"Tanks?" Alastair asked, as they trudged across the steamy tarmac toward the terminal.

"Tanks," she confirmed. "Ask my father. He loves to tell people how I took out the dining hall with one."

"Did you?"

"Not on purpose," Dar admitted. "I ordered a car for us."

"Are those two statements related?" Alastair asked. "We could take a cab, y'know."

"Only if you'd be amused at me knocking the driver out and taking control of the air conditioning and the radio. I lost my love for sweat and someone else's taste in music years ago."

"Well, all righty then."

"Besides, with our cab drivers the car's cheaper." Dar opened the door, standing back to let Alastair enter. The inside of the terminal was cool and empty, only a single security guard slouched in a bored posture at the entrance desk. He looked up and studied them, then went back to reading his magazine.

"Ah," Alastair mumbled. "High security."

"Guess he figures if the goon squad let us loose we're safe." Dar gave the man a brief nod. They passed the desk and exited the front of the small terminal and back out into the muggy sunshine. The drive in front was full of empty cars. Military vehicles were lined up against the curb and some pulled up randomly. "Must be using the Coast Guard base here."

"Sure." Alastair took advantage of a small bench and sat down on it, glancing at his watch. "Hope that car's fast," he said. "Or he'll end up pouring me into the back seat." He rested his elbows on his knees. "I'm too old for all this crap."

Dar took a seat on the concrete, leaning against one of the support posts that held up the seventies era concrete overhang that would, in a rainstorm, almost completely fail in protecting anyone from getting wet. She could smell newly cut grass, and the dusty pavement, and drawing a breath of warm damp air, admitted privately to herself that no matter how uncomfortable it was, it was home.

She'd been in prettier places, with better weather, and nicer scenery but there was something in her that only relaxed, only felt 'right' when she was in this air, with these colors and the distinctive tropical sunlight around her.

She wondered if Alastair felt like that too. "Were you born in Houston, Alastair?"

"About an hour north of there," Alastair replied. "Little place called Coldspring, near Lake Livingston." He glanced at her. "Why?"

"Just curious," Dar said. "You ever want to live anywhere else?"

Alastair leaned back and let his arms rest on the bench, extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. "Y'know, I never did," he admitted. "When I was younger, I traveled a lot and saw a lot of places. I thought about moving, maybe to Colorado. It's pretty there."

"Mm."

"But I'd come back, and look around, and say, well, why move?" he continued. "Every place has its peculiar problems. Nothing is a paradise. I like Texas. I like the people, I like the attitude. It fits me."

"That's how I feel about here." Dar watched a lizard scamper down the pylon she was leaning against and regard her suspiciously. "I bitch about the traffic and the politics but it's home." She glanced at her watch, then turned and looked at the long, tree lined approach to the terminal. "Here we go."

Alastair leaned forward and spotted the car approaching. "Well that wasn't too bad, now was it?"

"No." Dar got up off the ground. "I wanted to wait until we were rolling before I started yelling at people on the phone." She studied the big Lincoln Town Car that was rapidly approaching them. "Hope they remembered the YooHoo."

"Eh?"

The driver stopped the car and got out, coming around the front of the car rapidly. "Afternoon, folks," he said. "I had a little trouble getting past the police barricade, and I don't think they want me in here so we should make a little haste." He reached for their bags, popping the trunk with his remote in his other hand.

"Police?" Alastair frowned, handing his bag over. "Place is closed--why do they need police?"

The driver threw his bag in the trunk and grabbed Dar's. "I guess you haven't heard what's been going on here, huh? I was real surprised to get a note to pick up here, tell you that."

"No, we haven't." Dar headed for the now open back door. "We've been in the air for nine hours."

Alastair was getting in the other side as the driver slammed the trunk and trotted for the front seat. "Something going on here in Florida? More terrorist activity?" He got in and joined Dar, as the driver slid behind the wheel and threw the car into gear. "There's not a problem here, is there?"

"Problem?" The driver turned the car in a tight U, heading back down the approach as six police cars came rolling down the opposite lane. "Lady, they're arresting people and kicking down doors right and left around town." He watched intently in the rear view mirror as he drove, turning it so he could see the police cars. "My brother works for Dade County and he just told me the guys who took over those planes lived down here."

"Here?" Alastair asked. "What the hell?" He looked at Dar. "They lived here? I thought they were saying on the news before we left this was from some group outside?"

"Who knows at this point," the driver said. "Hey, I'm Dave, by the way," he added. "You gave me an address off Brickell, right?" He looked quickly behind him. "Guess those guys forgot about me."

"Right," Dar murmured. "This all doesn't make sense."

"Nothing's made sense since yesterday morning," Dave said. "That cooler in the back has got the drinks you asked for. They aren't very cold yet, I had to stop by Publix to get them." He glanced at them in the rearview. "How'd you folks end up landing here anyway? We heard there were no planes allowed to land. It's been real dry for us. I sure was glad to get the call. You need to go anyplace else? Want to stop and pick up some java?"

Dar met his eyes in the mirror. "Do we look like we need it?" she asked, wryly.

"Anyone flying for nine hours needs it." He neatly sidestepped the question. "You a Starbucks or Versailles kinda lady?"

"Versailles, please," Dar had to smile. "I promised my boss here a café cubano."

