Red Sky At Morning - DK4 (13 page)

Dar finished putting her badge on. “That’s the long way,” she gave him a grim smile, “but thanks.”

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Kerry waved at the guard. “
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,” she told him cheerfully as Dar drove past. Then she settled back into her seat and looked around curiously as they made their way along a rather weather-beaten road. It was so different than she’d expected, Kerry mused, taking in the long rows of sturdy, plain concrete buildings. Everything was neatly kept, and there were columns of men and women doing various military type things—like running and chanting, drilling in a nearby field—and some were just walking about.

To one side, through a stretch of tall trees, she spotted a large cluster of small houses. She glanced at Dar and saw her lover’s eyes on them as well, a curious mix of regret and nostalgia on her face. “Was that home?”

“Yeah.” Dar gave her head a little shake and returned her attention to the road. “Wasn’t much. I think my room was the size of the back of this car.” She fell silent for a beat. “I spent my first...five, six years here, I guess; then we moved up to Virginia. Year or two after that to North Carolina, two years later to Baton Rouge, then we came back here for a while.”

“Sort of tough on you, moving to different schools all the time, hmm?” Kerry half turned in her seat, watching Dar’s profile. “Making new friends and all.”

Dar laughed shortly. “That was the least of my worries.” She turned down a side street. “I never bothered much with friends.” She parked the Lexus and turned her head. “You ready for this?”

“Me?” Kerry allowed an easy laugh to escape. “Dar, you forget how I grew up. It would take more than a bunch of hunky sailors and Marines to spook me.” She put a hand on Dar’s arm. “Thanks for asking me to come along, though. I’m glad I’m here.”

Dar smiled. “Me, too.” She gathered up her briefcase and opened the door. “C’mon. Let’s go see what trouble we can get into.”

Kerry followed her as they walked along the sidewalk and turned in to go up a short flight of steps to a guarded doorway. She tried again to imagine Dar as one of these stern, earnest, professional warriors.

Ow
. It made her brain hurt. She gave the guard a smile and passed through the portal to another world.

DAR’S NOSE TWITCHED as she walked along the hallway, memories gently buffeting her from all sides. The air was thick with familiar scents: wool and brass and wood polish, and floor wax she knew came in gray five-gallon cans. The merest hint of gun oil trickled through, tickling her senses and bringing a faint smile to her face.

It was quiet as they passed closed doorways, the faint clatter of honest-to-goodness typewriters leaking through but not much more.

Kerry gave her a look. “Multipart forms,” Dar murmured. “Eight layers at least, sometimes ten.”

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“Ew.” Kerry winced. “They ever consider donating part of the government’s operating budget to saving the rainforests?”

“Mm.” Dar led the way up a flight of double stairs that swept up to a landing, with a door guarded by an armed Marine. “I tried to convince them to go thermal, but they held onto those Selectrics like they were worth actual money and wouldn’t give them up.” She gave the Marine a brisk nod and turned past him into a smaller, closer hallway with doors on either side.

“Dar?” Kerry watched her bemusedly. “When was the last time you were here?”

Dar thought about it. “Jesus...has it been ten years?” She shook her head and took a left, then put a hand on the first right-hand door and pulled it open. “I can’t believe it.”

Kerry glanced at the doorplate, which said “Computer Operations—Do Not Enter.”

“You’re telling me they haven’t moved anything in ten years?”

Dar looked at the plate, then at her. “Ten years? Kerry, there are some government offices that haven’t changed in over two hundred.

C’mon.” She followed her lover into a suite of offices that had a darker shade of carpet and colder air.

Now it was Kerry’s turn to twitch her nose. “That’s not mimeograph fluid I smell, is it?”

Dar chuckled, walking past her toward an office with a thick wooden doorframe and a scarred wooden door.

Perched outside it was a small desk, occupied by a dour-looking woman with curly dark hair and an attitude three times larger than she was. She intercepted them as they walked forward. “Ms. Roberts?”

Dar regarded her soberly. “Yes.”

“Commander Albert is in a meeting. He asked me to fill in for him,”

the woman stated flatly. “My name is Perkins, and I’m the data center manager.” She stood up. “We have a full schedule, so if you’d like to give me a list of what you want, I’ll see what I can do.”

