by Melissa Good
Kerry felt a little abashed, in fact, that she was here in the bus instead of at Dar's side, but there wasn't any way for her to connect to the conference in there and there was just so damned much to do.
So damned much. Her cell phone rang, and she closed the mic off to open it up. "Kerry Stuart," she announced quietly, turning her head a little as the attendant came back with a big, steaming mug that smelled of hazelnut.
"Hello, Kerry?"
Poised to deal with an annoyed politician, Kerry had to rapidly ratchet through her mental gears to deal with another one altogether. "Hello, Mother," she said. "Sorry, I was expecting the governor. "
"Oh. Well, of course, I'm sorry I disturbed you, ah--"
Kerry smiled, and picked up her coffee cup. "No problem. I'd rather be talking to you since you probably aren't going to ask me to do something impossible."
Dead silence for a moment. "Ah, well, yes, I see. Of course," Cynthia spluttered. "My goodness, that sounds terrible. Are you still working? It's so late. I just wanted to find out where you and Dar ended up this evening."
Was I supposed to call her? Kerry suddenly wondered. "Right now, we're at the Pentagon," she said. "Dar is hip deep in cables and I'm still working on issues from our bus."
"Oh my!" her mother said. "Kerry, it's midnight!"
"I know," Kerry acknowledged. "It feels like it's midnight. But we don't really have a choice. We have to get things fixed here, so we can get things moving for the governor, so we can get out of here and head to New York where apparently we're needed to save the Western world." She paused. "Or something like that."
"My goodness."
"By Monday," Kerry added. "So anyway. How was your day? When do you head back home?"
Her cell phone buzzed a second incoming call. She briefly toyed with the idea of letting it go to voice mail then sighed. "Hold on a minute, okay? I think that's the governor."
"Of course."
Kerry put the call on hold and answered the second. "Hello?"
"Ms, Stuart, I have the governor for you." The sound of the Newark ops manager's voice echoed softly in her ear. "Okay to conference?"
"Sure." Kerry sipped her coffee and waited for the click. "Good..." She checked her watch. "Morning, governor. What can I do for you?"
"Yes, Ms. Stuart, good morning to you too. Now listen, I know we spoke earlier but things are getting fairly critical here and--"
"Governor." Kerry interrupted him gently, but with force in her tone. "Things are critical here, too."
"I do understand that," the governor said. "But here's the situation. Our emergency command center was in 7 World Trade. Never even been used. We're working to set up a center to replace it but without being connected to anything we might as well be setting it up on a boat on the Niagara River."
Kerry closed her eyes in frustration. "I know--please understand sir I do know you need to--" She stopped and took a breath. Stop, think, then act, Ker. "Where are you setting up a command center, sir?"
"Pier 92," the governor said. "It's the old passenger cruise terminal. Right on the Hudson."
On the Hudson. Kerry racked her brains for a long moment. "I don't think we--" She paused. "Wait. That's right next to the Intrepid Air museum, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes it is," the Governor agreed. "Just down from there. Does that help? Is there something you can do? Come on, Ms. Stuart. We contracted with you because you people were supposed to be the best. Now, I need the best. We don't have a choice."
"We might be able to," Kerry said, after a pause. "I need to pull up our schematics in that area. I will have to get back to you on it."
"I need an answer, Ms. Stuart."
"You need an answer that's meaningful and correct, Governor. Not bullshit I'm pulling out of my ass just to make you get off the phone." Kerry could scarcely believe she'd just said that. "I'll do my best. That's all I can give you right now."
The man sighed. "When can I expect to hear from you? We're running out of time."
"As soon as I have the answer, you'll hear from me. That could be in ten minutes, or it could be tomorrow morning. Depends on how much detail I need, and if I can get hold of someone on the ground there," Kerry said. "You may need to clear some obstacles for us."
"Obstacles?" the governor asked. "You mean people? Ms. Stuart, you find obstacles, you call me. Understand?"
"I do."
"Hope to hear from you soon. Goodbye." The governor hung up.
