Hail Warning

East China Sea — Aboard the Hail Nucleus

Marshall Hail eased back on his flight control yoke. He wanted to talk with Nolan about the conversation he had with the president. He turned to Alex Knox and asked, “Can you please take over flying Cheap Trick?”

A young man sitting at a flight console on the perimeter of the mission room replied, “No problem, Marshall.”

Hail watched his right monitor until the outside edge of his control icons turned from green to red. A message popped up in the corner of his screen that read, “Cheap Trick has been acquired by Top Gun.” Cheap Trick was the code name for the drone that had been sitting on the table in the White House Rose Garden.

Hail turned his chair toward Lt. Commander Nolan, standing to his right.

“So, you saw and heard for yourself,” he told Lt. Commander Foster Nolan. “The president herself said you are good to stay onboard our ship.”

The jet pilot didn’t look convinced.

Nolan asked, “Do you think she actually has the authority to grant something like that? I mean, isn’t that a military decision?”

Hail said, “If the president can get someone off death row with a stroke of her pen, then I’m pretty sure she can assign you duty aboard the Hail Nucleus.”

“Is that what this is — a military assignment?” Nolan questioned.

“Hell, if I know,” Hail responded. “You just need to take stuff at face value and go with it. That’s what I do,” Hail told him. “I mean there are no guarantees in life. You know that better than anyone. Each time you climbed in your jet to fly off to fight the bad guys, there was no guarantee you would be coming home. I’m surprised you’re not used to the uncertainty by now.”

“It’s just not the way the military works. They make a big deal out of everything. I mean, the jet I crashed cost more than $300 million dollars. Just that alone is enough to raise some eyebrows.”

Hail put his hands in the air.

“Don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “At least for now, you work for me. Are you good with that?”

Nolan took a moment to look around the mission room.

“Did you know that this room looks just like the bridge on the Starship Enterprise?” Nolan asked.

Hail smiled and said, “Then we did a good job recreating it. I always loved Star Trek as a kid. Thus, when we were deciding what this room should look, the bridge on the Enterprise was a natural selection for me. I mean, look around.”

Hail stood up from his chair and waved his hand in a broad arc around the room as he talked.

“I love the way this room is tiered. It has sixteen flight stations that encircle the room. Then over the top of each of those flight stations, we have sixteen large monitors tied into a video router. That allows us to display anything we need to on any one of those big displays.”

Nolan did a slow 360-degree turn until again he was facing Hail again.

“And on the second tier,” Hail continued, “we have two consoles for the mission analysts. Typically, one of the analysts is responsible for providing us information about the weather, indigenous flora and animals that might pose a threat to the mission, and the other analyst serves as a translator.”

“Why do you need an expert in animals?” Nolan asked.

“Well, on our last mission, one of our drones was almost eaten by a large bird. If we hadn’t had a back-up drone, the mission would have been scrubbed.”

Nolan nodded his head, but still looked confused.

“And lastly,” Hail said, patting the arm of the massive chair in the middle of the room, “we have the third tier, complete with a replica of Captain Kirk’s chair.”

“Nice,” Nolan stated. “But I don’t remember his chair having the large displays mounted to the armrests.”

“You’re right,” Hail agreed. “But that was then, and this is now. Every contraption these days has screens mounted to it. Hell, the toilet in my stateroom has a touch screen on it — so does my toaster.”

Hail rested his hands on one of the chair’s monitors. “I use these as touch screens to control whatever it is that needs controlling. I can even fly a drone from this chair, if need be.”

“Why do you need to fly a drone?” the lieutenant commander asked. It was a simple question. The same question could be asked. Why did anyone on Hail’s ship need to fly a drone?

Hail gave the question some thought, and he finally responded, “I wouldn’t typically provide you operational details, but you are in a very unique situation. If you decide to go back to your unit, you will probably spend a few years in the brig. Therefore, any information I share with you will make little difference. But if you decide you’re going to stay on board you may need to quickly comprehend what we do as soon as possible, so you can make a difference. So, I don’t see any reason to beat around the bush with you, Foster.”

