Jack’s business was struggling like most companies in the current economy but Jack was doing his best in an unfamiliar environment and it seemed like he was finally getting things moving in the right direction. The company specialized in the installation and repair of HVAC systems and it had taken Jack considerable time and effort to learn the ropes but he was finally getting the hang of it. It was also how Jack found himself on the roof of this building.

This building wasn’t owned by one of Jack’s regular accounts but in the two years he’d been running this company he’d learned just how easy it was to come and go in the city when you wore the uniform of a working man. Put on a pair of blue trousers, a cap and a shirt with a name tag sewn on the pocket and you could pretty much go where you wanted in the city. Jack didn’t usually go out on service calls but when he first took over the company he’d made it a point to accompany the men on an occasional call just so he’d be familiar with all the aspects of his new business. In the Navy he was well known as a man who paid close attention to the minutia of every operation. Jack attributed his survival all these years to that attention to detail and just because he wasn’t in a blatantly hostile environment he saw no reason to get sloppy now. Like the old television ad that urged people to wear their seatbelts, Jack felt an accident could just as easily happen close to home.

Jack looked around one more time, he didn’t expect anyone to be watching and he wasn’t disappointed. As an active SEAL he often had to work under the cover of darkness with the enemy looking for him constantly but back here in the states it was proving relatively easy to operate. People tended to mind their own business. He knew that was the exact reason it had proven so easy for the terrorists who took down the World Trade Center to accomplish their goals. Jack remembered a news show he’d seen over a decade ago, a reporter was questioning an Arab terrorist in Afghanistan. The terrorist confidently predicted the United States would succumb to a large attack because America was such a free country. What he meant was it would be easy to attack any enemy with such an open society. Jack couldn’t argue the point but he would be the last one to want his country to turn itself into an armed camp. He wasn’t sure there was a good solution to the problem.