by Melissa Good
"Shoulda given me the mic," Dar sighed. "At least we'd have gotten some laughs out of it."
"So my controller is going to instruct your pilot to land that plane at the Opa Locka airport, where we're going to have you met with a security team so that I can get my job done. I don't much care about yours."
"Whooho." Dar laughed. "Score!" She lifted her hand and Alastair smacked it with his own, surprising the crew.
"How you get your affairs in order after that isn't my concern," the commander said. "But it's a nice long drive to Texas. So have a great day."
"Well. How do you like that?" Alastair chuckled. "First time I had someone's sand up their ass work to my favor. "If that's what your decision is, Commander, then we'll have to take it," he said, mildly. "It sure is a long drive from there to Texas."
The radio clicked off with a snitty hiss, and Alastair handed the mic back to the navigator. "Well, gentlemen, after all that crap in a hand basket I think we ended up winning that round."
"You didn't want to go to Texas?" the co pilot half turned. "I don't get it."
"Well," Dar said. "Houston is where our main offices are, and where Alastair here lives," she said. "On the other hand, Miami is where our main operations center is, and where I live, and we both need to end up in Washington and New York so this guy just did us a big favor trying to screw us over."
"Yep." Alastair nodded. "Be sorry not to see the wife and the kids, but this cuts what, two days travel for you?" He nodded. "That cloud sure had a silver lining. Maybe by the time we sort things out we can get a flight up from your friend the General."
"Otherwise I'll go pick up my truck at the airport and we can drive," Dar said. "But that gives us a lot more options. You can even stay in the Miami office and run things if you want, while I head up."
Alastair nodded. "So, sirs, please do what the nice men want and land us in Miami." He chuckled. "Bea's gonna kill me after all the arrangements she had to make."
The pilot nodded in relief. "You got it," he said. "Get us out of the air faster, we don't have to fly around a storm, and if we're all still grounded I get a layover on South Beach. Doesn't get any better than that." He looked at his co pilot. "You up for that Jon?"
The co pilot shook his head and laughed. "I'm up for that," he said. "Man, I thought this was really going to end up like crap." He looked back at Alastair. "You sure have brass ones, sir."
The older man chuckled. "Live as long as I have, you learn to figure out how much you can poke the stick at the bear, if you get my drift. Once that fellah knew who we--" He indicated Dar and himself, "were, I figured he knew better than to be serious about shooting us down."
"I don't know. He sounded pretty aggressive," the co pilot said. "We've heard from other pilots that the attitude is they've got carte blanche to do whatever they want in the name of national security."
"Someone still has to be accountable," Dar said.
"Do they?" the co pilot asked. "I sure hope they do. I've been on the wrong side of an INS officer in a bad mood. Almost cost me a paid flight."
The pilot half turned in his seat and addressed the navigator. "Egar, you okay with us landing there? I forgot to ask you."
The tall, slim man nodded. "I have family in Miami," he said. "I am very happy we're going there. It's good." He smiled. "I achieved my pilot's license at that airport. It's very nice."
Alastair stood up and waited for Dar to clear out of the way so he could exit the cockpit. "What a relief. No offense to your boating skills, Paladar, but I'm no yachtsman." He slapped Dar on the shoulder as they retreated back down the aisle to the passenger compartment. "Besides, fella was probably right. We'd have to end up buying the damn boat and then what? Be tough to explain a motor yacht on our inventory list."
Dar chuckled. "We could have auctioned it off." She was, however relieved. Much as she would have stepped up to sail an unfamiliar craft across what were sometimes very treacherous waters, she was damned glad she wasn't going to have that particular bluff called.
Silver lining. Absolutely. "We lucked out."
"Sure did," her boss agreed. "Well, sometimes we have to, y'know?" he added, as they resumed their seats. "Wish it hadn't gotten so nasty, though. I know the fella has a lot of issues he's contending with but my god."
Dar pushed her seat back. "They teach you to do that," she said. "Be a bastard, I mean. You try to overwhelm whoever your opponent is with loud, aggressive talk to knock them off balance and put them on the defensive."
