Storm Surge

by Melissa Good

  "The main trunks from overseas come into New York City," Dar said. "The termination point was underneath the World Trade Center."

  "Ah," he grunted. "Putting a kink in your work, I'm guessing."

  "Not really," Alastair said. "We've got a pretty comprehensive plan for this sort of thing."

  Sir Melthon's head dropped forward a little, as he peered at Alastair. "For this sort of thing?"

  "Well, disasters," he explained.

  "Dar?" Kerry's voice echoed softly in her ear. "Can you cover for me for ten minutes?"

  "Sure." Dar put her other ear bud back in. Then she removed it, and reached over to trigger the speakers in her laptop and half turned the machine so that their newest client could see the screen. "This is a system we developed to direct and coordinate a response to any kind of widespread disaster."

  "We?" Alastair moved back so give Sir Melthon a better view. He folded his hands over his stomach and twiddled his thumbs. "Charmingly modest as always, Dar, but didn't you design this?"

  Dar gave him a look from the corner of her eye. "Someone had to." She went on. "The system alerts everyone corporate wide where there is an event, either by sending them a network message..."

  "Not much good if they're not in the building," Sir Melthon commented.

  "Or via a PDA alert, SMS text message, or automated cell phone voice mail. Sometimes all four." Dar continued. "They're asked to respond in any of those methods, and the system logs their location, response and status."

  Sir Melthon leaned closer. "Huh," he said. "How many people?"

  "A quarter of a million," Alastair supplied. "It's a lot of people to keep track of."

  "Those that can get on the net connect to this global desktop," Dar said, taking advantage of the slight lull in the chaos. "There's a chat area, a status tab for all the locations showing who's accounted for and who isn't, and the global conferencing system, which is a voice over IP bridge that lets us all talk to each other."

  "Some folks call into that with their cell phones if they can, or a landline," Alastair supplied. "Keeps everyone informed, and lets us react to whatever we need to react to in real time."

  "Miami exec? This is LA Earth station," a voice erupted suddenly. "Do we have a go to bring up the reserve transponders? We are not at capacity yet, but I bet we will be and we'd like to grab them before someone else does."

  "LA Earth, this is Miami," Dar conceded to protocol, mostly for Sir Melthon's sake. "Go ahead and bring up whatever you have and hold it ready."

  "LA, this is Seattle Netops. We're getting a request for additional uplink from Vancouver, can you take it? Four channels."

  "Miami exec, this is Charlotte. Can you advise the status of Interbank? We have a text from London asking."

  Dar cleared her throat a bit. "Charlotte, Interbank is routing via the southern links, approximately an extra seven hops, plus two hundred milliseconds, but stable," she reported.

  "Uh, thank you ma'am."

  "Miami exec, this is Miami ops, we're publishing the new routes on the big map," Mark said. "Be advised, we're assembling technical teams and checking inventory."

  "What's that about?" Sir Melthon inquired. "Checking inventory?"

  Dar checked the news ticker, and then looked up at the television screen. "Any word on how long the flights are grounded?" she asked. "They're getting teams ready to go and help all our customers get back onto service."

  "Tomorrow noon, at the earliest I heard," Alastair said. "I've been exchanging mail with Bea. She's trying to see if she can get us international flights into Mexico and arrange a pickup if you don't mind going to Houston first."

  "Huh." Sir Melthon got up and moved out of the way, strolling back across the room toward the door. "Not bloody bad, for Americans." He disappeared, leaving them to listen to the new voices coming from Dar's speakers.

  "This is Tom Stanton from the New York office."

  Dar recognized one of the senior salesmen's voice. "This is Miami, go ahead Tom," she said. "Good to hear you."

  "I just made it up to our office on the Rock," the man said. "We were up in the South Tower."

  Dar felt a chill run up and down her back, and Alastair leaned forward, his expression altering to one of grim seriousness. "Go on," she said, as the rest of the background chatter faded.

  "What a nightmare," Tom said. "We were up on the ninetieth floor when the North Tower got hit. I saw the damn plane plow right into the side of the building and saw whatever was in its way come flying out the back side."

