Storm Surge

by Melissa Good

  "As I was saying, given that your company is so integral to national security, what security processes do you have in place to keep terrorists from getting a job with you?" she asked. "That's my concern. Especially after what's been going on down in Miami."

  "Well." Kerry leaned back and propped her knee up against the table, her peripheral vision watching the room fill behind them. "I don't think there's really a way to prevent that, honestly," she admitted. "How do you filter for someone who did what those men did?"

  "They didn't come from Idaho."

  Kerry studied her face. "We're an international company," she stated. "Most of our employees don't come from Idaho. I don't come from Idaho." She considered. "We run a reasonable battery of background checks. Our staff that works in secure facilities have to undergo security clearance processes."

  "Would you have hired one of those men who piloted those planes?"

  Pointless question. "If they were a skilled IT worker with no criminal background, they filled a job need and could legally work wherever they were applying, we might," Kerry said. "I don't think any company can say differently. Heck, I don't think the military can say differently."

  "We have to do something," Alicia said. "We have to protect ourselves from these people. That's the trouble down in Miami. That's why they hid down there. Too many people from other places." She frowned, glancing around as the senators started to take seats. "I can't say that to my boss. But you understand."

  Kerry's pale green eyes narrowed a little. She straightened up in her chair, her body coiling up a little as she brought her feet under her.

  A man walked to the dais in the front and knocked a wooden gavel against it. "Ladies and gentlemen, please sit. This is an informal session, but given the circumstances we should keep it a short one."

  Alicia stood up, and nodded slightly at Kerry. "Later then. Thanks." She walked over to where Alejandro Marcos was settling himself down, and bent over him, talking in a low voice.

  "Good heavens, Kerry." Her mother was back, taking the chair next to her. "I wasn't expecting so many people to still be here. They must have gotten tied up in committee."

  "Mm," her daughter grunted. "Just my luck."

  Cynthia gave her a half nervous look. "I'm sure it won't be that bad," he said. "Really, it's just a few questions."

  "At father's hearing, they just had a few questions." Kerry pronounced the words carefully. "That ended up with me escaping in a cab from a mob."

  Her mother didn't say anything.

  Kerry laced her fingers together and rested her chin against them. She didn't really feel that intimidated, somewhat to her surprise. She was more annoyed to have to face questioning about a company she knew was performing as well as anyone had any reason to expect.

  "All right." A tall, distinguished looking man stepped to the dais. He had gray hair and an impeccably cut suit, He glanced over at Kerry for a long moment before he donned a pair of reading glasses and studied the contents of a folder he opened.

  Alan Markhaus. Kerry drew in a little breath, remembering him from numerous visits in her younger years. An ally of her fathers, and always a welcome guest to her parents. Son of a Presbyterian minister she recalled, the senior senator from Minnesota and as conservative as they came.

  Great. Kerry sighed silently, and waited, hoping her father's old friend would keep his questions to the emergency at hand.

  "Let me start off then." The Senator removed his glasses. "Thank you all for attending. I know we're all tired, and I hope this won't take long." He waited for the murmuring to die down. "Based on the information we received from my esteemed colleague from Michigan--" He gave Cynthia a nod. "I thought it would be a good idea for us to get some clarification before things started running away from us again."

  Several of the group nodded.

  Kerry stayed where she was, aware of the eyes watching her. She was conscious of her own breathing, a little faster than normal and the uneasy knot in her gut as she sensed the edginess in the room. "Now I really wish I had that Mojito."

  "Kerry?" Her mother leaned closer. "What was that?"

  "Just clearing my throat." Kerry lowered her hands and folded them. "Wish I'd brought my briefcase."

  "Ms. Stuart." Senator Markhaus half turned to face her. "It's come to our attention that during the crisis yesterday, when attacks were being made in various places, that you had a good deal of information, immediate information, as things were happening." He paused and waited.

  "Yes, I did," Kerry answered.