This was the first time that Hail had used the lieutenant commander’s first name. This reminded Nolan that within the time it took for the earth to do a full rotation, his entire world had changed. He would no longer be in the military. He didn’t fully understand what type of special operations Hail ran, but it wasn’t run by any of the United States’ armed forces. It was a private operation, and Nolan was no longer a lieutenant commander of anything. He was simply Foster Nolan, an employee of Hail Industries. One rotation of the earth and everything he had worked for had vanished as well. Years of ROTC and his BA from Texas A&M, but his training hadn’t stopped there. In order to fly jets, Nolan had been required to take twelve to eighteen months of additional flight training and accept a seven-year active duty obligation. Dozens of countries, hundreds of missions, thousands of sorties, several promotions had all vaporized in one rotation of the earth. He would now, and forever, only be known as Foster Nolan. His only other choice would be prisoner #325469 at some Naval prison God only knows where. Considering the sensitivity of his last mission and how bad he had boned it, if he went back, he may never see daylight again, except for the hour in the prison yard.

Foster Nolan was so lost in his thoughts that he had to return his attention to what Marshall Hail was saying.

“—so, after my family was killed in The Five, I decided that life couldn’t just go on as usual. I knew I could use my wealth and technology to make the world a safer place. If all I achieve is to kill five of the jihadis on the Top Ten Terrorists list, that is money and time well spent. Maybe some other family won’t lose all they have to a mad man.”

Nolan nodded and asked, “So, all of this and all of your ships and all of your time is now being spent to track down and kill terrorists?”

“No, not all of my time. We still refine nuclear waste to be burned in our traveling wave reactors we manufacture. And we still sell and install those reactors in power-challenged countries. I would consider my time tracking down these scumbags as a hobby.”

Nolan looked around again.

“Looks like it’s an expensive hobby.”

“It ain’t golf,” Hail said.

Nolan focused on the only two other people in the large mission room. Both young adults appeared to be flying some sort of remote drone.

“What are they doing?” Nolan asked, nodding in the direction of the young men.

“Let’s go over and check it out,” Hail said.

Both men stepped down one level, passed the analysts’ stations and stepped down to the bottom tier. They stood next to the pilots.

Nolan and Hail watched a drone, from the point of view of the pilot, fly over the tops of buildings and swoop down into what looked like a residential area of apartments and condos.

“This is Alex Knox,” Hail said. “Alex, meet Lt. Commander Foster Nolan with the United States Navy. He’s a jet pilot.”

“No kidding?” Knox asked, not taking his eyes off his monitor. “Just give me one second.”

Marshall and Foster watched as he moved his flight joystick and worked the pedals under his feet.

“Just about there,” Knox said. His drone was now darting down a street, maybe thirty feet in the air, barely clearing power lines and street lights.

“It’s up here on the left, isn’t it, Skipper?” Knox asked Hail.

“Yeah, it’s that big brick building coming up.” Hail bent over and put his finger on the screen that was streaming back video from Cheap Trick.

“It’s that balcony right there,” Hail pointed.

Knox pulled back the joystick, and the drone began to slow. He pushed the throttles forward to increase power so he could bring the drone into a controlled hover.

“Where do you want me to put it down, Marshall?” Knox asked.

“Just set it down on the balcony’s table. I’ll text Trevor when he gets home from work and have him collect both drones to bring them inside.”

“Both drones?” Nolan asked.

Hail took a few steps to his left and centered himself behind the other pilot, who was also flying a drone.

“Yeah, Oliver is flying another drone named Bad Company. In its physical form, the drone looks just like a falcon.”

“You mean like the bird — a falcon?” Nolan verified.

“Yep. The drone can fly all day long above a target, and no one on the ground can tell it’s actually a drone.”

Nolan looked impressed, but a little skeptical. He asked, “Why do you need both of the drones?”

“You watched my meeting with the president. And what I told her was accurate. The falcon, Bad Company, sent laser signals to Cheap Trick, because all radio signals are being jammed near the White House.”

Nolan laughed.

“I thought you were just messing with the president,” he said.

