Storm Surge

by Melissa Good

  She got to her knees and plugged the end of the cable into her laptop, hoping she wasn't about to expose her equipment to anything. "For someone who said they didn't trust technology..." She got up and pulled the rolling chair back over, seating herself in it and starting to log in. "Pretty strange to find a router nailed to the back of your desk."

  The door swung open and Angie appeared. "There you are." She approached with a nervous expression on her face. "Oh my god, Kerry. They threw me and Mike out of mom's office." She looked around. "Is it okay to turn the TV on? You look so weird in here."

  Mike burst in. "Stupid assholes."

  Kerry glanced up from typing in her password. She found her brain completely unable to process this multiplicity of inputs and went back to the screen instead.

  Mike went over and put the TV on, then dropped into the leather couch against one wall. "These people suck," he said. "Freaking government secrets. The big secret is the government has no clue what's going on."

  "Mike." Angie sat down and twisted her hands. "This is really serious."

  Kerry checked the IP settings her laptop had received, and then started up her secure VPN session to the office. It wasn't completely safe. She really didn't know whose router that was, or who controlled it, but the line in the back was an Internet circuit and she didn't have a lot of other options.

  She hoped her Dar designed firewall was up to snuff.

  "See?" Mike said, pointing at the screen. "No one's sure what's going on, look at those news guys."

  "Give them a break, Mike." Kerry started up her profile and watched as her desktop appeared. "There are planes crashing into skyscrapers; that doesn't happen every day." The background of her profile was a picture of the sunset from their cabin, and for a split second, the familiar sight made her feel better.

  Only for a split second. She signed into her management console as she got a barrage of network popups, the little boxes multiplying like hamsters across one side of her screen.

  "Oh!"

  Kerry glanced up, to see a fresh plume of smoke issuing from one of the towers, and then a ground shot of people running amidst showering debris. She jerked her attention back to her screen and ignored the popups, calling up the administrator access that allowed her control of their various systems and processes.

  Selecting the Global Meeting place application, she activated it, clicking three times on the "Are you really sure?" warning boxes then sending it on its way.

  Simple act, complex program. Kerry then turned and selected Mark's box from the popups. "Hey."

  Poqueto Boss!

  Kerry smiled grimly. I just triggered the disaster plan. You better assemble your team in the conference room and get the situation stuff on the screens.

  Gotcha.

  For a moment, Kerry just watched the disaster program assemble itself on her screen, opening up tabbed layers that broke the company down into regions and offices, placing a barebones chat area in the background, and presenting her with a box asking for her corporate identification, location, status, and role in the process.

  "Kerry Stuart, Saugatuck Michigan, safe, moderator." Kerry muttered, as she answered the questions.

  "What was that, Ker?" Angie asked. "They shut the airports down. Isn't that like locking the barn after the horse left?"

  "What if there are more planes out there?" Mike asked.

  "Oh no," Angie gasped.

  Kerry's cell phone and PDA beeped. She opened her phone first, seeing an SMS message on the screen that echoed the request on her desktop. She then checked her PDA, and found a copy of it there. "Okay," she said. "So we know the SMS and email alerts are working."

  A soft crackle alerted her in the background, and she reached into her briefcase for a small headset in a back pocket she'd never had to use before. She settled the buds in her ears, clipped the microphone on her shirt collar and plugged it in.

  Already, information was flowing across the screen. She could see the senior management dashboard, icons lighting as their scattered main offices logged in to the system. A box opened, with Mariana's icon flashing, the system reporting her status on the header bar and very different from the normal net pops. Hey. Kerry typed in the box.

  Hey. Mariana answered. Have you contacted Dar?

  She was the one who called me and told me what was going on. Kerry typed back, aware of the chaos on the television across the room. She's fine; she's at the client site in England. Alastair's fine too.

  Do you know if he got hold of the people in the NY office?

  Kerry took a slow breath. No.

  In her ear, she heard a soft chime. "Virtual conferencing coming online." She typed quickly. I'm going on the conference bridge, you joining? I don't really know what's going on but it's a good excuse to try the system out isn't it?

