"They could be," Lopez nodded. "This device analyzes conversations and determines if they are of interest to us."

"Conversations from where? Inside the government?"

"No. From the public."

Kerry sighed. "Then you're in the wrong place," she said. "There's no public access here."

Lopez frowned. "There isn't?"

"No," Kerry said. "These are all closed systems. Isolated."

Lopez turned to Cutter. "Didn't you say they had internet access from here?"

"That's what I was told," Cutter said. "The guys in accounting said they had internet." He looked accusingly at Kerry. "You saying they're lying?"

"No," Kerry said. "They get internet via our secure gateway," she said. "But that's not here. They go out to the internet via three different nodes-in New York, Chicago, and Dallas." She got up and drew a rough circle, with three points on it, then put an X near one edge. "The request goes through two NATS and three different gateways. There's no outside access."

"Shit," Cutter muttered.

Kerry could see the consternation around the table. She almost felt sorry for the men. "If it's any consolation, the systems here are protected. I won't quote my boss and say they're un-crackable because it gets us into trouble, but they are secure. Feel free to run tests against them."

"Shit," Cutter repeated. "We wasted a whole fucking day."

Lopez rubbed his temples. "Ms. Stuart, are you telling us the truth?" He looked up into Kerry's eyes. "People's lives can depend on your answer. We have to find these people."

Kerry gazed gravely back at him. "I'm telling the truth," she said. "If you really want to tap public access, you need to go to the tier 1 providers, and put your appliance there," she said. "We provide our own access for our customers, but the rest of the country uses one of them.

"Tier 1?" Lopez got out a pad and scribbled that down. "Can you give me the names?"

Kerry promptly provided them. "There are lots of smaller companies, but those three form the public backbone," she told him. "Now I will tell you that we maintain a lot of filtering capability on our net access nodes. If there's something, some phrase or type of information you are looking for specifically, I would be glad to put a scanning routine in place and output the results to you."

"You would?" Lopez lost some of his menace. "You can do that?"

"Just let us know," Kerry said. "The security of the country is very important to us. The government is one of our biggest clients."

Now the men were nodding, and the whole atmosphere had completely changed. "Okay." Lopez handed her his business card. "We'll be in touch, Ms. Stuart. Thanks for the info."

Kerry selected one of her own cards and handed it over. "Good luck," she said sincerely. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to head out to the Pentagon."

Lopez extended a hand. "Sorry about this whole thing, Ms. Stuart." He shook Kerry's hand. "Everything's in a lot of flux right now. We're all scrambling."

"Us too." Kerry felt a sense of relief, and more than a little pride. "Gentlemen?"

They filed out, and headed for the door, walking quickly and bending their heads together as they left the building. Kerry watched through the smoked glass as they got into their SUVs and pulled away, and shook her head. "Wow."

The receptionist looked over at her. "Are they gone?" she said, as a service person arrived with a cart of coffee. "Wow. That was fast."

Kerry shrugged modestly. "Bring that up to wherever they've stuck me." She told the service person. "I'm sure I'll need it." She turned to the receptionist. "I'm expecting someone else from the government looking for me. I'll be here for another thirty minutes or so, and if they're not here by then, I'm heading for the Pentagon."

"Yes ma'am." The receptionist scribbled a note.

"Good to have you here."

Kerry smiled and headed for the security door, her shoulders straightening. "Wish Dar had seen that one," she muttered to herself as she swiped through. "She'd have loved it."


Chapter Fifteen

THE SMALL COCKPIT was getting very crowded. Dar stood just outside the door, her hands braced on the frame as she listened to Alastair arguing somewhat forcefully on the radio.

The steward had edged back out of the way and was busy in the galley, seemingly glad not to be involved in what was going on.

Dar didn't blame him. In front of her, Alastair was perched on a small jump seat behind the seats that the pilots were in, crammed in next to the slim, dark haired navigator.

Everyone was nervous. She could see the pilots all trading off watching their instruments with looking back at Alastair, as the intractable voices on the other end of the radio got angrier and more belligerent.

Not good. "Alastair." Dar leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. "Should I try to get Gerry involved?"

Alastair glanced back at her. "Hold that thought." He turned back to the radio. "Lieutenant? Are you there?"

The radio crackled. "Listen mister, I don't know who you think you are but you better just listen to instructions and shut the hell up before I send planes up there to blow you out of the sky."

"Nice," Dar said. "Sad to say, I grew up with jerks like that."

"Son." Alastair kept his voice reasonable and even. "You don't really need to know who I am. If you've got your last paycheck stub, just pull it out and look at the logo in blue on the right hand side on the bottom. That's the company I work for. We're not terrorists," he said. "So stop threatening us."

The radio was silent for a bit. Alastair let the mic rest against his leg, and shook his head. "What a mess," he said. "I appreciate things are in chaos down there, but for Pete's sake we don't even want to land in the damn country."

The pilot nodded. "That's what I tried to explain to him," he said. "He just kept saying security threat, security threat. I couldn't get a word in edgewise." He glanced back at Dar. "Are you in the military, ma'am?"

"No." Dar felt a surprising sense of relief at the admission. "My father was career Navy. I grew up on base."

The radio crackled. A different voice came on though. "This is Commander Wirkins. Is this Mr. McLean?"

"Ah." Alastair picked the mic up. "Maybe we're getting somewhere." He clicked it. "It is," he said. "Go ahead, Commander."