“Nope. It’s the real deal and we will be running into increasing security of that type. I can foresee a day in the future where no one will be able to text or use their cellphones, because signals everywhere will be jammed — all in the name of National Security. I’ll probably be dead by that time, or at least wish I was.”

“I’m with you on that,” Nolan said.

“This landing is going to be tricky,” Oliver said. “I can’t hover this bird, so all I can really do is come in fast, flare to a stall at the last second, and let it fall where it falls. You want me to put it on the balcony as well, Captain?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Hail said. “Just make sure it’s on his balcony. I’d hate to lose that bird. It’s expensive as hell, and we only have one of them now that Eagles is gone.”

“Eagles?” Nolan questioned.

“It was our first birdlike drone, and we lost it during the last mission. A North Korean general shot it from the sky with a hunting rifle, can you believe that?”

Foster Nolan shook his head and said, “So, the only two things that got shot down during that mission was your eagle and me. Hopefully, I fared better than your eagle.”

“Unfortunately, it was a total loss. As will be this bird if Oli can’t nail the landing.”

Almost on cue, Oliver stated, “Here we go. We are coming in hot.”

By now, Alex Knox had left his controls and had rotated his chair so he could watch Oliver land the falcon. On the screen, from the perspective of the falcon’s camera eyes, it looked as though the bird was traveling insanely fast as it glided down the street. At the last second, Oliver yanked back hard on the joystick and pushed his feet all the way into the pedals. The bird’s eyes shot skyward, and for an instant, all anyone could see was the underside of the balcony ceiling. And then, the screen was filled with horizontal lines which pixelated as the bird dropped onto the balcony. A few seconds ticked by while the camera on Bad Company refocused. The white plastic leg of the table that Cheap Trick had landed on came into view, inches from the falcon’s beak.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it’s on the balcony,” Oliver said, shaking out his cramping hands.

“Damn, I don’t know much about flying drones, but that looked like one hell of a landing to me,” Nolan said.

“More like a controlled crash,” Knox quipped, “but it’s really the best Oliver could do with a glider and a balcony. Not much of a landing strip there. And there is no power to compensate for a smooth landing. It’s all or nothing. The best you can really do is flare at the last second, spread the bird’s wings. It decelerated from about 80 miles per hour to 0 miles per hour in about a half-second. Good thing there was the ceiling on the balcony.”

“It was either the ceiling, or I could have just run it into the wall; that was the only other option,” Oliver commented.

“Before you put it to sleep, run diagnostics on it and see if it’s damaged,” Hail requested.

“Will do,” Oliver said. He flipped through some screens on his monitor and pressed an icon that read DIAG CHECK.

Nolan scrutinized the boy, Oliver, sitting at his flight station.

“Aren’t you the pilot who picked me up in the ocean?” Nolan asked.

“Yes, sir,” Oliver said, watching his screen as the diagnostic check continued spitting out data related to the falcon’s health.

“How old are you, son?” Nolan asked him.

“Sixteen,” the young man replied.

He faced Alex Knox.

“And how old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty next month,” Alex told him in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How old are you?” Alex asked Nolan.

The lieutenant commander laughed and said, “Only my hairdresser knows for sure.”

“What?” Alex asked.

“Just a line from a very old commercial,” Nolan replied. “I’m sure you have never seen it. You would have to be old like me to know what I’m talking about.”

Nolan thought about it for a moment. He tried to remember what he was doing when he was twenty. College parties and girls came to mind. But the boy, Knox, was flying drones on a cargo ship. Man, times had really changed.

“Bad Company’s diagnostics came back clean,” Oliver reported.

Oliver swung away his monitors and flight control set, swiveled his chair 90- degrees to the right and he stood with the others.

Hail checked the large monitor mounted on the far wall that listed times in different parts of the world. The time in the United States showed 9:30 a.m. However, their time, in the Eastern China Sea off the coast of China, was 1:00 a.m.…. a day later.

“Why don’t we all turn in for the night, and then maybe show the lieutenant commander some of our facilities tomorrow. It would be interesting to see who is the best F-35 pilot in the simulator.”

Both of Hail’s young pilots smiled.

Foster Nolan smiled even wider.