"They teach you that in the military?" Alastair asked, in a quizzical tone. "I thought you never went through that."
"They teach you that in most of the negotiating and ninja management classes these days," Dar informed him dryly. "But a friend of ours, who's a cop in Miami, says taking the offensive when you're confronting someone is a well used tactic of theirs too."
"You use that, yourself," her boss commented.
"Sometimes," Dar admitted. "If someone knows you're going to be an asshole, they usually do what you want, faster. Like our vendors. They know if they don't do what I'm asking, I'll just keep going up their ladder and get louder and louder until they do."
"Like what I just did to that fellah."
Dar nodded. "That's why they like dealing with Kerry better." Her eyes twinkled a little. "She's got the best of both worlds. She gets to be nice, and they like her, and she's got me in her back pocket to threaten them with."
Alastair laughed. "Well, all in all, I guess I can forgive that guy. I know he must be dealing with a thousand different problems. I was just his most annoying one that minute." He folded his hands over his stomach. "He must be laughing his head off thinking about how he showed us though."
Dar suspected he was. Probably cursing about them, and telling everyone around him how he showed these damn jerks who was boss. Dar couldn't really blame him either, since they had asked for special treatment, and had threatened him with going up the chain, and in fact, were the jerky pain in the asses he actually considered them to be.
However, it had gotten them what they wanted, in a rather classic case of the end justifying the means. Dar checked her watch. So they'd end up in a few hours in Miami. Awesome. "I'll send him a note telling him how much he helped us out after this is all over," she said. "My body's so screwed up I can't figure out whether to take you out to breakfast or dinner when we get there though."
"Well, it'll be different than burritos in Mexico City." Alastair put his hands behind his head. "Wasn't looking forward to all that, or the drive to Houston."
Dar smiled at the ceiling, relaxing for the first time since she'd woken up. She was already looking forward to landing, her mind flipping ahead to the messages she'd need to send, and more importantly, how happy she knew Kerry would be to hear from her. "I'll have someone go to MIA and bring my car down." She decided. "Figure it'll take a while for them to get through the paperwork once we land."
"Take me a few minutes to call Bea and get everything squared away anyway," her boss said. "It's going to feel good to be back home."
Dar exhaled. "Sure is," she said. "Sure damn is."
KERRY SETTLED HER ear buds in and peered at her laptop screen. "Okay, Mark, did we get inventory availability from the vendors yet? I know you've got everything we had with you, but from what they're telling me here we lost the whole WAN room."
"They got," Mark said. "But they can't get it to us faster than a truck. The distributor's in California."
Kerry looked down at the pad on the desk. "Well, tell them to start driving," she said. "By my count here, rebuilding that will take most of the inventory on your truck, and we're not even started yet."
"Will do."
"Miami exec, this is the Air Hub."
Kerry blinked. "Go ahead Air Hub."
"We're hearing rumors that they might let some flights up tomorrow, ma'am," the voice answered. "Sorry we can't be more specific. It's pretty quiet here."
"Miami, hello? This is Sherren in New Yo
rk. We've got good news! Six people just showed up here. I'm logging them in now!"
"That's great, Sherren." Kerry exhaled slowly. "Do they know about any of the others? Have they seen them?"
"No, no they don't," Sherren said. "Everyone got separated, they said. They're all taking showers. They're covered in that white stuff. They said a lot of people went south, too, toward the battery."
Kerry watched the red led's slowly change to green. Too few. "I'm really glad to hear that, Sherren. How are you all doing? Are you all right? Do you need anything?"
Sherren's voice sounded calmer today. "We're doing okay, you know? We needed some clothes so we went out and got some. We got bagels. The dog carts are there. People are out there. You can't stop this city. People are in shock, but we keep going."
Kerry thought about the empty streets she'd traveled through the night before. "You sure do."
"I'm sure the rest of the office will be here any time now," Sherren said, confidently. "We're going to get some coffee on. I wish we could get the phones working," she added. "I know some of our customers need us."
