Office on a remote computer utilising Microsoft's Content Distribution Network (CDN): No local download or customisation required.
What are the install and version control benefits of C2R? Whether using the client-side C2R client via a script, or using the ODT executable and XML, administrators actually have full control over the source of the installation, and the version that is actually installed. For example, if the latest Monthly Channel release is v16.0.9001.2171 (also know as 1801) introduced an issue in your environment, you are able to roll-back to a previous build using deltas, without needing to uninstall the software and install from a local source with the old build. Below is an example of a C2R command-line that can be used to upgrade or downgrade the current Office installation:
"%Program Files%\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\ClicktoRun\\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user updatepromptuser=false forceappshutdown=true displaylevel=true updatetoversion=16.0.xxxx.xxxx
Using my example above, let's say that you need to revert installation to the 1712 build to work around an issue, well in that case you would use the above command, and set the 'updateToVersion' parameter to '16.0.8827.2179'. This command will close all existing applications, and display a nice update dialog to the user, while rolling back to the 1712 version. Importantly, as you may have picked up already, the 'updateToVersion' parameter will modify change the version of the existing install to the specified build number, whether it is in upgrade, downgrade, and will actually install that build if no previous version of Office is installed. pretty powerful stuff.
What about the patching benefits of C2R? This is where things get even more incredible: C2R versions of Office are able to identify the version of each included binary, and are able to download only the deltas of any changes, in order to transform the binary into the updated or downgraded version. What this means for my previous example, is that downgrade I described might only be 300MB worth of changes, so the installation will only need to acquire 300MB from the CDN or local network share, and not the full 1.5GB Office installation. Taking this to the next level, patches are always one hop, and one delta download, away from being at the version defined (or latest version). Unlike the Office Standard and Office Professional versions that use MSI technologies, C2R versions of Office do not require multiple, large, slow-to-install, Windows Updates in order to patch. When the next build of Office ProPlus rolls around, each client will download what it needs to in order to reach that new build, using only the bits needed to get there; and this saves a lot of time, and a lot of storage space.
One of the other benefits of C2R is the cadence of feature updates.Microsoft internally treats Office Standard and Professional (the MSI installs) as long term servicing branches (LTSB), and do not push out new features to these installations. If you currently have an MSI-based installation of Office 2016 Professional installed, you will be receiving regular security updates and patches for the existing products, but you will not be seeing new features such as Microsoft Dictate in Outlook and Word, or the screen recording and video export functionality in PowerPoint. In fact, even if you were to uninstall your current version of Office (MSI), download the latest installer from Microsoft, and install… you'd still not see these amazing new features: For that, you need to switch to office ProPlus instead. Importantly, Microsoft's recent announcement of Office 2019 suggests that C2R is the only future, and there will not be an MSI version of the product, so you might want to investigate the C2R way if you haven't already.
But wait, there's more! Along with the C2R builds of Office, and the Content Delivery network that Microsoft uses to push new builds to customers, Microsoft also supports multiple update channels to manage how and when your site's Office updates occur.
As of writing, Microsoft supports four (4) Channels, and these are:
Monthly Channel (Targeted) – This was previously known as "First Release for Current Channel", this update channel provides an early look at the upcoming Monthly Channel release. It is a supported update channel, and usually is available at least one week ahead of time when it's a Monthly Channel release that contains new features.
Monthly Channel – Formerly known as "Current Channel", this configuration provides users with the monthly updates, and the newest features of Office, as soon as they're available.
Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) – Formerly known as "First Release for Deferred Channel", this configuration provides pilot users and application compatibility testers the opportunity to test the next Semi-Annual Channel before it is deployed to production users in the "Semi-Annual Channel". Updates for this Channel are released every six months, in March and September.
Semi-Annual Channel – Formerly known as "Deferred Channel", this configuration provides users with new features of Office only a few times a year, and is designed for environments that require more stability of features. Updates for this Channel are released every six months, in January and July.
IMPORTANT: Microsoft has jumped between calling these "Channels" and "Branches", and has even changed the required configuration XML parameter names several times. So even if you are already running C2R versions of Office, make sure you download the latest ODT executable, and update your XML files to the new parameters.
So C2R downloads a Office for each computer when installed? Yes, and no. I decided to include this last question because it is something that I see pop up all the time. While, by default, Office 2016 (C2R) installations willdownload the Office product from the Internet, for each computer you target with the installer, This can all be changed using the ODT and configuration XML. As Microsoft says: "Some administrators will need more control beyond the default Click-to-Run installation behavior in order to work best in their environments", so they provide a great deal of functionality within the XML. With a few small configuration tweaks via the ODT and XML, an administrator can:
Configure which products and languages to install, or what applications/features to remove. moreover, you can specify an exact version to install, even if the installation will be Internet-based via Microsoft CDN.
Download an Office installation to a network share location, so that this can be used as the installation and/or upgrade source for all your computers (saving a lot of time and bandwidth).
Configure an Office installation to use a network share as the installation source instead of the Internet, even if already installed via Microsoft's CDN connection.
Configure whether Office will automatically update or not, and whether it will update from the Internet or a local network share.
Configure an installation to suppress the user interface (run silently), an even suppress licensing prompts by configuring the installation as a Shared Computer Licensing configuration.
To customise Office, you need to download the latest version of the Office Deployment Tool, and create a configuration XML file. Below is an example of an XML that you could use:
<Add SourcePath="\\server\share" OfficeClientEdition="32" Channel="Monthly">
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail" >
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
<Product ID="VisioProRetail" >
</Add>
This configuration XML will:
Install the 32-bit version of Office and Visio, from the latest "Monthly Channel"
Will include the "English (United States)" language (recommended)
Will instruct clients to install from a local source instead of the Internet (SourcePath).
Extending this:
If you would like a specific build to be installed, you can add a "Version" option to the "<Add>" node, like follows: Version="16.0.8201.2193″.
If you would like to include another language, you can add a "Language" option to the "<Product>" node, like follows: <Language ID="ja-jp" />
If you would like to exclude/remove a component of Office, you can add an "ExcludeApp" option within the "Product" node , like follows: <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
And if you'd like your updates to come from a specific URL or internal share, you can add an "UpgradePath" option to end of the XML.
If you'd like some help creating your configuration XML, there's a fantastic online generator you can use. Access it here: https://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html
Once you have configured your XML as desired, you can initiate a download of the configured bits by running the ODT executable with the "/download" command, and your configuration XML, as follows:
setup.exe /download downloadconfig.xml
To install your configuration, you can then run the ODT command with the "/configure" option, and this will install as configured:
setup.exe /configure installconfig.xml
Using this arrangement, you can create multiple XMLs for all your needs, and you are only a single command-line away from installing Office, configuring Office, or removing Office.
If you're insterested in what the latest Office ProPlus updates and versions are for each release channel, you can see these here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Version-and-build-numbers-of-update-channel-releases-ae942449-1fca-4484-898b-a933ea23def7
For an overview of the current Office Channels, read more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-update-channels-for-office-365-proplus
You can also read the documentation for the Office Deployment Tool here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-the-office-2016-deployment-tool
Published by Murray Webber
Technology Enthusiast & Critic, Solution Architect for K-12 (Education), specialising in Microsoft 365, Azure AD, Identity, Active Directory, ConfigMgr, Software Packaging, PowerShell, Education Technology, and more. Musician/Producer, Sci-Fi fan, and all-round geek. View all posts by Murray Webber
Microsoft, Office ProPlus, Software, Tech Talk
What is Microsoft Application Virtualization (APP-V)?
