Storm Surge - Part 2

Chapter Sixteen

DAR SWUNG THE door open and flipped the lights on, not surprised to find no one else in the area as she stood aside to let her team in. "Where was that pile of cabling?"

"There." Kerry walked over and tapped the toe of her hiking boot against a square. "I won't forget that any time soon."

"Got it." Mark grabbed a tile puller and thumped to his knees on the floor. "Lemme get this up. You get ready to start clipping, Shaun."

"Watch out for the rats." Kerry said, just as Mark pulled the tile up.

He froze, and then he peered cautiously into the opening he'd just made."Thanks boss."

Kerry backed away from the space, taking up a perch on the desk. Dar had circled it, and was kneeling down next to Kannan, plugging the configuration cable from her laptop into the router resting on the floor.

Mark carefully shone his flashlight into the opening, and then pulled his kit over and settled on the floor. "C'mon, Shaun. No critters."He removed a set of cutters, an Ethernet crimper, and a handful of ends and mounded them on the floor near his knee, studying the mess to see where to start.

Shaun sat down on the other side of the open tile and removed his own tools.

"Who the hell prepped this router?" Dar asked.

"Uh oh." Mark eyed her. "Why?"

"It's the wrong damned image. Would have truly sucked if they showed up here and we didn't have the right code to support an optics module, wouldn't it?"

Mark made a face, but he kept his mouth shut, his eyes focused on the task at hand.

Dar sighed "Kerry--would you--"

"Mind using the bus's satellite hook up to download you the right image? Of course not, hon." Kerry gazed fondly at Dar. "Which one do you need?"

Dar handed her a slip of paper. Kerry took it and headed for the door, glad she had a task to take care of. Sitting there watching everyone work, while it fulfilled her promise to Dar, wasn't really to her liking.

She walked down the darkened corridor past the closed doors in the nearly silent building. As she came close to the door though, she could see an outline of gray light, and hear the sounds of the city waking up around them.

Not much time. She eased out the door, surprising the guard standing there. "Sorry." She gave him a brief smile. "Need something from the bus."

The man nodded. "All right, Ms. Stuart. But I have to tell you, my boss isn't going to be happy you people are in there. I know you got those passes and all, but no one's supposed to be near this building at this hour. Got a lot of important people showing up soon."

Kerry didn't even feel annoyed. "I understand." She patted his arm. "We'll try to do what we need to do and get out of here, before we can get ourselves and you in any trouble." She walked down the steps and crossed over to where the bus was parked, its door already open.

She entered and grimaced a little as she felt a jolt in her side. "Hi Dad."

"Hey kumquat." Andrew appeared from the back of the bus. "You all doing all right?"

"Yeah, just getting something for Dar." Kerry made her way to the small office and sat down behind the desk, carefully leaning forward and trying not to breathe deeply. She put the piece of paper on the desk, and logged in to her laptop waiting for it to give her desktop image.

"Had some fellers come by here." Andrew had followed her inside. "Think they were them secret service type people."

Kerry kept her arm on her injured side tucked against her side, and typed one handed on the keyboard. "What did they want?"

"Ah do not know that. But they were asking a lot of questions and ah do think they will be back here."

"What did you tell them?" Kerry pecked out a website, waiting for the slow satellite link to return the page to her. Then she logged into their image repository and slowly typed Dar's request into the search box.

"Told them ah was just a tour bus from Japan."

Kerry stopped typing, and looked up over the laptop's screen at Andrew. His scarred face tensed into a grin, which she returned. "You did not."

"Naw. Just told him you all were doing some work for the gov'mint in there. That's all." Andrew relented. "You all want some water or something?"

"Do we have any coffee?" Kerry clicked on the result of the search,and watched it start downloading. She fished in her pocket for a thumb drive, and plugged it into the side of her laptop. "My drugs are making me a little sleepy."

"Ah think we might." Andrew moved away, rattling around in the kitchen area of the bus and leaving Kerry to watch her creeping progress bar.

While she was waiting, Kerry clicked over to her mail program that was sorting itself out in the background. She scanned the new items relieved that nothing seemed really urgent, and her cleaning of the box on Friday hadn't resulted in a cascade of new mail over the weekend.

In fact--She clicked on one, a rare personal note from her sister.

Hey sis.

Mom said you were right in the thick of everything as usual. I hope you're safe, and Dar's okay. I thought it would be better to send you an email because I didn't want to call and interrupt you. I have some good news that I wanted to share though.

Kerry perked up. Good news? "Damn. It's been so long since I've gotten good news in my email I'm not sure what to do."

Brian proposed.

"Holy molasses!" Kerry blurted, straightening right up and then regretting it. "Ow!"

Andrew ambled in at a deceptively high rate of speed given his bulk. "What's the matter, Kerry?" he asked, his eyes flicking over her in concern. "You doin' all right?" He put the cup of coffee he was holding down and rested his big hands on the desk.