"Mr. McLean, we've established who you are. We understand you are trying to file an amended flight plan," the commander said. "Due to a situation in the area, I have to ask you to please instruct your pilot to land in Nassau. This is not negotiable."

"Something's going on." Dar shook her head. "Damn."

"Commander." Alastair gathered his thoughts. "I appreciate that you have your own issues," he said. "So let me ask you this. If we land in Nassau and your people are satisfied we're not going to hurt anyone, can we get cleared to fly into the States so your pit stop doesn't cause a delay in what we have to do?"

"Mr. McLean, you're not in a position to bargain with us."

Alastair sighed. "All right then, please put your ass in your chair and call the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Get Gerald Easton on the line," he said. "I'm about out of patience with you too. He was going to send a plane for us, damn well shoulda let him."

Silence on the radio.

"If they force us down," Dar said. "Chances are they're not going to let the plane take off again."

The pilot glanced over his shoulder at her. "We'll be out of air time anyway," he said. "No offense folks, but the storm would have been a better option."

"Agreed," Alastair held his hand up. "My fault. Sorry about that."

The radio remained silent.

"It's only about four, five hours from Miami by sea," Dar said. "We can charter a boat to get there."

The co pilot turned and looked at her. "Ma'am, are you crazy? That's not a trivial trip across the Gulfstream."

Dar didn't take offense. "I know," she said. "Been there, done that."

"I've been to the Bahamas. You won't get a captain to take you over like it is now. They're not stupid," the co pilot said. "They don't like risk."

"I'll captain it myself." Dar shrugged. "Pay enough money and they'll rent us a tub."

Both flyers looked at each other, then shook their heads. Alastair merely chuckled wryly.

Finally the radio buzzed. "Mr. McLean, this is Commander Wirkins."

"Go ahead," Alastair said. "At least we've got a plan B," he added, in an aside to Dar. "Though spending four hours bouncing over the Atlantic ain't my idea of fun."

"Mr. McLean, we're in a state of national emergency here and I do not appreciate, and my command does not appreciate you asking for special dispensation."

"Too bad," Alastair said, in a genial tone. "We have a job to do, mister, and you're keeping me from it. You may think it's got nothing to do with you, but if you do about ten minutes research on who we are, you'll catch a clue that's not the case."

The commander cleared his throat into the open mic. "I have done that research, or believe me, buddy there'd be two fighters up there blowing your ass out of the sky right now," he said. "So like I said, I don't appreciate you dropping names, no matter how justified you think you are."

Dar held her hand out. "Gimme."

"C"mon Dar." Alastair bumped her knee with his elbow. "He's about to cave. He's just pissing all over the wall so everyone knows what a big guy he is first." He clicked the mic. "Fish or cut bait, Commander."

"Well, Mr. McLean, sorry to tell you, but you're not getting to where you want to go today," the commander said, a note of smugness in his voice that made both Dar and Alastair's lips twitch. "You can call me an asshole if you want to, and report me to whoever you want to, but I've got a job to do too, and I'm going to do it."

"Shoulda given me the mic," Dar sighed. "At least we'd have gotten some laughs out of it."

"So my controller is going to instruct your pilot to land that plane at the Opa Locka airport, where we're going to have you met with a security team so that I can get my job done. I don't much care about yours."

"Whooho." Dar laughed. "Score!" She lifted her hand and Alastair smacked it with his own, surprising the crew.

"How you get your affairs in order after that isn't my concern," the commander said. "But it's a nice long drive to Texas. So have a great day."

"Well. How do you like that?" Alastair chuckled. "First time I had someone's sand up their ass work to my favor. "If that's what your decision is, Commander, then we'll have to take it," he said, mildly. "It sure is a long drive from there to Texas."

The radio clicked off with a snitty hiss, and Alastair handed the mic back to the navigator. "Well, gentlemen, after all that crap in a hand basket I think we ended up winning that round."

"You didn't want to go to Texas?" the co pilot half turned. "I don't get it."

"Well," Dar said. "Houston is where our main offices are, and where Alastair here lives," she said. "On the other hand, Miami is where our main operations center is, and where I live, and we both need to end up in Washington and New York so this guy just did us a big favor trying to screw us over."

"Yep." Alastair nodded. "Be sorry not to see the wife and the kids, but this cuts what, two days travel for you?" He nodded. "That cloud sure had a silver lining. Maybe by the time we sort things out we can get a flight up from your friend the General."

"Otherwise I'll go pick up my truck at the airport and we can drive," Dar said. "But that gives us a lot more options. You can even stay in the Miami office and run things if you want, while I head up."

Alastair nodded. "So, sirs, please do what the nice men want and land us in Miami." He chuckled. "Bea's gonna kill me after all the arrangements she had to make."

The pilot nodded in relief. "You got it," he said. "Get us out of the air faster, we don't have to fly around a storm, and if we're all still grounded I get a layover on South Beach. Doesn't get any better than that." He looked at his co pilot. "You up for that Jon?"

The co pilot shook his head and laughed. "I'm up for that," he said. "Man, I thought this was really going to end up like crap." He looked back at Alastair. "You sure have brass ones, sir."

The older man chuckled. "Live as long as I have, you learn to figure out how much you can poke the stick at the bear, if you get my drift. Once that fellah knew who we--" He indicated Dar and himself, "were, I figured he knew better than to be serious about shooting us down."