Use Surface MSIs to deploy driver and firmware updates

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Als Weinschwärmer werden verschiedene Schmetterlinge aus der Familie der Schwärmer (Sphingidae) bezeichnet:
 Kleiner Weinschwärmer (Deilephila porcellus)
 Mittlerer Weinschwärmer (Deilephila elpenor)
 Großer Weinschwärmer (Hippotion celerio)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Learning Genealogy
Records Directory
Frankford Genealogy (in Sussex County, DE)
USA (1,111,225) > Delaware (2,722) > Sussex County (723) > Frankford (22)
Note: This page primarily lists records kept at the city level. Additional records are listed on the county and state pages.
Frankford Cemetery Records
Bethel Church Cemetery Find a Grave
Bethel Tabernacle Church of God Cemetery Find a Grave
Blackwater Presbyterian Church Cemetery Billion Graves
Carey's Cemetery Find a Grave
Frankford United Methodist Church Cemetery Find a Grave
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Long Cemetery Find a Grave
Long Cemetery Billion Graves
Lynch Family Cemetery Find a Grave
Short Family Cemetery Find a Grave
Wilgus Cemetery Billion Graves
Frankford Census Records
Federal Census of 1940, Frankford, Delaware LDS Genealogy
Frankford Church Records
Records of Frankford M. E. Church, Frankford, Del., 1868-1900 : also Houston and Omar. Family History Library
Records of the Blackwater Presbyterian Church near Frankford, Delaware, 1778-1828 Family History Library
Frankford School Records
Clayton High School yearbook, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968 Classmates
Clayton High School yearbook, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968 (included in US Yearbooks collection) MyHeritage
Indian River High School - Chieftain Yearbook (Frankford, DE), 1956, 1977 E Yearbook
Indian River High School yearbook, 1956, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 (included in US Yearbooks collection) MyHeritage
Indian River High School yearbook, 1956, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995 Classmates
Additions or corrections to this page? We welcome your suggestions through our Contact Us page
Delaware Map
Sussex County shown in red
Using Distances and Travel Time Between Places in Genealogy Research
Solving Brick Walls in Genealogy
Note: Affiliate links are used within the directory on this site and a small contribution goes to the website for some purchases made.
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An asylum seeker has been arrested at an asylum reception centre in Levanger after threatening an employee with a knife.
Police in Trøndelag reported the incident just after 06.00 on Sunday morning.
'We were told at 04.30 that an asylum seeker in their late 20's had behaved threateningly, and held a knife in his hand.
This happened at approximately 02.15 or 02.30, but we were told only a couple of hours later,' said operations manager, Øystein Sagen of Trøndelag police district to NTB news agency.
The police were armed when they moved on Leira reception centre in Levanger, but the case officer said the incident was over when they arrived, and that the arrest occurred without drama.
'He was laying in his room, sleeping, when they arrived, as I understand it, so they went in there and arrested him,' said the operation manager.
The case officer said they don't currently know anything about the reasons for what happened.
Be the first to comment on "Asylum seeker threatens reception centre employee with knife"


text:
HB555 (2021) Detail
Relative to prisoners' voting rights.
HB 555 - FINAL VERSION
HOUSE BILL	555
AN ACT	relative to prisoners' voting rights.
SPONSORS:	Rep. Andrew Bouldin, Hills. 12; Rep. Kenney, Straf. 6; Rep. Nutting-Wong, Hills. 32; Rep. Bouchard, Hills. 11; Rep. Amanda Bouldin, Hills. 12
COMMITTEE:	Election Law
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
This bill amends the absentee voter application form and absentee voting affidavits to make clear that certain persons confined to penal institutions may vote by absentee ballot.
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty One
96:1 Voters and Checklists; Voters Confined in Penal Institutions. Amend RSA 654:2-a, III to read as follows:
III. In completing a voter registration form, as specified in RSA 654:7, or an absentee ballot application, as specified in RSA 657:4, I, a person confined in a penal institution shall list the address of his or her domicile in the address section, and the address of the penal institution in the mailing address section.
96:2 Absentee Voting; Forms. Amend RSA 657:4, I to read as follows:
I. Prior to any state election, the secretary of state shall prepare the appropriate application forms for absentee ballots worded in substantially the following form. The secretary of state shall insert the names of all parties qualified as set forth in RSA 652:11 in the list of parties on the application form. The secretary of state shall prepare the application forms in such quantity as he or she deems necessary:
Absence (Excluding Absence Due to Residence Outside the United States), Religious Observance, and Disability:
I hereby declare that (check one):
_____ I am a duly qualified voter who is currently registered to vote in this town/ward.
_____ I am absent from the town/city where I am domiciled and will be until after the next election, or I am unable to register in person due to a disability, and request that the forms necessary for absentee voter registration be sent to me with the absentee ballot.
I will be entitled to vote by absentee ballot because (check one):
_____ I plan to be absent on the day of the election from the city, town, or unincorporated place where I am domiciled.
_____ I am confined in a penal institution for a misdemeanor or while awaiting trial.
_____ I am requesting a ballot for the presidential primary election and I may be absent on the day of the election from the city, town, or unincorporated place where I am domiciled, but the date of the election has not been announced. I understand that I may only make such a request 14 days after the filing period for candidates has closed, and that if I will not be absent on the date of the election I am not eligible to vote by absentee ballot.
_____ I cannot appear in public on election day because of observance of a religious commitment.
_____ I am unable to vote in person due to a disability.
_____ I cannot appear at any time during polling hours at my polling place because of an employment obligation. For the purposes of this application, the term "employment" shall include the care of children and infirm adults, with or without compensation.
For use only on the Monday immediately prior to the election: I cannot appear at my polling place on election day because the National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning, blizzard warning, or ice storm warning for election day applicable to my city, town, or unincorporated place and either (check one):
______ I am elderly or infirm or I have a physical disability, and would otherwise vote in person but I have concerns for my safety traveling in the storm.
______ I anticipate that school, child care, or adult care will be canceled, and would otherwise vote in person but will need to care for children or infirm adults.
Any person who votes or attempts to vote using an absentee ballot who is not entitled to vote by absentee ballot shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. RSA 657:24.
I am requesting an official absentee ballot for the following election (check one):
_____ Presidential Primary to be held on _________________
(The date may appear as blank when the date is not known.)
_____ State Primary to be held on ________________
_____ General Election
For primary elections, I am a member of or I am now declaring my affiliation with the (check one):
_____ Republican Party
_____ Democratic Party
_____ (name of any party determined by the secretary of state to have achieved official status under RSA 652:11)
and am requesting a ballot for that party's primary.
Please print:
Applicant's Name:
(Last) (First) (Middle) (Sr., Jr., II., III)
Applicant's Voting Domicile (home address):
(Street Number) (Street Name) (Apt/Unit) (City/Town) (Ward) (Zip Code)
Mail the ballot to me at this address (if different than the home address):
Applicant's Phone Number : _________________________
Applicant's Email Address : __________________________
Applicant's Signature: __________________
Date Signed: ___________________________
I attest that I assisted the applicant in executing this form because he or she has a disability.
Signature ____________________ Print Name ____________________
If your absentee ballot application or affidavit envelope has the printed name and signature of a person who assisted you with voting, your signature will not be compared to your signature on the absentee ballot affidavit to verify your identity. Otherwise, if your signatures do not appear to be made by the same person, your absentee ballot may not be counted.
The applicant must sign this form to receive an absentee ballot. Any person who witnesses and assists a voter with a disability in executing this form shall print and sign his or her name in the space provided on the application form. The moderator will not compare the voter's signature on the application with the signature on the absentee ballot affidavit when a person assisting the voter has signed the statement on the absentee ballot application or affidavit envelope that assistance was provided.