"Oof." Kerry tried to catch her breath, closing her eyes as the stars faded. "Wow." She exhaled. "Who'd have thought a little crack would hurt this much." She eased her eyelids open, to find Andrew looking at her with an expression so familiar it made her smile.

Dar's image; that concerned glower facing her, right down to the twitching fingertips resting on the wood surface. Kerry reached out and patted one hand. "I'm okay. I just got a surprise from my sister, that's all."

"Uh huh."

Kerry relaxed as the pain faded. "No, really. Brian proposed to her."

Andrew studied her for a moment, and then hitched up one knee and perched on the edge of the desk. "That the feller who's the daddy of that little boy?"

"The one named for you? Yes." Kerry nodded.

"Took him long enough."

Privately, Kerry agreed. "Well, you know that was complicated. I mean, Angie was married and all that."

Andrew snorted. "I'd a been her daddy that feller would a stepped up a lot sooner."

Kerry got lost in a moment of wondering what her life would have been like if Andrew had been her daddy. Then she shut that out deliberately, as a pang stung her chest. "I bet he would have. But I'm just really glad he did, no matter how long it took."

"Hmph," he grunted. "Let me go see what's going on outside. Heard me some noises out there." He nudged the cup. "Made that like I do Dar's. Figured it would do."

"Absolutely. Thanks Dad." Kerry turned her attention back to the mail as he wandered out, leaning forward cautiously again and studying the screen.

I can hardly believe it. He came over last night and after we put Sally and Andrew to bed we were just talking and we ended up in the solarium, and the next thing I knew he was kneeling down and taking a box out. I almost freaked!

Kerry smiled quietly. "Good for you, Brian."

He said what happened this week made him realize the world isn't a sane place. That you have to do the right things at the right time and not worry about the future. Maybe he's right. You know, I thought I didn't care, but I found out last night I really did.

So anyway. Will you be my best lady? Maid of honor sounds so stupid. I want you and Dar and Dar's folks to be there. We're planning for a Christmas ceremony, but Mom's freaking out because it's so short on time. She's glad though.

"Sure." Kerry rested her chin on her fist. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you to be mine, but I don't think you were in a space where that would have happened then, Ang." She flipped over to the download, then back to the mail.

"Thanks for making my morning a lot brighter, though." She clicked the reply button, and started to type. "And if it's any consolation to you, Dar freaked when I proposed to her, too."

DAR CLOSED HER laptop. "That's it." She watched Kannan finishing up the delicate task of fusing the fiber ends to the patch panel."Mark, how are you guys doing?"

"Sucky." Mark grunted. "My eyeballs are coming out of my head keeping track of these damn cables."

Dar studied him for a minute, and then she slid over across the floor. "Got a spare set of crimpers? Let me in there."

Mark handed over a tool without comment, and Shaun squirmed out of the way as Dar joined them at the hairball, pulling her legs up and crossing them underneath her as she settled down. "You just putting--oh, okay. I see."

"Terminating them male and putting couplers in," Mark said. "Easier than me trying to put a splice rack in there, no space."

"Good thing they didn't chew them completely apart." Dar muttered, as she sorted out one set of mangled wire, and clipped out the chewed parts. She tightened a zip tie against one end of the cut wire, and started working on the other. "What a pain in the ass."

"Ms. Roberts?" Shaun cleared his throat somewhat timidly. "Can I ask you something?"

"We're sitting on the floor over a hole that could throw rats at us at any minute. You can call me Dar." Dar didn't look up form her task, as she pulled the insulation off the wire end and separated the pairs, sorting them with expert fingers.

Mark muffled a smile. "You still remember how to do this?" he asked his boss.

"Do you still remember how to do this?" Dar countered, clipping the wires off and inserting them to a clear, plastic end. "How in the hell can anyone forget?" She examined the work critically, then clipped the end into a coupler and went on to the other part of the cable.

"Okay. Uh. Dar," Shaun said. "Is this really going to work?"

They could hear voices in the corridor outside, but so far no one had come inside the room. Now, two, loud, angry male voices erupted just outside, the words so stumblingly fast they could hardly make them out.

"Damned if I know," Dar said, after a moment's listening. "But I think we better get hustling."

Mark checked his watch. "Kannan, if you're done there, wanna give us a hand?"

"Surely." The fiber tech was packing up his gear. "I would be most glad to."

"I find it very hard to believe," Dar stripped the end of the cable,"that this all happened between Tuesday and Friday."

"I don't know--I heard those rats can chew through a car tire in a day," Mark replied. "I saw them down in there Dar. They're big as your dog."

"Mm."

Just then the door opened, and Kerry's poked her head in. "Hey,"she said, looking a bit harried. "Dar, you need to hurry up. They're evacuating this lower level because they're bringing some big shots in."

"Give me a break." Dar was clipping the other wire. "We have authorization to be here."

