The Stair Case

By D. E. Harrison

In a city where most construction is done in the rain, a new 20-story high-rise foundation had to have tons of water dumped on it to cure it. The city passes a new building code early and the contractor must add two more subfloor staircases to both sides of the foundation.
The FBI is conducting a SWAT exercise in the same high-rise building many years later. They move the civilians to an upper floor after the building has been opened for a time. One old fellow is missed in the shuffle and goes to the very bottom #3S floor. They halted the elevators during the exercise. Coming up to the main lobby by the staircase, he finds it is full of terrorists. He tries to hide down stairs.
What could cause the exercise to go deadly and have the FBI Commander order his second unit into the building with live ammo?
Why was the radio tech for the exercise, which is a mousy looking, purple colored hair, female with glasses, be field promoted to a Special Agent by the FBI Commander? The Commander next tells his second in command to shoot any agent that does not do what the newest Special Agent says.
Why does the medical staff start to look at the knives the dead SWAT members are still carrying?

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. E. Harrison
• Release date: Oct 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463334140

D. E. Harrison

I am trained as a theoretical mathematician. I am an emeritus member of the American Mathematical Society for fifty odd years. I have lived in Seattle since 1967. I starting writing fiction after writing a family history.

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The Stair Case

By D.E. Harrison

Copyright 2008 by D. E. Harrison

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Years Before Today

Chapter 2 The Planning

Chapter 3 The Situation

Chapter 4 The Second Team

Chapter 5 The Re-enactment

Chapter 6 The Bloody Knives

Chapter 7 More Review, Agent Cummings Comments

Chapter 8 The Beginning and End

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Chapter 1 Years Before Today

A meeting is in progress with the building architect, general contractor Bill, several sub-contractors and two well-seasoned foremen in the architect’s home.

The architect seldom stands as he says from his favorite chair, I have the approved permits here. You can start as soon as weather allows. You can preassemble and pre-stage the equipment and people. It will all depend on the weather. If we have too, we will build a small rain shelter to turn the first spade full of soil. If the weather is not forecasted to improve this weekend, we will build the shelter. I do not want to waste what good days we will be having.

He pauses and looks toward Bill, "I will turn this meeting over to Bill the general contractor for the more crucial details.

Bill stands, Just to bring everyone up to the same level. The building site has about one hundred feet of glacial till followed by fifty feet of blue clay, and finally about fifty feet of compacted soil from all the ice that was on it. We will go down to this compact soil and test it. However, we will still drive a number of concrete pylons for the foundation.

Bill continues, There is likely twenty or thirty dump truck loads of the blue clay. We have found a buyer if he approves the first load. He wants the clay so badly that he is willing to strip off any over burden at his own cost. He will pay one dollar a pound at the gross weight of each load. We need to be careful not to load material he cannot use. At $10,000 a truck load, it will make a good bonus to everyone if we control costs. Otherwise, the clay will have to fill the cost overrun. Please, this does not leave this room.

The architect shakes hands with every person as they leave the meeting.

The general foreman and subcontractors will be ready in four days to begin the building of the new Windtowers.

In three days, the weather is just the normal Seattle weather for this time of year. But the rain seems to be hanging on a little longer than normal. The rain shelter is built in less than one day. The opening ceremony is scheduled for the next day. It takes four hours to dry the soil enough for the first spade of soil to be turned.

The survey crew has laid all the points, the next day the rain shelter is torn down, and the building starts. The one hundred feet of till is removed quickly. The general contractor Bill is down in the hole as the sides are being pile driven and secured. He has a hand shovel and the most experienced heavy equipment shovel operator. The rain is still coming down at about an inch every four hours. The operator gets in his equipment. He pushes and digs through the thin layer of glacial till left above the blue clay.

The shovel operator tells the general foreman, "A big shovel will not do the job, but a good front loader can skim the layer of till away. Then the blue clay will be almost clean. It will take an extra day to do this right. I can