  The Senator waited, but when it was obvious nothing more was coming, he glanced back at his notes. "It's been suggested that you had more accurate information than we were provided." He returned his eyes to her. "Is that true?"

  "I have no idea," Kerry replied. "I don't know what you were being told."

  Markhaus nodded briefly. "Fair enough," he commented. "Suppose you tell us then, what your experience was, and how this information was provided to you."

  Kerry stood up, always more comfortable standing when she had to address others. Part of that, she suspected, was her relatively short stature, but she also found it easier to project her voice that way. "Certainly."

  Chairs shifted and she waited for everyone to turn to face her. She took a moment to collect her thoughts then returned the gazes evenly. "It's fairly simple," she said. "Let me give you some background on what my company does, however, so you will all understand the context of the information we gathered."

  She stepped around the table and put her fingertips together in front of her, putting out of her mind her history with some of the people in the room not the least of which was her mother. "ILS has been contracted by a number of government agencies, including the military services, the general accounting office, the logistics office, among others to provide information technology services."

  "What does that actually mean?" an older woman asked. "Information technology services?"

  "It depends," Kerry backtracked. "We provide a wide range of services ranging from onsite help desks to programming, to network management." She paused, but the woman didn't speak up again. "We also manage a wide area network that carries most of the data between government agencies, and from the government and military to the public internet."

  "What kind of data?" Markhaus asked. "Confidential data?"

  "Again, it depends," Kerry said. "A large percentage of the data we carry is confidential at the least, and up to top secret encrypted on the other end of the scale. Accounting traffic. Payroll for the civil service. Command and control data streams for the armed forces."

  She could see eyeballs starting to roll back in some heads. "In any case," she said. "We do a lot of work for the country. We have a presence in most military bases, in the Pentagon, at Cheyenne Mountain, and we maintain a good percentage of the computers all of our tax dollars pay for."

  "Incredible. One company?" The woman turned toward Markhaus. "How was this allowed?"

  Markhaus merely looked at Kerry, raising his eyebrows.

  "It's called the free market," Kerry dryly informed her. "The government sends requests for pricing. We bid on them. So do a number of other companies."

  "Ms. Stuart," Markhaus said. "Let's get off the subject of contracts. I am sure this is interesting to my colleagues, but frankly, I know all about your company's portfolio so please move on to the information we asked."

  Kerry studied him for a moment. "I'm sure you are aware," she said, with a faint smile. "In any case, during the attacks yesterday we instituted a process we have for crisis management that involves the widespread communication of all of our resources."

  She walked toward the dais. "One of the components of this process is the rapid collection of observations, information, and statistics between all parts of our company."

  "But how did you get the information?" the woman asked. "That's what I am interested in. I understand passing it among yourselves, though I have to question the security around that."


  "Boots on the ground," Kerry replied, in a mild tone. "The information comes from the people who were there. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to describe what you're seeing with your own eyes. We had people in the Pentagon when that plane hit. We had people handling data centers who were affected by the buildings collapsing. We handle the telecommunications for the airlines so of course we knew what was going on." She lifted her hands a little and let them drop. "We were in the middle of all of it. When the planes were rerouted to Canada, and they needed extra bandwidth to send reports and let people call home--we get that request."

  A soft buzz of conversation followed her statement. Kerry watched the faces opposite her carefully, seeing surprise, doubt, suspicion, and boredom facing her. "I get that request," she clarified. "We spent most of the day dog paddling like a Chihuahua on Cuban coffee trying to keep things going."

  "Who did you inform of all this?" a man asked.

  "Inside our company? Everyone," Kerry said.

  "In the government," the man said. "Who knew what you were doing?"

  "No one," Kerry replied. "That's not what we're paid for. We get paid to know what to do and do it."

  "What?" Another man stood up. "No wonder no one could tell us what was going on. How could you work in a vacuum like that?"

  "There was no vacuum." Kerry felt her body tense, as she reacted to the rising emotion in the room.