"No, we don't," Kerry said. "They specifically told them no one, especially our company, was allowed in here. They're coming back in ten minutes and they said if we're not out, they're arresting us and taking us to the federal prison."

"That again?" Dar rolled her eyes. "C'mon."

"This time it's no BS, Dar," Kerry stated flatly. "This isn't those bozos we were dealing with before. They scared the hell out of me."

Dar looked up, and saw in the set of Kerry's jaw, and the tension in her posture how serious the situation really was. "Okay. Everyone just do as much as you can in nine minutes and then we're out of here." She looked up. "Can you stall them if they're early?"

"Do my best." Kerry promised. "We got that ten minutes because of Dad." She ducked back outside the door.

"Great." Dar sped up her motions, as Kannan slid into place next to them, already reaching for cables with his slim fingers.

"Wonder what that's all about." Mark snapped a cable into place and reached for another one. "Shit I wish these people would make up thier damn minds."

"You must realize," Kannan spoke up, after a moment's quiet. "We must come to this place, once again, when the technical people we are expecting arrive. We must install the optic unit."

"Worry about that when it happens." Dar reached for another coupler. "Let's just get this done. Or as much of it as we can. If some things don't come up, well, they'll just have to deal with it." She snapped the coupler in place and selected her next target.

Focusing intently, her eyes fastened on the cables, her hands making the motions of stripping, and sorting, and ordering automatically. Kerry's warning still ringing in her ears, she crimped the ends on, then coupled them and reached for the next set.

"Jesus, boss." Mark eyed her with respect. "You really didn't forget how to do this did you?"

"Shut up and cable."

KERRY EASED HER hands carefully into her pockets as she emerged into the pearly gray of an early dawn. She looked quickly in both directions, relieved not to see the black SUV's pulled up onto the sidewalk anymore.

Her nerves were wracked. More because she'd seen Andrew's nerves wracked by the agents than by what they'd said to her. Dar's father was one of the most unflappable, bravest people she knew, and to see him shook up by mere humans scared the poo out of her.

"They coming?" Andrew dropped out of the bus, seeing her.

"Nine minutes." Kerry checked her watch. "Seven now."

"The hell." The ex seal exhaled. "Ah do not want any of us to be here when them fellers come back, Kerry."

"I know, Dad." Kerry bumped him very gently with her shoulder."Dar knows. She'll get back here."

There were already some people on the sidewalk. Not many, several policemen in their distinctive black uniforms, and cars were beginning to park along the street, shadowy figures busy behind the wheels.

They were running out of time. Kerry felt a prickle go down her back. Not only because of the government agents. "C'mon Dar."

"Them people are trouble," Andrew said, unexpectedly. "Them are the kind of people who don't have to account to no one for nothing, you understand me, Kerry?"

Kerry studied his face. "You mean they're above the law?"

"Yeap."

"My father thought he was too." Kerry spotted motion in the distance. "Uh oh."

Andrew turned and saw the trucks coming back. "Shit." He looked up at the entrance. "Let me go get them people."

"Dad." Kerry caught his arm. "Get the bus started. I'll stall these guys if they get here." She nudged him toward the bus. "Dar said she'd be here. Two more minutes."

"Kerry, you do not understand." Andrew protested.

"I do," she insisted gently. "It's okay. They're part of the government, Dad. I've lived with part of the government most of my life. I know where their buttons are. Please. Just leave it to me, and let's get ready to go."

Andrew studied her for a brief moment, and then he nodded and disappeared back up the steps to the bus, leaving Kerry standing alone on the sidewalk.

Kerry took a careful breath and released it, hoping she hadn't pissed her father in law off too much. She then turned and watched the approach of the black SUV's that appeared to be heading directly for them.

She checked her watch and leaned against the bus, feeling the rumble as its engine started up and nearly scared the wits out of her as the air brakes hissed suddenly.

The lead SUV pulled into the next block, and the one behind it continued on toward her. She could see the man behind the wheel, and the one in the passenger seat, both in black jackets, neither of whom were smiling.

The passenger pointed at her, and looked at something.

Oh boy. Her heart started to race. She kept her calm posture through, her ear cocked for the sound of her partner and their team approaching. "Maybe I should call my mother sooner rather that later."

A weak card and she knew it. "You may think you're outside the law, but I bet your boss really hates to be embarrassed."

The SUV pulled into the curb just behind the bus, and the men prepared to get out. One was talking rapidly into a radio, glancing at her all the while.

"Here we go." Kerry prepared herself for the confrontation, deciding a gentle approach to start would be a good idea. "I don't understand officers. What's going on?" She muttered under her breath. "We're just here taking care of a problem, I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding."

The men got out and headed her way. One took a baton out and was holding it.

"On the other hand, screw you asshole works too." Kerry readied a retreat route, and pushed away from the bus, getting her center of balance over her boots. "And so does calling for help."