  "Good lord," Alastair muttered.

  "A lot of people stayed to watch," Tom said. "We started to head out of the place because it seemed to us the tower might lean over into the South. We couldn't get an elevator, so we started walking down and we were just past the sky lobby when that second bastard hit."

  Dar caught a pop up box from the corner of her eye. She opened it.

  I'm back, thanks sweetheart. Needed a bio break.

  Dar flexed her fingers and typed back.

  Anytime. I reported the Interbank reroute and told Seattle they could take four more sat channels from LA for Vancouver, and told LA they could bring up the cold reserve transponder space. She paused, glancing at Alastair who was typing on his PDA. Wish we were home on our couch.

  "So we kept going," Tom said. "The stairs were full of dust and hot as hell. You could hardly breathe, and there were these firemen trying to go the other direction. What a mess. Pieces of concrete kept falling on everyone."

  I wish we were too. My mother's here listening. I want my dog, and my PJ's and you, and all I have is my father's desk and my family not understanding what the hell I'm doing.

  "Tom, this is Sherren," Sherren interrupted. "Are you all back? Are you at the office? We're up at Central Park, about a dozen of us."

  There was a silence. "Just me and Nancy are here right now," Tom answered. "I don't know where everyone else is. We lost them. Bob stopped to help this lady, and two of the other guys did too, and then part of the stairwell caved in."

  "Jesus," Alastair whispered.

  "Oh no," Sherren said. "Maybe we should go back to the office and wait there, maybe they'll show up next."

  "Anyway," Tom continued, tiredly. "We got down to the bottom floor and out into the plaza. There were bodies all over the place. People jumping, I guess. The firemen were trying to move them but they kept getting called to go this way, then the other way. They were going crazy."

  Dar closed her eyes. She was aware that someone had muted the television, and the room they were in was totally silent.

  Alastair clicked his mic on. "Tom, this is Alastair. I'm glad you made it out. I know it was rough."

  "Thank you sir," Tom answered. "We were just past the plaza when everyone started screaming, and I heard this rumbling in back of me. It sounded like a big plane, you know, a seven forty seven. That rumbling when they're going to take off? And these huge bangs. I never heard anything like it." He took a breath. "There were cops in front of us and they just started yelling for us to run, run, run--they shoved us down the street and I looked behind me and saw it coming down."

  "Oh no," Sherren murmured.

  "We started running, but there were these firemen--" Tom stopped, and then went on again. "They started yelling and running the other way, toward the building, and the cops were trying to catch hold of them and stop them, and then the cloud was on top of us and all we could do was get behind some trucks and lay down and pray we didn't die from it."

  At the end of the sentence his voice broke, and they could hear him crying. Dar bit her own lip and looked down at her keyboard. She folded her hands and rubbed the tips of her thumbs together, unable to truly fathom what it must have been like to have been there.

  Alastair keyed his mic again. "Tom. Is there anything you need done? What can we do to help out?"

  Tom drew a shaky breath. "We're okay," he said. "We both live down in Greenwich. We can't go home." He added "is Dar there?"

&nb
sp; Startled, Dar looked up. "I'm here," she said, after a brief pause.

  "God bless you," Tom said. "God bless you for not listening to us."

  "Tom, we're all heading back to the office," Sherren said. "We'll stay together and help each other out. Okay? We'll see you soon."

  Alastair put his hand on Dar's arm. "Do they have any kind of facilities there, at the office? Food?"

  Dar nodded. "Showers, gym, kitchen, vending, yeah," she said. "They were so pissed at me for not putting them in the Trade Center I decided to throw in the works for them there."

  "Hindsight," Alastair said, grimly.

  "Yeah." Dar typed a response into the waiting message box. On the flip side, at least we're both away from the trouble and safe instead of in the middle of it. One building collapsing on me in my lifetime was more than enough.

  Kerry's response was almost immediate. You are so right. I'll stop my whining and get back to work now--talk about getting a new perspective.

