Storm Surge - Part 2 (16 page)

Dar considered that. "Which one of us is spectacular and brilliant?" she asked. "I forgot all about that. I have extra capacity at the office. We might be able to take part of the traffic there." She closed her eyes. "But I was serious, Ker. They have to step up, just like we had to step up yesterday and get the job done."

Kerry kissed the top of her head. "I love you," she replied, simply.

Dar smiled.

"Anything we can do to help though?"

"I knew you were going to ask that." Dar remarked. "Let's get Scuzzy up here and see if she knows someone we can talk to. I met her on a subway. Maybe it's a sign." She reached over and put her hand on Kerry's leg. "Want to hear my ulterior motive?"

"That if they run the cable up to our uplink, we can piggy back our customers down here on it? Starting with our tech office?"

Dar chuckled under her breath, a soft, light sound that echoed inside the bus. "Busted!"

Kerry started laughing too, her body finally giving up its tension as her headache faded and her blood sugar stabilized. The sense of horror from the disaster site moved to the back of her mind and the optimism that was more natural for her returned.

Dar turned her head and brushed Kerry's lips with her own, ignoring the rest of the folks on the bus that were within earshot.

Shocking. Kerry returned the kiss, caressing Dar's face with gentle fingers. But who cared?

The whole world was different now.

Chapter Seven

KERRY RESTED HER chin on her hand as her other hand moved her mouse clicking on another email. "Go ahead, Air Hub. I think it sounds like everyone has everything pretty much together."

"Roger that, Miami exec. Traffic isn't back to normal, but it's steady, and I think we can handle the additional service requests."

"Miami exec, this is Herndon." A female voice broke in. "We're getting calls from sites affected by the Pennsylvania outage. They want a status."

Kerry tapped on the mouse. "Do you have someone on now?"

"Yes, ma'am." Herndon answered. "Docson Pharmaceuticals."

"Put them on."

There was a moment's silence. "Put them on the bridge, ma'am?"

"Yes," Kerry said. "I only have two ears and one set of vocal cords. Put them on."

"Uh--yes ma'am. One second."

Kerry released her mouse and picked up her cup of hot tea, taking a sip of the mint and raspberry flavored beverage as she waited for the customer to come on the line.

She was in the last section in the bus a small, discrete office barely the size of her bathroom in the condo, but furnished in solid teak with the most comfortable leather office chair she'd ever encountered.

Plush and expensive, it was designed to provide a marginal business purpose for the courtesy bus and, in the case of strange and utter emergency, it allowed whoever was using the bus at the time--always senior officers of the company--to perform whatever office it was they held in dignified good taste.

She liked it. It was private. There was a smoked glass wall that separated it from the rest of the bus, and a door she currently had shut. The glass kept it from being too claustrophobic, but the shading kept it from being a fishbowl and it was soundproofed to a moderate degree.

"Standby." Herndon warned her. "Mr. Eccles? You're on the line with Kerry Stuart, our VP of Operations. Go ahead."

The only thing it lacked was enough space for Dar to be in therewith her. "Go ahead, Mr. Eccles. What can I do for you?" Kerry spoke into the mic.

"Ah, okay, yes. Ms--ah, Stuart was it?" A male voice came from the speaker, along with faint static.

"That's right." Kerry saw a popup start to flash, and she clicked on it.

Hey Kerry -- got a minute?

Kerry typed into the box.
Go ahead Mari.

"Well, listen. I need to know what's going on here. I've tried to get hold of my account rep, but he's not answering, and the support center said there's no one available down there so--"

Kerry clicked on another box as a text message passed through their internal messaging system rather than to her phone.

Scuzzy knows a guy.
She smiled at the words. "Well, Mr. Eccles, I'm very sorry, but you'll have to be a little more specific on the question. There's an awful lot going on right now. I am sure you can appreciate that we have many issues we're working on, including yours."

She waited for the answer while she typed a response.
Scuzzy's going to be worth a promotion by the time this is over

She'll end up a regional director. Can't wait for the conference calls with her on them.

