Storm Surge

by Melissa Good

  "Ah," Dar murmured. "I see." She paused. "Why the hell are they after you for that, Gerry? Since when is the Joint Chiefs in charge of telecommunications repair?"

  "We aren't," Gerry stated, with a snort. "Which is what I told this feller, and he told me he didn't want to hear my problems. He wanted me to get his solved." The general cleared is throat. "Apparently because I," he said, "know you."

  "Me?"

  "You," Easton confirmed. "Someone told this guy that you'd be able to fix this thing."

  "Me?" Dar repeated. "Gerry, they're not customers of ours. We have nothing to do with the Exchanges. That's all private line work," she protested. "I don't even know anyone down there."

  "Well, Dar, I don't know what to tell you, but this guy said I should get hold of you and make you fix this problem for the White House," Gerry said. "Now, he said I wasn't suppose to tell you it was for the White House, but I told him if he wanted me to ask you to do something you had to know why or you'd tell them to--ah--"

  "Kiss my ass?" Dar exhaled. "To be honest, Gerry, I really wouldn't tell the White House that, even though I think the current occupant has the mental capacity of a woodchuck, and the personality of what it excretes."

  General Easton cleared his throat.

  "I just don't know what we can do about it," she went on. "Honestly. None of that is ours, and they lost so much infras--"

  She paused, thinking hard.

  "Dar?"

  "Yeah, sorry," Dar said. "I was just considering something. So what do they want me to do, Gerry?"

  A soft buzzing sound came through the phone. "Damn thing," Gerry sighed. "Dar, honest, I don't know because all that whoohah you do is just so much mumbo jumbo to me. I think you need to come up to talk to this guy. Tell him the straight facts. If you can't do it, you can't."

  "Okay," Dar agreed. "Can you get me a lift? I'll do him one better, I'll bring my boss with me so we can dispense with the 'let me talk to your boss' routine right off."

  "Sure can." Easton sounded pleased. "Let me get my girl on it, and she'll call you with the scoop," he said. "Listen, Dar--" He hesitated. "If you can do anything for this guy, you might want to think about it. He's big. He can cause you a lot of trouble, if you catch my drift."

  "Yeah," Dar murmured. "I catch your drift."

  "Good. See you tonight then," Easton said. "Later, Dar."

  "Later." Dar hung up the phone, leaning back in her chair with her hands laced behind her head. "Well, shit."

  The door opened, and Maria poked her head in. "Ready for café, jefa?"

  Dar looked at her. "Oh yeah," she said. "I sure am." She waited for Maria to enter. "Looks like I'll be flying out to DC tonight, Maria. Any chance of getting someone to run by my place and grab another overnight bag?"

  "Of course," Maria said. "Mayte has already mentioned she would be glad to do that if you needed her to, and also to bring anything Kerrisita might need. We want to do our part as well."

  Dar smiled at her. "This is a hell of a time, isn't it, Maria?"

  Her admin set her coffee and pastries down and came around to the back side of the desk, leaning against the edge of it as she studied Dar. "I was crying so much, all day," Maria said. "I was so scared, for everything."

  "Me too," Dar replied.

  "Listening to Kerrisita, she sounded so upset also," Maria said. "But you know when you came on to the big conference, and what Kerrista said? We all said the same thing, all of us. Everyone."

  Dar cocked her head in puzzlement. "Oh, you mean about being glad to hear my voice."

  "Si." Maria nodded.

  Dar exhaled. "Now that yesterday is over though, it's hard to know where we go from here," she said. "It all just makes so little sense."

  "My Tomas says the same," Maria said. "Let me leave you to get your things done. I will send Mayte over to your house right away."

  "I'll call my folks and have them get a bag ready," Dar said, leaning forward and reaching for the phone. "And I guess I better warn Alastair."

  "Como?"

  "I think I got us into a hell of a situation."

  KERRY LEANED ON the steering wheel, waiting for the lights to change so she could continue her slow progress toward the Capital. She glanced at her watch, then pulled through the intersection and continued along her way.