  Definitely. Dar leaned back and looked around, finding the room full of both their team, and Sir Melthon's people, all quietly listening. "Damn." She shook her head. "Not a good day."

  Not a good day at all.

  "Scotch all round, I think." Sir Melthon turned to practical matters. "Think it's going to be a rather long night."

  KERRY STOOD UP and stretched, twisting her body right and left. "Pentagon, Danny, this is Miami exec. Are you still out there?"

  A soft crackle. "This is Roger, Miami exec. Danny is getting his arm taken care of finally." The voice that answered was hoarse. "Part of the wall, the outside, just fell down. Fires are still burning here, but a lot of the paramedics are around and taking care of people."

  "Miami exec, this is Herndon. We believe the outage in Somerset is due to the United 93 crash near there. One of our techs reported it's in a large field about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh."

  Kerry rubbed her neck. "Okay," she said. "Thanks Herndon. How many people are we looking at for the outage?"

  "Ten major customers, Miami exec." The voice on the other end sounded apologetic. "And our backhaul to Houston."

  "Ah." Kerry sighed. "Okay. How many transponder channels are we looking at? I want to send as many of the sat rigs to New York as we can, since they've got so much infrastructure down."

  "We can probably do it with three megs, Miami exec"

  Kerry considered. "Hang on." She glanced across the room, uncomfortably aware of her mother watching her like some match at Wimbledon. She keyed her mic again. "Tell you what, Herndon. If the lines aren't repaired by the time the trucks get to your area, I'll send two your way. Can you pressure the vendor?"

  There was a moment of silence. "Uh...I don't think we've even called them," Herndon answered meekly. "Everyone's still freaking here."

  Understandable. "No problem, Herndon," Kerry said. "Let's revisit the question in about ten hours. It'll take that long for the trucks to get out of Texas anyway."

  "Will do, ma'am," the tech replied. "That sounds like forever. It feels like today is already twenty four hours gone."

  Kerry looked at her watch. "And it's not even noon," she murmured. "You're right." So much had happened in so short a time it was hard to process it. Had it really been less than three hours? So short a time for the world to have changed so profoundly.

  It seemed incredible. But at least they hadn't had any catastrophic news in the last fifteen minutes. Kerry wondered if there were more planes out there, heading to places further away. Could they have gotten them all?

  What if there were other things planned? What if it was just the start?

  "Miami exec, this is Miami HR," Mari's voice caught her attention. "I've just gotten off the phone with the community support team. We're working on sending assistance to Washington and New York, but we need some input on what the requirements are."

  "Miami HR, this is Roger at the Pentagon. We sure could use a chuck wagon and a hot spot here."

  "Roger, we already have the big bus headed your way," Mari said. "I'll tell them to stop and pick up food."

  "I remember that big bus," Kerry commented to Angie. "It's what showed up outside the hospital the last time. I was so glad to see it I almost cried."

  "I remember you told me about it," Angie said. "I think you mentioned leather couches and a beer tap."

  "Oh, thanks ma'am." Roger did, truly sound grateful. "We'll tell the guys with guns to let us know when it gets here. They're really tight right now."

  "I can well imagine," Mari said. "Which reminds me, Miami exec? Do we know when we can get relief teams into Manhattan? I heard the bridges and tunnels are all closed inbound."

  Kerry's brow creased, and then she keyed her mic. "Hang on. Let me see what I can do." She turned to her mother. "Mother? Can you find that out for me?"

  Caught utterly by surprise, Cynthia Stuart stared at her for a long moment. "I beg your pardon, Kerrison?" she finally spluttered. "What are you asking me?"

  The irony was almost too much. Kerry felt uncannily like she wanted to sneeze. "We want to send community support trailers into New York to help our people, and anyone else," she explained. "I need to know when they'll let people into the city. Can you find that out for me?"

  Her mother looked honestly perplexed. "Me?" she asked.

  "You're a Senator, Mom," Angie supplied helpfully. "I think Kerry figures the government would probably tell you sooner than they'd tell her if she called." She ignored Mike, who had covered his mouth with one hand. "Right Ker?"