96:3 Absentee Voting; Absentee Ballots and Related Materials; Absence, Religious Observance, and Disability. Amend RSA 657:7, II(a) to read as follows:
(a) Absence from City or Town. A person voting by absentee ballot because of absence from the city or town in which he or she is entitled to vote shall fill out and sign the following certificate:
I do hereby certify under the penalties for voting fraud set forth below that I am a voter in the city or town of _______________, New Hampshire, in ward __________; that I will be unable to appear at any time during polling hours at my polling place because I will be working on election day, or I am voting on the Monday immediately prior to the election, the National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning, blizzard warning, or ice storm warning, and I am elderly or infirm, have a physical disability, or have to care for children or infirm adults, or I am confined to a penal institution for a misdemeanor or while awaiting trial, or I will be otherwise absent on election day from said city or town and will be unable to vote in person; that I have carefully read (or had read to me because I am blind) the instructions forwarded to me with the ballot herein enclosed, and that I personally marked the ballot within and sealed it in this envelope (or had assistance in marking the ballot and sealing it in this envelope because I am blind). For the purposes of this certification, the term "working" shall include the care of children and infirm adults, with or without compensation.
(Signature) ____________________
In accordance with RSA 659:34, the penalty for knowingly or purposefully providing false information when registering to vote or voting is a class A misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of imprisonment not to exceed one year and a fine not to exceed $2,000. Fraudulently registering to vote or voting is subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $5,000.
96:4 Effective Date. This act shall take effect 60 days after its passage.
Approved: July 01, 2021
HB555 at GenCourtMobile
HB555 Discussion
Feb. 17, 2021 House Hearing
March 5, 2021 House Exec Session
March 10, 2021 House Exec Session
House Floor Vote
May 10, 2021 Senate Hearing
May 27, 2021 Senate Floor Vote
HB555 Revision: 32790 Date: July 1, 2021, 2:10 p.m.
HB555 Revision: 32504 Date: May 20, 2021, 10:26 a.m.
HB555 Revision: 31885 Date: Jan. 12, 2021, 1:06 p.m.
July 1, 2021: Signed by Governor Sununu 07/01/2021; Chapter 96; Eff: 08/30/2021
June 25, 2021: Enrolled (in recess of) 06/24/2021
June 24, 2021: Enrolled Adopted, VV, (In recess 06/24/2021); SJ 20
May 20, 2021: Ought to Pass: MA, VV; OT3rdg; 05/20/2021; SJ 16
May 20, 2021: Committee Report: Ought to Pass, 05/20/2021; Vote 5-0; CC; SC 24A
May 27, 2021: Committee Report: Ought to Pass, 05/27/2021; Vote 5-0; CC; SC 25
May 4, 2021: Remote Hearing: 05/10/2021, 09:00 am; Links to join the hearing can be found in the Senate Calendar; SC 23
May 10, 2021: Remote Hearing: 05/10/2021, 09:00 am; Links to join the hearing can be found in the Senate Calendar; SC 23
April 7, 2021: Introduced 04/01/2021 and Referred to Election Law and Municipal Affairs; SJ 11
April 7, 2021: Reconsider (Rep. Osborne): MF VV 04/07/2021 HJ 5 P. 50
April 7, 2021: Ought to Pass: MA VV 04/07/2021 HJ 5 P. 12
: Committee Report: Ought to Pass (Vote 20-0; CC) HC 18 P. 9
March 29, 2021: Committee Report: Ought to Pass (Vote 20-0; CC) HC 18 P. 9
March 10, 2021: ==CONTINUED== Executive Session: 03/10/2021 10:10 am Members of the public may attend using the following link: To join the webinar: https://zoom.us/j/95087806399 (if necessary)
March 3, 2021: ==CONTINUED== Executive Session: 03/10/2021 10:10 am Members of the public may attend using the following link: To join the webinar: https://zoom.us/j/95087806399 (if necessary)
March 5, 2021: Executive Session: 03/05/2021 12:00 pm Please click the link below to join the webinar: https://zoom.us/j/99327579520
Feb. 17, 2021: Public Hearing: 02/17/2021 10:30 am Please click the link below to join the webinar: https://zoom.us/j/95842759377 Executive session on pending legislation may be held throughout the day (time permitting) from the time the committee is initially convened.
Jan. 12, 2021: Introduced (in recess of) 01/06/2021 and referred to Election Law HJ 2 P. 53
Jan. 6, 2021: Introduced (in recess of) 01/06/2021 and referred to Election Law HJ 2 P. 53


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The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era [ Norman F. Cantor] on hikinisupuja.ml The top history books of last year picked by Amazon Book Review Editor, Chris Schluep. Related video shorts (0) John of Gaunt and his brother Edward the Black Prince have intrigued me since I first.
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Forbidden k I am NOT proud of my 4 stars rating. Forbidden kind of love, or "liaison", I somehow refuse to believe that keep going at it automatically translates into love. The overdone sex thing aside, the lead characters are likeable and somehow they seem to really have a thing between them. I don't know how Connie Mason did it.
Gotta give her credit. The dialogues, oh my God, do they get any cheesier than this? They don't. I really had to roll my eyes in multiple sections and wince. Is Drake an asshole or an honorable knight? Sometimes he says things so out of character that I want to scream: man I don't know who you are!
But again, I don't know how Mason did it. She made it work. This story could have been really great, with the medieval backdrop done very nicely. All very grand notions. Despite Drake's horrendous behaviors, I still like him better than Raven. Raven as a heroine, did not capture my heart, even though she did not do anything that I despised in females such as throwing fits and holding a grudge for things that cannot be helped.
Honestly it is a really bad book but so bad that it's good. Am I making sense?? I actually enjoyed reading it and with shame I am putting it on my keeper shelf. I won't recommend the book but damn, I liked the book! View all 7 comments. Apr 17, Jenny rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , heroine-i-adore , steamy , made-me-swoon. My first Connie Mason and I loved it! I devoured this book. So much angst, a great villain and super hot and steamy love scenes. I loved Drake and Raven. I loved that she was in love with him since forever and that she never stopped loving him.
So romantic and Drake's jealousy and possessiveness towards the end was amazing to read. The epilogue melted my heart. Their son was a cutie and the scene with their twins adorable. View 2 comments. Cute, sweet and cheesy yep, over the top lines in this one read. I think Medieval reads are some of my top favorite reads knights, sigh and drool. View all 3 comments. Dec 15, Elle rated it it was amazing. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here. But when he saw Raven of Chirk, with her long, chestnut tresses and womanly curves, he could barely contain his embro He rode into Chirk Castle on his pure black destrier. It was she who made him vow to trust no woman - to take women only for his pleasure. But she could unleash he passion in his body, the goodness in his soul, and the love in his heart. If all of her books are as good as this one was I think I might have a new fav author!!
This book was fantastic! Even his name is perfect for this book Drake is the illegitimate first born son of the lord of castle Chirk At 17 Drake is in love with Daria, Daria is engaged to Drake's legitimate half brother, Waldo, perfect goofy name for him Raven, and completeing the circle Raven is in love with Drake Daria is fickle and simply uses Drake to try to make Waldo pay more attention to her since he really wants Raven, Drake makes plans to elope with Daria which are sabotaged by Daria on purpose and Drake is banished from castle Chirk, he blames Raven for there plans being ruined, never knowing the Daria herself was the one to actually do it Drake leaves castle Chirk, and years later he has become a knight won a title and an estate that is badly in need of repares, while Drake was off making a success of himself Waldo married Daria and she mysteriously died and Waldo and Daria's brother Duff go off to war the same as Drake with none of the same success, Raven's fiance who we never meet is killed in that war by Waldo but we don't find that out till the end they return from war and Waldo convinces Duff to allow him to marry Raven, because of religious reason's Waldo must jump through numerous hoops to be allowed to marry Raven When Raven and Drake meet there's a spark that wasn't there before I'm guessing it's because she's no longer 12!!
Raven asks Drake to help her escape to her aunts in Scotland, he refuses several times I totally expected Drake to rescue her but he sits back and actually watches the wedding ceremony! At the wedding feast Waldo being the dope that he is gets drunk enough to pass out Drake decides that it is his duty to protect Raven from the danger Waldo presents, seeming as he is the cause of that danger, and he takes Raven to his new estate instead of her aunts.