  She checked her watch. Thirty minutes until the time she'd told her mother she'd be there, and she figured she would even have time to find her way without having to run through the hallowed halls.

  "Talk to Congress." She drummed her fingers on her steering wheel. "How completely freaky that I'm considering taking a break from what I was doing all day."

  She picked up a bottle of juice from the cup holder and unscrewed the top, tossing a few tablets into her mouth and washing them down as she found the cross street she was looking for and turned down it. On one side was a stately office complex, its limestone front the same sedate cream she remembered.

  The first time she visited the Russell building to see her father in his offices there, she'd been about eight. Kerry remembered, dimly, the feeling of wonder as she walked at her mother's side between the trees and up into the solemnly colonnaded rotunda.

  Now she took a moment as she got out of the SUV to collect herself, and tug her jacket sleeves straight before she shouldered her brief case and closed the door. The cool air puffed against her hair as she crossed the road and walked down the sidewalk, giving the armed soldiers there a brief smile.

  They glanced at her, but none of them made a motion to stop her. Apparently blond haired, Midwestern looking chicks weren't on the watch list. Kerry reached the visitors entrance and went inside, not surprised to see more armed soldiers there.

  She approached the visitor's desk and stood quietly, waiting her turn as two men ahead of her spoke to the receptionist. The room was quiet, several people sitting in chairs on one side, one or two people working at tables, and the soldiers looking shockingly out of place in their field uniforms with guns slung over their shoulders.

  What exactly, she wondered, were the soldiers supposed to do in case someone wanted to blow themselves up in the room? Jump on them? Surely not. Shoot them? Would that stop whoever it was from pressing a button?

  Technology moved faster than people. Kerry knew that better than most. If someone in the room had explosives strapped to their chests and pressed a button, there was nothing on earth that could stop that signal from reaching its target.

  Security, men with guns, presupposed the threat they were guarding against could be reasoned with or intimidated. If your aim was killing yourself and everyone around you, like those pilots, how secure could you really make anything outside? Require people to go around naked and putting them through plastic explosive detectors every six feet?

  Bad. Kerry exhaled. Violence never really was the answer, was it? At best, it was a temporary roll of duct tape in a series of escalating contests of humanities drive to claw its way to the top of whatever anthill they occupied. "As a species, we sure suck sometimes."

  "Ma'am?" The woman behind the desk was looking at her, one eyebrow lifted.

  The men had left, and Kerry apologetically stepped forward to the edge of the table. "Sorry," she murmured. "I have an appointment with Senator Stuart."

  The woman studied the book in front of her. "Your name, please?"

  "Kerrison Stuart."

  The receptionist glanced up and studied her face for a moment. "Yes, she's expecting you," she said, after a pause. "Sergeant, can you please escort this lady to suite 356?"

  The nearest soldier came over, and gave Kerry the once over, then nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Come with me please."

  Kerry obediently circled the table and followed the soldier through the back door and into the building. The hallways too, were quiet. She could hear the far off sound of typing, something that had become an alien sound in the office buildings she now frequented.

  It smelled of stone, and polish, and old wood. The buildin
gs were from the early 1900's, and you could sense the history in the place as they walked along the wide corridor.

  "Ma'am?" The soldier glanced sideways at her.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you know where you're going?"

  Kerry repressed a smile. "Yes, I do," she said.

  "That's a good thing. We just got here this morning, and I don't know even where the bathroom is. The soldier confessed. "There are a lot of little rooms around here."

  "There are," Kerry agreed. "It used to hold around ninety different senator's offices, but now it's only about thirty of them, since everyone needs more people, more computers, more conference tables--it's a warren with all the interconnections now."

  "Yeah," the soldier said. "You know the senator? I met her this morning. Seems like a nice lady."

  "She's my mother,," Kerry replied.

  "Oh, wow. That's cool." The man seemed to relax a little. "My mother would come in this place and want to right off paint it some other color. Put some plants around, you know?"

  Kerry chuckled. "I know," she said. "This is more or less the same color as the walls in the house I grew up in, unfortunately. I'd go for a nice teal myself."