  "You were meddling in the government during a disaster!" The woman stood up, clearly outraged. "What do you mean, you didn't tell anyone what was going on?"

  Cynthia stood as well. "Now, please," ahe said. "I did not ask..."

  "Oh shut up!" the man said. "We know where your part is--"

  "HEY!" Kerry startled even herself, as a loud bark erupted from her chest. She took a step toward the man as he whirled to face her. "Keep a civil tongue in your head to my mother." She glared at him. "Or you can take your questions and shove them up your ass."

  There was a moment of utter, total silence after her yell's echoes faded.

  "Sit down!" Kerry followed that up with another bark. "Who in the hell do you people think you are to be questioning me?" She felt the anger surging through her, making her vision lose a little color and bringing a flush to her skin. "Of course we didn't tell anyone. Why should we? What in the hell use would that have been? No one had any control over what was happening, least of all the people in this room."

  "Ms. Stuart," Markhaus said. "Please recall where you are."

  "I know where I am," Kerry retorted.

  "Then please act like it," the Senator said. "We're due respect. I know you were raised knowing that."

  Kerry turned her head and looked at him. She put her hands on her hips. "Someone once told me," she said. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, become consultants. Those who have no clue at all run for Congress."

  Markhaus' lips twitched, his eyes narrowing a little.

  "I can, and I do," Kerry said. "If you people did not have proper information from your regular channels, take that up with them. Don't stand here asking me why I didn't stop what I was doing to send updates to anyone." She spoke slowly and forcefully. "That is what my customers, who happen to include the government, pay me for."

  Markhaus studied her, as the rest of the room shifted angrily. Uncomfortably. "So let me understand," he said. "All these people calling, all this chaos going on. People needing information, needing whatever it is--what did you call it, bandwidth?"

  Kerry nodded.

  "Who decides what takes priority?" the woman asked. "I know my offices were down. Why weren't they considered?"

  "I make those decisions," Kerry stated. "Based on a set of priorities we catalog and adjust to fit the circumstances."

  "You?" Markhaus asked.

  "Me." Kerry's green eyes took on just a hint of wry amusement. "Now, let's not get too dramatic about it. We're a very large company. We have a very large number of contracts and customers and worldwide resources. We handle minor emergencies all the time. We plan for this." She paused. "We know what the priorities are."

  "I am very disturbed." Cynthia Stuart came out from behind the table and joined Kerry. "Kerrison and her colleagues performed amazingly yesterday. I heard quite some parts of what they were doing. They deserve our thanks not this horrific inquisition."

  "Cynthia, we just--" Markhaus waved a hand. "Please."

  "Please nothing." Kerry's mother frowned at him. "I am sorry I asked Kerrison to appear here. I am even sorrier that I confided how competent her staff was yesterday. You make me very ashamed, as though you asked me to do this so you could take out your frustrations, our frustrations, on my daughter."

  "Maybe we did," Markhaus agreed. "Welcome to the Hill." He didn't look apologetic at all. "You're damn right I'm frustrated. Standing up in front of the rest of the world with my pants around my ankles makes me that way."

  "Then why not take that out on someone who deserves it?" Cynthia asked. "It seems to me that we have spent the day in ridiculous debate about how terrible this was, and we have not even discussed the fact that someone allowed it to happen."

  Go Mom. Kerry eyed her mother with wry surprise.

  Markhaus grunted, and shook his head.

  "The question is," the woman next to her spoke up, but in a quieter tone. "Why did they know so much, and no one else seemed to?" She eyed Kerry briefly. "I didn't mean to be rude."

  Kerry altered her body posture, removing her hands from her hips and sticking them in her pockets instead. "Well," she said. "It's called Information Technology for a reason. Knowing what's going on is what my business is. We have a good communication plan, we all speak the same language, and we're used to passing data to each other without the constraints of different agencies, different politics, or different chains of command."

  Markhaus grunted. "Probably got a point there," he admitted. "I just heard the police and firemen in Manhattan couldn't even talk to each other because their radios were incompatible."

