“What do you think?” she said, her hand on her hip while she waited for him to figure it out.

Light dawned and his face lit up, “Shit, that’s it! We have it!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm again, this time with reverence, “That’s awesome!”

Contemplating a troop of those tiny warriors coursing through his veins was strange for him, and he took a moment to think about it. But Ayala was already picking up her bag again. He stared at her. He had been a little thrown by being unexpectedly jabbed, but he had a lot he wanted to discuss with this woman, and information he needed her to share with his colleagues working at Hanscom as well.

“Ayala, wait. I have some materials for Martin in Hanscom. Let me get them together for you. Actually, they are on one of the isolated PCs, so let me put them on a drive.” he walked over to one of the PCs and sat down, quickly inserting one of the many blank flash drives he kept handy for just this purpose.

He carried on talking as he moved files to the drive, “Look, I know you are in a rush, but while I have you here there is something that I wanted to discuss with you.” he paused a moment, focusing on the screen while he dragged the last of the documents he wanted to copy, until all he was left with were a series of time-remaining screens as the bulky files filled the solid state device.

Turning to face her once more, he gathered his thoughts and then said, “I have been thinking about something, and I imagine the colonel will have been struggling with the same thing too, but I think it’s time we got someone more … senior on the team if we are going to get the GBMD system online and prepared for D-day.”

Ayala nodded, she had considered the same thing but had assumed that the colonel had it under control. “I know what you mean, Neal, but I am assuming Barrett’s got that part of the plan under control. I’ll mention it to him, but I think that he probably is the most knowledgeable among us on US military protocols.”

“Of course, of course.” Neal glanced over his shoulder to check the progress of the file copy then looked back at Ayala. “I just, well, I think he may be hesitant to take the cause further up the ranks because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think we all know his immediate superior is a bit of an ass.”