Chapter 11

Thursday morning my JBG email was full of pictures. Heavy equipment and materials were on the tower’s site. Erosion fencing had been installed yesterday. The project was divided up among several major contractors.

The time limit had run out on the county and opposition was low to begin with. The few that were complaining were using the excuse that the buildings would spoil their view of the bay. Hell, they couldn’t see the bay unless they were in a five story house because of the trees. There were no five story houses in the area.

The Chinese group bid on the towers but were rejected by JBG; it would be a US contractor. One contractor was going to do both foundation tubs as they were called. That included driving steel into the bedrock and a waterproof concrete basement within the tub.

A thousand tons of steel piling would be driven for each building into the bedrock and five thousand yards of high strength steel reinforced concrete for each tub. Steel from the bedrock would eventually rise fourteen hundred feet into the air to the top floor. The access for water, sewer and electric were made at several locations in the tub.

Engineers for the tower building company were on site to ensure the pillars were properly placed. As soon as the tub cured, the construction on the tower would begin. Then the tub contractor would move to the second one. If weather and materials cooperated I would still be President when they were completed.

The contractor promised that with the number of crews and subcontractors they were planning to have working both towers would be done in four years. Both towers being structurally identical was going to speed things along.

Atlanta Construction Management was the general contractor for both towers was from Atlanta Georgia. They had built many high-rise buildings in Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas. They were responsible for the overall project.

There were dozens of subcontractors, many from the south; Richmond, Atlanta, North Carolina and a few from Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia.

Bob’s Construction was building the RV and water park on the 200 acre site. He had subcontracted the site work to a local dirt contractor and was going to handle the rest of it with his crews.

There were four bath and laundry houses to build along with the camp office and store. They were also building an adjoining bath house and laundry plus a club house and the ranger shack. Over two thousand trees were to be planted

The water park would have two pools, an Olympic size for adults and a smaller shallower one for youngsters. The water park would have all the high and low slides along with the dump buckets and drip sprayers. There was a river course that inflated donut rafts could be ridden, carried by the flow of the pumps within the park.

There would be a club house that made a small list of fast foods and drinks with picnic tables and vending machines plus showers and rooms to change in.

It was a well planned out and laid out. I liked it a lot — I hoped it would be very successful attraction for the area kids to enjoy all summer.

Another task that happened today was working with the inaugural committee. They were finishing up thousands of details and making the last minute invitations for all the scheduled parties. The inauguration was ten days away. Tomorrow night there was a dress fitting from a world’s clothier — my mates were coming over to get fitted for theirs.

I asked Andy if he and Shelia wanted to come to the festivities. “Not only no, but hell no,” was his response.

Ziva, Abra and Farah — the former Mossad officers and now my personal body guards — were going with us.

New additions to my staff were researching every federal agency, fretting out advisors, appointees and people they had hired by liberal presidents to place liberal policies in those agencies. They were to be removed in the downsizing of the budgets.

I would appoint and hire new people to those agencies with my line of thinking. The swamp that operated against every president from within was leaving government, like it or not. My investigative group was looking at all social media of the supervisors and managers in those agencies. If they weren’t on board with conservative policies and principals, they were gone too.

General Ingram came in to inform me that two of the carriers were at sea and two more would be before the end of the day. I wondered why the Navy didn’t come to tell me that.

“What are the satellites showing for activity in Pakistan near the border?” I asked.

“Frank will be in with the updates in a few minutes,” General Ingram said.

Melinda and Hanna were in the lobby waiting to see me with questions from the group of reporters that were going to Iran. It took an hour to answer them, the related information and what arrangements were made.

“Every news reporter from the inside and outside group has signed up to get updated vaccinations, saying they wanted to go,” Hanna said.