Storm Surge - Part 2 (37 page)

Perfectly cooked, chilled just right. Kerry licked her lips. "I think I know why emperors had servants now." She accepted another bite of lobster, neatly dipped in butter sauce and a touch of lemon. "This is lovely."

Dar chuckled softly, taking a piece for herself before she offered Kerry a bite of corn fritter. "I just wanted something simple I could handle with my fingers. I'm too tired to mess with silverware. Ready for you pills?"

"Just my luck." Kerry sighed happily. "You know what?"

"What?" Dar delivered a sip of champagne to her.

"Save the pills for tomorrow when we fly." Kerry leaned on her pillows and accepted a mouthful of lobster. "Right now, I feel great." She gazed lovingly at the angular face next to her. "Thanks."

Dar kissed her. "Anytime."

Kerry took another sip of bubbly to clear her mouth. "Dar, how do you really feel about us walking out like that? Do you regret it?"

Dar sipped her champagne, set the glass down, then picked up a piece of corn fritter and bit into it. She chewed slowly, thinking about the question. Then she handed over the other half of her fritter to Kerry's waiting lips. "Yes."

Kerry chewed, and swallowed. "Yes, you regret us backing out?"

Dar nodded. "I hate quitting. You know that. I don't blame Alastair for a minute for what he did, but yeah. I do regret it, a little. But on the other hand--" She offered Kerry more lobster. "Now if it doesn't work we don't have to stand there looking like jackasses either."

"You think that's why he did it?"

"Maybe. I might have. He knew what the deal was. Might have been a calculated decision. This is going to cause a huge wave, but from that standpoint, better than public failure."

"Hm." Kerry cautiously reached for her glass of champagne and took a sip. "That actually makes sense. You really don't think we'd have been able to do it?"

"No. Ultimately we'd have gotten everything in place, but there's no way they could have worked the optics. We'd have been standing here when that bell rang with a lot of egg on our faces. That's why I didn't say anything to Alastair when he told me. He's right."

"That really sucks though." Kerry selected a green bean and ate it."It sucks that they put us in that position." She paused. "Or did we put ourselves in it?"

Dar extended her legs along the bed and stretched out on her side.She lifted her glass in Kerry's direction in a wry toast.

"Mm." Kerry took a sip of her champagne and set the glass back down. "Can you reach me a bit?"

"Sure." Dar produced a chunk of lobster. "So tomorrow, let's work on wrapping up things here, and get a task list we can throw at ops in Miami. See what we can do for our customers aside from letting them camp at our doorstep."

"Sounds good." Kerry chewed and swallowed. "I can start looking at the capacity we have here. We can find out what we need to do if we need to start mounting SAT rigs on people's roofs."

"With solar panels." Dar suggested. "Maybe we can have the gang down at integration start putting together mobile kits."

Kerry settled back and licked her lips. The pain in her side had subsided to a mild throbbing, and she was perfectly content to lay here nestled in her pillows, enjoying the chance to just sit and talk to her partner.

She hoped the rest of the team was having as quiet an evening as she was.

ALASTAIR SAT DOWN in a leather chair in the empty flour lounge, glad the rest of the team was off resting--he hoped--or enjoying some time off. He glanced over at the door where a secret service agent was standing, his attention fixed on the hallway rather than inside the room.

He thought, perhaps, he should be more nervous than he was, having been called out of his room for this meeting on just a few minutes notice. But he'd discovered he was just too tired, and too over it to be anything more than mildly thirsty.

Fortunately, the lounge was equipped for that. He got up and went to the sidebar holding a self-service beverage station, selecting a tea bag and setting it into a china cup. He poured water over it and let it steep, even when noise behind him indicated he was no longer alone in the lounge

"Hello, Alastair,"a voice sounded behind him.

"Hello, Dick." He added a touch of cream and a cube of sugar,stirred, then took the cup and returned to his seat. "If you're here to yell or threaten me, give it up." He sat down, and regarded the man standing across from him. "I'm not in the mood."