Loud voices suddenly erupted. Kerry half turned and then turned all the way around as the door burst open and Dar rapidly took the stairs two at a time, the techs right behind her with their eyes wide.

"Get in." Dar ordered Kerry. "Dad, get ready to move."

Kerry didn't waste any time. She climbed onboard just a whisker ahead of Dar's rapidly moving form and moved inside to make room for the rest of them. Just as she got to the far wall, the bus surged into motion, the air breaks releasing and the door hissing shut almost in the agent's face.

Dar grabbed hold of her as they lurched to one side, cradling Kerry against her as they swung around a corner and lots of things went flying, including the techs and a fair assortment of hand tools. Dar had a good grip on the doorway into the back office and didn't get thrown.

"They are laughing at us." Kannan was looking out the back window. "Those men."

"Nice." Kerry had no intention of protesting the hold. Her chest hurt, and the thought of holding herself in place made her grimace."Did you guys finish?"

"Not quite." Dar braced herself against the door frame as the bus swerved again. "The building infrastructure people finally showed up."

"Oh, that somebody's uncle company?"

"I think it's Uncle Guido's company," Dar said. "They jumped all over us. They were pissed we were touching their stuff, not that we were in the building though. I wasn't going to stick around to argue about it."

"Yeah." Mark had gotten himself and his gear into one of the armchairs. "Lucky for us big D was there to kick their asses."

Kerry glanced up at her partner. "Did you?" She muttered under her breath, watching Dar's face take on an almost adolescent expression that held its own answer. "Oh boy."

"Yeah, especially since we're going go need to get back in there when the module shows up." Dar said. "Or else this is just a pointless waste of a morning."

"I've never seen anyone kick someone like that." Shaun looked up from gathering his scattered supplies on the bus floor. "That was pretty cool."

Kerry looked back up at Dar, her eyebrows lifting in question.

"They were blocking the door and not letting us out," Dar explained."Not sure that was intentional, but you said ten minutes and I didn't have time to explain to the stupid bastard-- Whoa!"

The bus was turning completely around now, leaning over to a scarry degree as the horn blared. Both Dar and Kerry were thrown against the door sill, and Kannan kept his feet only by the slimmest margin.

"Holy crap!" Mark yelped.

"Hang on back there." Andrew yelled. "Got to get this thing heading back straight."

"Jesus." Kerry tucked her elbow against her sore ribs and tucked her other hand around Dar's waist. "Maybe we should go sit down."

Then the bus straightened up and started going forward, settling down into a more regular movement. "We back on the main road,Dad?" Dar called out.

"Yeap."

"Okay." Dar cautiously released Kerry. "Everyone get your gear together. We've got a lot of work to do when we get to the office. Kerry, can you arrange for Skuzzy to pick our guys up at the airport?"

"Already did." Kerry stayed where she was, tucked along Dar's side"I sent her and Nan the flight details. She's tracking them too, she'll let us know if they're late."

They rolled along in silence for a moment. Then Dar sighed. "Theism insanity."

Mark looked up from zipping his tool bag. "Yeah, but in a good way, right?"

Dar leaned back and put her arms around Kerry again, as the sun started to rise and flash through the curtained windows of the bus, splashing them all intermittently. "We'll find out soon enough, I guess."

"WHERE DID THEY leave it?" Dar had her hands on her hips.

"It's below in the tunnels," the building manager said. "The guy with it said it wouldn't reach any further."

"Oh crap." Mark echoed the words sounding in Dar's skull. "You gotta be kidding me."

The building manager shrugged. "I wish I was. He left the message with me, said he didn't have time to wait for you guys to wake up."

Dar snorted. "Yeah. Thanks." She let her hands drop. "Okay, let's go see where they left it. Maybe they were lying." She motioned Mark and the others to follow her, unclipping her radio from her shoulder as she walked. "Ker?"

The radio hissed, and then crackled. "Right here, go ahead. Scuzzy reports the flights on time, Dar."

"Everything else isn't," Dar said." Cable's still down in the subway."

"Jesus."

"And they think it's too short."

"Oh, man." Kerry's voice reflected the frustration she was feeling. "Dar, I don't--" She stopped. "What's your plan?"

"I don't think we're going to make it either." Dar turned and headed down the steps. "Just-- could you grab someone, maybe two people, and see if you can find a pipe, something, anything, in that damn hole our dmarc's in that I can shove a cable through?"

"You got it. On the way." Kerry clicked off.

"This is gonna suck." Mark tugged at the collar of his jumpsuit. "I knew we shouldn't trust those guys. They gave off bad juju."

Dar rolled up the sleeves on her own jumpsuit as she trotted down the steps. She dodged past the hurrying figures of people coming up out of the subway, and paused only when she got to the ticket turnstile. "Damn it."

"Machines over here." Mark had started toward it. "What do we need, four? I'll get em."