  She led the way to the doors to her mother's offices. "Well, here we are."

  "Okay. Thanks for showing me," the soldier said. "You have a good day now, okay ma'am?"

  "Thanks." Kerry pushed the door open, giving the man a smile. "By the way, the bathrooms are down the next corridor, on the left." She winked at him, and ducked inside the office, closing the door behind her.

  The soldier digested that information, and nodded. "That was a nice woman. Wish we had more people around like that."

  He turned and started back toward the reception area, whistling softly under his breath.

  Kerry was spared the need to interrupt the harried looking staff when her mother came out of one of the side doors, and spotted her.

  "Ah, Kerry." Cynthia Stuart looked relieved. "I'm glad you could make it over here. Please, come inside and tell me how it is over at the Pentagon."

  Kerry followed her back into what she remembered had been her father's office and knew a very strange moment of skewed déjà vu as she crossed to a chair across from the desk and set her briefcase down. "How are things going here today?"

  Cynthia seated herself behind the desk. "Troubling," she said. "I hardly know where to start in addressing all of these issues. I just am quite glad my home area was not one of the ones affected."

  Kerry sat down. "I'm sure you heard Florida was."

  Her mother blinked a little. "I had heard. Yes. That's so very strange," she said. "I remember your father saying so many times how he felt uneasy about Miami, and now to hear all this makes me wonder if he didn't somehow know more than he realized."

  "I don't think that's what he had in mind," Kerry said, after a brief pause. "I always got the sense he didn't trust Miami because of all the immigrants there. Hispanics are a majority. But I never got the idea that they were part of anything dangerous to the country."

  "Perhaps," her mother said. "We will have to see what it is they found there. Maybe those men felt they could blend in more there than in other places."

  Kerry half shrugged. "Like any other major city," she said. "We're working with the people at the Pentagon to get their systems back up. We should have some basic connectivity back in a few hours."

  "I see." Her mother folded her hands. "Or, well, let me not lie about it. I assume that means something positive since I don't really understand what it is you mean."

  Kerry relaxed a trifle in her seat. "It is." She paused. "They depend on computers to exchange information with everyone and everything. Right now, they have some dialup ability with a few servers, but it's very limited. What we'll do tonight is get their main computers to talk to the rest of the world using a portable satellite truck while my team is rebuilding the pieces that were destroyed in the attack."

  "I see," Cynthia said, again. "Has Dar returned? I know you were concerned about her."

  Kerry's face broke into a grin. "Believe it or not, she's home in Miami," she said. "I heard from her around one thirty or so. She may be heading up here tonight. It's a big load off my shoulders, that's for sure."

  "How lovely," Cynthia said, with sincere warmth. "I'm so glad she's back safely. It's impossible to believe how dangerous simple travel now is. I was talking to one of my colleagues today about it, and he's terribly worried about tourism, and how that will affect the economy."

  Kerry blinked. "Because people will be afraid to fly?"

  "Yes," her mother nodded. "You may not realize it, but many of our airlines are on the borderline in terms of being profitable. This sort of thing devastates them. It's a domino also, as so many state economies depend on tourism, you know."

  "Like Florida's." Kerry nodded. "Maybe people will just start staying closer to home. Travel in a car." Her brows twitched. "I always wondered what that was like. The longest car trip I've made is from Miami to Orlando."

  Her mother looked thoughtful. "We never did have time for that as a family," she allowed. "I think I would have enjoyed driving through the Grand Canyon area. It's so beautiful."

  "It's on our list too."

  "Well, at any rate," Cynthia sighed. "Several of the intelligence committee would like to meet up with us in the caucus room at four. Does that suit you?" She watched Kerry's face carefully. "It shouldn't take more than perhaps an hour, and then I thought we could have some dinner."

  "Sure," Kerry agreed readily. "That's fine by me. I was actually grateful for a reason to get out from under my staff at the Pentagon and let them do their jobs. When I'm around they tend to hover." She smiled briefly. "And really, there wasn't much for me to do there once I got the facilities straightened out and arranged for power and air conditioning."

