Storm Surge - Part 2 (19 page)

She squeezed a blob of apricot scrub on it, and started soaping herself. It felt good to feel the clean tingle, although she'd worn her jumpsuit she'd felt like the dust had formed a film on her skin and she was literally itching to get it off.

It was good to be back at the office away from all the destruction.Kerry rinsed herself off, then applied a good handful of shampoo to her hair and scrubbed her scalp. Up by the hotel, there were people and cars, and a lot of activity, a far cry from the ghostly wasteland they'd so recently left.

With the last of the soap circling down the drain, she shut the shower off and stepped out, wrapping herself in the thick towel that was hanging nearby. Even that felt good and she dried herself off, glancing briefly in the half fogged mirror at her reflection.

Grim. She stuck her tongue out at the disheveled image. Then she got her underwear on and ran a brush through her hair, before she wrapped the towel around her neck and emerged from the bathroom.

It was quiet. The windows were surprisingly sound proofed, and the room itself had a thick carpet, and a comfortable king size bed--not a specially grand space, but right now it seemed like heaven to Kerry's tired eyes.

She pulled on a pair of carpenter pants and a polo, but left her feet bare as she went over to the desk and sat down next to it, picking up her water bottle and taking a swig.

Laying down was an option, but she knew if she did, she'd fall asleep and she wasn't sure she wanted to do that. Dar was down in the basement of their office looking for pipes, and she wanted to wait for her to come back up to the room to see what she'd found down there.

The team--she'd started to think of all of them as one big team-- would probably want to gather for dinner. She'd heard them talking on the ride back up from Battery Park, and there was something of a group mind going on that she could appreciate in the situation.

She did appreciate it. However, on a personal level, she would have rather spent the time alone with Dar simply decompressing. Her body wasn't that tired, but her mind was, having spent hours and hours chasing problems around in circles.

"I don't think I'm up to a communicative evening." Kerry remarked to the empty room. "But let's see what happens." She glanced at her laptop, then she extended her legs and crossed them at the ankles, leaving the machine sitting closed on the desktop.

Her cell phone and PDA rested next to it, both blessedly quiet for the moment.

That was good. She was tired of telling people what to do, and getting mostly bad news from all quarters. She wanted to be able to chill out, and not feel guilty that she was letting issues lie without her attention.

There was a point, she had discovered, when you lost the ability to quantify everything you had to do when there was just too much of it.It was like trying to dig a hole in the sand by the ocean--fast as you kept digging, it kept filling.

She'd found that point today, right before she'd shut her laptop and turned off her mic. No matter how many customers she'd talked to, there were more waiting. No matter how many times she explained the situation, there were people that begged the exception and, to their credit, most of them were not frivolous requests.

Never enough.

Kerry took a swallow of her water, then decided she really wanted something stronger. She got up and put the cap on the bottle, then started looking around for some shoes, figuring even a seat in the corner of the bar would probably keep her from falling asleep until Dar finished fiddling.

Maybe they'd even have some decent jalapeno poppers or something. Kerry found her boots and put them on, then tucked her room key into one of her side pockets and slipped out the door and into the hallway.

It, too, was quiet. She passed one other person on the way to the elevator, and rode all the way down in solitary splendor to the floor which housed the bar. This area was more crowded, and she spotted a few familiar faces as she made her way into the dark, wood-lined space."Hey guys."

"Hey boss!" Mark waved her over. "The big Kahuna was checking one more thing, then she said she'd meet us up here."

"Good." Kerry claimed one of the leather chairs in the midst of her techs. "Someone get me a beer, please. The bigger the better."

"Right you are, ma'am." Shaun got up and trotted over to the bar.

"Long ass day, huh?" Mark asked. "Man, I don't envy those phone guys though. I wouldn't want to be creeping around in that subway at night."

"No way." Another of the techs agreed. "They've got balls." He paused, and blushed. "Sorry ma'am."

"No problem." Kerry sighed. "They've sure got more balls than I do, anyway." She glanced at Mark. "So what's Dar doing now? Did you find a route through the basement?"

Mark shook his head. "No such luck," he replied, mournfully. "I can't even get them to tell me where our damn demarc is. They have to call some guy who was on vacation or something to find out. We couldn't find any easy way to get from the building out."

