Chapter Ten #2
“Twenty disaster teams, their size depends on their mission focus. Seven of those are the fast reaction teams, Kilo through Quebec. They can either work together, each performing their specialty at a site, or they can break off and work alone. Each team develops different skill sets. For example, we have an avalanche team. They train out of Newfoundland, so they can drop down into the Arctic region quickly. They develop mainly European language skills, which are becoming less relevant as most people under 35 speak amazing English. Our teams work with older generations, too, so part of our training protocol includes survival language skills of the more populous language groups, so we don’t always have to rely on a translation app.
Which becomes clunky in an emergency. Oscar had the right skills and languages for Colombia. ”
“Out of curiosity, how do you handle it if your teams don’t have the language for the deployment?” Dakota hoped that some banter and curiosity would ease WorldCares into a comfortable relationship with Jasper and him. They weren’t here as adversaries. Quite the opposite.
“There are locations that aren’t on our language list, so on the way over, you’ll find our group sitting on the airplane learning basics: stop, go, come, water, food, shelter.
Simple-simple, there’s only so much you can learn in a few hours.
And for much of their travel time, they prioritize sleep.
Sleep becomes a precious commodity once they’re boots on the ground. ”
Erica showed up at the door, showing Jasper in.
It was interesting to see him stall out when he met Neesa.
She stood and walked from behind her desk, extending her hand. “Neesa Meesang and you’re Jasper Lee? I’m so glad to meet you.”
The handshake hadn’t ended.
“Yes, Jasper. I’m sorry to be late.”
Still, the handshake hadn’t ended.
“Traffic in this part of town is difficult,” Jasper explained.
Erica came back to the room, pushing a rolling chair.
“Right here,” Neesa said, gesturing to the open space by her desk. “Thank you.” She turned to Jasper and ended the handshake with a gesture toward the chair.
Interesting.
Dakota introduced Sun and gave Jasper a quick summary of what had been said.
Jasper unbuttoned his suit jacket. “At the airport yesterday, we were surprised at how much cash your people were carrying.”
“Which they declared at customs after your interrogation, correct?” Sun asked.
Neesa looked at Sun, then turned to Jasper. “I imagine you have access to the border records, and you’ll see this is the norm for our organization. If you need them, I can provide you with our records. Everything is accounted for.”
“Yes, thank you,” Jasper said. “The thing I’m trying to understand here is why there is so much cash flowing over the borders with your organization.”
Dakota noticed that Jasper had pitched his voice lower and smoother than usual. Dakota tucked that away so he could ride Jasper about it after they left.
“That cash is kept here on site or in a bank?” Dakota asked.
“Here we have a walk-in safe and a security guard,” Neesa said. “Tank is the dog that smelled the fake money on my team?”
“Yes, ma’am.” This might be sticky, and it could go either way if Neesa got protective of her staff.
“Thank you. It’s important that we figure this out to protect my teams from even the shadow of any illegality. So we need to get to the bottom of this.” Neesa pointed toward Tank. “He came today to see if we had any more counterfeit money in our safe?”
“All the money coming into the United States with your teams is stored there?” Jasper asked.
“The money that’s associated with WorldCares, yes. But we don’t regulate in any way the personal money of our responders.”
“Can you explain why you deal with so much cash?” Jasper asked.
“Oh, for a lot of reasons. We can’t always pack in everything we need, so we either buy from other NGOs or from locals, including cases of water, food, fuel, medicine, and medical equipment.
If our people can buy locally, it is preferred because it helps to strengthen the local base economy.
Sometimes, we hand out cash to affected people so they have the resources to leave the area and go stay with friends and family somewhere that wasn’t experiencing the disaster.
That helps remove some of the population from areas with the greatest need and the least resources.
Many foreign groups bring in U.S. dollars because it is widely recognized and flows freely and with trust from hand to hand in the local economy.
Of course, if you’re thinking about inserting counterfeit dollars, that would be an easy way to do it.
The local people have probably never handled U.S.
dollars in person, because why would they?
So how would they know they were being swindled? It’s immoral.”
“The money that your team brought in was in hundred-dollar denominations,” Jasper said.
“Otherwise, the money would need its own suitcase. Hundreds are easy enough.”
“How do you protect that?” Dakota asked. “People in dangerous situations and dire straits can do things that are normally outside of their morals and ethics.”
“Agreed,” Neesa said. “Of course they do. This is especially true when it comes to food. Everything and anything becomes precious under such circumstances. How do we protect it? It starts here with recording all the serial numbers and banding the stacks using the tracking system. That’s monitored.
We keep the money in a location where a team member is always present.
They don’t leave it, even to go to the latrine.
They develop a duty roster when they get boots on the ground.
Someone has to be awake with the equipment; they take turns. ”
Neesa stopped and swiveled toward Jasper, sitting very still with a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m worried about what you’re going to find in the vault,” she said. “I was thinking about it all night.”
“What did you come up with?” Dakota asked.
“That if it were me in the field trying to pull a fast one, I’d put a real bill on top and bottom. In the movies, they just fan through it.” Neesa said. “So people would only see the top and the bottom if they were handling a stack.”
“That’s ten thousand, do you hand out a stack like that?” Dakota asked.
“Absolutely. The price-gauging in these situations is high. Here in the United States, if there’s a hurricane coming through, greedy people jack up the costs of gas, hotels, food, and tarps.
If it’s a survival item and there’s a limited supply, the price flies sky high.
Same around the world. It’s a get-while-the-getting’s-good mentality.
That doesn’t mean we’d be in a position to go without.
We pay what we need to pay in order to get the job done.
