Book 3 Chapter 58

            The media fiasco at the gym and Morton was unfolding as I closed down the Oval Office for the day.

            At Summers Road, Andy had thirty protesters properly immobilized with four flex cuffs each on the side of the road. A dozen Secret Service agents were politely watching while taking a boat load of pictures with cell phones. The county sheriff had called for two county ride passenger vans to take them to the detention center.

            If the Secret Service had arrested them, they would be released almost immediately by a federal magistrate. Not so with the county; they were going to spend at least one night in the detention center. The county judge that handled all the new arrest cases was a hard ass – from the prisoner and attorney complaints.

            The county detention center was not known to be a kind place. There was a section that had hard timers there, the worst of the worst was the word.

            Dozens were sentenced to life and a few that were once on death row until a liberal governor gave in to the pacifist and changed the death sentence over to life.

            They had nothing to lose so battles that resulted in solitary confinement were often. Then there were the normal prison gangs that are prevalent in all large prisons.

            Then there were the holding cells that all those waiting to see the judge were put into. There was always the local addict and trouble makers in the group. The protesters were in for a rough night.

            The women’s section holding cells were no better, maybe even worse. Women can be vicious, even more vicious against other impressionable women. The power plays in women’s prisons are as bad as in any men’s prison.

            Those women that thought they were doing something by joining in the protest were in for a rude awaking, starting with an aggressive body cavity search and going downhill from there.

            The two groups that were arrested at Morton were going to the federal system. All crimes at airports became federal crimes and that included blocking the airport, blocking aviation services and so on.

            Morton came under the Baltimore DOJ office. The judge – and by connection the prosecutors – were my appointees. I chose the most hardline people I could find for all those positions nationwide. Let the fun begin.

            There were updates all afternoon on the fate of the protest and protesters. There were also some news footages and a few posts on the protesters’ websites.

            Most of the website were directed at their rights being denied and about their phones and cameras being seized or destroyed. Then there were the charges of excessive force being used by security and the use of torture devices being used – cattle prods on protesters sitting in the road.

            They were lucky Marcy wasn’t there with her bull whip. Jenny and I had a good laugh at that thought.

            We received a text from Lorrie that we needed to be home Saturday morning for training on the two new Stryker airport fire trucks. They were at the Pierce dealer getting final touches put on them and were to be delivered Friday night after dark.

            Lorrie wanted their appearance on Saturday to be a media event for Morton. There was an 0700 breakfast for the attendees, then an all-day training session for the Morton fire department, the agency fire department and the three local volunteer fire departments that were on the call box for anything that happened at Morton.

            The county EMS system was done by a call box. The 911 call center determined the call box by the type of emergency and where. Any call box that was for Morton Field or the truck stop went to all three volunteer companies as well as activating the Morton fire alarm that included the agency’s fire group.

            I sent a text back that I would be home Friday night. I wanted to be there to look at those beasts, maybe even drive one down the taxiway. I also sent that she should invite Hanna and Elmo, as well as Duke Justice and Clarence Hallworthy.

            As an afterthought I sent that she should invite the three managers of the air freight companies that were renting hangars for their sorting operations, especially now that all three were expanding operations.

            I went back to the task at hand, there were always dozens of people that wanted to meet with me. Kitty screened them first, then Troy and Connie screened them again and ranked them on level of importance.

            The federal tax changes that were in the works would affect some states in the way they figured state tax. Every one of those state governors wanted a meeting.

            Of course, they wanted their chief revenue officer or the head of their tax division to be in on the meeting to emphasize their concerns. They also wanted their senators and representatives to sit in on the meeting. What should have been a small meeting was now very large meeting in a couple of cases.

            The small states that had the two senators and one, two or three representatives would not be too bad. Meetings with large populations such as California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania would be a cluster fuck from the beginning.

            I knew I was going to get seriously lectured by California, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, demanding they get more federal money in and for hand out programs but because of the proposed changes, they weren’t getting any more money.

            California and New York were this afternoon, the meetings took all afternoon. They were upset and disappointed when they left – there was formal promises of extra money. Being the bad politician that I was, I still dangled the carrot in front of them. I still needed enough votes to pass the measure to make it law.

            New Jersey and Pennsylvania were tomorrow morning, then Jenny, Ching Lee, the kids and I were going to Summers Road.

            The fire truck training and demo was Saturday and Sunday we were leaving for East Water Cay. The Secret Service was already there with a small detachment and so were some of Andy’s men.

            After the decision of keeping a lower profile on my travels, just a few of my Washington staff were going. Needed people would be moved in and out for special projects, problems and meetings as needed.

            The six added rental cottages had been completed and were all booked by the government for the two weeks that we were going to be there. There were no regular rental customers staying on the island for those two weeks. Congress was going to go crazy when the bills hit the GSA books.

            Jenny read me the update from the tower construction site. It was trouble and a disappointment in more ways than one. As with many things at home, I was not kept in the loop as much as I would have liked. I needed to find more time to sit in on the nightly meetings by video.

            The base tubs for the two towers were completed. The tubs went all the way to the bedrock and were designed to keep water from seeping into the huge pit needed to construct grillage for each column tube of the tower.

            The grillage was set directly on the bedrock with huge anchor bolts drilled into the bedrock. The grillage consisted of a thick concrete pad long enough to support several columns.

            On top of the pad was several layers of steel H beams crossed and layered for support. On top of that was an extremely thick steel plate for the columns to sit on and be welded to. Then the complete grillage was covered with high strength concrete. This pad was sixty feet below ground level. That sixty feet was floors of the basement.