"You got it," the driver said. "Sit back and relax, and I'll get you right there. I figured you were local."

"Thanks." Dar did, in fact, sit back in her seat. She opened her PDA and looked up a number. "Might as well get this started." She was about to dial, when the phone rang. "Dar Roberts," she answered it, only to have it beep for a second incoming call.

Alastair was already on the phone, waiting for it to be answered. "Does that java come in buckets?" he asked. "I think we're going to need it."


Chapter Seventeen

KERRY FELT A sense of odd déjà vu as she took her bottle of ice tea and settled down in one of the thick leather chairs in the courtesy bus. "Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking time out of your day to talk with me for a minute."

The facilities chief, an older man with a bristly gray buzz cut and a weathered face, dropped into the chair across from her with a tired grunt. "Any excuse to sit down." He glanced up as one of the bus workers approached him and offered a tray. "What's that?"

"Roast beef sandwich, sir," the young woman supplied. "And we have chips and fresh potato salad."

The chief didn't hesitate, reaching over to envelop one of the rolls in a large, callused hand. "Hand them over. First thing I had since dark of the clock this a.m."

Having supplied herself with spicy chicken, Kerry was content to watch as the military men were served, Danny and two of the other techs were already busy at the nearby counter chowing down. She opened her bottle of ice tea and sipped from it, jerking just a bit as her PDA went off. She pulled it out and opened it, unable to repress a smile when she saw the message's sender.

Hey.

We're out of the airport and heading for coffee. Did you know all hell's breaking loose down here? People getting arrested and all that?

Jet lag sucks.

We are going to the office after this. I'm working on your gear. I got two calls from clients up in New York who complained they were down and told them off. I think I scared Alastair. Some guy from the NSA called me, but hung up before he could tell me what he wanted.

Left a message for Gerry. Maybe he can get me up there tonight.

Kerry's eyes widened. "Tonight?"

"Ma'am?" The bus attendant was in front of her. "Would you like a sandwich?"

Tonight? Kerry blinked at the tray, completely distracted. "Uh--no." She held up her tea. "I'm fine thanks. I stopped and had lunch on the way here." She waited for the server to move away, and then looked down again at her PDA.

I need a good night's sleep with you wrapped around me.

"So now, what's this all about?" the chief asked, wiping his lips with a company logo napkin. "You people the computer people?"

Kerry hesitated, then closed the PDA. "Yes, we're the computer people." She fought the urge to go back to Dar's note. "But we work with a lot more than computers. We handle the systems that let you communicate with the rest of the military infrastructure, and run most of the programs that bring in information and send out things like accounting and payroll."

The chief chewed his sandwich, studying her with faded blue eyes. "So what you're saying is you're important."

Kerry shook her head. "No. You're important," she disagreed. "The people here working their tails off to get things back up and going are important. Our mission here is to help you do that."

One gray eyebrow cocked. "Good answer."

The CO, a tall, lanky man with straight, dark hair chuckled softly under his breath. "Ms. Stuart, I've been trying to get hold of your management since yesterday," he said. "You don't need to sweet talk me into pushing to get you what you need."

"Well," Kerry paused, "we had to evacuate our commercial operations center and they took the brunt of that over in Houston. I know they were slammed. I was traveling here yesterday, Dar Roberts, our CIO and our CEO Alastair McLean were in transit back from England."

"Seems like you were putting together a plan to come help us anyway," the CO said. "But then, you people always do. I hate computers," he said. "I wish I could throw the lot of them into the Potomac, but at least you make ours work."

"Most of the time." Kerry accepted the compliment with a smile. "They're machines. They break." She paused a moment. "So what I need-to bring this conversation to a point--is power in our backup core space."

"One that ain't finished yet?" the chief asked.

"Sure," Kerry replied. "We never do things the easy way."

"What's the point of that, Ms. Stuart?" the CO asked.

"Please, call me Kerry," Kerry said. She stood up and went to the side mounted white board and picked up a marker. "Your systems are laid out like this. " She quickly sketched in the five sided building and its rings, putting squares in place rooted out of her memory of Dar's planning sessions. "Each area has a wiring closet, and those closets are connected with a fiber backbone."

She glanced behind her, finding the military men watching her intently. "Eventually, everything has to come back to one place, so we can take it out of the building. In this case, for this facility, we had two central locations for redundancy."

"Ah huh," the chief said. "Remember you all bitching about all that space it took up?" He turned and looked at the CO. "Had to hear that from you for a month."

"You did," the CO agreed. "Thought it was a waste of time until I got told I didn't know my ass from a teakettle and to leave the IT stuff to the IT people."

Kerry eyed him. "Talked to Dar, huh?"

"Certainly has a smart mouth," the CO said. "I was about to kick up when she went off talking for about twenty minutes, and I have to admit to you I did not understand one single word she said. Might as well have been speaking Turkish."

"The mouth goes with the rest of her," Kerry said, in a mild tone. "She's brilliant. Sometimes she goes on for twenty minutes and I don't understand a word."

"Yes, well, I realized that when we went through the plan for the reconstruction of the wing there, and figured out if we hadn't had a spare, we'd have been in a world of hurt trying to work around that. So all's good," the CO said. "But here we are and nothing's working."