  Kerry nodded. "I think our nearest ones are in Boston and Albany."

  "Senator." One of Cynthia's aides poked his head in the door. "I think they are ready to start the conference call again, apparently the lines are working better now."

  Cynthia regarded him. "Albert," she said. "I need you to find something out for me, urgently."

  The aide blinked in surprise and entered all the way in the room, glancing at Kerry and her brother and sister briefly. "Yes, ma'am? Do you want to discuss it in your office?"

  "No," Cynthia said. "Please find out at once when the roads into Manhattan will be reopened to allow assistance into the city."

  "Senator?"

  "Was I not clear?" Senator Stuart asked. "I realize there is much confusion in this situation, but there are resources ready and willing to help some of those poor people and we must assist. So please go at once."

  "Ah, sure," the aide said. "We have resources?"

  "Yes," the senator confirmed.

  "Okay." The aide turned and headed for the door. "I'll start working on that right away. Do you want to come to your office for the conference call?"

  Cynthia sniffed. "Based on the last one, I think my time is more valuably spent sitting here. I certainly have learned far more."

  The aide looked puzzled. He merely nodded and left.

  There was a brief, awkward silence. "Hey Ker." Angie got up. "Want some ice tea? My throat's dry listening to you yak this whole time."

  "Sure," Kerry said.

  "I'll help." Mike followed his sister out the door, leaving Cynthia and Kerry alone in the room.

  Kerry made a mental note to properly thank her siblings at a later time. She sat down and rested her elbows on the desk, half hoping for an interruption from the conference line. "Thanks," she said belatedly. "I know there's a lot going on but we want to help where we can."

  Her mother folded her hands together. "I had no idea how involved you were with this sort of thing," she said. "Your company seems quite organized."

  "We try to be," Kerry said. "I don't think you can ever prepare for something like what we're living through today, but we do have plans for different types of problems."

  Her mother digested this. "You seem very competent." She looked up to see Kerry's expression. "I'm sorry. That must sound very patronizing," Cynthia said. "But to be truthful, I really had no idea until today what it is you actually did, Kerrison."

  Kerry grunted.

  "And, actually, I sti
ll don't really grasp what it is you were discussing on that machine." Her mother went on. "Except that it seems to be very involved with different parts of the government, which surprises me."

  "It shouldn't," Kerry said. "Don't you remember father saying he wanted our company out of all the government contracts we hold?"

  Cynthia studied her. "Extraordinary," she murmured. "I do remember him saying that. I just had no understanding of what he meant until now."

  It almost made Kerry smile. But not quite. "Don't worry," she said. "You're in good hands." She turned hers over and exposed the palms of them. "We know what we're doing."

  "It certainly sounds like you do," her mother said.

  "Does that surprise you?" Kerry asked.

  Her mother frowned. "Of course not," she said. "You've always been quite clever, Kerrison."

  "Senator? The call's starting." Another one of the aides popped his head in. "They think they've gotten hold of someone at the Pentagon to give an update, and they're asking for all of Congress to go to Washington to be in session tomorrow."

  Cynthia Stuart glanced at him. "Please put the call in here, to this phone." She indicated the console phone on the desk where Kerry was sitting. "I'll take it here."

  "Ma'am?" the aide looked pointedly at Kerry. "It's a secure line."

  "Yes, thank you for clarifying that for me," the senator said. "Now please just do as I asked, and while you are at it, tell the staff to bring coffee service in as well," she added. "I will need to evaluate if I can leave my family here before travel is arranged to Washington."

  "All right, Senator. If you say so." The man still looked dubious, but he nodded and escaped out the door, shaking his head a little.

  Cynthia waited a moment, and then she turned to Kerry. "I would rather we have all of the information in one place. I trust you understand how confidential it is."

  "It's okay." Kerry rested her chin on her hand. "I've got a top secret clearance."

  Her mother paused in mid breath, tilting her head to one side as she regarded her daughter. "You do?"