"Miami exec, this is Miami telecom," a new voice broke in. "We're handling the inbound 800 service trunks for New York. We can get messages to the people there, if you can get us a mailing list built."
"Oh, that would be great!" Sherren said. "You can get calls out, if you try hard enough. Or maybe if they have email, we can email them. That works a lot better than the phones."
Kerry nodded. "Good idea." She glanced at the screen. "Miami server ops, are you on?"
"Yes, ma'am," a quiet voice answered. "We're here."
"Build a list based on the reported list onscreen." Kerry said, after a brief pause. "And get that to telecom."
"Will do."
"Miami exec, this is LA Earth station. I have Newark Earth station on landline. They need generators. They've got a seven day estimate on repairs to the power station there. Someone told them it was sabotaged."
"Oh my god," Sherren said.
"Miami exec, this is Miami ops," Mark's voice replied. "That needs industrial. That little trick you and I pulled ain't gonna cut it."
Kerry tapped her pen on the desk. "Shouldn't their facilities operator be handling that?"
"Miami, no one's doing anything there. Everyone's been sent to staging to go into the city." LA Earth station reported. "If we want help, we need to do it ourselves, that's what they were told."
"Right." Kerry scribbled a note on her pad. "Let me get in touch with APC. Everyone's going to be hitting the usual providers let's try the high tech ones."
"Ms. Stuart?" Nan stuck her head in the door. "I have some president or other of AT&T on the line for you."
"Tell them hang on a minute." Kerry finished writing.
"Miami exec, this is Danny. The bus is here." Danny sounded relieved. "Man, are we glad to see that," he added. "We're waiting for clearance to start going in there, but we're going to need some help."
"Danny, we're almost there," Mark said. "Hang in there, buddy. I got ten people with me."
Ten? Kerry glanced at the screen, then back at her paper. "Hope that's a big RV," she muttered under her breath. She looked up. "Okay, you can transfer whoever it is from AT&T here." She pointed at the phone. "Thanks."
Nan disappeared.
"Mark, we're looking for you man," Danny answered. "Did you say you have a truck? We haven't been able to shake loose and get that plywood yet."
"No prob," Mark said. "Miami exec, any word on when we can get into lower NY?"
Kerry keyed her mic. "Let's concentrate on DC for now since we have access to the facility. With all the damage in Manhattan it could be a while."
"Miami exec, this is Lansing," the Michigan center broke in.
"Hold on, Lansing. I have to take a call." Kerry put her mic on mute and hit the speaker phone. "Kerry Stuart."
"Ms. Stuart?" a man's voice answered. "This is Charles Gant from AT&T. I think we met at that technical conference in Orlando a few months back."
"We did." Kerry nodded. "What can I do for you? I assume this is something critical."
Gant sighed. "Much as I'd rather be asking you to meet me for coffee and chat about high end routers, it is a critical issue. I just want to bounce a question off you, since I know of all the private providers you guys are the biggest."
"Okay." Kerry picked up her bottle of water and took a sip. "I'm listening."
"We lost everything in lower Manhattan," he said. "I think you probably know that, since we had a lot of tie-ins to you."
"We know," Kerry said. "We have almost nothing at all coming in to our three nodes in the region. A lot of customers are affected."
"Well, let me give you the laundry list," Gant said. "We lost the triple pop. Verizon said nothing's recoverable. They also lost their West office. Power's out for the area, including all the cell towers and the ones that do have power either don't have backhaul or are overloaded."
"Wow," Kerry murmured.
"I got my counterpart at Sprint on the other line. Between us, we lost everything overseas, and so did MCI."
"We realized that," Kerry said. "We had to backhaul a lot of overseas financial via our southern circuits."
There was momentary silence. "So how badly are you affected?"
Kerry took another sip of water. "We obviously can't service the local accounts in lower Manhattan, and we lost our major switching office in the Pentagon." Then she stopped speaking.
