"What was that, Ker?" Angie asked. "They shut the airports down. Isn't that like locking the barn after the horse left?"
"What if there are more planes out there?" Mike asked.
"Oh no," Angie gasped.
Kerry's cell phone and PDA beeped. She opened her phone first, seeing an SMS message on the screen that echoed the request on her desktop. She then checked her PDA, and found a copy of it there. "Okay," she said. "So we know the SMS and email alerts are working."
A soft crackle alerted her in the background, and she reached into her briefcase for a small headset in a back pocket she'd never had to use before. She settled the buds in her ears, clipped the microphone on her shirt collar and plugged it in.
Already, information was flowing across the screen. She could see the senior management dashboard, icons lighting as their scattered main offices logged in to the system. A box opened, with Mariana's icon flashing, the system reporting her status on the header bar and very different from the normal net pops. Hey. Kerry typed in the box.
Hey. Mariana answered. Have you contacted Dar?
She was the one who called me and told me what was going on. Kerry typed back, aware of the chaos on the television across the room. She's fine; she's at the client site in England. Alastair's fine too.
Do you know if he got hold of the people in the NY office?
Kerry took a slow breath. No.
In her ear, she heard a soft chime. "Virtual conferencing coming online." She typed quickly. I'm going on the conference bridge, you joining? I don't really know what's going on but it's a good excuse to try the system out isn't it?
Mari's answer was wry even in written form. I'd
rather be doing shredder comparisons again.
"What the hell was the point of this?" Mike asked. "How are they going to put those fires out anyway, drag hoses up a hundred floors?"
"I guess," Angie said. "I don't think there are ladders that reach that far."
"Okay," Kerry said into her microphone. "I'm opening the bridge, this is Kerry Stuart. "
Cracklings and murmurs answered her. "Houston ops here." "Lansing." "Charlotte." "Los Angeles Earth Station."
Slowly, a map built in front of her, stretching out from one side of the screen to the other, an outline of the world with the United States in the center and circles of light that indicated all their major offices, installations, infrastructure and service centers.
"Kuala Lumpur calling in." The acknowledgements continued. "Dubai." "Sydney's on."
"Miami Ops on," Mark's voice echoed softly. "Kerry, I'm inserting the news crawler into the global desktop."
"Thanks." Kerry saw the ticker appear.
"Oh, there's the president," Angie said. "Kerry, look!"
Kerry glanced up at the television. The destruction had been replaced by their president with several aides standing in what appeared to be a schoolroom. "Where in the hell is he?"
"Florida," Mike said. "Some school."
"Great," Kerry muttered. "Like the air traffic isn't screwed up enough," she said. "Every time he visits I end up sitting at some gate for six hours."
"Kerry." Angie turned. "Maybe we'll find out what's going on."
"CNN's got the prez on," Mark commented. "See if the feed updates."
"Miami exec?"
Kerry turned back to the screen. "Kerry here."
"This is Danny Chambers, at the Joint Chief's office," a man's voice said, sounding stressed. "Ma'am, it's crazy here."
"I bet," Kerry murmured. "I'm sure everyone's upset."
"No ma'am, that's not it," Chambers said. "They think there's more out there. More hijacked planes! There are folks running up and down the hallways around here. No one knows where the planes are."
There was a moment of dead silence. Kerry stared at the blinking status lights in front of her, and then she looked over her screen to the television, where the president was talking.
"Hello? This is Sherren from the Manhattan office! Is anyone there?" A voice broke in. "Is anyone there? I can't find half our people, and there's sirens and smoke everywhere! They closed the bridges and tunnels and they're saying to evacuate Manhattan!"
Voices now burst in, startled and afraid. Kerry took a few deep breaths, and then she spoke up. "Okay, okay, people, please settle down," she said. "Let's not panic. I know it's really confusing out there, but a lot of things are getting said and we don't have all the facts."
"This is Michael Talmadge up at the air hub," a new voice spoke up. "Kerry, I have a landslide of requests for more voice and video bandwidth for the FAA and essential services. "
"You got it," Kerry said at once. "Whatever you need to link speed up there."
"This is Houston ops," another voice said. "We're getting reports of cell failures on the East Coast. The government support team here says they're seeing a lot of dropped calls."
"Everyone's using their phones," Mark said. "Can't handle it, probably what's going on in NY. I can't reach any of the staff there, only Sherren is on the VOIP conf."
"That's right," Sherren agreed immediately. "Most everyone who's here is outside, or up on the roof trying to see what's going on. Sirens are going off like crazy."
Kerry thought fast. "Mark, send an SMS blast to everyone in the New York node and tell them to evacuate north. I don't' know what's going on there either, but I think it's too dangerous where they are."
There was a blast of confused noise, overwhelming the call.
"What in the hell--" Mark said. "Kerry I got that and we're working it but half the damn--oh, crap! The secure Virginia nodes just went down!"
"Danny?" Kerry asked. "Danny, you still there?"
Silence.
"Oh wow!" Angie exclaimed. "Now they think a bomb went off in the capital!"
Kerry felt her breathing getting faster. She could see on her network grid that there were flashing yellow and red lines now where she was used to seeing sedate greens and blues, and they were centered around the three nodes they had that ringed the Pentagon military complex.
"Yeah look! What? Oh...crap!" Mike half stood. "I think--did it go off at the White House? Is that what they said?"
"Pentagon," Kerry corrected him. "I think something happened there." She keyed her mic back on. "Okay, Mark, get those SMS messages out to New York, and also to anyone in the area of DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Tell everyone to get the hell out of there and get under cover."
"Kerry," Mari's voice broke in. "They're telling us to evacuate here."
"There?" Kerry leaned closer to the screen. "Why?"
"Oh my god! They just said another plane is heading here!" Sherren screamed. "Oh my god!"
"They think--they're afraid there are more targets," Mari blurted out. "We're a tall building, in the glide path--the building management just called. They got a call from Metro Dade and they told them to get out. They're evacuating a lot of the buildings behind us."
Too many inputs. "Sherren, why don't you go ahead and log off, go home, and then either text us or login from there if you can, okay?" Kerry suggested. "Mark, did you get those texts off?"
"Done, boss."
"Okay, I'm getting out of this office," Sherren said. "How do I text? Oh, no, wait, I see here in my phone, it's the first address, right? At least I can use this for something! I can't get a line to anyone!"
"Kerry, I just heard from one of our techs. A plane plowed into the Pentagon," Mark said. "He's texting me like a crazy person. The damn thing came in almost at ground level and smacked into one side. He says it's on fire there, and walls are about to come down."
"Okay." Kerry considered. "Houston Ops, are you there?"
"Here, ma'am."