  "Excellent," her mother said.

  "Senator?" One of the aides stuck their head in the door, and paused as they spotted Kerry. "Oh, hello there."

  "Hi." Kerry smiled at the aide, the older man who'd been with them the night before. "How are you doing?"

  "Much better for not having slept in the car, thanks." The aide briefly smiled. "Senator, they've confirmed it. It was the White House and Air Force One that was targeted. No doubt at all."

  "Goodness." The senator frowned. "Then that last plane in Pennsylvania, it was headed there?"

  "They think so, yes." The aide nodded. "I'm not sure how they were going to target Air Force One, but it was flying all over the place yesterday so--" He shrugged, and ducked back out.

  "Thank goodness that came to nothing," Cynthia said. "What a horrible thing this is. So many people hurt. So many people killed." She looked up as her phone rang then glanced at Kerry. "Excuse me, Kerry. I have to take this." She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

  "Sure." Kerry checked her PDA, gratified to find a note from Dar waiting for her like the fudge at the bottom of a sundae. She leaned on one arm of the chair and opened the note, half listening to her mother's end of the conversation.

  Hey babe.

  Kerry smiled, hearing Dar's voice saying the salutation. That was a recent development too.

  I'm sitting here at my desk trying to get over being hugged by Eleanor.

  Kerry stopped reading, her eyes going wide. She leaned closer to the PDA and reread the line, not quite able to believe what she was seeing. "Huh?"

  "I'm sorry. Did you say something, Kerry?" her mother asked, putting her hand over the receiver.

  "Uh?" Kerry looked up. "No, sorry. I was just reading something here." She indicated the PDA. "Status report from Dar."

  "Ah, good." Cynthia went back to the phone. "Edgar, I'm sure you're concerned, and I know we have a somewhat large community of--well, yes, I agree it's possible. People are very upset."

  Kerry wrenched her eyes back to the PDA.

  I definitely have to head up there. I talked to Gerry, and I need to fill you in, but I'd rather do it in person.

  M
e too, Kerry agreed readily. I don't frankly care why he wants you up here, matter of fact. They could want us to light the White House with double redundant tin cans and strings and I wouldn't care.

  So I'm waiting to hear from Gerry's secretary about flights. I'll drop you a note or call you when I find out anything. Alastair's got everyone in a twitter--he's working out of your office.

  Kerry stopped again. My office? She ran quickly over what she'd left on her desk, relaxing when she remembered cleaning it off before she'd traveled. "They couldn't find him an office in that mausoleum?" she muttered. "Sheesh."

  Mari wanted to get him space, but I told him he could work out of there and punch your dummy if he got frustrated.

  Oh. Kerry scratched her nose. "Hope he likes having you looking back at him, sweetie. That's a big picture of you on my desk."

  Anyway. I hope things are settling out there for you. I'd rather not spend the night configuring routers again.

  Nope. Kerry could think of much better things to spend the night doing.

  I'm going to go grab a sandwich. My body's all screwed up from the damn time change.

  Later DD.

  "Well, thanks for keeping me informed, Edgar," Cynthia sighed. "Please tell the chief to keep his eyes out for anything. I understand how people feel, but we have to uphold the law." She listened and put the phone back in its cradle. "Well. That's worrying."

  "What's up?" Kerry gazed across the desk.

  "You know, there are quite some numbers of Muslims that live in Michigan," her mother said. "Edgar Braces, one of the commissioners in Dearborn, is afraid there might be some repercussions against them."

  "Ah," Kerry grunted. "I hope people don't react like that."

  "I hope so too," Cynthia said. "But you know anger makes people so unreasonable sometimes."

  How true that was. Kerry felt a sting of possibly unintended reproach in the words. She decided the retort that was in the back of her throat wasn't appropriate and her mother didn't deserve to hear it. She was being as gracious as Kerry had ever seen her, and she, herself had the inner grace to feel a little abashed for her previous behavior. "It kind of proves the theory though, that violence usually breeds nothing but more violence, doesn't it?"