There was another moment of silence. "So you have service otherwise? Transatlantic?"
"We have data service, yes," Kerry confirmed. "We rely on your interchanges, and the other Telco's for phone service, naturally, so that's down, but we're backhauling everything else across our redundant links, or sending it up to the birds."
"Interested in renting some bandwidth?" Gant asked, in a wry tone. "We've got nothing between New York and our main service centers. I can't even guess what's down because our systems can't connect." He cleared his throat. "I figured I'd ask you before everyone else does."
Kerry thought about all the times she'd had to browbeat the Telco vendors for everything from bad circuits to late ones. "How much do you need?" she asked. "And what would it take for you to get a tie into our Roosevelt Island node?"
"I'll take ten meg if you have it." His voice sounded utterly relived. "I think our substation on the island can carry the traffic over. I can check but my notes here show we're in the same building."
Mentally, Kerry did a quick calculation. Dar had provisioned a larger than normal spare of bandwidth in the area, thankfully, but she knew there'd be more requests to come. This was just the first. "We can do that," she said. "Get me your LOA and I'll send it to my internal provisioning group."
"God bless you." Gant sighed. "Sorry if I sound overwhelmed, but damn it, I am," he said. "My brother is missing in that mess and I can't think straight."
"Charles, I'm glad we can help," Kerry said gently. "We have some people missing ourselves. Most of our office in Manhattan was in the Towers for business meetings yesterday morning."
"My god."
"So we're sweating right along with you," Kerry said. "And speaking of that, could you possibly do me a favor?"
"If I can, for sure," Charles said.
"My Rockefeller Center office is down hard," Kerry said. "Any chance of getting one of our lines up?"
"Give me the circuit ID," he answered instantly. "We've got service near the Rock. You probably are just terminated closer to the triple--to where the triple was."
Kerry typed a question into her search applet, and was rewarded with a number. "Here it is." She gave it to him. "It would help the people left there. Most of them lived down in the affected area and can't go home."
"You got it, Kerry," Charles said. "Expect that LOA in the next five minutes."
"Call me if you need anything else," Kerry said. "Talk to you later." She hung the phone up, and went back to her screen. She clicked her mic on. "Miam
i exec to New York, you still on Sherren?"
"I'm here," Sherren responded promptly. "Two more people just showed up! We're all like kids here, screaming."
Kerry smiled. "I'm very glad. We're working on getting you some phones there, too."
"Oh, that's great!" Sherren said.
"Ma'am?" Nan poked her head back in. "Do you want a CNN feed in here?" She indicated a dark panel on the wall. "We've got one running in ops."
"Sure," Kerry said. "Any sign of more government visitors?"
"None yet." Nan shook her dark head. "When did you want to leave for the Pentagon?"
Kerry checked her watch. "I think I need to spend a little more time here, maybe an hour. Let's say eleven? Mark's almost at the Pentagon and he's going to be tied up for a while when he gets there."
"Okay, I'll be around," Nan said. "We'll push the feed in here." She ducked out and closed the door behind her.
Kerry scribbled a few more notes, listening with one ear bud in to the conversation going on in the background. A flash of motion caught her eye, and she looked up at the screen just in time to see a shot of the inside of the Capitol, where the hall was full of men and women all milling around.
Her mother was there, she realized. She spotted her immediately off to one side of the chamber, with two other senators who were vaguely familiar to her. "Hi Mom." She briefly waved at the screen, remembering the odd occasion when she'd flip past CSPAN2 and find her father talking.
She always stopped and listened.
"Miami exec, this is Miami HR."
"Go ahead." Kerry keyed her mic. "Good morning, Mari."
"Good morning," Mariana replied. "Not sure if you caught the news, but it's all over the local here that they've issued search warrants for a bunch of locations in Miami."
Kerry's head jerked up and she stared at the screen. "What?"
"No one's really sure what's going on. Duks says one of his people had a police raid in their apartment complex around four a.m.," Mari said. "We heard something about some of the hijackers coming from here."
