by Melissa Good
"Naw." Andrew pushed another button, resulting in the bus's hazard lights coming on with an orange blare. "Drove me a tank a few times though. Can't be that different."
Kerry studied him. Then she walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, straightening carefully and retreating to the midsection of the bus before he started experimenting with anything else. Kannan and Shaun were already there, the two of them dressed in dark jeans and navy blue goodies with equipment belts buckled over the top of them filled to the brim with nerdish jewelry.
"Hello, ma'am." Kannan looked up from stuffing cable ties in a pocket."How are you feeling?"
"Not too bad, really." Kerry went over to the far side of the bus and opened the door to the small office in the back. Her laptop was already inside and set up. She walked around behind it to find a handful of chocolate kisses on the keyboard, along with two bottles of green tea and her bottle of drugs resting nearby. "Aw."
"Something wrong, ma'am?" Shaun called in.
"Not a thing." Kerry sat down slowly in the chair, testing her rib's reaction to the motion. The chair had nice, padded arms just like herbed cushions had, and she rested her elbows on them in relative comfort. "This'll work."
The door opened again, and she heard Dar's voice trickle back into her little haven. With that as a reminder, she unwrapped one of the kisses and put it in her mouth, humming softly under her breath as she booted up the laptop and waited for her login screen.
On the desk she also had a radio, and her PDA, and she grabbed for both as the bus lurched unexpectedly into motion. "Whoa."
"Everyone hang on," Dar said. "Dad's driving."
"Is that a bad thing?" Mark's voice cut in.
"Let's put it this way," Dar said. "If my mother were here, she'd be calling in an air strike on the bus to stop us from getting hurt.
Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose and tried not to laugh. She made a note to relate the conversation to Ceci when she saw her, as she knew her mother-in-law would find it worth a chuckle knowing well her husband's method of driving.
Such as it was. "Glad you didn't inherit that part, Paladar." Kerry remarked in a voice loud enough for her to hear.
"So's my mother," Dar responded. "She threw a party when I got my driver's license."
"Wow," Mark said. "All righty then. Everyone got all their gear?Shaun, you concentrate on that Ethernet rat's nest and I'll help Kannan finish the fiber uplink."
"What about the stuff on this end?" Shaun asked. "Those guys weren't finished running the cable, were they?"
"First thing's first, since we're done on this end with the connectivity," Mark said. "That rat's nest'll take us longer than our end will."
"Not only that, the later it gets on that end the more people we have to contend with." Dar said. "I want to get in and get out and then we can deal with the rest of it."
"What if they just quit and left it there?" Shaun asked. "Under the ground in that tunnel?"
Kerry wondered the same thing herself. She had no idea if the workers had been told to stop what they were doing, or if, like their vendor, they'd just kept working in ignorance.
"We'll deal with that when it comes to it," Dar answered, her voice coming closer to Kerry's little den. "I don't want to split up at this point. It's dark and we don't know what we're going to run into." She appeared in the doorway, studying Kerry intently. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." Kerry held up a kiss. "Thank you Dr. Dar."
Dar grinned unexpectedly. Then she shrugged and turned back to the rest of the team, presenting Kerry with an attractive view of her bare shoulders emerging from her tank top as she lounged in the doorway, resting a hand on either side of it.
The bus lurched into motion again, rocking back and forth alarmingly as its tires apparently climbed up onto the sidewalk as Andrew got them underway. "Dar, do we have insurance on this bus?"
"Not my area." Dar glanced over her shoulder. "Should I rig seat-belts in there?"
Kerry settled back in her padded chair for the ride, the motion making her a little seasick when she looked down at her keyboard. She rested her elbows on the chair arms and looked past Dar, seeing the first hint of gray tingeing the windows of the bus.
No sense in looking at the laptop anyway. There was either too much or too little for her to do, especially at this hour of the morning, so she abandoned any pretense of work and simply relaxed as best as she was able for the ride.
A blaring horn and a sudden lurch of the bus made her close her eyes for good measure; glad she wasn't up in the front.