"Thanks." Dar put her hands on the bar and peered through them. "Kerry has my wallet." She ignored the stream of people coming out of the turnstiles, studying the wall and stairwells on the other side of the gates until Mark came over with four squares of cardboard.

She took hers and they passed through, walking past the fare booth and going down the steps to the level where the trains were. There was a train on one side of the platform, so Dar went to the other side, and looked up and down it. "Which one would it be in?"

"Um." Mark went to the map in the center of the platform and studied it. "They'd have to be in the tunnel from--here?" He traced a line with his finger uncertainly. "Man, where's that native woman?"

"Fetching our world savers." Dar went over to the map and looked at it. "Yeah, this is the cross over from that other line so it has to be this way." She pointed up the tunnel the train was in. "Let's wait for this thing to leave and go look."

Mark eyed her. "Go into the tunnel? Boss, that's sorta dangerous. We touch that live rail and we're all toast."

"They had to be in there." Dar reminded him. "There's a ledge along the wall here. We can walk on that."

"Oh, my goodness," Kannan murmured.

"Dar?" Kerry's voice crackled faintly on the radio. "You there"

"Yeah." Dar keyed the mic. "What's up?"

"The secret service was just here." Kerry's voice sounded tense."They asked Alastair to go with them down to the Exchange."

Dar glanced around. "Just giving him a ride?"

"Well." Kerry exhaled audibly. "They made it sound like a polite request"

"That sounds kinda crappy." Mark muttered softly.

"Yeah." Dar clicked the radio a few times. "All right, Ker. Thanks for telling me. See what you can do to find me that pipe."

"Will do." Kerry clicked off.

The train hooted, and the doors shut, then it pulled out of the station, disappearing down the tunnel with a whoosh of dank air behind it.

Dar walked immediately to the edge of the platform and climbed over the rail, getting her boots on the small ledge and walking along it with confidence. She didn't look behind her to see if anyone was following, leaving it to their individual conscience.

It was dark in the tunnel, but this close to the station there were lights against the wall just barely glowing from the layers of soot and grease covering them. She climbed up a few steps onto a platform that faced a set of closed doors, the faint hum from behind them audible to her.

The platform had steps back down to the ledge, she paused, as the wall dipped into a darkened angle as though a wedge had been cut into it.

Dar pulled out her flashlight and turned it on, flashing it down to the tracks to see a set of them diverging from the main ones and heading directly into the wall. The gap they made was far too wide for her to jump, and she wasn't really sure which one of them was live in the dim light.

Jumping down seemed like a bad idea. Dar turned her flashlight to the wedge instead, playing it against the walls. There were old pylons there, branching off to go with the tracks but it all ended up in bricked off wall.

"Over there, boss." Mark spoke up. "See the cable? It's coming down--where the hell does it go?"

Dar flashed her light over to the edge of the tracks and spotted the thick cable. "Yeah." She examined the ground beneath the platform she was on, seeing piles of litter and eyeballs reflected back at her. With a sigh, she gathered her courage and stepped off the concrete, falling through the air for a few seconds before she landed in the trash, sending cracklings and squeals in every direction.

"Yow." Mark stayed where he was.

"You know something? I went into information technology so I'd avoid crap like this. I should have stuck with the damn Navy." She edged carefully along the platform into the shadows, spotting a much bigger bulk in the darkness in the very corner of the wedge.

"Careful, boss."

Dar lifted her light and moved forward into the gloom, pausing when she heard a frantic rustling just near her right foot. "Oh boy," she muttered. "Glad I have boots on." She scuffed her feet forward, and felt her toe impacting something soft and moving.

Expecting a squeak, she was shocked at a hiss instead, and froze in place, her senses on momentary overload.. "Holy shit! I think there's a damn snake down here!" She trained the light down at her feet and searched the litter.

Then she felt something strike at her boots and instinctively she kicked out with one of them, impacting a body and sending it flying.

"Boss! Dar!" Mark scrambled off the platform. "Hey!"

A loud yowl made them both freeze.

"That's not a snake," Mark said, after a nervous silence.

"No." Dar felt her heart about to come out of her chest. "I think it's a cat."

"Kitty cat or wildcat?"

Dar heard motion again and prepared herself to be attacked, but a furry form dashed past her, eyes glinting in the flashlight, and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. "Okay." She moved a little further, and then stopped as her thighs bumped into something big. "Oh."

"Wh--oh." Mark peeked past her at the big spool blocking the way."Hey, good job, boss. You found it."

Dar leaned over and examined the remaining cable, and then straightened. "They're right. Not enough. Barely get to the damn stairs in the station."

"Shit." Mark peered at the cable. "Now what?"

Dar started searching the walls with her light. "I don't know. I honestly don't goddamned know."

KERRY STOOD BACK as they opened the door to the old storage closet that they'd used as a demarc. "Thanks," she told the custodian.

"We really appreciate it."

The man grunted and walked off, shaking his head.