            Each column was essentially a tube of steel – a fourteen-inch H beam with three-inch web thickness twelve feet long. The ends were machine cut to a bevel to be welded. They were pre drilled for the floor trusses and stress reinforcements. After all that was completed a two–inch thick plate was added to its flanges making it a high strength box. These columns would be incased in concrete to the ground level.

            These column tubes were three feet apart, with eighty -three on each of the four sides of the tower. At a given height the columns would be connected with a spandrel reducing the number of columns going to the top of the tower. The thickness of this would decrease as the height increased. The greatest structural load was on the lower floors.

            The best definition of a spandrel is an upside-down Y taking two columns into one; instead of sharp corners, they were curved to increase strength.

            The spandrels were prefabbed and were forty feet tall and weighed thirty tons. They were predrilled for all the necessary brackets, bolts and rivets. The spandrels were added to the columns at ground level, increasing the speed the towers were rising.

            There was also an inner box that was duplicate of the outer box. Fifty percent the size of the outer box – that added tremendous strength to the tower. It was built first, then when several floors high the outer box columns would be completed to the same height, then work would continue on the inner. All the elevators were inside the inner box area.

            Preformed trusses thirty-six inches wide were covered with corrugated metal, which would be attached to the outer and inner columns. They had all the necessary holes for water, sewer, electric and whatever else they needed a modification for. After they were bolted, riveted and welded in place, the concrete for the floor was poured onto them.

            Two very large contractors from the south had won the bids to build the towers. Both had decades of experience in building multistory buildings. One of them had even supplied labor and engineering to build the replacement towers in New York that Bin Laden had taken down. So, they had plenty of experience.

            The first five stories of each building were completed in the raw form. The developing problem was welders. The joint at each spandrel took hundreds of passes of weld to fill in the cut taper. There were big wire feed welders using flux cored welding wire that had to be chipped and wire wheeled to be perfectly clean and after the final weld, ground flat so reinforcing plates could be installed by bolting and welding. There were dozens of portable welders running at a time.

            The process could take forty hours of labor at each joint. There were forty-two joints on each side that needed this done every forty feet the building rose on the outer wall and another forty on the inner wall. One solution was to put two welders on each joint if they could be found, cutting the time in half.

            The problem was welders and weather. The contractors had brought dozens of welders with them and then advertised for certified welders from Baltimore, Philly, New Jersey and the oil fields of Texas.

            Many of the welders from Baltimore, Philly, New Jersey and New York were members of the Union Iron Workers. When the Union Hall had work contracted through the hall, that was their job for the day.

            They had to go to the Union Hall every day to see if there was work for them. If there was no work, they went home and got beer money for checking in.

            Our contractors had work on the towers – plenty of work – so much work that all the welders were getting overtime every week, sometimes twenty hours and more to keep up with the steel erectors – if they wanted it.

            The unions allowed no overtime on any of their contract jobs. If the job didn’t get done, the company needed to contract for more welders, resulting in more union dues and more cut of the wages.

            The problem started at the Union Hall when no welders or only a few showed up to want work, the union couldn’t supply welders for its contract agreements. The union was losing fifty percent of its cut of the wages. The businesses that they needed welders to make production schedules were screaming and making threats.

            The threats started first by phone calls, demanding they show up or lose union protection, benefits and the union card. When that didn’t work, the Union sent people to their house to threaten them. Many of them told the Union to blow off – knowing they had at least four and more years of work on the towers.

            The next step was to send union organizers trying to organize the nonunion welders to form a union and pickets at the job site. The security people that Andy had on site had been advised by some of the welders that the union was going to make trouble. The union organizers soon found out that they were not going to be on the property.

            The tower site was fifty acres – including parking for employees – that required a company ID photo for access. A huge storage yard held all the materials. The materials were trusses, beams, spandrels, boxes, columns, braces and an assortment of other large materials need for construction.

            All these components were supplied in order as needed and each has a serial number, an assembly number and a number that led to the correct spot on the blue print. They were stamped with metal stamps in four places on each piece.

            Most were coming from steel plants in Virginia by truck. The famous Sparrows Point Steel Plant that had put Baltimore on the map was long gone, along with 40 thousand jobs in its hay day. They were contracted to steel companies and fabricators in West Virginia to ensure there were plenty of completed spandrels in advance.

            The tower site had rows of shipping containers with the thousands of small parts needed. There were two hundred and fifty thousand rivets, a million bolts, a hundred rolls of welding wire.

            And then there were the tools. Big impact wrenches, magnetic drills and bits, gas powered welders, grinders and grinding wheels; there was even a tool repair shop and several inventory control specialists and supply people to make every beam, truss and anything else needed was on hand when it was needed.

            The contracts required every piece to be delivered thirty days ahead of its installation date to ensure there was no stoppage for the lack of materials.

            Then there were the big cranes and equipment, tower cranes that grew with the towers – four for each building – mobile cranes and heavy lift forklifts.

            Thousands of tons of stone were dumped to make roadways that would not be mud pie with rains. All these jobs would have been done by a variety of unions workers if the towers had been built on the western shore, New Jersey, Pennsylvania or New York.

            After the first encounter with union organizers, Andy had the security fly a couple of the drones with night vision around the job site. A week later two boats with ten men in them came ashore on the bay frontage with all kinds of gas cans. They were going to sabotage and set some of the equipment on fire.

            They were given a rude awaking by gunfire and held until Andy and more men arrived. Vicky was called, what happened after that was her decision and Andy’s.

            I wondered when I would find out what it was?

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