Chapter Sixteen
DAR SWUNG THE door open and flipped the lights on, not surprised to find no one else in the area as she stood aside to let her team in. "Where was that pile of cabling?"
"There." Kerry walked over and tapped the toe of her hiking boot against a square. "I won't forget that any time soon."
"Got it." Mark grabbed a tile puller and thumped to his knees on the floor. "Lemme get this up. You get ready to start clipping, Shaun."
"Watch out for the rats." Kerry said, just as Mark pulled the tile up.
He froze, and then he peered cautiously into the opening he'd just made."Thanks boss."
Kerry backed away from the space, taking up a perch on the desk. Dar had circled it, and was kneeling down next to Kannan, plugging the configuration cable from her laptop into the router resting on the floor.
Mark carefully shone his flashlight into the opening, and then pulled his kit over and settled on the floor. "C'mon, Shaun. No critters."He removed a set of cutters, an Ethernet crimper, and a handful of ends and mounded them on the floor near his knee, studying the mess to see where to start.
Shaun sat down on the other side of the open tile and removed his own tools.
"Who the hell prepped this router?" Dar asked.
"Uh oh." Mark eyed her. "Why?"
"It's the wrong damned image. Would have truly sucked if they showed up here and we didn't have the right code to support an optics module, wouldn't it?"
Mark made a face, but he kept his mouth shut, his eyes focused on the task at hand.
Dar sighed "Kerry--would you--"
"Mind using the bus's satellite hook up to download you the right image? Of course not, hon." Kerry gazed fondly at Dar. "Which one do you need?"
Dar handed her a slip of paper. Kerry took it and headed for the door, glad she had a task to take care of. Sitting there watching everyone work, while it fulfilled her promise to Dar, wasn't really to her liking.
She walked down the darkened corridor past the closed doors in the nearly silent building. As she came close to the door though, she could see an outline of gray light, and hear the sounds of the city waking up around them.
Not much time. She eased out the door, surprising the guard standing there. "Sorry." She gave him a brief smile. "Need something from the bus."
The man nodded. "All right, Ms. Stuart. But I have to tell you, my boss isn't going to be happy you people are in there. I know you got those passes and all, but no one's supposed to be near this building at this hour. Got a lot of important people showing up soon."
Kerry didn't even feel annoyed. "I understand." She patted his arm. "We'll try to do what we need to do and get out of here, before we can get ourselves and you in any trouble." She walked down the steps and crossed over to where the bus was parked, its door already open.
She entered and grimaced a little as she felt a jolt in her side. "Hi Dad."
"Hey kumquat." Andrew appeared from the back of the bus. "You all doing all right?"
"Yeah, just getting something for Dar." Kerry made her way to the small office and sat down behind the desk, carefully leaning forward and trying not to breathe deeply. She put the piece of paper on the desk, and logged in to her laptop waiting for it to give her desktop image.
"Had some fellers come by here." Andrew had followed her inside. "Think they were them secret service type people."
Kerry kept her arm on her injured side tucked
against her side, and typed one handed on the keyboard. "What did they want?"
"Ah do not know that. But they were asking a lot of questions and ah do think they will be back here."
"What did you tell them?" Kerry pecked out a website, waiting for the slow satellite link to return the page to her. Then she logged into their image repository and slowly typed Dar's request into the search box.
"Told them ah was just a tour bus from Japan."
Kerry stopped typing, and looked up over the laptop's screen at Andrew. His scarred face tensed into a grin, which she returned. "You did not."
"Naw. Just told him you all were doing some work for the gov'mint in there. That's all." Andrew relented. "You all want some water or something?"
"Do we have any coffee?" Kerry clicked on the result of the search,and watched it start downloading. She fished in her pocket for a thumb drive, and plugged it into the side of her laptop. "My drugs are making me a little sleepy."
"Ah think we might." Andrew moved away, rattling around in the kitchen area of the bus and leaving Kerry to watch her creeping progress bar.