"What a nice guy," Scuzzy said. "A real New Yorker." She looked inside the room. "So what are we looking for?"

"Wow. What a place." Nan entered, shining a big flashlight around. "Good grief, Ms. Stuart. Don't tell me this is an actual telecom demarc."

"Kerry, please." Kerry poked her head in. "Unfortunately, yes, it is.Here's the problem. They have the cable for this thing down in the subway tunnel, and it's too short for us to bring up the steps and across the floor there. Dar wants us to find a pipe or conduit that might go down there so she can bring the connection up."

"Oh. Wow." Nan peered around. "Are we still trying to do this? I thought we were giving it up last night." She looked back at Kerry. "It's almost eight o'clock."

"Yeah." Scuzzy looked at her watch. "I gotta get going to the airport, yeah? Bring this guy right back here?"

"Right back here." Kerry agreed. "Okay, Nan, Robert, let's see what we can find." She entered the room cautiously with the office applications support specialist behind her. "We're looking for a pipe."

"Plenty of them in here." Nan said.

"Keep clear of that one, it's steam." Kerry pointed. "And don't touch that panel. It's live electrical."

Nan stopped, and turned around to look at her.

"Dar found out the hard way." Kerry took a careful breath, and edged along the wall, inspecting everything within reach of her flashlight. She'd passed on wearing her jumpsuit, since the idea of struggling into it was just too much for her at the moment.

Dar had insisted on her boots though, going so far as to put them on her, in a moment of exasperating over protectiveness, in front of the staff standing there waiting for them.

Goofball. She found a pipe and tapped on it, shaking the rust off the outside and exposing the old lettering. "Water. No, that won't do it."

"These are huge pipes--steam you said?" Nan was moving around the other side. "They're big."

"We have steam heat," Robert said. He was kneeling on the floor near the front of the room looking at the pipes protruding through the concrete. "What are we looking for, Ms. Stuart? Will they be labeled? I think these are electrical, they say Edison."

"What we're really looking for is an empty pipe that might go down." Kerry stepped carefully over their router and the fiber patch panel Kannan had just finished. "Something that might be going down into the subway from an office building."

"Well." Nan slid between two of the bigger pipes, her slim form almost obscured by them. "This one says fire alarm system--it's going down."

Kerry abandoned her search and made her way to the other side of the closet, easing her head between the pipes since she was pretty sure the rest of her wouldn't fit. "Okay--oh." She turned her head sideways."Telegraph conduit. Telegraph?"

"There used to be fire boxes on the street," Robert explained. "Connected to the fire department. It worked by Morse code or something."

Kerry unclipped her mic. "Dar? You there?"

A loud rushing sound answered her and she pulled the mic away from her ear. "Yow."

"Sorry." Dar clicked in a minute later. "Train going by. What's up? You find anything?"

"Are you in the tunnel?" Kerry asked. "Where the tracks are? Holy crap, Dar!"

"That's where the cable is," Dar reminded her.

"Be careful." Kerry felt her stress level rising. "We found a pipe that is supposed to be for the fire alarm system. It says 'telegraph' on the outside. Can you find one down there?"

"Bang on it," Dar said. "Get something and keep banging on it and we'll look."

Nan nodded. "Good idea." She looked around. "There's a piece of brick--maybe that'll work." She squeezed over near the wall and retrieved it, and then came back over and started banging on the pipe.

"Hear that?" Kerry asked over the radio.

"Hang on."

Kerry held the mic with one hand, keeping her other elbow pressed against her side that had started to ache again. "Good catch, Nan." She complimented the woman. "Last thing we needed was to be stuck inhere for a long time."

"Ker? I can hear it." Dar answered back. "Just keep banging. We'll try to find ya. Good job."

"Thank Nan." Kerry backed away from the pipe. "Robert, can you find a brick and spell Nan when she gets tired? I don't think my ribs are going to be up to me whacking something."

"Sure," Robert agreed instantly. "Boy that took a lot less time than I thought it would."

"How are we going to get the cable inside the pipe up here?" Nan asked over the pounding. She whacked the pipe at one-second intervals; making a low, gong like sound that wasn't quite pleasant. "There's no hole in the pipe."

No, of course there wasn't. "Hey Dar?" Kerry keyed the mic. "I'm going to need someone up here with a hacksaw."

"Send them up when they're done here," Dar answered, her breathing sounding a bit strained. "Get back to you in a minute."

Kerry released the mic, trying hard not to turn tail at once and go chasing down the stairs to see what her partner was up to. "Boy, that was a lot shorter than I thought, too," she commented. "We may make this if Dar can find that pipe."

"They're making a big deal out of the Exchange this morning."Robert straightened, with a small section of pipe in his hands. "The vice president's going to be there, and a bunch of other people. I hear they're going to have one of the firemen ring the opening bell."