Waldo is furious of course seeming as his bride knocked him out and ran off with his half brother, he looks for her at her aunts doesn't find her, and realizes that she must be with his half brother and heads there I won't spoil the rest of the book for you but I will say that Raven ends up pregnant right before the king tries to marry Drake off to his wealthy charge Drake and Raven prevail and end up together of course this is a romance and through several very interesting twists Waldo looses everything Drake wins Raven and castle Chirk, he saves his new estate, Drakes would be bride and Raven's brother Duff find happy endings, the story of Drake's legitimacy becomes clear, and it's just such a great book!
The only things i found strange about this book is Raven has brown hair View all 5 comments. Mar 23, Daneesha rated it it was amazing. This book took me 1 day to complete! I'm not usually a fan of medieval romances, but the story was fast paced and exciting! I was riveted from the beginning to the end. All time favorite! Dec 11, JennyG rated it it was ok Shelves: virgin-heroine , nice-hero , medieval , no-cheating , pregnancy , personal-revenge , heroine-mistress. I expected to love this book. I didn't. Too many sex scenes distracted from the story and the story which at first showed promise fizzled out.
Jul 28, Wondra Vanian rated it it was amazing. Quite possibly THE perfect bodice ripper. Apr 15, Mermarie rated it it was ok Shelves: bodice-ripper , kindle-or-ebook , positively-medieval , trope-hop , no-fucks-were-given. I got the impression that I had read this book before, but with newly named characters.
I really wish the historical, 14th century aspect had been focused on more. Just wasn't for me. Jun 27, Sarah Z rated it liked it. I would actually rate the story itself 4 stars, but I can't in all honesty rate it higher than 3 because it was so poorly written. Good lord it was bad! It was like reading an awful script and picturing D-list actors. The writing improved towards the end, but that may have just been me acclimating to her style.
Lots of people commented on the copious amount of sex scenes and there were a lot , but they weren't super detailed so that part didn't bother me. When it comes to the plot, not 3 stars. When it comes to the plot, not much truly bothered me. I enjoyed the book for the most part. I would have never believed The Black Knight of all books would get me out of my HR funk, but it did! Drake definitely had his issues and was sort of a dick at times, but I liked him. And I liked Raven. And I liked them together. As bad as the writing is, CM made it more than just a lot of sex between them. They had great chemistry and their love story was believable.
I would say the majority of books I rate with 3 stars I probably wouldn't read again, but I will definitely keep this one for another time Sep 16, Toviel rated it liked it Shelves: historical-fiction , romance , erotica , fiction , knights-and-damsels. Drake is the bastard son of a knight, hated by all his noble peers, and becomes a hardened jerk after his plans to run off with the local noble hottie go awry.
He returns to the castle over a decade later Heathcliff-style, only to find his first love dead and her sister, the architect of his juvenile downfall, grown into a fine young woman. Drake forgets his hatred of her as soon as he and Raven are alone for ten minutes, but unfortunately, he arrived just in time to witness her wedding. Nonetheless, she also considers consequences of their actions, makes intelligent plans accordingly, and even calls out her stereotypically macho lover when his attitude or protectiveness crosses the line.
Not that it stops him, but at least the topic of consent is broached a time or two. While the story turned out more interesting than expected, the writing quality leaves a lot to be desired. Shelves: hot , romance-historical , own , and-earlier , reviewed , theme-medieval.
This book is set in England, It was a fast paced book, with good quality characters that developed well throughout the story. Sep 25, Elle rated it really liked it. This is another of those situations where the hero is an OTT jerk, and the heroine is waaaay too forgiving. But Mason managed to get me past it and get me rooting for the HEA.
Good story. Jan 09, Doreen rated it really liked it. Ok so This is definitely a guilty pleasure book! Super cheesy, too much sex, and very predictable ending. I love the medieval books and Mason writes them so well. This is definitely a "junk food" book. Only the best ones are!!
I have read this book too many times to count.. It's what I turn to when I have reader or writer's block. Jan 15, T. Duff rated it really liked it. I love the historical setting of knights and castles. Raven was pretty strong for a woman of her time too. I really love the way the author brings the past and characters to life. The story was good even with the romance in it. May 24, Asvhini Seema rated it really liked it. Too draggy.. Oct 07, Vincenza rated it really liked it. Great book. Dec 01, Brenda rated it it was ok Shelves: meh , so-plain.
TOO rushed. I didn't feel the love. May 22, Annette rated it it was amazing. Yes, sometimes weak in dialogue but a really good story line. Lots of sex. Feb 13, Preacox rated it it was ok Recommends it for: fans of historical romance who also like it a bit trashy. Recommended to Preacox by: no one, found it on rebuy.
Shelves: historical-romance , historical-romance-medieval , no-reread-wanted. Well, this one was really trashy, but it kept me entained enough so that I finished it and had a good time at it. Still, I don't think I want to re-read it. The character development was too incomprehensible for my liking. It started out pretty well and interesting. Drake is the mysterious Black Knight, the one who is known for his courage, strength and his many affairs with women. Now he is back at Chirk Castle, the place he had been banned from 12 years ago because of the betrayal of Raven of C Well, this one was really trashy, but it kept me entained enough so that I finished it and had a good time at it.
Now he is back at Chirk Castle, the place he had been banned from 12 years ago because of the betrayal of Raven of Chirk. Of course, the Black Knight is the best of them all. There is not a single gram of fat on his sculpted body. Not one. And Raven, once a scrawny little girl with hair as orange as a carrot, of course, is now a true beauty. Her beauty is in fact so captivating that the Black Knight rather quickly forgets that he despises her deeply due to her betrayal years ago. There is a bit of a rapey scene. The villian, naturally, is a real moustache twirling villian, and everything resolves just too perfectly in the end.
But somehow, despite its trashiness, "The Black Knight" still was a nice reading experience. Things were not playing out according to the neat script in Eversmann's head. His chalk was still a block north of their position. Time played tricks. It would be hard to explain to someone who wasn't there.
Events outside him seemed to be happening at a frantic pace, but his own perceptions had slowed; seconds were like minutes. He had no idea how much time had gone by. Two minutes? It was hard to believe things could have gone so much to hell in such a short time. He knew the Dboys worked fast. He kept checking behind him to see if the ground convoy had moved up. It was too early for that, but he looked anyway, wishing, because that would be a sign that things were wrapping up.
He must have looked a dozen times before he saw the first Humvee round the corner about three blocks down. What a relief! Maybe the D-boys have finished and we can roll out of here. Schmid, the Delta medic, had examined Blackburn more closely, and was alarmed. The kid had a severe head injury at a minimum, and there was a big lump on the back of his neck. It might be a break. He looked up at Eversmann. We need to extract him right now or he's gonna die. Can't you send somebody up the street? Eversmann I relayed this news to the Delta medic. He addressed the more senior of the two, McLaughlin, shouting over the escalating noise of the fight.
They ran stooped. McLaughlin didn't think Blackburn was going to make it. On the litter he was deadweight, still bleeding from the nose and mouth. They were all yelling at him, 'Hang on! Hang on! They had to keep setting down the litter to return fire. They would run a few steps, set Blackburn down, shoot, then pick him up and carry him a few more steps, then put him down again.
He took off running on his own. The command center was a whitewashed two -story structure adjacent to the hangar at Task Force Ranger's airport base. A mortar round had fallen on it at some pointy and the roof was caved in on one side. It bristled with so many antennae and wires that the men called it the Porcupine. On the first floor, off a long corridor, there were three rooms where senior officers sat wearing headphones and watching TV screens. General Garrison sat in the back of the operations room, chewing his cigar and taking it all in. Color images of the fight were coming from cameras in the Orion spy plane and the observation helicopters, and there were five or six radio frequencies buzzing.