While she was waiting, Kerry clicked over to her mail program that was sorting itself out in the background. She scanned the new items relieved that nothing seemed really urgent, and her cleaning of the box on Friday hadn't resulted in a cascade of new mail over the weekend.
In fact--She clicked on one, a rare personal note from her sister.
Hey sis.
Mom said you were right in the thick of everything as usual. I hope you're safe, and Dar's okay. I thought it would be better to send you an email because I didn't want to call and interrupt you. I have some good news that I wanted to share though.
Kerry perked up. Good news? "Damn. It's been so long since I've gotten good news in my email I'm not sure what to do."
Brian proposed.
"Holy molasses!" Kerry blurted, straightening right up and then regretting it. "Ow!"
Andrew ambled in at a deceptively high rate of speed given his bulk. "What's the matter, Kerry?" he asked, his eyes flicking over her in concern. "You doin' all right?" He put the cup of coffee he was holding down and rested his big hands on the desk.
"Oof." Kerry tried to catch her breath, closing her eyes as the stars faded. "Wow." She exhaled. "Who'd have thought a little crack would hurt this much." She eased her eyelids open, to find Andrew looking at her with an expression so familiar it made her smile.
Dar's image; that concerned glower facing her, right down to the twitching fingertips resting on the wood surface. Kerry reached out and patted one hand. "I'm okay. I just got a surprise from my sister, that's all."
"Uh huh."
Kerry relaxed as the pain faded. "No, really. Brian proposed to her."
Andrew studied her for a moment, and then hitched up one knee and perched on the edge of the desk. "That the feller who's the daddy of that little boy?"
"The one named for you? Yes." Kerry nodded.
"Took him long enough."
Privately, Kerry agreed. "Well, you know that was complicated. I mean, Angie was married and all that."
Andrew snorted. "I'd a been her daddy that feller would a stepped up a lot sooner."
Kerry got lost in a moment of wondering what her life would have been like if Andrew had been her daddy. Then she shut that out deliberately, as a pang stung her chest. "I bet he would have. But I'm just really glad he did, no matter how long it took."
"Hmph," he grunted. "Let me go see what's going on outside. Heard me some noises out there." He nudged the cup. "Made that like I do Dar's. Figured it would do."
"Absolutely. Thanks Dad." Kerry turned her attention back to the mail as he wandered out, leaning forward cautiously again and studying the screen.
I can hardly believe it. He came over last night and after we put Sally and Andrew to bed we were just talking and we ended up in the solarium, and the next thing I knew he was kneeling down and taking a box out. I almost freaked!
Kerry smiled quietly. "Good for you, Brian."
He said what happened this week made him realize the world isn't a sane place. That you have to do the right things at the right time and not worry about the future. Maybe he's right. You know, I thought I didn't care, but I found out last night I really did.
So anyway. Will you be my best lady? Maid of honor sounds so stupid. I want you and Dar and Dar's folks to be there. We're planning for a Christmas ceremony, but Mom's freaking out because it's so short on time. She's glad though.
"Sure." Kerry rested her chin on her fist. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you to be mine, but I don't think you were in a space where that would have happened then, Ang." She flipped over to the download, then back to the mail.
"Thanks for making my morning a lot brighter, though." She clicked the reply button, and started to type. "And if it's any consolation to you, Dar freaked when I proposed to her, too."
DAR CLOSED HER laptop. "That's it." She watched Kannan finishing up the delicate task of fusing the fiber ends to the patch panel."Mark, how are you guys doing?"
"Sucky." Mark grunted. "My eyeballs are coming out of my head keeping track of these damn cables."
Dar studied him for a minute, and then she slid over across the floor. "Got a spare set of crimpers? Let me in there."
Mark handed over a tool without comment, and Shaun squirmed out of the way as Dar joined them at the hairball, pulling her legs up and crossing them underneath her as she settled down. "You just putting--oh, okay. I see."
"Terminating them male and putting couplers in," Mark said. "Easier than me trying to put a splice rack in there, no space."