"Ugh." Kerry accepted the large, frosty mug of beer Shaun was handing her. "Thanks. Where's Kannan?"

"In our room," Shaun said. "He's still pretty freaked out. I told him to order some room service and relax."

Kerry took a sip of the cold beer and swallowed it "Good choice." She complimented Shaun. "And good idea to have Kannan just rest tonight I have my admin trying to get him a flight out of here tomorrow to go home. I don't think he's really in danger hereafter all, so many people here in New York are from India it's not really unusual--but I understand how he feels."

"Yeah, I know." Shaun picked up his own glass that seemed to be some kind of highball drink. "He's just freaked out by all of it. Sucks too, because he's our best WAN guy."

It did suck. Kerry sat back in her chair and looked around the bar. Aside from her group, there were several others, clustered around the scattered tables or watching the three television sets mounted on the walls.

Ordinarily, the screens would have sports on them, she figured.Basketball, or football, or whatever ESPN was serving up. Now, all three were tuned to CNN, and those sitting around seemed fixed on the pictures that showed again and again the horrific sights she'd gotten to know up close and personal earlier that day.

Shots of the wreckage. Shots of the Pentagon. Shots of a burned field in Pennsylvania. Talking heads. Shots of the president with his bullhorn standing on a mound of debris. More talking heads. Shots of smoke, of the mayor at a funeral, of the barges removing remains to Fresh Kills landfill along with mounds and mounds and mounds of debris.

Fresh Kills. What a cosmically ironic name. Kerry was truly surprised someone hadn't changed it just to spare everyone the wince. It was Dutch, she'd learned. The old word kille meaning water channel and the place itself was an estuary that drained wetlands into the sea, but in the current context it was ghoulish and she was tired of hearing it.

Certainly, she'd winced. That reminded her of something and she set her beer down, removing her cell phone from her belt and opening it. She looked up a number, pressed the dial, and listened to the ring until it was answered. "Hello, Mother."

"Wh--oh, hello, Kerry," Cynthia Stuart answered. "What a surprise. I hadn't expected to hear from you this evening. Where are you? Still in New York?"

"Yes. Across from our office at Rockefeller Center," Kerry replied."How are things there?"

"Frustrating," her mother answered honestly. "I have to say it's very difficult talking to people who cannot see past someone with perhaps a different religion, or so on, and who must assume everyone who is from somewhere else is suspect."

"I heard about the attacks," Kerry said. "I'm sorry. We encountered that here. One of our techs is from India and he's had a tough time."

"Terrible." Her mother agreed. "I have to say your being there also makes me quite anxious, however, Kerry. Angela is also concerned. "

"Thanks. It's been a rough day. We were down at the disaster site earlier. We just got back uptown a little while ago."

"Oh my." Cynthia gasped a little. "I had no idea! I saw the pictures on television just before--it seems absolutely horrific. Hold on, Angela, I have your sister on the phone. She seems right in the middle of everything again--what--oh, all right. Yes, hold on."

"Ker?" Angie's voice came over the line. "Are you nuts? Get the hell out of there!"

"Hi, Ang." Kerry gave her table mates a wry look, and a shrug."Family," she mouthed. "Get out of here? We're in the lobby bar at our hotel. What's wrong with it?"

"Kerry, cut it out! Why are you guys there?" Angela acted upset. "It was bad enough when you were at the Pentagon, but Jesus!"

Perversely, after being horrified the whole day, now Kerry felt the need to downplay the whole thing. "C'mon, Ang. There's a whole city full of people here. Chill. We had to come here. There's a lot of stuff that needed taking care of. "

"How long are you staying there?" Angie asked. "Have you heard what's going on here?"

"I heard. People are going a little crazy, I think," Kerry said. "We have a lot of customers down here, and there are some things we're doing for the government. It's not just me and Dar, either. Our CEO is here and a bunch of our corporate people. "

"So you and Dar aren't running the planet as usual?"

Kerry spotted her beloved partner entering the hotel, surrounded by men, all of whom were glued on whatever it was she was telling them."Who us? Nah, we're just little fish here." She watched Dar, hands moving in a decisive motion, dismiss her accolytes who scattered in all directions. "We're just a couple of nerds to these guys."

