he pulled a mission briefing out of his desk drawer and threw it into James’ lap. ‘You’d better read this.’
7. BRIEFING
** CLASSIFIED **
MISSION BRIEFING FOR JAMES ADAMS THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED WITH A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION TAG. ANY ATTEMPT TO REMOVE IT FROM THE MISSION PREPARATION BUILDING WILL SET OFF AN ALARM DO NOT PHOTOCOPY OR MAKE NOTES
J ANE O XFORD ( FORMERLY J ANE H AMMOND) – E ARLY Y EARS
Jane Hammond was born on a United States Army base in Hampshire, England, in 1950. She was the daughter of Captain Marcus Hammond, a US Army logistics specialist and his wife Frances, a British citizen he’d met and married while based in the United Kingdom .
Jane spent her early years living at various military installations around the world. She was a bright girl with a rebellious streak. At fifteen, while living in Germany, Jane ran away with a nineteen-year-old private in the US Marines. They surrendered themselves to the Parisian police three weeks later, when they ran out of money .
By this time Jane’s father, Marcus Hammond, had risen to the rank of General and was close to retirement. He requested a final military posting near to his birthplace in California, believing that a return to the United States would help Jane settle down and gain qualifications to attend college .
General Hammond was posted to Oakland naval base in California. He was put in charge of the supply chain, shipping troops and equipment across the Pacific to the escalating war in Vietnam .
Jane, meanwhile, did not buckle down to her education as her father had hoped. She began to skip school regularly and hang out with a group of hippies. Photographs from this era show a grubby-looking girl with long braided hair, strings of beads around her neck and flared jeans with holes over the knees .
Jane became interested in anti-Vietnam war issues through a boyfriend called Fowler Wood. Twenty-year-old Fowler was a dropout from the nearby University of California and the chairman of a radical anti-Vietnam war protest group .
Fowler became fascinated with General Hammond’s job. He’d been searching for a non-violent way to blunt the American war effort and came up with the idea of sabotaging weapons passing through Oakland docks. Jane began digging into the papers her father brought home each night. She even broke into his office and took blank security passes for the wharves where the goods were being loaded on to ships .
Jane learned about a regular shipment of assault rifles. Fowler and his anti-war movement colleagues hatched a plan. It involved using stolen security passes to bring a truckload of caustic lime into the docks. The protestors planned to break open the weapon crates and shovel powdered lime over the guns. By the time the guns arrived in Vietnam, the lime would have corroded the metal, making them useless .
Two nights before the raid was set to take place, Fowler’s peace group took a vote and decided that the guerrilla action was too risky. Or as Jane put it , ‘The little wimps chickened out.’ She immediately broke up with Fowler. She stole his car and her mother’s chequebook and headed south, paying her way towards Mexico with bad cheques .
J ANE H AMMOND MEETS K URT O XFORD
Jane got as far as San Diego, which borders on to the Mexican town of Tijuana. She found a room in a cheap motel and began scouring the local bars, looking for someone who could sell her the fake passport and driver’s licence she needed to cross the border. Instead, she found Kurt Oxford .
Kurt was a mountainous twenty-eight-year-old outlaw biker, complete with beard, tattoos and a prison record for violent behaviour and armed robbery. He’d co-founded a motorcycle club called the Brigands. At the time it was the second largest motorcycle gang in California and a bitter rival of the internationally famous Hell’s Angels. Jane took up the offer of a room in Kurt’s house, which also served as a clubhouse for the
7. BRIEFING
** CLASSIFIED **
MISSION BRIEFING FOR JAMES ADAMS THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED WITH A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION TAG. ANY ATTEMPT TO REMOVE IT FROM THE MISSION PREPARATION BUILDING WILL SET OFF AN ALARM DO NOT PHOTOCOPY OR MAKE NOTES
J ANE O XFORD ( FORMERLY J ANE H AMMOND) – E ARLY Y EARS
Jane Hammond was born on a United States Army base in Hampshire, England, in 1950. She was the daughter of Captain Marcus Hammond, a US Army logistics specialist and his wife Frances, a British citizen he’d met and married while based in the United Kingdom .
Jane spent her early years living at various military installations around the world. She was a bright girl with a rebellious streak. At fifteen, while living in Germany, Jane ran away with a nineteen-year-old private in the US Marines. They surrendered themselves to the Parisian police three weeks later, when they ran out of money .
By this time Jane’s father, Marcus Hammond, had risen to the rank of General and was close to retirement. He requested a final military posting near to his birthplace in California, believing that a return to the United States would help Jane settle down and gain qualifications to attend college .
General Hammond was posted to Oakland naval base in California. He was put in charge of the supply chain, shipping troops and equipment across the Pacific to the escalating war in Vietnam .
Jane, meanwhile, did not buckle down to her education as her father had hoped. She began to skip school regularly and hang out with a group of hippies. Photographs from this era show a grubby-looking girl with long braided hair, strings of beads around her neck and flared jeans with holes over the knees .
Jane became interested in anti-Vietnam war issues through a boyfriend called Fowler Wood. Twenty-year-old Fowler was a dropout from the nearby University of California and the chairman of a radical anti-Vietnam war protest group .
Fowler became fascinated with General Hammond’s job. He’d been searching for a non-violent way to blunt the American war effort and came up with the idea of sabotaging weapons passing through Oakland docks. Jane began digging into the papers her father brought home each night. She even broke into his office and took blank security passes for the wharves where the goods were being loaded on to ships .
Jane learned about a regular shipment of assault rifles. Fowler and his anti-war movement colleagues hatched a plan. It involved using stolen security passes to bring a truckload of caustic lime into the docks. The protestors planned to break open the weapon crates and shovel powdered lime over the guns. By the time the guns arrived in Vietnam, the lime would have corroded the metal, making them useless .
Two nights before the raid was set to take place, Fowler’s peace group took a vote and decided that the guerrilla action was too risky. Or as Jane put it , ‘The little wimps chickened out.’ She immediately broke up with Fowler. She stole his car and her mother’s chequebook and headed south, paying her way towards Mexico with bad cheques .
J ANE H AMMOND MEETS K URT O XFORD
Jane got as far as San Diego, which borders on to the Mexican town of Tijuana. She found a room in a cheap motel and began scouring the local bars, looking for someone who could sell her the fake passport and driver’s licence she needed to cross the border. Instead, she found Kurt Oxford .
Kurt was a mountainous twenty-eight-year-old outlaw biker, complete with beard, tattoos and a prison record for violent behaviour and armed robbery. He’d co-founded a motorcycle club called the Brigands. At the time it was the second largest motorcycle gang in California and a bitter rival of the internationally famous Hell’s Angels. Jane took up the offer of a room in Kurt’s house, which also served as a clubhouse for the
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