Kerry took another sip of her coffee, before she clicked back to her call on hold. "Hello, Mother." She looked up as a wonderful scent of fresh cookies came close, and found a platter almost at eye level to her. "Thank you," she mouthed at the attendant, capturing three of the cookies, their warmth stinging her skin a little.
"Dear, I don't mean to keep you. I hope things are going better," Cynthia said. "I have a flight back to Michigan tomorrow. Is there anything I can do for you here before I go?"
"Hold that thought a minute, Mother." Kerry motioned to the attendant, taking a bite of the warm cookie as the woman came back over. "Could you please have a tray of those and a gallon of cold milk with cups taken to the work site?"
"Absolutely, ma'am. Let me get one of the guys to ride me over," the attendant said. "Not a problem at all."
"Thanks." Kerry smiled at her, then shifted her attention back to the phone. "Mother," she said. "Thanks for hanging on. It's a little crazy here."
"I can hear that," Cynthia said. "Are you going to get some rest? What about poor Dar? She must be exhausted after all that traveling."
Dar must be. Kerry felt faintly abashed. "I'm going to go see if I can get her to take a break right now, matter of fact," she said. "But we've got a lot on our plates and getting more every time the phone rings."
"My."
"Anyway," Kerry sighed. "Thanks for offering. Just travel safe, and give Angie and Mike a hug for me."
"Well, I'm sure they'd be happier if you were coming back with me, but I will give them your best wishes. Try to get some rest," her mother said. "If there's anything I can do to help, just call."
"I will," Kerry said. "Good night, Mother."
"Goodnight."
Kerry closed the phone and gazed at it, as she broke off a cookie half and chewed. That had ended pretty much all right, she figured. If one reasonable thing had to come out of the disaster she was living, maybe it was that she, and her mother, could at least talk again.
She wasn't ready to let it all go. But she also didn't feel like she wanted to hold the rage inside her so much anymore. She was content to think that if things hadn't really moved forward, they also hadn't moved backwards, and she was in a place where she actually wouldn't mind having her mother visit their home.
She chewed her cookie, getting up and making her way through the much smaller crowd to the galley area to find herself some milk. She spotted Nan curled up in a chair near the back of the bus sleeping, and she felt a little bad about keeping the woman around so long.
"Hello, Ms. Stuart" Danny appeared, his sling covered in concrete dust. "Boy, we're sure getting things done here today, aren't we?"
Kerry leaned against the counter as she poured her cup of milk. "You know, we are," she admitted. "It doesn't seem like that to me, because there's so much left to do, but you guys are doing an amazing job."
Danny took a root beer from the small refrigerator and opened it, sucking down half the bottle in a gulp before he answered. "It's dry as heck in that room," he explained. "But let me tell you, Ms. Roberts is amazing."
Kerry felt a smile stretch her face muscles out. "She is."
"I mean--I know you know that." Danny blushed, just a little. "But we never got to work with her before, and you hear all kinds of stories from people but in reality, wow."
"Dar is an amazing person," Kerry said. "And I'm not just saying that because she's my boss, or because we're partners. She really is. In fact, I was about to head over there and see if I could get her to take a break for a few
minutes. I know you guys have been at it for hours."
"It's tough work," Danny agreed mournfully. "I just came back to pick up more zip ties. The other guys don't want to take a break while Ms. Roberts is there cause she hasn't."
"Oh for heaven's sake." Kerry drained her milk and set the cup down in the small sink. "C'mon. Let's go back over there. Those poor guys." She dusted her hands off and wiped her lips on a napkin, as Danny hurried to finish his root beer. "I'm going to tell the bridge I'm going offline."
She walked back over to her laptop and put her ear buds in again. The chatter had faded off the last hour or so, only a few sporadic voices coming back on at intervals. Kerry keyed her mic and cleared her throat a little. "Folks, this is Miami exec. Just want to advise I'm going offline for a little while. I'll have my cell if anything's urgent."
"Noted, Miami exec," a soft voice answered. "This is Houston night ops. Everything's pretty quiet right now."