That job is saving lives.” Neesa turned her focus back to Jasper.
“There’s the personality of the thief to consider.
Who the hell steals from a charity that’s saving people in dire straits?
” She pushed back into her chair. “They’re going to hell. ”
Sun’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline when she said ‘hell.’
Neesa slapped her palms onto her desk. “But we can’t wait around for karma to kick in.
We need to protect WorldCares. So this is where I want to start: I need permission from you to talk to our CEO about getting a public relations crisis team involved here.
” She swept her hand through the air. “I want to make a full disclosure of what’s happened.
Talk about our commitment to integrity, not just the rule of law, but the rule of doing what’s right for the best for those I need.
” Neesa’s voice grew louder as righteous anger rose in her chest.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jasper said. “That’s a strategy. One we’d rather not act on immediately.”
“Kumar Singh, he was at the airport, but he’s not here today,” Sun said. “How does he fit into this picture?”
“Kumar is on our team,” Dakota said. “He’s been developing this case.
We’re joining in now that he believes this is a single actor who is working for personal gain, taking advantage of all the aspects of targeting groups such as yours, which move from country to country with unusual but legitimate amounts of cash. ”
“You’re just going to go through our safe and remove any counterfeit bills, so we don’t do anything illegal, right?” Neesa asked.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct,” Jasper said.
“You don’t have to ma’am me. I feel like we’re all in this together, and saying ma’am kind of makes me an outsider.”
“Thank you,” Jasper said with a smile.
“Can your dog detect all counterfeit money?” Sun asked.
“Tank was trained to find the money that is generated from two different countries,” Dakota said, putting a hand on Tank’s head as he roused after hearing his name.
“From Peru and Colombia?” Neesa asked Jasper.
He didn’t respond.
“I looked up the countries where most of the counterfeit money comes from, and of course, my team was coming from Colombia. We also sent in teams to the recent flooding in Peru. That was team November.” She nodded toward the lawyer.
“Sun told me how we had team members stopped at the bank there. Someone really should have told me immediately.”
“Neesa, I didn’t submit for a search warrant for today,” Jasper said. “Sun indicated that your organization wanted to be cooperative.”
“Absolutely,” Neesa stood. “I’m not putting our teams in danger by accidentally sending them out with fake currency. I’m appreciative that you’re here.”
As the men stood, Dakota said, “We’ll use Tank to help us out. But Jasper also has a machine with us to test the bills, should Tank indicate on any of them.”
Neesa was tense as she stood up from her desk and passed through the door. “Okay, the vault is on this level, just around the corner.”
Jasper went out first, walking beside Neesa, followed by Dakota and Tank.
Sun came up behind them.
“We keep our cash in a safe cabinet on one side of the secured room. In that area, we also keep medications. Some of them are controlled substances.” She rounded the corner.
“Our fast-response teams are all trained in advanced trauma, but we don’t have doctors on board.
Setting up the field hospitals is something we leave to specialized organizations.
” She turned the second corner. “We do pack in what our own people might need should they sustain an injury and evacuation is delayed. It’s prescribed via communications with an on-call doctor who is always on duty here at WorldCares. ”
Tank knew that he was about to play one of his favorite games of sniff and find. His whole body was alert and ready.
They moved to a security gate. “Hi, Stew,” Neesa greeted the guard. “You’re expecting us this morning.”
Jasper and Dakota pulled out their badge wallets and lifted them. “Secret Service,” Jasper announced.
Stew took another look at Neesa, then over to Sun to see if there were any signals or signs of distress before he unlocked the gate from his side.
“Do you keep a lot of money on hand?” Jasper asked, eyeing the security structure.
Stew shut and locked the gate behind them, moving them to the biometrics box, where Neesa looked into a black screen as she laid her hand on a pad.
“A necessary amount,” Neesa said as she heard the whir and click that meant the computer had properly identified her and processed the lock.
“Remember, we have twenty teams. It’s often the case that they are fanned around the world.
Much like a street fight, a disaster in one part of the world doesn’t mean another one isn’t revving up in another part of the world. ”
They walked into the room, neat as a pin, with shelves of medications in careful rows and two refrigerators.
“O negative blood and saline,” she said, “for our most remote ventures. That requires quite a bit of cross-border paperwork, so it’s ready for exceptional circumstances.
” She pulled one side of a shelving unit, which swung away from the wall, revealing a hidden security door.
There, Neesa typed in a code and tugged it wide.
“So here it is.” Neesa gestured to what looked like perhaps a hundred banded stacks of bills.
A quick calculation meant that they kept approximately a million dollars in cash on hand.
Neesa seemed to read his mind. “Twenty teams with fifty thousand each. Yes, it’s a lot. But we are ready for extremes. What if there’s a collapse of a market? A run on a bank? An EMP or a hacker? Illiquidity risks lives. And cash and carry is always a lower price.”
Fifty thousand per team, trying to buy equipment and supplies in-country for an undetermined amount of time? Yes, that was more than reasonable.
“Each time a group goes out, we record the tracking band. If you were to find more counterfeit bills, we can trace that down to all the locations where that band of money was taken.”
Jasper turned to Dakota. “You’re ready to go in?”
Dakota, in turn, turned to Neesa. “Is it okay if I video record with camera and mic to share with Tank’s trainer?”
Neesa shifted uncomfortably, but Sun said, “Of course, anything you need.”
Dakota handed his messenger bag to Jasper, taking a moment to attach a camera to a chest harness. Then he reached back into his bag and pulled out a rolled-up towel.
Holding it under Tank’s nose, Dakota signaled it was go time.