  Mari's answer was wry even in written form. I'd

  rather be doing shredder comparisons again.

  "What the hell was the point of this?" Mike asked. "How are they going to put those fires out anyway, drag hoses up a hundred floors?"

  "I guess," Angie said. "I don't think there are ladders that reach that far."

  "Okay," Kerry said into her microphone. "I'm opening the bridge, this is Kerry Stuart. "

  Cracklings and murmurs answered her. "Houston ops here." "Lansing." "Charlotte." "Los Angeles Earth Station."

  Slowly, a map built in front of her, stretching out from one side of the screen to the other, an outline of the world with the United States in the center and circles of light that indicated all their major offices, installations, infrastructure and service centers.

  "Kuala Lumpur calling in." The acknowledgements continued. "Dubai." "Sydney's on."

  "Miami Ops on," Mark's voice echoed softly. "Kerry, I'm inserting the news crawler into the global desktop."

  "Thanks." Kerry saw the ticker appear.

  "Oh, there's the president," Angie said. "Kerry, look!"

  Kerry glanced up at the television. The destruction had been replaced by their president with several aides standing in what appeared to be a schoolroom. "Where in the hell is he?"

  "Florida," Mike said. "Some school."

  "Great," Kerry muttered. "Like the air traffic isn't screwed up enough," she said. "Every time he visits I end up sitting at some gate for six hours."

  "Kerry." Angie turned. "Maybe we'll find out what's going on."

  "CNN's got the prez on," Mark commented. "See if the feed updates."

  "Miami exec?"

  Kerry turned back to the screen. "Kerry here."

  "This is Danny Chambers, at the Joint Chief's office," a man's voice said, sounding stressed. "Ma'am, it's crazy here."

  "I bet," Kerry murmured. "I'm sure everyone's upset."

  "No ma'am, that's not it," Chambers said. "They think there's more out there. More hijacked planes! There are folks running up and down the hallways around here. No one knows where the planes are."

  There was a moment of dead silence. Kerry stared at the blinking status lights in front of her, and then she looked over her screen to the television, where the president was talking.

  "Hello? This is Sherren from the Manhattan office! Is anyone there?" A voice broke in. "Is anyone there? I can't find half our people, and there's sirens and smoke everywhere! They closed the bridges and tunnels and they're saying to evacuate Manhattan!"

  Voices now burst in, startled and afraid. Kerry took a few deep breaths, and then she spoke up. "Okay, okay, people, please settle down," she said. "Let's not panic. I know it's really confusing out there, but a lot of things are getting said and we don't have all the facts."

  "This is Michael Talmadge up at the air hub," a new voice spoke up. "Kerry, I have a landslide of requests for more voice and video bandwidth for the FAA and essential services. "

  "You got it," Kerry said at once. "Whatever you need to link speed up there."

  "This is Houston ops," another voice said. "We're getting reports of cell failures on the East Coast. The gover
nment support team here says they're seeing a lot of dropped calls."

  "Everyone's using their phones," Mark said. "Can't handle it, probably what's going on in NY. I can't reach any of the staff there, only Sherren is on the VOIP conf."

  "That's right," Sherren agreed immediately. "Most everyone who's here is outside, or up on the roof trying to see what's going on. Sirens are going off like crazy."

  Kerry thought fast. "Mark, send an SMS blast to everyone in the New York node and tell them to evacuate north. I don't' know what's going on there either, but I think it's too dangerous where they are."

  There was a blast of confused noise, overwhelming the call.

  "What in the hell--" Mark said. "Kerry I got that and we're working it but half the damn--oh, crap! The secure Virginia nodes just went down!"

  "Danny?" Kerry asked. "Danny, you still there?"

  Silence.

  "Oh wow!" Angie exclaimed. "Now they think a bomb went off in the capital!"

  Kerry felt her breathing getting faster. She could see on her network grid that there were flashing yellow and red lines now where she was used to seeing sedate greens and blues, and they were centered around the three nodes they had that ringed the Pentagon military complex.

