By the end of the week, all of the homeless elderly in Portland were gone. Only one cruise ship was left in Portland, because there were considerably fewer people. The second ship had already been moved to LA. The elderly were already being sent up to the ‘resort’ in the mountains above LA. It had been decided not to publicize this move, but simply to use word of mouth down at Venice Beach to let the elderly know. This seemed to be working fine and the media had not gotten wind of the move, yet. There were bigger news stories at the moment, with wildfires raging in the area and a small earthquake that took the public’s and the reporter's minds off of the homeless.
Ray knew there was probably a small window of opportunity to get the elderly moved and taken care of before the media sniffed out the situation going on, so he was pushing for efficiency. He had devised a plan for when the media realized the elderly were being taken care of. He would designate one floor to be for the elderly who would be the distraction. They would be staying there long-term so it would appear to actually be a resort. They would be spared the fate of the others. These people would be told that the people on the other floors had a serious sickness and needed to be isolated. That way, when the reporters invaded, as they inevitably would, they would hear the elderly say out of their own mouths that they had been there for a while, so suspicions would be averted.
Larry Barton was at a dinner party for the heads of commissions and for the top Generals from the Pentagon. He kind of felt like it was mixing oil and water, but then who could tell? He might be able to glean some valuable information from the men. His committee was on the war on homelessness and poverty and he needed to come up with a solution which would please his boss and make some headway in this war. He was seated next to none other than General Horace Smith, who was one of the leaders in military strategy. While the awards were being given out, he planned what he would ask General Smith.
After the awards, while dinner was being served, Larry turned to the General and asked him what he attributed his success in military strategy to be. The general said, “Well you have heard that we win wars by not delaying, but the very best strategy is absolutely cutting off their supply. An army runs on its stomach, so by coming between the enemy and their food and medical and fuel supplies, it starves them,makes it impossible to heal them again and causes their tanks, planes and cars to be unusable. Why, what war are you fighting?”
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When Larry explained, the general got excited and said, “I’ve always said that if we could run this country like we run the military, it would run a hell of a lot smoother!” He turned away when the man on the other side of him asked him something. Larry was disappointed that he was unable to ask the general anything else, because the general stayed too busy to talk with him the rest of the evening. Larry did have that time to think how he could apply the general’s wisdom to his problem. That meeting happened in 2019, pre-covid.
Larry was very intrigued and while the current homeless were not his specific target, he knew the poor in the US were the next likely to become homeless, since many of them were living paycheck to paycheck. In order to break the cycle of poverty to homelessness, something had to be done and he just needed to figure out what it was and he was pretty sure he had come up with the perfect solution!
Max’s wheels were turning. He was in a bad situation. The homeless elderly had a jump on him and he needed to figure out how to get away. He didn’t have a plan how he would take them back to Portland and definitely didn’t have any help. Bob Perkins had made that perfectly clear. He also couldn’t put into effect plan two, which was to simply shoot all of these people because his guns had been confiscated. The sweet old lady, Karen, might just be his way out. She reminded him so much of Eva Gabor that every time she walked into the room, he could hear the theme from Green Acres playing! She was adorable!
He thought, “I heard that these people have walkie talkies. What if I asked for Karen and I to have a set of walkie talkies tonight in case I have to go to the bathroom. Then when she comes to take me and unties me, it will be a piece of cake to overpower her and get away! Will I take her as a hostage or just leave alone?