The underlying hypocrisy made Kerry's eyeballs twitch. She turned and looked around searching out a path for the cable to come up once it came out of the pipe. The floor was crowded with mechanics but she traced out a route with her eyes, taking the cable along the floor and past the dangerously humming electrical panel.

Yes, that would work. She eyed the bend the cable would have to make to get to the router, and while it was steeper than Dar probably would have liked, beggars in this case certainly could not be choosers and they'd just have to try and make it work.

She was just relieved they'd found a solution. She checked her watch. Quarter past eight. They had really an hour to get everything hooked up and tested before the exchange opened at nine thirty. If the modules got here in time, it was do-able.

Just.

"Ker?" Dar's voice crackled through, sounding tired and irritated.

Uh oh. "Here," Kerry answered. "What's up?"

"We can't get at that damn pipe." Dar answered. "It's inside an equipment room behind some locked doors."

"Well--"

"Which Mark already picked. Someone decided to dump a load of unwanted concrete in the closet and it's covering the pipes. They're inside the concrete."

Shit. Kerry clicked the mic, looking over at the others, who were looking back at her in dismay. "All the pipes in that area?" She looked around."They're all on that wall, Dar."

"All of them," Dar confirmed. "Every last goddamned one of them buried inside a pile of rock with construction worker's graffiti marked all over it.

Nan stopped pounding, and let the brick fall to her leg. "So, now what?"

"Good question." Kerry exhaled. Slowly she let her eyes wander over the inside of the room. "Damned good question."

"QUARTER TO NINE." Kerry wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. She was kneeling on the dirty concrete, as Nan squirmed under the consoles looking for something, anything they could use to solve their current problem.

"I don't see anything," Nan said. "Just a lot of dirt."

"Son of a bitch." Kerry exhaled. "This stupid piece of shit room. If I had a stick of dynamite I'd just blow a damn hole in the floor."

Nan eyed her, a trifle nervously.

"Is there anything I can do other than hold this flashlight?" Robert asked. "I feel a little useless standing here letting you ladies do all the dirty work."

Kerry lowered herself carefully down until she was lying flat on her belly on the ground. She slowly moved her flashlight around every inch of the floor, ignoring the throbbing pain in her chest.

"Ker, I think we're about out of time." Dar's voice crackled softly over the radio. "I can't find a damn thing down here."

Kerry cursed under her breath. "Hang on." She keyed the mic. "I'm going to have one last look here."

"Okay." Dar responded. "Good luck. We're not having any."

"Thanks hon." She released the radio and continued her inch-by-inch search, running her flashlight over the back wall past the electrical panel, over the painted over wooden half door, over the brick--

Wait.

Kerry moved her flashlight back. She focused on the long sealed half portal, her eyes flicking over it with startling intensity. "Robert?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get me a sledgehammer. Immediately."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Nan squirmed over to see what she was looking at. "What are you going to do?"

Kerry pointed. "That was a door once. It went somewhere." She rested her flashlight on the ground and her chin on the flashlight, trying not to breathe too deeply. "It's lower than the level of the floor."

"You think it goes somewhere?"

"Haven't a fucking clue." Kerry keyed the mic. "Dar, I found something. Give me two minutes, and then see if you hear me knocking."

"Will do," Dar responded. "Got my damned fingers crossed."

Nan studied Kerry. "You people from Miami curse a lot. No offense. It just sounds weird."

"We have a lot to curse." Kerry edged forward, now regretting that she'd declined the jumpsuit. She could feel the chill of the concrete against her belly as she angled herself under a large metal shelf toward the door. "It's either hot and steamy, or it's a tropical storm, or it's bad drivers, corrupt politicians, and roads under perpetual construction."

"Oh." Nan watched her. "You want me to do that? You must be hurting like crazy crawling around like that."

Kerry turned her head and looked at her. "Can you swing a ten pound sledge hammer underhand?"

Nan blinked. "Um--you know, I never tried, but I'm more into marathons than weightlifting."

"Well." Kerry squirmed a last few inches. "I can, and I'm short enough to get in here." She arrived in front of the door. There was an alteration in the floor there, a pour of concrete that had settled into a depression three feet wide. It made the floor in front of the half door a good twelve inches lower than what she was laying on. She ran her fingers over it. "Stairs?"

"Hard to say." Nan looked up over her shoulder at the door. "Found one?"

"I did." Robert came forward. "The custodian was there. I just paid him twenty bucks and he handed it right over." He edged toward where Kerry was. "You want it there, Ms Stuart?"

"We must be in New York," Nan said, in a wry tone.

"Like Washington doesn't know anything about bribes?" Robert jibed back.

"Can you get the head of it here, next to--yeah." Kerry curled her fingers around the shaft of the sledgehammer and steeled herself, tucking her right arm up against her side to support her ribs. Then she lifted the hammer and smacked the head against the door, making a loud cracking boom.

"Whoa." Nan squirmed back out of the way. "Let me get outta here before splinters start flying."