The vice president took his hands from his pockets and sat down. "Won't waste my breath" he responded. "We've known each other too long. When you tell someone to fuck off, it's usually for a reason."

Alastair took a sip of his tea. "So what are you here for then?"

"I want to understand. What the fuck you think you're doing, putting everything you worked half your life for at risk here. This is big,Alastair. There's no going back from this. Either you're with us, or you're not, and those that are not, might as well move to Japan."

Alastair regarded him benignly. "Y'know, funny thing. Tried sushi for the first time just the other day, matter of fact, I liked it. Why don't you tell me something? Why are you letting all these jackasses scrambling around like idiots treat people like me like a hired hand? I've spent the last week being smacked around by your lackeys and threatened with everything from jail time to being taken into a back room somewhere all because we're here doing you a fucking favor."

The vice president pursed his lips. He was dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a dark wind breaker, in an apparent pitch to avoid notice. "People are tense. You can't blame them."

"I sure as hell can blame them." Alastair shot back. "Just because every jack one of you got caught bare assed is no reason to take it out on me."

"Alastair," the man shook his head, "you're not doing yourself any favors."

"I'm not looking for any favors."

The vice president exhaled. "You always were such a hard ass," he complained. "Al, this needs to happen."

Alastair shrugged. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you told everyone it was working yesterday."

"Figured I was safe. They told me you were handling it. We have to show how little this affected us. You know that."

"I know that," Alastair said. "So, back to my original question. "

"Oh for Pete's sake," the man said. "Give me a break, Al. Every single department in the whole government was thrown into a high speed reactive mode and told to not let anything stand in their way. This was no joke. This was not some half assed tornado we were responding to. People died."

"Some of mine did," Alastair said quietly. "I lost a good friend down there."

The vice president sighed. "So you won't do this?"

Alastair took the time to sip his tea again. "No. We've done what we could."

"You know you'll get blamed for this. You'll have to stand there and explain why you walked out on helping your country in this time of disaster." There was a perceptible touch of irony in the words. "You really want to do that? Do the people you work for really want that spotlight? You've got a lot of contracts with us, Al. More than most companies."

"The board's been advised." Alastair shrugged. "They agree with my decision."

His visitor looked surprised. "Would your stockholders?"

Alastair shrugged.

"I don't get it."

"Maybe I just don't like being pushed around." Alastair gazed steadily at him. "I'll be there. I'll be glad to stand by my decisions, and my people. If that frustrates you, Dick, sorry. Nothing personal. For what it's worth, I think we did a damn fine job for you through this."

The vice president nodded slowly, shrewd eyes watching Alastair's face with sharp intent. "Nothing personal, Al. I know our wives are close. But we'll bury you for this." He got up and waved, then headed for the door, zipping his jacket up as he gave the secret service man a nod."Let's go."

Alastair lifted a hand and waved back. Then he let his hand fall to his knee and took a sip of his tea.

After a long moment's silence, the doorway filled again, and he looked up to see Dar's tall form leaning against the sill, arms crossed, pale blue eyes watching him with intent question.

"Tea?" Alastair raised his cup in her direction.

Dar crossed the room and went to the credenza, opening the refrigerator and removing a chocolate milk. She brought it back over and dropped into a chair next to him, extending her long legs and bare feet across the carpet before crossing her ankles. "We in trouble?"

"We?"

Dar opened the milk and drank from it, swirling the liquid around in the container as she waited him out in silence, one eyebrow fully hiked.

"Nah, we'll be fine."

Dar's other eyebrow hiked to join its mate.

Alastair toasted her wryly with his tea, his face creasing into a rueful smile.

DAR WASN'T SURE what made her wake up. She lifted her head off the pillow, looking around in the darkened room. The clock on the bedside table blinked 4:00 a.m. She cocked her head to listen to see if some sound had broken through her dreams.

Nothing. It was quiet. Some soft mechanical sounds were evident-- the cycling of the air conditioning and the working of the elevator down the hall--but nothing else seemed to be stirring.