Kerry stifled a laugh, appreciating Dar's wry humor. Then Mari's box started flashing with a new incoming message, and she clicked over to it.

Kerry, I've got a request here from the FBI to provide them with all our employment records.

Kerry's head jerked up. "What?"

"Well, I--what?" Eccles answered. "What did you say?"

"Sorry." Kerry typed furiously into the machine. "Go ahead. I have quite a few things working here right now."

"As I was saying, our offices have been down since Tuesday. I'm the first one to understand that there's been terrible things going on, and I assume your people are busy, but my business is at a standstill and I need to know what's being done for us."

What?
Dar's response came back.

What should I tell them?
Mari asked.

"Hang on a minute, Mr. Eccles. Let me call up the support system and see what I can find out for you." Kerry said, as she typed.
Mari, I'm getting Dar on this. She's with Alastair, and I hope also with Hamilton. They really need to handle that request. Who's it coming from?

I'm on the way there.
Dar's message somehow sounded as indignant as Kerry knew she was.

Bring Alastair and our lawyer.
Kerry advised her. "Okay, Mr. Eccles,what I have here on your outage is that you have three circuits down--"

Her cell phone rang. "Hold on a second, maybe that's news." She put the mic on hold and opened her phone without looking at the caller ID."Kerry Stuart."

Okay, gotcha.
Mari typed back.
I halfway understand the request, Kerry--it's become very obvious to a lot of people just how involved we are in the government, but I'm concerned.

She's concerned? Kerry took her eyes from the screen briefly as she heard a slight buzz on the phone. "Hello?"

"Ms. Stuart? Hello? This is Danny down at the Pentagon--I'm trying to get hold of Mark. Do you know where he is?"

The door opened and Dar entered the small room, bringing her restless energy with her. "Who's asking?"

"Danny, last time I saw Mark he was inventorying the routers here. Can I get him to call you? I'm on a few things right now." Kerry blocked out the distraction of her partner with difficulty.

"Oh, sure. Sorry about that," Danny said. "They're all of a sudden chewing me to move some of our rigs and I don't want to disconnect anything"

"Let me see that." Dar circled the desk and squeezed behind it with her, leaning over to peer at Kerry's screen. She clicked on Mari's box and typed into it.

"Okay, yeah, I'll have Mark call you." Kerry promised. "Bye." She hung up the phone and picked up the mic. "I'm on the bridge, hon.Don't start yelling."

"Idiots." Dar growled while reading the screen.

"Okay, sorry about that." Kerry keyed the mic. "Mr. Eccles, according to our system--" She paused, as Dar's typing removed the view from her screen. "Sorry, hold on one more minute." She clicked the mic off. "Sweetheart, I need to see my stuff. I'm in the middle of something here."

"I know--I know--just one second," Dar muttered. "Freaking idiots. I'm having her give them Hamilton's number. He's earning his salary today, that's for sure."

Kerry took the opportunity to take a sip of tea. Despite Dar's interruption in her flurry of communication, she didn't mind having her partner hanging over her. It gave her a chance to rearrange her thoughts, and the warmth of Dar's breasts pressing against the back of her head didn't hurt either.

"There. Sorry. Want me to pass that message to Mark?" Dar kissed the top of her head. "Since I messed up your flow here?"

"That would be awesome." Kerry took possession of her laptop."Now let me go and give some BS story to this guy about his circuits. Do you think they'll look at the Philly ones any time soon?"

"All the techs are here," Dar said. "Want me to send him a sat truck? Is he big enough? "

Kerry called up the account and studied it. Then she sighed. "Honestly, no," she said. "Let me see what I can do to placate him."

"Okay." Dar gave her shoulders a squeeze, then edged out from behind the desk and got the door open. "Let me know if you need anything else, okay?"

"Absolutely." Kerry resisted the urge to come up with something else on the spot. "Thanks babe." She waited for Dar to close the door then she went back to her mic. "Okay. Where the hell was I?"

DAR SHUT THE door to the bus and emerged into the area defined by the bus, the sat trucks and equipment vans that had accompanied it. In the middle of the open space, they'd set up a rough wooden worktable, and on it was spread the underground map with a handful of techs and Scuzzy all looking at it.