Garrison and his staff probably had more instant information about this unfolding battle than any commanders in history, but there wasn't much they could do but watch and listen. So long as things stayed on course, any decisions would be made by the men in the fight. The general's job was to stay on top of the situation and try to think one or two steps ahead.
In the event things went wrong he could call across the city to the UN compound, where troops from the 10th Mountain Division waited, three regular army companies in varying degrees of readiness. So far there was no need. Other than one injured Ranger, the mission was clean. At about the same time they learned of Blackburn's fall, the Dboys inside the target building radioed that they'd found the men they were looking for.
This was going to be a success. It had been risky, going into Aidid's Black Sea neighborhood in daylight. The nearby Bakara Market was the center of the Habr Gidr world. Dropping in next door was a thumb in the warlord's eye. Marines had pulled out in May, wouldn't go near that part of town. It was the one place in the city where Aidid's forces could mount a serious fight on short notice, and Garrison knew the dangers of slugging it out there.
Garrison's task force preferred to work at night. They were expert at flying totally black. With night-vision devices, they could move around on a moonless night like it was midday. The unit's pilots had been involved in almost every U. These pilots were fearless, and could fly helicopters in and out of spaces where it would be hard to insert them with a crane. Darkness made the speed and precision of the D-boys and Rangers that much more deadly. Night afforded still another advantage. Many Somali men, particularly the young men who cruised around Mog on 'technicals,' vehicles with.
Midafternoon was the height of the daily cycle. Most started chewing at about noon, and by late afternoon were wired, jumpy, and raring to go. Late at night it was just the opposite. The khat chewers had crashed. So today's mission called for going to the worst place in Mog at the worst possible time. Still, the chance of bagging two of Aidid's top men at the same time was too good to pass up. They had done three previous missions in daylight without a hitch.
Risk was part of the job. They were daring men; that's why they were here. The Somalis had seen six raids now, so they more or less knew what to expect. The task force had done what it could to keep them guessing. Three times daily, mission or no mission, Garrison would scramble the whole force onto helicopters and send them up over the city. The Rangers loved it at first. You piled into the back end of a Black Hawk and held on for dear life. The hotshot Nightstalkers would swoop down low and fast and bank so hard it would stack your insides into one half of your body.
They'd rocket down streets below the roofline, with walls and people on both sides flashing past in a blur, then climb hundreds of feet and scream back down again. Garrison had also been careful to vary their tactics. They usually came in on helicopters and left by vehicles, but sometimes they came in on vehicles and left by helicopters.
Sometimes they came and left on choppers, or on vehicles. So the template changed. Above all, the troops were good. They were experienced and well trained. They had come close to grabbing Aidid several times, but that wasn't their only goal. Their six previous missions had struck fear into the Habr Gidr ranks, and more recently they'd begun to pick off the warlord's top people.
Garrison felt they had performed superbly so far, despite press accounts that portrayed them as bumblers. When they'd inadvertently arrested a group of UN employees on their first mission - 'the employees' had been nabbed in an off- limits area with piles of black market contraband - the newspapers had dubbed them Keystone Kops. Garrison had the stories copied and posted in the hangar.
That sort of thing just fired the guys up more, but to the public, and to Washington officials keenly concerned about how things played on CNN, the task force was so far a bust. They had been handed what seemed like a simple assignment, capture the tinhorn Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid or, failing that, take down his organization, and for six weeks now they'd had precious little visible success. Patience was wearing thin, and pressure for progress was mounting. Just that morning Garrison had been stewing about it in his office.
It was like trying to hit a curveball blindfolded. Here he had a force of men he could drop on a building - any building - in Mogadishu with just a few minutes' notice. These weren't just any men, they were faster, stronger, smarter, and more experienced than any soldiers in the world. Point out a target building and the D-boys could take it down so fast that the bad guys inside would be hog-tied before the sound of the flashbang grenades and door charges had stopped ringing in their ears.
They could herd the whole mess of them out by truck or helicopter before the neighborhood militia even had a chance to pull on its pants. Garrison's force could do all this and even videotape the whole operation in color for training purposes and to show off a little back at the Pentagon , but they couldn't do any of these things unless their spies on the ground pointed them at the right goddamn house. For three nights running they had geared up to launch at a house where Aidid was either present or about to be so the general's spies told him.
Every time they had failed to nail it down. Garrison knew from day one that intelligence was going to be a problem. The original plan had called for a daring, well-placed lead Somali spy, the head of the CIA's local operation, to present Aidid an elegant hand-carved cane soon after Task Force Ranger arrived. Embedded in the head of the cane was a homing beacon. It seemed like a sure thing until, on Garrison's first day in-country, Lieutenant Colonel Dave McKnight, his chief of staff, informed him that their lead informant had shot himself in the head playing Russian roulette.
It was the kind of idiotic macho thing guys did when they'd lived too long on the edge. Few people knew this better than Garrison, who was the picture of American military machismo with his gray crew cut, desert camouflage fatigues, and combat boots, a 9 mm pistol strapped to a shoulder holster and that unlit half cigar jammed perpetually in the side of his mouth.
Garrison had been living by the sword now for about three decades. He was one of the least known important army officers in America. One thing all these missions had in common was they required cooperation from the locals. They also demanded a low threshold for bullshit. The general was a bemused cynic. He had seen just about everything, and didn't expect much - except from his men.
His gruff informality suited an officer who had begun his career not as a military academy graduate, but a buck private. He had served two tours in Vietnam, part of it helping to run the infamously brutal Phoenix program, which ferreted out and killed Viet Cong village leaders. That was enough to iron the idealism out of anybody. Garrison had risen to general without exercising the more politic demands of generalship, which called for graceful euphemism and frequent obfuscation. He was a blunt realist who avoided the pomp and pretense of upper- echelon military life.
Soldiering was about fighting. It was about killing people before they killed you. It was about having your way by force and guile in a dangerous world, taking a shit in the woods, living in dirty, difficult conditions, enduring hardships and risks that could - and sometimes did - kill you. It was ugly work. Which is not to say that certain men didn't enjoy it, didn't live for it.
Garrison was one of those men. He embraced its cruelty. He would say, this man needs to die. Just like that. Some people needed to die. It was how the real world worked. Nothing pleased Garrison more than a well-executed hit, and if things went to hell and you had to slug it out, then it was time to summon a dark relish for mayhem.
Why be a soldier if you couldn't exult in a heart -pounding, balls -out gunfight? Which is what made him so good. He inspired loyalty and affection by not taking himself too seriously. If he told a story - and the general was a hilarious storyteller - the punch line was usually at his own expense. When he arrived at Bragg as a newly leafed colonel in the mid-eighties, his crew cut alone invited scorn and suspicion from the D boys, with their sideburns and facial hair and civilian haircuts down over their ears.
But soon after he started. Garrison saved their ass. Some of America's secret supersoldiers were caught double -dipping expenses, billing both the army and the State Department for their covert international travel. The scandal could have brought down the unit, which was despised by the more traditional brass anyway. The new bullet-headed colonel could have scored points and greased his own promotional path by expressing outrage and cleaning house.
Instead, Garrison placed his career in jeopardy by defending the unit and focusing punishment on only the worst abusers. He'd salvaged a fair number of professional hides in that caper, and the men hadn't forgotten. In time, his insouciant Lone Star style and understated confidence rubbed off on the whole unit. There were guys from suburban New Jersey who after weeks with Delta were wearing pointy boots, dipping tobacco, and drawling like a cowpoke.
Garrison had been living for six weeks now in the JOC, mostly in a small private office off the operations room where he could stretch his long legs and prop his boots up on the desk and shut out all the noise. Noise was one of the biggest problems in a deal like this. You had to separate out signals from the noise.