Dar flicked her eyes over the much shorter woman, then simply walked past her, heading down a small corridor toward a set of double doors.

“Ma’am?” The data center manager bolted after her. “Ma’am, that area’s off limits.”

Dar just kept walking, stiff-arming the doors open and letting them close behind her, almost slapping her pursuer in the face. Kerry sighed and followed, catching one door as their naval guide blasted through them. Inside was a large room filled with mainframes, some of which, she realized, were perilously close to being an older vintage than she was.

“Ms. Roberts, I need to ask you to leave, or I’ll have to call the guard,” the data center manager stated fiercely.

“Go ahead.” Dar turned abruptly and faced her, showing her edgier
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side. “You call the guard, I call the Pentagon.” She took out her cell phone and opened it. “Because frankly, Lieutenant, I’ve had about enough BS for one morning, and I just got here.”

“This is a secure area,” Perkins shot back. “You are a civilian, and this is off limits; I don’t care how many generals you know.” Pause.

“Ma’am.”

“Look.” Kerry eased between them. “Lieutenant Perkins, I know this is seriously messing up your day.” She smiled kindly at her. “And I know that Commander Albert probably told you to be as big a pain in the ass to us as possible, but that’s okay, because Dar and I are used to that.”

The lieutenant eyed her warily.

“Most of the time when we’re doing this, the people we’re working with are scared silly we’re going to fire them, and sometimes we do,”

Kerry went on. “But you’d do us and yourself a favor if you’d just relax and let us do our jobs. Things will go much faster, and we’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

The woman stiffened a little, bringing her head just slightly above Kerry’s. “We have a job to do here. Everything works, and we don’t need a couple of outsiders coming in and changing things,” she replied.

“I don’t have time to explain these systems to you. So why don’t you do yourselves a favor and just get the hell out of here.”

“Because we’re being paid to be here, just like you are,” Kerry explained gently. “And frankly, Lieutenant, you don’t have to explain anything to us. Between Ms. Roberts and myself, we’ve got enough certifications to plaster every square inch of the walls in here, so why don’t you just go over there and sit down and stay out of our way.”

The three junior operators in the room had become silent, radar-eared statues, staring at their screens and watching the reflections of the three women behind them.

DAR PUT HER briefcase down and unzipped it. “If we’re done with the first round of jousting, I’m gonna get the analyzer up and connected and start running first- and second-level tests.” She pulled out a coil of network cable and booted up her laptop. “If you’d like to do something other than stand there gaping, Lieutenant, you can get me a list of subsystems and running job streams.”

Without a word, the woman turned and walked out, letting the doors swish shut behind her with a vindictive sound.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Dar continued her task. She looked around and caught one of the console ops staring at her, a look of mixed awe and admiration on his face. “Would you like to run that for me?”

The sailor grinned at her wholeheartedly. “Yes, ma’am, I would.”

Dar grinned back and winked at him. “Smart boy.”

The other console operator turned in her seat and folded her arms 70
Melissa Good
over the back of it. “Who are you people?” She was a willowy thin woman with straight, russet hair and an innocent face. Her voice was soft, and thickly Southern.

Kerry, who was closest to her, held out a hand. “Kerry Stuart, and that’s my boss, Dar Roberts.” She shook the red-haired woman’s hand with a firm grip. “Our company’s been asked to come in and see what we can do to make your lives easier.”

“You just did,” the third operator drawled softly. “Lieut’s been on the warpath all week, driving us half crazy.”

“Well, that’s probably our fault,” Kerry told him. “I know your leadership isn’t too happy we’re here, because they think we’re going to find all kinds of things they’re going to get blamed for. But that’s not what our plan is.”

“It’s not?” the girl asked.

“Nope.” Dar studied the results on her laptop screen. “The government’s looking to spend some money here, we’re gonna help them.” Her brow creased.

“Why’re they all freaking out, then?” the towheaded man closest to Dar asked.

The lines of data flashed before her eyes. “You know, that’s a good question.” Dar looked up at Kerry.