  Everyone got quiet again.

  "Did you hear, on CNN earlier, those sounds?" the woman asked. "All those chirps, from the firefighter's pagers they said."

  Kerry let her eyes drop to the ground, as the silence lengthened after that. She jerked a little then when her cell phone buzzed softly, and she looked up in apology before she removed it form her belt. "I'm sorry, excuse me."

  Mark's cell phone. "Hey." Kerry kept her voice low. "What's up?" She moved away from the now whispering Senators, and turned her back to them.

  "Hey." Mark sounded subdued. "Listen, I was just listening in on the bridge. They found our big guy in NY."

  "Bob? Where?" Kerry murmured.

  Mark hesitated. "He's um--he didn't make it."

  Kerry's heart sank. "Damn." She exhaled. "Does Dar know?"

  "She was on the bridge," Mark said. "She went to go tell the big cheese. The NY people are pretty slammed."

  "Damn it," Kerry sighed. "He and Alastair were good friends."

  "Yeah," Mark murmured. "How's it going there?"

  "I'm about to kick box a few senators and get my ass thrown in jail," Kerry admitted. "Tell Dar to bring cash."

  That got a tiny laugh out of Mark. "Hey, listen. Good news is they got the Newark E up. Birds are synced, and I'm doing some bandwidth hacking while I wait for power here."

  "Good job, Mark." Kerry sighed, and glanced over her shoulder. Some of the people were moving toward the door, and she realized the session seemed to be over. "Let me wrap this up, and I'll get back to you. The boss said she'd be heading out here tonight."

  "Woo fucking hoo. I'll be glad to see her," Mark said.

  "Me too," Kerry agreed. "Me too," she repeated, closing the cell phone. She turned and walked back to where her mother was standing, talking to Senator Markhaus. "Sorry."

  "Is everything all right, Kerry?" her mother asked. "You look upset."

  Kerry gazed past them. "One of our people in New York was killed in the attack," she said. "They just
confirmed it."

  "Oh dear. I'm so sorry." Cynthia put her hand on Kerry's shoulder. "Was it someone you knew well?"

  "No." She shook her head. "But we've been trying to support our people there, and it's very hard news for them." Her eyes flicked to the door. "Are we done here?"

  "For now," Senator Markhaus said. "Nice bit of fencing, by the way. Quoting your father back at me." He studied her coolly. "Wonder what he'd say if he'd heard you do that."

  Kerry stared right back at him. "He'd tell you not to piss me off." She glanced at her mother. "Excuse me. I'll wait outside." She eased past them and made for the door, twitching her jacket across her shoulders as she cleared it and went out.

  "Was that called for, Alan?" Cynthia asked. "Please don't expect me to ask Kerry to come in here again."

  Markhaus put his hands in his pockets, regarding the now empty doorframe. "Interesting kid," he said. "Turned out more like him than he ever dreamed," he said. "He'd have popped a button listening to her tell us off like that."

  "Kerry has quite a temper," her mother agreed. "But in this case, I agree with her. She did our country good service, and was rewarded with accusations and your mean tongue. Why not turn that on your dear friends in the administration instead? Is it just so much easier to yell at a young woman?"

  Markhaus gave her a sour look.

  "Perhaps Roger was right." Cynthia straightened up. "We are ruled by fools and cowards. Fortunately for me, my daughter is neither." She turned and marched out, slamming the door with a resounding bang behind her.

  DAR SAT QUIETLY in the chair in Kerry's office, listening to the quiet conversation on the speaker phone. Across the desk from her, Alastair was crouched, leaning forward toward the phone with his head resting on both fists.

  She'd had to deliver bad news more than once in her lifetime, but usually it was bad news of an impersonal sort. Telling Alastair about Bob's death had been anything but impersonal. It made her feel sad, and angry all over again at the senselessness of it all.

  Her guts were in knots. She could see how upset Alastair really was, though his expression was merely somber and his voice even as he spoke into the phone to the devastated New York office.