Old Hickory on Patience

 294.

The key is patience.

"Old Hickory said we can take 'em by surprise,
I we didn't fire our muskets till we looked 'em in the eye."

Amid the controversy of authorship, most side with Jimmy Driftwood, the ethos of the famous ballad, The Battle of New Orleans, remains stirring. Adding to the legend of the tune, Johnny Horton's went highest on the charts, but the Dirt Band's historical tribute from the Will the Circle Be Unbroken masterwork has always resonated deeply, it is the emotion captured by both its author and those who paid homage via their cover that will forever remind me of bravery by snare drum, lying banner and bagpipes. Gets me every time.

"We held our fire till we see'd their faces well,
then we opened up our squirrel guns and gave 'em hell."

Patience. Hold your fire. When the time is right we'll join the fight. It is the chain of command that wields the ultimate hammer in the critical decision of when to strike. That chain runs simultaneously in both directions, linking up as well as down. The high command decides the strategy, the what, and leaves the tactical, the how, to those of lesser rank, but closer to the action. I have always found it interesting that often times major field decisions are made by soldiers with the least amount of training or field experience.

So we wait. And we watch. And we listen.

Every room on the penthouse floor of the Buccaneer is wired (wirelessly) as well as the conference room, restaurant and lobby. Drysdale reports that every one of the forty-eight mini Chameleon surveillance cameras are in use. He further states that since the software has a maximum capacity of thirty-six, The Queen stepped up and added an extenuation plugin to allow the inclusion of the additional units, and that tests have all provided pristine audio and video. And lastly, he reports that she has also been successful in adding biometric sensing data to the feed, in a limited number of units. Meaning that not only is motion and aural dynamic range captured, but ambient temperatures, facial recognition and fingerprint capture all available within a few seconds of recording.

"She is currently testing a heart-rate application that might, according to her theory, let us know whether someone is lying as determined by spikes in their metabolic heart rate, in real time," He enthusiastically adds.

"Outstanding work Drysdale, it looks like Goldson and Company will be arriving tomorrow around 1300 your time. We have a scheduled ETA of 1715. Are we good with the hotel security and management?" I ask.

"Absolutely, they get the political implications, and this won't be their first rodeo. Seems this is a regular hangout of a large percentage of US policy makers - and their sponsors, girlfriends and lobbyists. Plus Goldson is a regular."

"No surprise there," I mutter, "we'll have you on com, but I want to make sure we stay patient. No big bang. Let them come, stay, play and leave thinking all is well. We need to be extras in this shoot, not the stars. Excepting Davis and Saunders, of course."

"Yes, sir. Understood.

"See you tomorrow. Get some sleep."

We end our communication and I make my way to the kitchen to grab a last cup of coffee and maybe a brioche. However, from my favorite verse there is no escape, and so I sing:

"We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down,
so we grabbed an alligator and fought another round,
we filled his head with cannonballs and powdered his behind
and when we set the powder off
the gator lost his mind."

In the kitchen I cannot tell if Mina is more appalled by the lyrical grotesqueness of the song or by my atonal cover of it.