Chapter 258

Caroline was having a tough go of it. She had made two more trips to surgery. Linda Breeze had intended to go home on Wednesday to return to work. The company she worked for told her to stay as long as necessary.

Linda was a nervous wreck and spending so much time alone did not help after her family went back to Fort Wayne. Wednesday night Courtney convinced her to stay at her house in the spare room.

For JBG the week had been busy. Marcy, Cindy and Mark were crunching the numbers for the two new sites. On Wednesday, Eric and agents from two other agencies met with Marcy to review the bids and make adjustments. Those adjustments were more surveillance equipment, more costs and more mark-up.

The contracts were rewritten and sent to both colleges for approval. It was a no brainer for them; more security and less cost with the government grants in the equation. Both colleges faxed signed contracts back on Thursday and the process began with the job postings in those cities.

Finally, on Thursday I was able to get back into a normal routine for the rest of the week. Thursday night, while on the way home from KCC I stopped by the airport site.

One of the three batch plants was gone along with several of the concrete mix trucks. The floor pour was different than what had been done with the runways. It looked like they were starting from each side and working towards the middle with the concrete.

They were using some kind of pump truck get the concrete to the big center sections. One of the men said it was the same procedure that they had used with the other two hangars. I had not been around to see the first ones.

With the heating system in the floor, it was the only way they could pour it. They were working on the last few hundred feet of the hangar. Men were riding on a gasoline powered trowel that was smoothing the surface.

The outside sections already had the steel beams to support the roof beams in place and they were installing the roof beams with big cranes. To me it looked like this was the only place concrete work was left to finish along with the tarmac and its connection to the runways.

It made sense because Tony had said that all the concrete work would be finished before any freezing weather. In this area that could happen soon after Thanksgiving, just four weeks away.

Tony had sent me a text yesterday that both the JBG and Agency hangars were now completely finished. The Agency had their contractors installing top secret stuff in theirs now. Tony said there was a daily convoy of government trucks and SUVs navigating the access road to the hangar.

Marcy and Lorrie were both itching to move our planes here to stop the tie down, rental fees and FBO fees at Easton for the bombardiers and at Island Airport for the rest.

There were two hold-ups to that move. One was the OK from Tony that the concrete was ready to support that kind of weight. The other was the terminal building. We needed to be able to assemble passengers out of the coming cold and bad weather and they needed a place to park their vehicles.

Fuel was not one of the problems. The fuel tanks were filled to check for any leaks before the final payment to the contractor. Our fuel supply was ready to go.

Bob's Construction and all of his sub-contractors had made remarkable progress on the terminal, but I did not see the move happening for another month at least. As soon as the cover crop seeding was done the biplane would make its last flight here.

The mechanics were going to drain all the fluids, remove the batteries, touch up all the paint then help Bob move it into the terminal to its designated spot as a museum piece as we had agreed with Crash.