"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."
"Right." Kerry went back to the diagram. "There is no way we can quickly recover the destroyed room." She looked over at the chief. "I think you probably realize that."
The man nodded. "Find all your folks?" he asked, the tone of the conversation suddenly growing quiet, and grim.
"Not all of them," Kerry said. "We're still missing a few."
The chief studied her. "Might have been in there. Your folks were, a lot."
There was an awkward silence. Kerry folded her arms, gripping the marker in her right hand. "That had occurred to me," she said. "But I hope that's not the case. I hope they're just out of touch and we'll hear from them today."
The CO cleared his throat. "So you need power in this new space," he said. "Chief, can we do that?"
The chief chewed his sandwich thoughtfully as they waited in silence for his answer. Kerry went over to the table and got her ice tea, leaning an elbow on the counter as she gave in and opened her PDA again.
I need a good night's sleep with you wrapped around me.
"I need that too," Kerry muttered under her breath. "Maybe I can call Gerry and ask him."
"How much power you need?" the chief spoke up suddenly.
Kerry glanced over at Danny. "Do you have that handy, or do I need to get it from the master document server?"
Danny stopped in mid chew. "Uh--"
"Ah hah." Kerry went over to where her laptop was resting on the counter and unlocked it. She opened a browser and typed in an address, waiting for the page to display over the satellite link before she entered a request. "Hang on."
She glanced back at the PDA on the counter.
We're driving through little Havana now. There are a lot people on the street talking. Want some café con leche? Alastair's trying a croqueta.
"Okay." Kerry reviewed the list on the screen. "Boy, there was a lot of stuff in there." She ran the calculations. "Ten racks at sixty amps per rack." She looked up at the chief. "Six hundred amps, twenty 30 amp lines."
The chief stopped chewing and stared at her. "In that little room?"
Kerry nodded wryly. "We also need AC."
"Son of a bitch!"
"Can we do it, chief?" the CO broke in. "Who the hell cares how much it is? It's not like we have a budget for it. What does it mean a bigger cable? C'mon now, you know what's at stake here. We're blind without that equipment."
"You don't even have equipment for me to plug in there," the chief turned around and said to him. "I know it ain't here because I heard those IT people talking about it."
The CO looked over at Kerry. "What's the story with that?"
Kerry leaned against the counter. "Dar's working on it," she said. "It'll be here. Our racking vendor is already preparing a truck heading here with the framework."
The chief looked around at her. "We can do it," he said, surprisingly. "I'll have power pulled in there by tonight. That do it for you?"
"Thank you." Kerry smiled warmly at him. "Yes, that takes a big weight off my shoulders. I wouldn't want to call in the markers I'm calling in just to get everything here and not be able to use it."
There was a little silence. The military men subsided into pensive thought, and Kerry took a sip of her ice tea. She took a breath, and from one moment to the next, seeing those tired faces, they changed from a problem she had to solve to human beings she just wanted to help.
She'd never felt a kinship to the military. She'd always regarded that world with a wary respect, not understanding it or the people who chose to be a part of it. Getting a closer look had never really been in her plans, right up until her partnership with Dar.
Dar had been her window into that world, however unexpected that had been. She still wasn't sure she understood most of it, but having talked with Ceci, and knowing and loving both her and Andrew, she'd gained, at least, sympathy for those people who chose to serve.
"What else can we do?" Kerry asked, gazing at them. "Can we get something or do something for the people here? Do people need help? Access to their systems for emergencies? We're bringing up an internet hotspot here and if you send your financial people to see me, I can get them into workstations here on the bus, or in our Herndon center."
The chief leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Can you take back yesterday?"
Kerry put her tea down and went over to where he was sitting, taking a seat on the couch next to him. "I wish I could," she said. "I think every single person I know would."
The chief looked at her. "Have you ever wanted to hit someone but you ain't got a target, young lady? I just want to find the people who thought this was a great and noble thing to do and keep hitting them until their guts come out on the floor."
"We all feel that way," the CO put a hand on the chief's shoulder. Billy remained silent, eyes wide, just watching behind them. "We all lost friends. We all have people in the hospital, and families hurting." He looked at Kerry. "But we have a job to do. We have jobs that only we can do, so we can turn this around."
Kerry nodded. "We'll get you back in operation," she stated. "We'll get everything fixed. We have the resources and the will to make it happen."
The bus attendants came back in, with chocolate cupcakes and hot coffee. The scents filled the interior, and the men all looked up, visibly brightening as the women came over.