Kerry decided this apparent bait and switch was legitimate, and that this was the actual boss of the group. She and Dar played that game sometimes with new companies. "Mr. Lopez." She tapped her thumbs together. "No, I don't think you really do understand what kind of responsibilities I have here." She stood and opened the whiteboard at the back of the room.

Lopez stopped and waited.

She turned and faced them. "I have a quarter of a million employees," she said. "I have two dozen of them missing in New York, and a dozen missing in Washington." She turned and scribbled on the board. "I have most of the infrastructure for communications down in Manhattan. I have an entire secure multipoint structure to restore in the Pentagon." She scribbled again. "I have overseas links down, a major satellite uplink used by the Navy down, bandwidth shifted in gigabits to cover planes in Newfoundland and Vancouver, satellite endpoints to establish, cellular backhaul to rebuild, and last by not least, several hundred major financial and banking customers who are depending on us to put them back in operation and prevent a major financial crisis."

She turned and faced him. "Now explain to me again why I am in this room, listening to you bitch at me for something you won't explain instead of letting me go and do my job bringing this country back from crisis?"

Lopez blinked at her.

"As my late father would have said, put it on the table, or take a hike." Kerry found the irony almost painful, but the quote fit. "I don't have time to play games with you." She could feel an exquisite tension in her guts, and knew she was playing with fire. She could see in Lopez's face that he wasn't a goon, and he could, in fact, drag her ass off to jail and might very well do so.

"This is a matter of national security," Lopez said.

"I have a top secret clearance," Kerry shot right back. "Next excuse?"

Lopez sat down in the chair next to hers. "Okay."

Kerry sat down, and folded her hands.

"Close the door." Lopez looked at Cutter. "Is this room secure?"

"It is," Kerry said. "We had them sweep for security yesterday after you first got here." She paused. "Though, I would still love to know where the NSA fits in."

Lopez frowned. "First things first." He waited for the door to be shut, and glanced up as the air compressed a little around them. "Soundproofed?"

"Yes," Kerry said, quietly.

"Okay." Lopez looked a little more relaxed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize the extent of your company's involvement in all this. I was told you were simply a service provider."

Kerry nodded. "Then I understand your approach," she said. "Please go on."

"This device," Lopez said. "We suspect that the people who planned and executed the atrocities yesterday are still here, still planning, still executing more horrible things. We have to find them. Do you understand how critical that is? We have very little time."

Kerry nodded again. "Okay, what exactly is this device looking for?" She held a hand up when he started to protest. "I don't want to know specifics. I need to know what type of data stream you're hoping to intercept. Are you thinking these people will be trying to attack the government financial systems?"

"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."