"Great. Check in with you later." Kerry unplugged herself and shrugged her jacket on, then she met Danny at the door and they exited the bus into the chilly night air.
DAR WAS PRETTY well convinced she'd actually died and gone to hell. She braced her tester with its one attached wire and reached for yet another dangling strand, bringing it over to touch it against the probe.
The tester lit up, surprising her. "Son of a bitch," she muttered, unclipping the wires and twisting them together. "Gimme a tag."
Mark handed over a piece of cardboard with a string. "Here you go," he said, his voice slightly hoarse. "Hey, that's ten, isn't it?"
Dar shook her head, re-clipping the wires and reading off the identifier. She scribbled it on the tag then tied the tag firmly to the twisted cables. "First person who gets our circuits gets a 200 percent raise and a month vacation."
A soft chorus of voices answered back. Dar glanced to either side of her, where techs were almost covered in the prickly, copper mass of wiring, testing patiently cable by cable looking for a match.
It was like finding a bird feather, and catching each one you saw to see if it was the one who lost it. Frustrating, maddening, aggravating, uncomfortable--if Dar had possessed a machete the chances were, she decided, that she'd have just gone amok with it and ended the problem in a mass of copper fragments.
There was no place to sit, no place to relax. You had to stand almost inside the cabinet to reach the wires, and the ones you weren't testing were poking through your clothes like tiny needles.
She and Mark had started off doing the testing. They'd managed to show three other techs how to use the testing sets, but though there were four other units, there wasn't any more space in front of the cabling cabinet so they'd just started plugging through it.
Dar knew she could get someone else to take over her set, and do the testing. She was, after all, their ultimate boss. But she felt all the eyes on her, and understood she had to live up to her reputation, and so she kept slogging.
Her eyes burned. She blinked a little, then a very different odor penetrated all the concrete and plastic and she turned to look over her shoulder as a woman entered the room with a tray and a pitcher. "What do we have here?"
"Cookies and milk," the bus attendant smiled. "Ms. Stuart told me to bring them over here."
Dar could smell the chocolate all the way in the back of the room. "Are those just baked?"
"They are," the woman affirmed.
"Is that cold milk?" Dar asked, as she saw the techs all starting to turn around, faces covered in smudges of dust and eyes exhausted.
"Yes, it is," the attendant said.
Dar held her hands up, letting the tester fall against her thigh. "Did you bring towels?" She displayed her grunge covered palms with a wry expression.
"Ah." The attendant had to admit to being at a loss. "Well, we can go get some."
"Cookies will get cold." Dar eased away from the cabinet, carefully extracting her boots from the snarls of cable. "Take a break, boys. Let's not waste good, warm cookies."
The techs needed no further prompting. They laid their tools down and scrambled out of holes in the floor, stretching out sore backs and shaking out stiffened fingers. "Man, what time is it?" one asked. "I feel like I've been doing this for three days."
Dar wiped her fingers on her shirt to get the worst of the dust off, before she selected a cookie from the tray and accepted a cup of milk from the smiling attendant. "Thank you."
"You should really thank Ms. Stuart," the woman chuckled.
"She'll get hers later," Dar responded, with a somewhat rakish grin, which grew even more wry as a short, blond woman appeared in the doorway, leaning against it as she looked inside. "Well well. Speak of the devil."
Kerry entered, waving at the techs who all called out greetings. "How are you guys doing? Is Dar running you into the ground yet?"
"Hey." Dar seated herself against the bare wall, extending her legs out as she took a sip of her milk. "I'm working here too."
"I know." Kerry sat down next to her, the entire reason for her coming over now moot, but she didn't care in the least. "I came over to see how you were doing." She glanced up at the crowd, but they were clustered around the cookies, moving away once they'd gotten their share and settling down on the other side of the room.
Or wandering outside in the hall. Kerry wondered if they were being given space out of courtesy or just coincidence.