Dar turned her attention to her sleeping partner. Kerry was propped up half sitting against her nest of pillows with the blanket tucked around her, and her face relaxed in slumber.

Seemed like a good idea. She started to compose herself to go back to sleep when the dryness of her mouth annoyed her enough to spur her to get up and do something about it.

With a soundless sigh, she eased out of the bed, stood up, and then moved quietly across the room to the credenza. She sorted through the choices there, not finding anything to her liking.

Being a milk fanatic sort of sucked when you didn't have ready refrigeration. She picked the room key up off the counter and palmed it along with her PDA, giving herself a cursory glance at her reflection in the mirror, before making her way to the door, opening it and slipping outside.

The hallway was, not unexpectedly, empty. She crossed it and went down to the lounge where the big screen television was playing mutely to the audience of couches and chairs.

They'd left the sports on, but at this time of day it was soccer. Dar glanced idly at the screen as she headed for the service fridge, opening it and retrieving a bottle. She took it back over and sat down on the couch, the leather unexpectedly cold against the backs of her thighs. "Urg."

She opened the milk and set it down and turned her attention to the PDA that had displayed the stuttering red light indicating she had messages. She flipped the top open, wondering if it was her mother sending one of her infrequent notes.

Her eyes scanned it, and then scanned it again, more slowly. Then she took a deep breath, and released it. "Son of a bitch."

Hey Dar! Just a got a second to drop you a note before I head for the airport and a flight out there! Tried calling, your phone went to voice mail. But they did it! Those boys worked until their eyes were bleeding, and got that thing working. Couldn't believe it! Still can't! Got some special refractive diamond mirrors in the damn things, but I saw it myself, saw it link up at over a mile!

Shit. Dar knew a moment of total dismay.

Figure to land there around 8, realize it's cutting it close as hell, but it's the best they could do for a flight. Anyway, see you then, and I can't wait to see this thing work!

Dar set the PDA down on her leg and rested her elbow on the arm of the couch, leaning her head against her hand. Then she looked up, and tapped her fingers against her lips, staring blankly at the silent screen.

There had been very few moments in her career when she'd been caught in so complete a quandary as she was now, faced with a situation she hadn't really believed was going to happen. Of course, she could simply do nothing.

Let it all be for nothing. But she knew she should have called when Alastair pulled them out and told them to stop working on it and she hadn't. Hadn't even remembered, focused as she had been on Kerry's injury and taking care of her.

On a human level, she knew that was the right thing. Even if she told the men that, they'd agree. Family did come first and Kerry was her family.

Didn't make it any easier to take though. Dar rubbed her eyes, and exhaled. "Shit." She opened the PDA and tapped the reply key, pausing with the stylus held between her fingers as she tried to compose an answer.

"Couldn't sleep, boss?"

Dar's head jerked up and she looked at the door as Mark entered. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and he'd obviously also been sleeping."Got thirsty." She held up her milk. "What about you?"

"Ops woke me up." Mark trudged over to the counter and took out a can of Coke returning to the seating area and dropping into a chair with it. "Freaking accounting jobs didn't run again. I hate those damned scripts."

Dar gave him a wry look. "Want me to rewrite them?"

He paused in mid sip. "Those are yours?" he asked, his eyes widening.

Dar let him wait for it, and then she smiled. "Nah. But if you want I'll redo them anyway."

Mark relaxed. "Man, you had me. I should have figured they weren't. They suck." He took a swallow of his soda. "They crap out at least once a week and we have to restart them. This time they tanked Duk's reporting and he bitched out ops."

"Reporting shit definitely rolls downhill." Dar commiserated."Speaking of which,"she held up her PDA, "c'mere."

Puzzled, Mark got up and edged over joining her on the couch. "What?"

Dar opened the message and showed it to him, watching his face for a reaction. His eyes widened again and his body shifted, as he turned to look back at her.

"Are you kidding me? Is this guy for real?"

Dar sighed. "Apparently he is." She leaned back. "So now this guy's on the way here, ready to save the world and he's going to run right into a pissing match he had no part of."