"Uh huh," Angie said. "Sis, be careful, please? It's easy to get hurt in all the stuff going on.

"I will."

Dar stopped at the front desk and leaned over the top of it talking to the short, well dressed woman behind it.

"Ker?"

"Huh?" Kerry wrested her attention back to her phone. "Sorry, what was that?"

"I said, here's Mom back. Be careful!"

"Here comes Big D." Mark spoke up. "Looks like she could use a beer too, Shaun."

"Hey, you'd think my family were Irish bartenders or something--oh wait. They are." Shaun good naturedly got up and headed back to the bar.

"Kerry?"

"Yes, I'm here." Kerry could see the irritation in her partner's body language, but she smiled anyway, as the stormy blue eyes lifted and found hers. "Listen, I hope everything settles down and people start to think again. I know this has to be a knee jerk reaction."

"I certainly hope so. Will you be there long? "

Kerry considered the question as Dar arrived and took a seat on the arm of her chair. "I think we'll know more on Monday, to be honest. I'll let you know," she said. "I'm sure Dar will want to get out of here as soon as we can."

"Bet your ass." Dar commented.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Cynthia asked. "Was that Dar? I thought I heard her voice."

"It was," Kerry said. "She was just agreeing with me."

Shaun came back over and offered Dar a glass. "They told me to get this."

Dar eyed him. "They did, did they?" She let her eyes narrow. "Now why would they say something like that?"

"Um." Shaun took a half step back.

"C'mon boss." Mark called over. "Be nice."

A grudging smile appeared on Dar's face and she extended one hand to take the glass. "Thank you, Shaun." She lifted the glass and glanced around the table. "Let's hope this is one day in a million."

"Hear hear." Kerry lifted her own glass. "Mother, we're going to rustle up dinner now, so let me let you go. I'm glad the family's safe there, and I hope things cool down." She listened, then closed the phone and put it down on her knee. "People, you all did an amazing job today."

"Ma'am, we just hung out and watched," Shaun said.

"That's okay, I did too." Kerry bumped Dar's leg with her shoulder. "Dar did the heavy lifting. But everyone hung in there, and now at least we have a plan, and we're moving forward." She glanced up. "Right?"

Dar waggled her free hand and took a sip of her beer.

"Uh oh." Kerry retreated to her own mug.

"We have some challenges," Dar said, after a pause, waiting for everyone to lean forward to listen. "I found out we need to go and take a closer look at the subway tunnels coming under the office tomorrow.Apparently there's more than one set."

"Oh sure," Scuzzy spoke up. "You ain't gonna believe how many tunnels are under this city here. I think there's like ten that come into Grand Central--you remember Grand Central? That's where we met up that time."

"I remember." Dar nodded. "Looked like a maze made by whacked moles fighting blind badgers," she said. "So tomorrow we need to try and scope a path for them to take that cable up into the building so we can cross-connect it to our gear."

"We can't use the copper riser," Mark said. "I didn't find any ground level demarc."

"I'll go with ya tomorrow," Scuzzy said, confidently. "My old man worked here. I used to sleep in some of them little rooms, me and the rats and the bums."

Kerry felt the air in the bar hit the outsides of her eyeballs as they widened.

"Y'know, you never know. They might have coal bins and who knows what down there. We'll find something. But I thought you were telling them to take it out to Roosevelt?" Scuzzy went on. "What's up with that?"

"Kerry reminded me it'd be a lot closer to bring it here," Dar said."We've got enough pipe here to take at least part of the traffic."

"That sure helps," Scuzzy said, sucking on the straw poked in her colorful fruity drink. "Cause you don't want to be in those tunnels under the East River, you know?"

"I know." Dar agreed solemnly. "Me either."

"Specially since the Roosevelt is like, halfway to China." Scuzzy continued, "It's like, ten, maybe fifteen stories underground, and I got my ears all screwy going up and down from there."

Dar regarded her for a moment, then she looked down at Kerry."This project lucked out having you in it. I sure as hell am not going ten stories underground to fish fiber cable up."