"I'm doing complete and utter suckitude." Dar gazed down at her now empty hand, its palm scraped and reddened. "We've found ten circuits out of a thousand in six hours."
"Jesus."
"If he was here, I'd give him a phone tester and tell him to get his ass working," Dar said. "Ker, this is insane. "
Kerry took hold of Dar's hand and stroked it, clasping her fingers around her partner's. "Can I help?" she asked. "I'm tired of yapping on the bridge. Why don't you go yap for a while, and I'll do this."
"And make me feel like a total zero for sticking you with this nightmare while I lounge in the bus?" Dar eyed her. "I don't think so."
"Are you saying that's what I was doing?"
Dar saw the quirk of Kerry's eyebrows, and the sudden bunching of her jaw. The last thing she really wanted to do this late in this crappy a situation was trigger her partner's temper. Kerry was tired. She was tired. No way she wanted a squabble. "No, hon. I sent you to the bus, remember?" she replied. "Is there any sense in both of us being miserable?"
Kerry studied her face. "Yes." She laced her fingers with Dar's. "Because I was just in that damn bus thinking I was a creep for not being out here with you," she admitted. "I'm tired of people telling me all their problems, and politicians calling to yell at me. The governor of New York wants his new office connected."
"You have got to be kidding me."
"Well, it's their disaster response office," Kerry said. "Long story, and anyway, we can't even look at that until we get through this. So teach me to use one of those things and let me suffer here with you like the sappy love struck goofball I really am."
Dar sighed, looking across at the cabinet with its morass of wires. "I feel like just quitting and going to bed," she admitted, in a soft voice. "Ker, I don't want to sit here and do this. It's going to take days. We don't have days."
Kerry gently rubbed the side of her hand. "Is there any other way to do it?"
"No."
"Can we get the vendor in here to do it? It's really their hairball," Kerry asked, reasonably. "Let me call them again."
Dar was silent for a moment then nodded. "Call them," she said. "I've had enough of this."
Kerry leaned over and rested her head against Dar's shoulder for a brief moment then straightened up and pulled her cell phone out. "You got it, boss."
"Ten freaking lines in six hours." Dar sighed, letting her head rest against the wall. "Most moronic thing I've ever done."
"WHAT DO I want? I want your technicians standing in front of me ready to go help, that's what I want." Kerry heard the sharpness in her own to
ne, and knew she was close to losing her temper.
"Ms. Stuart, I don't have anyone to send you." The male voice on the other end of the line sounded as harassed as she felt. "I'm not trying to blow you off. I just don't have anyone. We sent everyone--everyone we had to New York."
Kerry felt her neck start to get hot. "So what am I supposed to tell the generals here at the Pentagon?" she asked. "And by the way, let me make sure I have the spelling of your name right."
"Ms. Stuart, please. Don't think threats are going to get you anywhere."
"I'm not threatening anyone," Kerry said. "I just have to know what the hell I am supposed to say to the military leadership of this country when they ask me why they have no communications."
The man sighed. "Look, we're under a lot of pressure from the political people. They told us to send everyone to New York, and damn it, that's what we did."
"They told us the same thing," Kerry shot back. "But we're intelligent people, and we know better. So fine. That's what I'll tell the people here. That your company abandoned them to go hook the mayor's phone back up and make sure the stock traders can make money."
"Oh come on," the man said, in exasperation. "Would you please cut the crap? This isn't a stupid game anymore."
"I'm not playing anything. That's exactly what I am going to go tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Kerry said, in an inflexible tone. "And trust me, when we pull everyone's ass out of the fire here, we're going to take every bit of business you had and make it ours, because that's my CIO in that demarc room punching down your lousy circuits."
The tension and the exhaustion were getting to her. Kerry was on the verge of just hanging up.
"What is it you want from me, Ms Stuart?" the man asked, after a pause.
"I want linemen in here, sorting out your part of the fucking hairball someone left in this facility," Kerry responded, in soft, precise tones. "And if you can't do that, I guarantee not only will the Pentagon not do any more business with you, we won't either and we're a hell of a lot bigger."