Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday with the exception that Patti drove to KCC. On the way home I was going to pick up the new suburban to replace the wrecked one. With the death threat against me unresolved and no new information, bigger was better when it came to vehicles.

At KCC, students continued through the enrollment process with little difficulty. The biggest complaint was about the replacement section of the dorm being for seniors only.

The new three story dorm was reserved for girls only. This was a break in the tradition for the last few years where girls were on one floor and males were in the same building on another floor. More and more international and immigrant students and the problems at other colleges had contributed to this change at KCC.

I was expecting legal complaints or at least a complaint from the new Student Union President as soon as one was elected. But for now the college was safe and probably for the year because I doubted that any changes would be made until the next college year, no matter who complained.

Patti dropped me off at the GM dealer to pick up my new KCC Suburban. The paperwork was already done; I just had to grab the keys and leave. At least it was full of gas so I did not have to stop on the way home.

I had just pulled into the driveway when the agent came running up to the Suburban. “We think there has been a pipe bomb left near the fence. You need to move the vehicle over to the gym parking lot. Wait over there; a unit is on its way to check it out.”

The girls had already moved all our cars over to the gym parking lot and were in the gym. The sheriff’s department had stopped all traffic turning into Summer’s Lane and had stopped traffic leaving before our house and gym.

We waited over at the gym with all the rest of the people while all the county, state and federal departments got all their equipment out.

They had one of those remote controlled tracked bomb inspection units loaded with sensors and cameras. The thing moved at a snails pace. After it made an initial inspection bomb sniffing dogs would check it out if there were any doubts.

They had laptops on the back of several cars monitoring the thing and looking at the camera. I thought ‘what the heck’ and walked over to the car where everyone was gathered and looked over Eric’s shoulder at the camera feed.

By now the media was parked out on the edge of 50 along with their tower cameras held high. The reporters were raising cane with the troopers out at the entrance of the road trying to gain entrance.

The robot would inch ahead then the robotic arm with the camera would angle, raise and lower and then it would inch ahead again.

There was no doubt that it was a piece of 4 inch pump pipe with a welded cap on the end from the view I saw. The other end was what made it suspicious. There were what appeared to be wires and something else taped to the outside.

We waited as they moved the robot closer. Finally it was in a position so we could see the other end. Everybody breathed a small sigh of relief and I’m sure that the all the experts were disappointed that they could not use more of their special equipment.

The other end of the pipe was open and there were pipes in it, each getting smaller in size. Every plumber’s truck had several pipes like this fastened to the side or sticking out the back; they used them to store smaller pipe and in making more space in the back of the truck.

Apparently this one was fastened with wire and taped to keep the pipe from sliding out of the wires. This one must have been on the truck a long time and the wire finally gave way.

One of the specialists in a heavily padded suit went over to give it a real look. He then picked it up out of the ditch and pulled the other pipes out of it for a good look inside.

Playing it safe is one thing, but I was wondering if paranoia was beginning to sit in; everyone was on edge. I walked away to the gym as they reopened the road. Eric followed behind me all the way to my office.

“The phone is back in use. It has passed here several times last night and today. It hasn’t stopped or pulled off the highway. It goes to Dover, stays an hour and then back to Washington, but has not been used to make any calls,” he said. “We believe it is with a courier or they are checking to see how far we have gotten with our digital investigation,” he added.

After things had returned to normal we had our nightly meeting and updates from the colleges. Today went better than yesterday. Two more days and we would be over the hump and everyone on the way home.

Tony, Kathryn and Janet came in for the last update to the airport plan for the week. They entire construction team were leaving to go home for the holiday tomorrow afternoon.

When they came back on Tuesday they were going to bring the rest of the concrete mix trucks and on Wednesday do the first pour of the runway. One runway was completely ready with all the rebar in place waiting for the concrete.

One pour on Wednesday with the Portland tanks refilled as it was used and another pour on Friday would finish half of one runway. Pours on Monday and Wednesday the following week would finish the NE / SW runway.

In between the pours the rebar for the P loops would go down. One runway would be completed in the next three weeks. The second one was to be completed three weeks after that. Then all the tarmac and cross taxi ways were to be poured.

All the concrete work would be done by the second week of October. All the other contractors were on schedule, the water tower, radar, fuel farm and electric would be completed and even the terminal building would be closed in before bad weather set in. The inside work could then be done regardless of the weather.

The water tower contractor was going to use the six inch well that Crash had used for a water supply for his spraying operation. They had run some tests and it pumped enough flow. It would run continuously for four days on the first run to fill the tower. The water and fire lines had already been installed. The pipes were capped off at all the buildings, waiting to be hooked up when the buildings were ready.

The sewage system became another problem in itself. The airport was too far away from either town to connect to a sewage system. Putting in a separate septic system for each building didn’t make sense. A huge concrete multi compartment septic tank was poured with a tremendous drain field.

There were holding tanks put at each building with an effluent pump to pump the mess to the main sewage tank. It would be trial and error learning process as to when the first of several separation compartments would need pumping out.

A maintenance department and a building for them and their equipment were going to be built. It was the one thing that had been neglected in all the planning.

It needed to be big enough to park a jet and AV-gas fuel truck along with mowers, a trash truck and several aircraft tugs in with some extra room. I was sure there were many little things we had forgotten or just had taken for granted that needed to be added, including snow removal equipment for the entrance road and the rest of the airport.

Homeland and the agency were going to supply the trash truck and the aircraft tugs and several bat-wing grounds maintenance tractors – a series of excess items from a base closing somewhere. JBG was going to supply the manpower. The intent was to keep as many strangers as possible from wandering around the property with a cover story as to why they should be there.

Edit by Alfmeister