There was nothing of the general's in this private space, no family photos or memorabilia. It was the way he lived. He could walk out of that building at a moment's notice and leave behind no personal trace. The idea was to finish the job and vanish. Until then, it was an around-the-clock operation. The general had a trailer out back where he retreated at irregular intervals to grab about five hours of sleep, but usually he was camped in this command post, poised, ready to pounce.
Take the previous night, for instance. A local spy had been told this by a servant who worked there. So powerful cameras zoomed in from the Orion, the fat old four-prop navy spy plane that flew circles high over the city almost continually, and Garrison's two little observation birds spun up. The troops pulled on their gear.
The Aden Adere compound was one of their preplanned targets, so the workup time was nil. But they couldn't commit - or at least Garrison refused to commit - without firmer intelligence. The task force had been embarrassed too often already. Before he launched, Garrison wanted two of the Somali spies to enter the compound and actually see Aidid.
Then he wanted them to drop an infrared strobe by the target building. Two informants managed to get in the compound, but then exited without accomplishing either task. There were more guards than usual, they explained, maybe forty. They continued to insist that Aidid was in the compound, so why didn't the Rangers just move? Garrison demanded that one of them return with the strobe, find Yogi the fucking Bear, and mark the damn spot. Only now the informants said they couldn't get back in. It was dark, past 9 P. The guards wanted a password the spies didn't know.
Which was all just bad luck, perhaps. Garrison reluctantly scratched another mission. The pilots and crews shut down their helicopters and the soldiers all stripped back down and went back to their cots. Then came a late bulletin. The same Somali spies said Aidid had now left the compound in a three-vehicle convoy with lights out. One of their number had followed the convoy west, they said, toward the Olympic Hotel, but lost it when the vehicles turned north toward October 21st Road. All of which sounded significant except that the two OH-5 8s were still in place, equipped with night-vision cameras that lit up the view like green-tinted noon, and neither they nor anyone watching the screens back at the command center were seeing any of this!
I do not. Furthermore, when a [local spy ring] team member is reporting something that is totally different than what our helicopters are seeing which we watch here back at the JOC , I naturally weigh the launch decision toward what we actually see versus what is being reported. Events such as last night, with Team 2 stating that Aidid had just left the compound in a three- vehicle convoy, when we know for a fact that no vehicles left the compound Too much time between missions.
In six weeks they'd launched exactly six times. And several of these missions had been less than bang-up successes. After that first raid, when they'd arrested the nine UN employees at the Lig Ligato compound, Washington had been very upset. On September 14, the assault force had stormed what turned out to be the residence of Somali General Ahmen Jilao, a close ally of the UN and the man being groomed to lead the projected Somali police force.
The troops were restless and just wanted to hit something, anything. In this frame of mind, it didn't take much of an excuse to launch. When one of the Rangers thought he'd spotted Aidid in a convoy of cars outside the Italian embassy, the assault force was rallied and a duly startled General Jilao was arrested along with thirty-eight others. Again an apology. All of the 'suspects' were released. In a cable detailing the debacle for officials in Washington the next day, U. Jilao has received apologies from all concerned. Aidid was Gen. It would be hard to confuse him with Aidid.
Jilao is approximately ten inches taller than Aidid. Aidid is very dark. Jilao has a much lighter complexion. Aidid is slim and has sharp, Semitic -like features. Jilao is overweight and round-faced We are very concerned that this episode might find its way into the press. Never mind that every one of these missions was a masterpiece of coordination and execution, difficult and dangerous as hell.
So far none of his men had been seriously hurt. Never mind that their latest outing had netted Osman Atto, Aidid's moneyman and one of his inner circle. Washington was impatient. Congress wanted American soldiers home, and the Clinton administration wanted to remove Aidid as a player in Somalia. August had turned to September had turned to October. One more day was one day too long for the wishes of America and the world to be stymied by this Mogadishu warlord, this man America's UN Ambassador Madeleine K.
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Albright had labeled a 'thug. He knew that his superiors and even some people on his own staff thought he was being too tentative about choosing missions. With such shaky work on the ground, what could you expect?
There are plenty of places we can go and be stupid. Every Sunday morning the Habr Gidr held a rally out by the reviewing stand on Via Lenin, where they hurled insults at the UN and its American enforcers. One of the main speakers that morning was Omar Salad, Aidid's top political adviser. The clan had not caught on yet that the Rangers had targeted the entire top rung of Aidid's gang, so Salad wasn't even trying to hide. Salad was observed entering a house one block north of the Olympic Hotel.
At about 1. Two major targets! Aidid might also be there, but, again, nobody had actually seen him. High above, the Orion zoomed its cameras in on the neighborhood, and the observation choppers took off. They moved up over the Black Sea to watch the same street. The TV screens in the JOC showed many people and cars on the streets, a typical weekend afternoon at the market. To mark the precise location where Salad and Qeybdid were meeting, a Somali informant had been instructed to drive his car, a small silver sedan with red stripes on its doors, to the front of the hotel, get out, lift the hood, and peer into it as if he were having engine trouble.
This would give the helicopter cameras a chance to lock on him. He was then to drive north and stop directly in front of the target house where the clan leaders had convened.
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The informant did as instructed, but performed the check under his hood so quickly that the helicopters failed to fix on him. So he was told to do it again. This time he was to drive directly to the target building, get out, and open the car hood. Garrison and his staff watched this little drama unfold on their screens. The helicopter cameras provided a clear color view of the busy scene as the informant's car entered the picture driving north on Hawlwadig Road. It stopped before a building alongside the hotel. The informant got out and opened the hood.
There was no mistaking the spot. Word passed quietly to the hangar and the Rangers and D-boys started kitting up. The Delta team leaders met and planned out their attack, using instant photo maps relayed from the observation birds to plan exactly how they would storm the building, and where the Ranger blocking positions would be.
Copies of the plan were handed out to all the chalk leaders, and the helicopters were readied. Just as Garrison was preparing to launch, however, everything was placed on hold. The spy had stopped his car short. He was on the right street, but he'd chickened out. Nervous about moving so close to the target house, he'd stopped down the street a ways and opened the hood there. Despite Garrison's finicky precautions, the task force had been minutes away from launching an assault on the wrong house.
The commanders all hustled back into the JOC to regroup. The informant, who wore a small two-way radio strapped to his leg, was instructed to go back around the block and this time stop in front of the right goddamn house. They watched on the screens as the car came back up Hawlwadig Road. This time it went past the Olympic Hotel and stopped one block north, on the other side of the street. This was the same building the observation choppers had observed Salad entering earlier. It was now three o'clock. All aircraft were ordered out of the airspace over the target.
The commanders of the 10th Mountain Division were told to keep one company on standby alert. Intelligence forces began jamming all radios and cellular phones - Mog had no regular working phone system. The general made a last-minute decision to upload rockets on the Little Birds. Lieutenant Jim Lechner, the Ranger company's fire support officer, had been pushing for it. Lechner knew that if things got bad on the ground, he'd love to be able to call in those rockets - the two pods on the AH-6s each carried six missiles. In the quick planning session, Lechner asked again, 'Are we getting rockets today?
He was a student, a tall and slender teenager with prominent cheekbones and a sparse goatee. He studied English and business in the mornings and afternoons manned the store, which was just up from the Olympic Hotel. The front door was across Hawlwadig Road diagonal from the house of Hobdurahman Yusef Galle, where the Rangers seemed to be attacking. Peering out the doorway, Ali saw American soldiers sliding down on ropes to the alley that ran west off Hawlwadig. His shop was on the corner of that street and the gate to his family's home was just down from there.
The Americans were shooting as soon as they hit the ground, shooting at everything. There were also Somalis shooting at them. These soldiers, Ali knew, were different than the ones who had come to feed Somalis. These were Rangers. They were cruel men who wore body armor and strapped their weapons to their chests and when they came at night they painted their faces to look fierce. Further up Hawlwadig, to his left about two blocks over, another group of Rangers were in pitched battle.
