Kerry typed a question into her search applet, and was rewarded with a number. "Here it is." She gave it to him. "It would help the people left there. Most of them lived down in the affected area and can't go home."

"You got it, Kerry," Charles said. "Expect that LOA in the next five minutes."

"Call me if you need anything else," Kerry said. "Talk to you later." She hung the phone up, and went back to her screen. She clicked her mic on. "Miami exec to New York, you still on Sherren?"

"I'm here," Sherren responded promptly. "Two more people just showed up! We're all like kids here, screaming."

Kerry smiled. "I'm very glad. We're working on getting you some phones there, too."

"Oh, that's great!" Sherren said.

"Ma'am?" Nan poked her head back in. "Do you want a CNN feed in here?" She indicated a dark panel on the wall. "We've got one running in ops."

"Sure," Kerry said. "Any sign of more government visitors?"

"None yet." Nan shook her dark head. "When did you want to leave for the Pentagon?"

Kerry checked her watch. "I think I need to spend a little more time here, maybe an hour. Let's say eleven? Mark's almost at the Pentagon and he's going to be tied up for a while when he gets there."

"Okay, I'll be around," Nan said. "We'll push the feed in here." She ducked out and closed the door behind her.

Kerry scribbled a few more notes, listening with one ear bud in to the conversation going on in the background. A flash of motion caught her eye, and she looked up at the screen just in time to see a shot of the inside of the Capitol, where the hall was full of men and women all milling around.

Her mother was there, she realized. She spotted her immediately off to one side of the chamber, with two other senators who were vaguely familiar to her. "Hi Mom." She briefly waved at the screen, remembering the odd occasion when she'd flip past CSPAN2 and find her father talking.

She always stopped and listened.

"Miami exec, this is Miami HR."

"Go ahead." Kerry keyed her mic. "Good morning, Mari."

"Good morning," Mariana replied. "Not sure if you caught the news, but it's all over the local here that they've issued search warrants for a bunch of locations in Miami."

Kerry's head jerked up and she stared at the screen. "What?"

"No one's really sure what's going on. Duks says one of his people had a police raid in their apartment complex around four a.m.," Mari said. "We heard something about some of the hijackers coming from here."

"From Miami?" Kerry found this hard to believe.

"That's what they're saying."

Holy crap. Kerry stared in bewilderment at the television, reading the crawl on the bottom that repeated what Mari had just said. Hijackers from Miami? "But didn't they say yesterday this was something from the Middle East?"

"I don't know," Mari said. "Just wanted to give you the heads up since believe me, there's a lot of crazy, nervous people down here at the moment. We have about half the office in. A lot of people stayed home."

"Wow," Kerry said. "Okay, thanks for the warning." She scanned the lists again then sighed. "I'm going on hold for a minute, to call APC."

"Good luck, Miami exec," the LA Earth station chimed in. "Those guys sound pretty tapped."

"Mari, can you find out how close our community support teams are to Newark?" Kerry asked, as she searched her address applet for the phone number of their racking vendor. "Make sure they stop for a cold keg of beer."

Silence. "I don't think that's spec, Kerry," Mari said.

"Don't give damn. They've been there all night," Kerry said. "It's as muggy there as it is here. Have them bring fans and make sure they've got six volt to 110 converter lines so they can run them."

"Okay, will do," Mari said. "You're the boss."

"Until 3:30 p.m. I sure am." Kerry sighed. "Someone turn the planet faster please."

KERRY CHECKED THE time, then put her pen down on her pad. "Okay folks," she said. "I have to head out of here. Mark, I'll see you in about thirty."

"Gotcha, boss," Mark replied. "We're waiting for clearance to pull this rig in. "

"Mark, this is Danny," Danny said. "We'll come over there and talk to them. Give me five."

"Will do. Kerry, I've got it."

"All right. Miami exec off. " Kerry pulled out her ear buds and stood up, walking around in a circle to shake the cramps out of her body from the tension of dealing with issue after issue for a solid hour. She had a headache from it, and even two cups of tea hadn't prevented her throat from gaining a painful rasp.

The door cracked open, and Nan stuck her head in. "Ready to go? Sally at the front said no one else showed up for you."