Kerry smacked the door again, then again, and again. It didn't seem to be moving, but she could see the paint cracking along the sealed edges. "Hope Dar can hear that."

"Ker. " As though in answer, Dar's voice sputtered near her ear. "What the hell are you do--where is that? Mark! Mark! Where in the hell is that coming from?"

Kerry felt a jolt in her side, and she took a quick breath against it. She kept up her attack, feeling some of her rage at the situation coming out as she swung against the door harder and harder. "Stupid." Bang."Piece." Bang. "Of crap." Bang.

"I think the edge is breaking there." Nan had slid over under the back section of piping to get a better look. "Yeah, it is."

"Should be." Kerry grunted, slamming the hammer against the wood as she felt the burn in her triceps. "Glad for all those hours in the gym now."

"You guys actually have time for the gym?"

"We make time for it." Kerry paused and studied her target, and then she selected a different spot and slammed the hammer against the edge of the door near the frame, seeing flecks of brown wood under the black paint.

"Nine o'clock," Robert said. "Ms. Stuart, they're back with that part--upstairs just paged me."

"Go down into the subway and get Kannan and Shaun back up here." Kerry felt her breath coming fast, and her heartbeat hammering against her chest. "Tell them to get ready."

"Yes, ma'am." Robert disappeared again.

"C'mon. C'mon." Kerry closed her eyes and just concentrated on the hammer, blocking out the pain and the burn in her arms. She banged the tool against the wood again, and again, and again, and again.

Faster.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

"KERRISON! STOP!"

Kerry almost jumped and smacked her head against the pipes, the voice so loud in her ears it hurt. She dropped the hammer and let out a gasp as the surface she'd been pounding disappeared into a black hole and gust of cold, oil scented air blew hard against her face.

She stared at the opening until Dar's upper body appeared, her arms resting on the depressed floor. "H--hi."

"Sorry I yelled," Dar said. "But one more smack and you'd have gone through the damn door and knocked me off this stack of crates and old railroad ties I'm standing on." She disappeared. "Hang on."

Kerry was very glad to stay completely still, blowing her hair out of her eyes with a puff of relieved breath.

"Wow," Nan said. "Just, wow."

"Here." Dar reappeared with something in her hand. "Feed this in." She got a good look at Kerry's face, and then shifted her focus."Nan, grab this please. Pull it forward to the rack." She had a cable end in her hand and now she fed it through under the rusted iron pipe work.

"Got it." Nan took hold of the cable and squirmed backwards. "Got it, got it--whoa!"

"Hey!" Shaun skidded to a halt, breathing hard. "There's the cable!Kanny! Move it, buddy!!"

The cable slithered forward as Dar fed it up, past Kerry's shoulder. "That's enough," Dar called back. "Tie it off for strain relief, Mark."

"Doin' it!" Mark called back. "Dar, for Christ's sake don't fall, okay? I don't think I can catch you and we're both gonna end up across those freaking tracks!"'

"I'm all right." Dar leaned on the sill again. "You okay?" She focused on Kerry.

"Absolutely not." Kerry reached over and extended her hand which Dar clasped. "We're not done. The part's here, Dar. We've got to get it down to the exchange."

"I know," Dar said. "And I've got to be here to configure this end of it when the traffic starts coming down. I told the router on that end to send me everything. I'm going to split it up here."

"We're insane." Kerry rested her head against her arm. "I'll get the part and go to the Exchange. If they won't let me in, at this point, I'm going to start biting and kicking people so get the bail money out."

"Ker, we can send someone else," Dar said. "I'll send Mark."

"Who do you think has the best chance of getting in there?" Kerry kept her eyes closed. "Honestly."

Dar sighed.

"You're taking me to dinner at Joe's Stone Crab tonight, Paladar."

Dar pulled her hand closer and kissed her knuckles. "Ker, I'll buy Joe's Stone Crab for you if you want, but--ah--can you move back out of the way?"

"Huh?"

"Gotta jump up here." Dar looked behind her.

"Boss! Watch it!" Mark yelled suddenly. "Watch it!"

Kerry's eyes popped open. "Honey you're not fitting through here. Dar, wait--no wai--Dar!"

With a sudden surge, Dar hauled herself through the opening. "Mark! Move!"

"Outta here boss!"

There was thundering huge crash behind her, and far off, the sound of alarms going off. "I think we just blocked the tracks." Dar reviewed her options in the tiny, cramped space. "I think I'm gonna end the day pissing a lot of people off."

Kerry was wriggling backwards as fast as she could, trying not to kick Shaun and Kannan who had descended over the cable and were working furiously.

"Guys?" Dar said. "Stop."

Shaun looked up. "Ma'am?"

"Pull Kerry out of there." Dar pointed. "Just grab her legs and pull gently before she passes out." She looked up, then jumped and grabbed a pipe, pulling her body up and over the top of it. "C'mon people, we're out of time."