He saw two of them drag another who looked dead out of the street. The Rangers across the street entered a courtyard there and were shooting out. Then a helicopter came down low and blasted streams of fire from a gun on its side. The gun just pulverized his side of the street. Ali's youngest brother, Abdulahi Hassan Mohamed, fell dead by the gate to the family's house, bleeding from the head.
Abdulahi was fifteen. Ali saw it happen. Then the Rangers ran out of the courtyard and across Hawlwadig toward the house of Hobdurahman Yusef Galle, where most of the other soldiers were. Ali ran. He stopped to see his brother and saw his head broken open like a melon.
Then he took off as fast as he could. He ran to his left, down the street away from the Rangers and the house they were attacking. At the end of the dirt alley he turned left and ran behind the Olympic Hotel. The streets were crowded with screaming women and children. People were scrambling everywhere, racing around dead people and dead animals.
Some who were running went toward the fight and others ran away from it. Some did not seem to know which way to go. He saw a woman running naked, waving her arms and screaming. Above was the din of the helicopters and all around the crisp popping of gunfire. Out in the streets there were already Aidid militiamen with megaphones shouting, 'Kasoobaxa guryaha oo iska celsa cadowga! There were gunmen, they called them mooryan, who lived for rice and khat and belonged to the private armies of rich men. Ali was just a student and part-time shopkeeper who joined the neighborhood militia to protect its shops from the mooryan.
But these Rangers were invading his home and had just killed his brother. He ran with rage and terror behind the hotel and then, turning left again, back across Hawlwadig Road to the house of his friend Ahmed, where his AK was hidden. Once he had retrieved the gun he met up with several of his friends. They ian back behind the Olympic Hotel, through all the chaos. Ali told them about his brother and led them back to his house and shop, determined to exact revenge. Hiding behind a wall behind the hotel, they fired their first shots at the Rangers on the corner.
Then they moved north, ducking behind cars and buildings. Ali would jump out and spray bullets toward the Rangers, then run for cover. Then one of his friends would do the same. Sometimes they just pushed the barrels of their guns around the corners and sprayed bullets without looking. None of them was an experienced fighter. The Rangers were better shots. Ali's friend Adan Warsawe stepped out to shoot and was hit in the stomach by a Ranger bullet that knocked him flat on his back.
Ali and another friend risked the shooting to drag Adan to cover. The bullet had punched a hole in Adan's gut and made a gaping wound out his back that had sprayed blood on the dirt. When they dragged him it left a smear of blood on the street. Adan looked both alive and dead, as though he were someplace in between.
Ali moved on to the next street, leaving Adan with two friends. He would shoot a Ranger or die trying. Why were they doing this? Who were these Americans who came to his neighborhood spraying bullets and spreading death? They were the last of the assault forces to enter the house. Howe asked Sergeant Mike Foreman if anyone had gone upstairs. So Howe took his four men up to the second floor. It was a big house by Somali standards, whitewashed cinder-block walls and windows with no glass in them. At the top step Howe called for one of his men to toss a flashbang grenade into the first room.
It exploded and the team burst in as they were trained to do, each man covering a different firing lane. They found only a mattress on the floor. As they moved around the room, a volley of machine-gun fire slammed into the ceiling and wall, just missing the head of one of Howe's men. They all dropped down.
The rounds had come through the southeast window, and had clearly come from the Ranger blocking position just below the window. One of the younger soldiers outside had evidently seen someone moving in the window and fired. Obviously some of these guys weren't clear which building was the target. It was what he had feared. Howe was disappointed in the Rangers. These were supposed to be the army's crack infantry? Despite all the hype and Hoo-ah horse-shit, he saw the younger men as poorly trained and potentially dangerous in combat.
Most were fresh out of high school! During training exercises, he had the impression that they were always craning their necks to watch him and his men instead of paying attention to their own very important part of the job. And the job demanded more. It demanded all you had, and more That's why Howe and the rest of these D-boys loved it. It separated them from other men. War was ugly and evil, for sure, but it was still the way things got done on most of the planet. Civilized states had nonviolent ways of resolving disputes, but that depended on the willingness of everyone involved to back down.
Here in the raw Third World, people hadn't learned to back down, at least not until after a lot of blood flowed. Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun. If you winted the starving masses in Somalia to eat, then you had to outmuscle men like this Aidid, for whom starvation worked. You could send in your bleeding-heart do-gooders, you could hold hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only way to finally open the roads to the big-eyed babies was to show up with more guns.
And in this real world, nobody had more or better guns than America. If the good-hearted ideals of humankind were to prevail, then they needed men who could make it happen. Delta made it happen. They operated strictly in secret. The army would not even speak the word 'Delta.
Secrecy, or at least the show of it, was central to their purpose. It allowed the dreamers and the politicians to have it both ways. They could stay on the high road while the dirty work happened offstage. If some Third World terrorist or Columbian drug lord needed to die, and then suddenly just turned up dead, why, what a happy coincidence! The dark soldiers would melt back into shadow. If you asked them about how they made it happen, they wouldn't tell. They didn't even exist, see? They were noble, silent, and invisible.
They did America's most important work, yet shunned recognition, fame, and fortune. They were modern knights and true. Howe did little to disguise his scorn for lower orders of soldiering, which pretty much included the whole regular U. He and the rest of the operators lived like civilians, and that's what they told you they were if you asked - although spotting them down at Fort Bragg wasn't hard.
You'd meet this guy hanging out at bar around Bragg, deeply tanned, biceps rippling, neck wide as a fireplug, with a giant Casio watch and a plug of chaw under his lip, and he'd tell you he worked as a computer programmer for some army contract agency. They called each other by their nicknames and eschewed salutes and all the other traditional trappings of military life. Officers and noncoms in Delta treated each other as equals. Disdain for normal displays of army status was the unit's signature.
They simply transcended rank. They wore their hair longer than army regs. They needed to pose as civilians on some missions and it was easier to do that if they had normal haircuts, but it was also a point of pride with them, one of their perks. A cartoon drawn by a unit wit showed the typical D-boy dressed for battle with his hip holster stuffed, not with a gun, but a hair dryer. Every year they were obliged to pose for an official army portrait, and for it they had to get Ranger-style haircuts. They hated it.
They'd had to sit for buzzes before this trip to better blend in with the Hoo-ahs, and the haircuts had just made them stick out even more; the sides and backs of their heads were as white as frog bellies. They were allowed a degree of personal freedom and initiative unheard of in the military, particularly in battle. The price they paid for all this, of course, was that they lived with danger and were expected to do what normal soldiers could not. Howe wasn't impressed with a lot of things about the regular army. He and others in his unit had com-plained to Captain Steele, the Ranger commander, about his men's readiness.
They hadn't gotten any-where. Steele had his own way of doing things, and that was the traditional army way. Howe found the spit-and-polish captain, a massive former University of Georgia football lineman, to be an arrogant and incompetent buffoon. Howe had been through Ranger school and earned the tab himself, but had skipped straight over the Rangers when he qualified for Delta. He disdained the Rangers in part because he believed hard, realistic, stair-stepped training made good soldiers, not the bullshit macho attitude epitomized by the whole Hoo-ah esprit.
Out of the men who tried out for Delta in his class these were highly motivated, exceptional soldiers , only 13 had made it through selection and training. Howe had the massive frame of a serious bodybuilder, and a fine, if impatient, analytical mind. Many of the Rangers found him scary. His contempt for their ways colored relationships between the two units in the hangar. Now Howe's misgivings about the younger support troops were confirmed. They were shooting at their own men! Howe and his team left the room with the mattress and then moved out to clear the flat roof over the front of the house.