"Well, good." Kerry flexed her hands and walked back over to the desk, picking up her jacket and slipping it on. "Maybe they changed their mind, or figured out something else to do, or talked to the Secret Service. Either way, I'm outta here."

She shut down her laptop. "Is there a Wendy's between here and the Pentagon?" she asked. "Love my hotel, but they have seriously deficient continental breakfasts."

Nan smiled. "Yeah, there is. You sure you don't want to stop somewhere else? There's some great restaurants around there."

"Nah." Kerry buckled her briefcase and slid the strap over her shoulder. "So little time, so many fubars." She followed Nan out the door and down the hallway. "I've got my fingers crossed hoping I get a call back from APC. They have a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania."

"APC--the rack people?" Nan asked. "Do they need that many new ones for the Pentagon?"

"Well, they need some, but I called them for a couple of UPSs." Kerry shouldered the staff door open and held it as Nan went through. "For the Earthstation."

"Ah, yeah. Right." Nan pulled her keys from her jacket pocket. "Those poor guys. They were being pounded yesterday. I think they were almost glad they lost power because everyone stopped bugging them for space."

Kerry slid into the passenger side seat. "Right now, I need to get the pressure off the station on the other coast, so hopefully we can get them some power and get them running again."

Nan started the SUV and pulled out of the parking lot, pausing at the gate as the security guards waved and the big iron portal slowly slid aside to let them out. The big doors were set into well made concrete and stone walls that stretched around the facility to an impressive height and came complete with a set of serious looking security guards whose bulk and stance were staunchly professional.

Kerry liked the guards in Miami, but most of them were what Dar called domesticated tabbies, nice men and women, and very competent, but they focused on watching the building and checking for fire alarms, helping the staff out when they locked their keys in their car, and manning the badge issuing equipment.

They weren't the ILS police. Most of them were far less intimidating than some of the marketing reps were with their big white teeth and aggressive tactics.

These guys here, on the other hand, looked like they were ready to turn back a platoon of Marines.

Kerry was pretty sure she didn't want to swap them for her uniformed friends down south, but it was nice to have them here, especially given the shifting uncertainties of the situation they were in. "Nice guys?" she asked, as they waved on the way out.

"Oh, absolutely," Nan said. "In a no neck, space ranger kind of way." She pulled out of the entry road and onto the main street. "They really take themselves very seriously, if you know what I mean. Most of them are ex military."

"Mm." Kerry remembered her time at the Navy base with Dar. "Are they reserve?" she asked. "I have a feeling this situation is going to end up with us fighting someplace again."

"Well, I don't know that much about them," Nan said." But I thought I heard someone saying that they had to be completely retired, not in the reserves to be hired. Someone was complaining that it wasn't fair, because being a reservist or National Guard is supposed to be a good thing."

Kerry considered that. She rested her elbow on the armrest and leaned back, watching the buildings flash by. "Boy, I can see both parts of that," she admitted. "I do think serving your country is an admirable thing, and shouldn't be a reason to block someone from employment."

"That's what that person was saying," Nan said.

"On the other hand, if my whole security department was reserve and guard, and they all got called up, I'd be a pickle," Kerry said. "It's a really tough question, especially these days. Used to be if you were guard, the worst thing you'd have to deal with is helping with a flood, or being asked to patrol streets during a riot."

"Well, yeah."

"Now, it's not like that," Kerry said. "Before, employers didn't really worry about hiring someone who had that commitment, because it wasn't likely to impact them more than that one weekend a month or whatever. Nowadays, you've got a reasonable chance of being sent overseas for six months, a year, who knows?"

"We shouldn't stop people who want to do it though," Nan said, with a frown. "That seems selfish, I guess."

"Business very often is," Kerry agreed. "It's all what's in the company's best interest." She had to smile wryly at this. "Sometimes. But actually I agree, you shouldn't stop people from serving and it shouldn't be a bar to employment, so I am going to find out from Mariana why that's so for this group since it doesn't apply to anyone else that I know of. "

Nan nodded. "That's cool," she said. "My brother's in the guard. He didn't have to go the last time, but his boss pretty much told him he'd never promote him to anything really critical because he just couldn't afford to have to replace him on short notice, and it was too much of a hassle."