She rejoined them and the techs cleared a space for her. She was about to delve back into the underground puzzle when her conscience poked her. "Where's Mark?"

"He was just here," Shaun said. "Just a second ago."

"Mark!"

"Whoa, whoa--right here, Big D." Mark appeared from around the back of the bus. "I got that stuff you wanted me to look for--what's up?"

"Pentagon was calling for you. Something about moving a rig." Dar replied briefly. "Call them. Tell them not to bug Kerry if they want you.

She's not your sitter."

"Okay boss, you got it." Mark reversed course and headed for the bus. "My cell's gone wonky. It keeps losing sig. I'll tell them to text me on the PDA."

Dar returned her attention to the map, satisfied she'd taken one annoyance off her partner's plate. "Okay." She pulled out another schematic of the office building where their office was located. "Let's say, by some miracle of political voodoo they do manage to get a wire in this direction."

"Y'know, they could," Scuzzy said. She leaned on the table with both hands, appearing pleased to be involved. "Those union guys, they ain't that bad, you know? They want their stuff the way they want their stuff, if you know what I mean."

Dar nodded. "Matter of fact, I do know what you mean. But I don't lay bets on people I don't know. So all we can do is have a few plans in our back pocket." She tapped the blueprint. "As I was saying if they do manage to get up here, then what? How do we get the signal upstairs? Riser?"

Shaun hunkered down over the plan, leaning on his elbows."Here's something labeled electrical room. I think."

"But are there any openings between the room and the lower basement?" Kannan added, folding his long, slim arms over his chest. "I am thinking that will be the largest of the problems. I do not think they will let us put a hole through the wall."

Dar drummed her pencil against the plans. "I think we should relocate back to the office--at least half of us anyway. We can start figuring out what to do about the connection while some people stay here and work on this end."

"You really think these guys are going to do this?" Shaun asked. "I was talking to one of those Verizon techs. He didn't sound too enthusiastic."

"I don't know," Dar answered honestly. "But I do know if they do decide to come through, and we're not ready for it, we'll look like a bunch of jackasses. That's not on my agenda for today."

"Ah. Yeah." Shaun blushed a little. "Sorry."

"Lo there Dardar." Andrew had slipped between the bus and the sat truck and came up next to her. "What's the problem with them fellers? All these people round here looking to help, and all they're doing is pushing back."

He stuck his hands in his pockets, and cocked his head. "Don't make no sense."

"It doesn't really." Kannan agreed. "I don't understand it myself."

"You guys don't understand, yeah, that's right." Scuzzy spoke up."These guys--like the tunnels, and the buildings and everything-- they've been these guys like, home plate, you know? Like, my cousin, he's a guy who works in the tunnels. His pop, he was a sandhog. You know what that was?"

"Fellers work underground." Andrew supplied.

"Yeah, but here, that's like, something special." Scuzzy told them."This whole place, this whole city? It's built on what's underground. So they take it real personal about all them spaces. "

Dar now folded her arms. "You know something? I get it.""Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dar said. "I get it, because our entire company is built on a foundation I laid. I take that really personal also. But right now, they need to either get their heads out of their asses and be part of the solution, or be the ones who are going to answer to the damn politicians when their banks won't open on Monday. I'm not covering for them."

Scuzzy nodded. "That's pretty much what I told my cousin to tell those guys. 'Cause you know what? They ain't into seeing their pictures in the Times, you know?"

"Let's hope so." Dar pulled a pad over and started to scribble on it. "So. Let's see."

"Ms. Roberts?" A strange voice broke in.

Dar looked up, to find Charles somewhat timidly sticking his head around the corner of the bus. "Yes?"

He took that as permission to approach. "Listen, we're having a meeting with the city and union folks--would you mind stepping in and giving your view on the situation?" He asked. "There's some skepticism as to what our goals are."

Dar's brows lifted slightly.

"Okay, they all think we're nuts," Charles amended hastily. "I'm not having much luck convincing them otherwise. I thought maybe you'd have a better chance at it." He looked hopefully at Dar. "Please?"