“People get comfortable with things, Dar. They don’t like change,”

her lover reminded her. “Even if the change is good.”

“Mm.” Dar finished her capture and closed her laptop. “That’s all I need here for now. Let’s see if we can get into the command and control center.” She gave the operators a half wave. “We’ll be back.”

Kerry heard the whispers and muffled laughs as they left, and she shook her head. She had a feeling this was going to be an uphill battle all the way.

And they were wearing Roller Blades.

DAR PUT HER briefcase down on the scarred wooden conference table and sat, folding her hands together. Kerry took a seat to her right, and the two Navy officers settled opposite them. “We’ve finished our initial review,” Dar said. “I’ve identified three main systems that need replacement of hardware, and I’m going to recommend installation of a new infrastructure to support that.”

Albert and Perkins exchanged glances, but didn’t comment. Kerry could almost read their minds, which were buzzing along the lines of

‘not as bad as we thought.’ “I’ll have the proposal transmitted to the Pentagon by tomorrow,” she told her boss. “And an estimated timeline for install.”

“All right,” Commander Albert said. “You can coordinate with Lieutenant Perkins for that.”

Dar nodded. “That was the easy part.”

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Both officers stiffened. “You’re not finished?” Albert hazarded.

“No.” Dar met his eyes. “General Easton has forwarded us status and analysis reports on the existing processes you have in place here for training and implementation. He wants them reviewed.”

Kerry thought the two of them were going to implode, right there at the table. She’d never seen someone turn that red that fast, and her eyes widened a little as the veins appeared on the side of the commander’s temples. “It’ll go faster if you just cooperate,” she told them. “He’s not saying you don’t do a good job here, he just wants to see if there’s a way to make things easier and better.” She leaned forward. “Sometimes you need an outside pair of eyes to look at things—you get too close to the situation otherwise. Really.”

“Lieutenant, Ms. Stuart, would you excuse us please.” The commander bit off his words.

Kerry glanced at Dar, who cocked an eyebrow at her, then she stood and pushed her chair in. “I’ll go find some coffee.” She waited for the glowering lieutenant to join her, then walked out of the room, closing the door behind them. “Would you like to tell me where it is, or do I have to go ask the Marines?”

The woman was grimly silent for a beat, then her shoulders perceptibly relaxed and she shook her head. “Follow me.”

As they strolled along the corridor, Kerry took the opportunity to study their erstwhile adversary more closely. They were about the same size, she realized, and more or less the same age. She’d also detected something familiar in the woman’s speech. “Where in the Midwest are you from, Lieutenant?”

Brown eyes flicked to her in wary attention. “Ann Arbor.”

Kerry nodded. “You sounded local. I’m from Saugatuck.” They stopped at a coffee station and busied themselves in silence for a moment as they poured cups. Kerry was aware she was being covertly watched, and it made her ears twitch. “Want to sit down for a minute while they finish yelling at each other?”

Without answering, the other woman led the way to a utilitarian table with two bench seats. She put her coffee down and straddled one, resting her elbows on the table and keeping her gaze firmly fixed on the beaten Formica top.

Kerry took the seat opposite and composed her thoughts briefly.

“We’re not as bad as you think.”

“Do you know how often we have to go through this?” Perkins lifted her head and glared. “Everyone thinks they know how to do our jobs, so they come waltzing in here, change things all around, and two months later we’ve got to go back to doing it the old way because it’s the one that works.”

Kerry’s eyebrows lifted. “They send in consultants every two months?”

“No.” The other woman sighed. “Every goddamned newly made 72
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admiral they put in charge of this place.”

“Oh.” Kerry took a sip of the coffee and held back a wince at the pungent strength of it. She was abruptly reminded of Andrew Roberts’s affection for tar sludge, and now knew where he got it. “Well, we’re not admirals.”

“No, you’re even more clueless about what we do,” Perkins snapped.

“That can be a plus,” Kerry answered mildly. “And as far as I’m concerned, yes, you’re right, I’m clueless about the Navy. But I’ve got a good understanding of the government and how it works, because my father’s a senator.”

The lieutenant grunted, tensing muscular forearms as she lifted her cup.