  "Yeah look! What? Oh...crap!" Mike half stood. "I think--did it go off at the White House? Is that what they said?"

  "Pentagon," Kerry corrected him. "I think something happened there." She keyed her mic back on. "Okay, Mark, get those SMS messages out to New York, and also to anyone in the area of DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Tell everyone to get the hell out of there and get under cover."

  "Kerry," Mari's voice broke in. "They're telling us to evacuate here."

  "There?" Kerry leaned closer to the screen. "Why?"

  "Oh my god! They just said another plane is heading here!" Sherren screamed. "Oh my god!"

  "They think--they're afraid there are more targets," Mari blurted out. "We're a tall building, in the glide path--the building management just called. They got a call from Metro Dade and they told them to get out. They're evacuating a lot of the buildings behind us."

  Too many inputs. "Sherren, why don't you go ahead and log off, go home, and then either text us or login from there if you can, okay?" Kerry suggested. "Mark, did you get those texts off?"

  "Done, boss."

  "Okay, I'm getting out of this office," Sherren said. "How do I text? Oh, no, wait, I see here in my phone, it's the first address, right? At least I can use this for something! I can't get a line to anyone!"

  "Kerry, I just heard from one of our techs. A plane plowed into the Pentagon," Mark said. "He's texting me like a crazy person. The damn thing came in almost at ground level and smacked into one side. He says it's on fire there, and walls are about to come down."

  "Okay." Kerry considered. "Houston Ops, are you there?"

  "Here, ma'am."

  "Can you take all the monitoring from Miami ops?"

  "We're setting up consoles now."

  "Mari, go ahead and tell everyone to leave the building," Kerry said. "I honestly don't think Miami's a target, but who the hell knows, and it's better not to take a chance."

  "You got it."

  "Mark, see if the tech can find Danny," Kerry said. "Get a text blast out and see if we can get a count of people out there."

  "Working it."

  "This is Sufir in Dubai," a voice very quietly broke in. "I know there is not much that we can do, but we are all thinking about all of you there and wishing with all our hearts the danger stops quickly."

  "Miami Financial," Duks' voice broke in. "Houston, please stand by we're syncing the accounting systems."

  "Standing by," the Houston Ops tech said.

  Kerry looked up at the television, aware that her sister and brother were half listening to it, and half to her as pictures continued to roll along the screen, more smoke, more screaming people, more destruction.

  Where would it end?

  What if it didn't?

  "COFFEE?"

  Dar glanced up from her screen to find a server there, standing with a tray of steaming cups. "Thank you." She accepted one, and set it down, nodding as the server placed a small dish with four sugar cubes next to it, and a container of cream.

  Alastair was still sitting next to her, one hand cupped over his ear, the other pressed against his cell phone. The television was on and Hans, John, and Francois were seated at the nearby desks watching the screen with expressions of bewildered disbelief.

  "All right, thanks." Alastair closed his phone and turned back to Dar. "So where are we?" He picked up a set of ear buds connected to the second jack on Dar's laptop and inserted one in his ear. "Kerry's doing a hell of a job."

  Dar nodded.

  "Never seen her work before. Very impressive."

  Dar nodded again.

  "Dar?"

  She looked up at him. "Sorry," she murmured. "Aside from all our people, I'm worried about my friend Gerry Easton."

  Alastair's face tensed. "Ah. That's right. He works at the Pentagon, doesn't he?" He studied the screen. "What a goddamned mess."

  Dar reached over to drop three of the cubes into her coffee cup, stirring the liquid with the provided spoon before she added cream to it. "So many damn people unaccounted for."

  Alastair sighed. "What do we have down in that area?"

  "Mostly commercial," Dar said. "Closest net node is near Penn Station." She leaned closer to the screen, listening as voices now echoed again.

  "Hello? Hello? This is Sherren again."

  Kerry's voice answered. "Sherren? Did you get out of the office? Where are you?"

  "I did, but you can't get anywhere," Sherren said. "I'm near Central Park though, at a Starbucks."