It was enclosed by a three-foot concrete wall with decorative vertical slats. As the Delta team fanned out into sunlight, they saw the small orange fireball of an AK- 47 erupt from a rooftop one block north. Two of Howe's team returned fire as they ducked behind the low wall for cover. Then another burst of machine-gun rounds erupted. There were inch-wide slits in the perimeter wall. Howe and his men crouched and prayed a round didn't pass through an opening or ricochet back off the outside of the house.
There were several long bursts. They could tell by the sound and impact of the rounds that the shots were being fired by an M60, this time from the northeast Ranger blocking position. The Rangers were under fire, they were overeager and scared, so when they saw men with weapons, they fired. Howe was furious. He radioed Captain Scott Miller, the Delta ground commander down in the courtyard. He told him to get Steele on the radio immediately and tell him to stop his men from shooting at their own people!
Just before boarding the helicopter. Captain Steele had tapped him on the shoulder. I want you to know I'm going to be on the fast rope right after you, so you better keep moving. After roping down, he scrambled so fast from the bottom of the rope that he collided with Chalk One's M gunner, and they both fell down. Stebbins lay there for a moment, waiting for the dust to clear, and then spotted the rest of his team up against a wall to his right.
He was scared, but thrilled. He couldn't shake the feeling that this was all too good to be true. Here he was, an old-timer in the Ranger company at age twenty-eight, having spent the last four years of his life trying to get into combat, to do something interesting or important, and now, somehow, through an incredible chain of pleading, wheedling, and freakish breaks, he was actually in combat - him, stubby Johnny Stebbings, the company's chief coffee maker and training room paper-pusher, at war!
His trip to this Mogadishu back alley had started in a bagel shop at home in Ithaca, New York. Stebbins was a short, stocky kid with pale blue eyes and blond hair and skin so white and freckly it never turned even the faintest shade darker in the sun. Here in Mog it had just burned bright pink. He had gone to Saint Bonaventure University, majoring in communications and hoping to work as a radio journalist, which he had in fact done for minimum wages at a few mom-and-pop stations in upstate New York.
When the bagel shop offered to make him head baker, the hourly wage was enough to chuck his infant broadcasting career. So he made bagels and dreamed of adventure. Stebbins had gone to college on an ROTC scholarship, but the army was so flooded with second lieutenants when he got out that he couldn't get assigned to active duty. When Desert Storm blew up in , as his luck would have it, his National Guard contract was up. He started looking for a way out of the kitchen and into the fire. He put his name on three volunteer lists for Gulf service and never even got a response.
Then he got married, and his wife had a baby, and suddenly the hourly wage at the bagel shop no longer covered expenses. What he needed was a medical plan. That, and some action. The army offered both. So he enlisted as a private. Stebbins told him, 'I want to jump out of airplanes, shoot a lot of ammo, and shop at the PX. Then he had to do RIP the Ranger Indoctrination Program twice because he got injured on one of the jumps toward the end and had to be completely recycled.
When he graduated he figured he'd be out there jumping and training and roping out of helicopters with the younger guys, except somebody higher up noticed that his personnel form listed a college degree and, more importantly, typing ability. He was routed instead to a desk in the Bravo company training room.
Stebbins became the company clerk. They told him it would just be for six months. He got stuck in it for two years. While the other Rangers were out scaling cliffs and jumping out of planes and trying to break their records for forced marches through dense cover, old man Stebby sat behind a desk chain-smoking cigarettes, eating donuts, and practically inhaling coffee. He was the company's most avid coffee drinker.
The other guys would make jokes: 'Oh yeah, Specialist Stebbins, he'll throw hot coffee at the enemy. When the company got tapped for Somalia, no one was surprised when ol' Stebby was one of those left behind at Fort Benning. We have a limited number of spots on the bird and we need you here.
It was just like Desert Storm all over again. Somebody up there did not want John Stebbins to go to war. He helped his friends pack, and when it was announced the next day that the force had arrived in Mogadishu, he felt even more left out than he had two years before as he watched nightly updates of the Gulf action on CNN. At least he had company. Sergeant Scott Galentine had been left behind, too.
They moped around for a few days. Then came a fax from Somalia. Some Rangers had received minor injuries in a mortar attack and they needed to be replaced. On his way to the airport Stebbins stopped by his house to say a quick good-bye to his wife. It was the tearful scene you'd expect. Then when he got to the airport they told him he could go home, they wouldn't be leaving until the next day. A half hour after their emotional parting, Mr and Mrs Stebbins were reunited.
He spent the night dreading a phone call that would change the order. But it didn't come. A little more than a day later, he and Galentine were standing on the runway in Mogadishu. In honor of their arrival they were ordered to drop for fifty push-ups, a ritual greeting upon entering a combat zone. Stebby was thrilled. He'd made it! There weren't enough Kevlar vests Ranger body armor to go around so he got one of the big bulky black vests the D-boys wore.
When he put it on he felt like a turtle. He was warned not to go outside the fence without his weapon. His buddies briefed him on the setup. They told him not to sweat the mortars. Sammy rarely hit anything. They had been on five missions at that point, and they were all a piece of cake. We go in force, they told him, we move quickly, the choppers basically blow everybody away from the scene, we let the D-boys go in and do their thing. All we do is provide security. They told him to watch out for Somalis who hid behind women and children.
Rocks were a hazard. Stebbins was nervous and excited. Then he got the news. See, they were glad to have him there and all, but he wouldn't actually be going out with the rest of the guys on missions. His job would be to stay back at the hangar and stand guard. Maintain perimeter security.
It was essential. Somebody had to do it. Who else? Stebbins took out his ire on the folks trying to get past the front gate. He took the guard job as seriously as it was possible to be taken. He was a major pain in the ass. Every Somali got searched from head to toe, every time, in and out.
He searched trucks and trunks and carts and climbed up under vehicles and had them open their hoods. It annoyed him that he couldn't figure out a way to search the big tanks on the back of the water trucks. Intel had said the Skinnies were smuggling heavy weapons across the border from Ethiopia. They were told that the Ethiopians checked out all trucks. Stebbins doubted they were checking the water trucks. You could put a lot of RPGs rocket- propelled grenades in the back of one of those things. He finagled his way onto the helicopters for the pro -file flights, fastening the chin strap on his helmet tight as they zoomed low and fast over the city, cheering like kids on a carnival ride.
He figured that was about as close to action as he was going to get Then, this morning, just as the runner from the JOC showed up to shout, 'Get it on! He just came back from the doc's office. You're taking his place. Stebbins ran through the hangar, trading in his bulky tortoise-shell vest for a Kevlar one. He'd stuffed extra ammo in his pouches, and gathered up some frag grenades. Watching the more experienced guys, he discarded his canteen -they would only be out an hour or so - and stuffed its pouch with still more M magazines. He picked up a belt with three hundred rounds of M ammo, and debated trying to stuff more in his butt pack, where he kept the goggles and the gloves he needed for sliding down the rope.
He decided against that. He'd need someplace to put them when he took them off. He was trying to think through everything. Trying to stay calm. But damn! Talk to me, Steb. What you got? What's on your mind? Boorn could see his friend was in a state. He told him to relax. Keep it simple. His job was to secure whatever sector they asked him to point his rifle at, and give ammo to the 60 gunners when they needed it. They probably wouldn't even need it. Just before heading out to the Black Hawk, Stebbins was by the front door of the hangar sucking on a last cigarette, trying to get his nerves under control.
This was finally it, what he'd been aiming for all this time. The guys all knew this was a particularly bad part of town, too. This was likely to be their nastiest mission yet, and it was his first! He had the same feeling in his gut that was there before his first jump at airborne school. I'm gonna live through this, he told himself. I'm not gonna die. One of the D-boys told him, 'Look, for the first ten minutes or so you're gonna be scared shitless. After that you're going to get really mad that they have the balls to shoot at you.
There was no way they'd get in a real shitfight.
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