"Good thing they didn't chew them completely apart." Dar muttered, as she sorted out one set of mangled wire, and clipped out the chewed parts. She tightened a zip tie against one end of the cut wire, and started working on the other. "What a pain in the ass."
"Ms. Roberts?" Shaun cleared his throat somewhat timidly. "Can I ask you something?"
"We're sitting on the floor over a hole that could throw rats at us at any minute. You can call me Dar." Dar didn't look up form her task, as she pulled the insulation off the wire end and separated the pairs, sorting them with expert fingers.
Mark muffled a smile. "You still remember how to do this?" he asked his boss.
"Do you still remember how to do this?" Dar countered, clipping the wires off and inserting them to a clear, plastic end. "How in the hell can anyone forget?" She examined the work critically, then clipped the end into a coupler and went on to the other part of the cable.
"Okay. Uh. Dar," Shaun said. "Is this really going to work?"
They could hear voices in the corridor outside, but so far no one had come inside the room. Now, two, loud, angry male voices erupted just outside, the words so stumblingly fast they could hardly make them out.
"Damned if I know," Dar said, after a moment's listening. "But I think we better get hustling."
Mark checked his watch. "Kannan, if you're done there, wanna give us a hand?"
"Surely." The fiber tech was packing up his gear. "I would be most glad to."
"I find it very hard to believe," Dar stripped the end of the cable,"that this all happened between Tuesday and Friday."
"I don't know--I heard those rats can chew through a car tire in a day," Mark replied. "I saw them down in there Dar. They're big as your dog."
"Mm."
Just then the door opened, and Kerry's poked her head in. "Hey,"she said, looking a bit harried. "Dar, you need to hurry up. They're evacuating this lower level because they're bringing some big shots in."
"Give me a break." Dar was clipping the other wire. "We have authorization to be here."
"No, we don't," Kerry said. "They specifically told them no one, especially our company, was allowed in here. They're coming back in ten minutes and they said if we're not out, they're arresting us and taking us to the federal prison."
"That again?" Dar rolled her eyes. "C'mon."
"This time it's no B
S, Dar," Kerry stated flatly. "This isn't those bozos we were dealing with before. They scared the hell out of me."
Dar looked up, and saw in the set of Kerry's jaw, and the tension in her posture how serious the situation really was. "Okay. Everyone just do as much as you can in nine minutes and then we're out of here." She looked up. "Can you stall them if they're early?"
"Do my best." Kerry promised. "We got that ten minutes because of Dad." She ducked back outside the door.
"Great." Dar sped up her motions, as Kannan slid into place next to them, already reaching for cables with his slim fingers.
"Wonder what that's all about." Mark snapped a cable into place and reached for another one. "Shit I wish these people would make up thier damn minds."
"You must realize," Kannan spoke up, after a moment's quiet. "We must come to this place, once again, when the technical people we are expecting arrive. We must install the optic unit."
"Worry about that when it happens." Dar reached for another coupler. "Let's just get this done. Or as much of it as we can. If some things don't come up, well, they'll just have to deal with it." She snapped the coupler in place and selected her next target.
Focusing intently, her eyes fastened on the cables, her hands making the motions of stripping, and sorting, and ordering automatically. Kerry's warning still ringing in her ears, she crimped the ends on, then coupled them and reached for the next set.
"Jesus, boss." Mark eyed her with respect. "You really didn't forget how to do this did you?"
"Shut up and cable."
KERRY EASED HER hands carefully into her pockets as she emerged into the pearly gray of an early dawn. She looked quickly in both directions, relieved not to see the black SUV's pulled up onto the sidewalk anymore.
Her nerves were wracked. More because she'd seen Andrew's nerves wracked by the agents than by what they'd said to her. Dar's father was one of the most unflappable, bravest people she knew, and to see him shook up by mere humans scared the poo out of her.
"They coming?" Andrew dropped out of the bus, seeing her.
"Nine minutes." Kerry checked her watch. "Seven now."