  "Miami ops," Mark's voice sounded. "Kerry, I've gotten the blasts out to DC and NY," he said. "I'm only getting about fifty percent positives."

  Everyone went quiet, and Alastair briefly closed his eyes.

  "Well," Kerry said, "you know the cell systems are pretty overloaded, Mark. Let's wait and see what happens before we assume anything."

  "Oh!" Sherren suddenly said. "Hey, it's Larry. Larry! Over here! I'm online!"

  Dar studied the traffic patterns on the network screen behind all the chatter. She could see the bare bones chat window filled with lines of talk, the employees online who were not participating in the conference bridge sharing with each other in this remarkable time.

  "Network looks pretty stable," Alastair commented. "But that shouldn't surprise anyone."

  Dar glanced at the keyboard, then turned her head and looked at him, one eyebrow lifted.

  "Well, I have seen you work before," her boss said. "So what's our plan here? Can we send help out to Virginia and New York? I know it's early yet--"

  "OH MY GOD!"

  Both of them jerked upright as though they'd been shot, and turned back to the screen.

  "Good lord!" John blurted. "Look!"

  "It's falling! Oh my god! Oh my god!" Sherren was yelling at the top of her lungs. "Oh my god! The whole tower! It's falling down!"

  Dar's heart rate shot up as she found herself unsure of where to look first. The television screen showed a scene of unreal destruction, hundreds of stories of the World Trade Center collapsing in on itself as though taken down by an expert demolition team.

  People were running.

  People were screaming.

  The air was full of thick, choking gray dust filled with debris that flowed and rushed over everything, leaving a landscape behind that must have been what Pompeii had been like just before the end.

  Lunar. Horrifying

  She stood up behind the desk, staring at the screen, unable to imagine actually being there and realizing she had been, the cross streets now covered in debris, places she'd walked on her last visit. "Damn."

  "Son of a bitch," Alastair added, standing at her shoulder.

  Hans covered his eyes, and then shook his head, opening his fingers to look at the screen again. "Mein Go
tt," he said. "Die ganzen Leute hinein."

  Dar remembered, then, suddenly, the moment after the explosion in the hospital when she'd been on the floor, lying in something like that same gray dust, in a completely different world.

  Slowly she sat down and rested her elbows on her knees, and after a moment, Alastair perched on the edge of the desk, gazing quietly down at his shoes.

  "Miami ops," Mark said. "Kerry, we're almost evacuated here."

  "Miami ops, this is Houston ops," the Houston group broke in. "We are showing large scale outages now in lower New York."

  "Miami exec, this is Herndon." Another voice. "We've had a request to activate the emergency circuits for Cheyenne, and add seventy two more channels to the tie lines."

  It took a second, and then Kerry answered. "Ah," she said. "Sorry. Herndon, go ahead. Take standby circuits 2105 through 2110 and shut down the failover."

  "Miami HR." Mari's voice. "Sorry to break in, but we're out of the building except for a few people."

  "Miami exec, Miami ops." Mark's voice. "I'm staying."

  Sir Melthon entered his eyes wide. "Did you see that?" He pointed at the screen. "Never in my life have I seen the like of it." He turned. "Got your things from the hotel, and they're settled here. Anything else we can do?"

  Alastair sat back down in the chair and rested his elbow on the arm of it, propping his head up on his fingertips. "Got any good Scotch?'

  Melthon snorted with wry understanding. "Of course we do. What do you think this is, America?" He snapped his fingers at one of the servers. "Bring me a bottle of the Talisker and a couple of dirty glasses."

  "Sir." The man inclined his head, and scooted off.

  Dar turned back to the screen, and settled the bud more firmly in her ear as she heard her partner's voice, sounding more than a little stressed.

  "Miami ops, Miami exec. Mark, please shut down the center and leave," Kerry said. "The last person we need something to happen to is you. Work from home."

  "Miami exec, you're not here, and you can't make me leave," Mark said, in a firm voice.

  Dar keyed her mic for the first time. "I can," she said. "Get your ass out of there before I have my father drive over and smack you over the head and drag you out."