Hail Warning

Q Street Apartment Complex — Washington, D.C

The FBI agent had just finished eating dinner and was watching a baseball game on TV when his phone chimed with a text message. Trevor Rodgers read the message.

Can you please bring the drones inside — we left them on your balcony? Thx, Marshall.

Rodgers hadn’t thought about the drones since he helped launch them earlier that day. He hadn’t considered Hail would fly them back to his apartment.

Getting up from the couch, Rodgers set his dinner plate on the kitchen counter. He opened the sliding glass door. Sure enough, there were two drones sitting there. The one that had been in the flat box stood on its tripod legs on the plastic table. The other drone, the falcon named Bad Company, was lying on its side on the concrete floor. A few of its feathers were scattered where it lay.

Trevor picked up the bird, curiously assessing it for further damage, but he was unable to determine the reason for the missing feathers. He walked inside and set the bird upright in an over-stuffed chair and set it on the coffee table.

He watched the video drone that Marshall Hail had appeared on earlier. It just sat there, immobile, doing nothing.

“Hello?” Rodgers said to it. He then looked at the bird to see if it was awake. Nothing.

“Hello, are you there, Marshall?” he said, a little louder this time. He shook the video drone to wake it up from a hibernation mode, trigger a sensor or whatever it required to make a connection to its Master.

Nothing.

He picked up the video drone and turned it around, looking for a power switch of some sort. Finding none, he set it back on the table and resumed staring at it.

When neither drone came to life, Trevor decided to text Marshall.

He found the text his friend sent him earlier, and Trevor replied:

The drones are back inside. I will be going to bed soon — Trevor

He resumed his baseball game and waited patiently for Marshall to appear on the drone’s screen. His phone startled him when it chimed. Hail was requesting a video call. Rodgers pressed ACCEPT, and Hail’s face appeared.

“Hi, Trevor,” Marshall greeted him.

“Hi, Marshall. For some reason, I thought that you were going to appear on the drone thing in front of me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know?” Trevor said, a little confused. “I mean, you appeared on the drone this morning, so I thought that you would just roll down the screen again and talk to me that way.”

“Why, is talking on the phone no longer good enough for you now? Did you want me to call you back and Skype you on the drone?”

It was a logical question, but it made Trevor feel like Hail was messing with him — which was normal. For some reason, his friend Marshall always seemed to be one step ahead of him. Whether it was a ping-pong game, racquetball, poker or technology, Hail was just one short step away, and it always made Trevor feel inferior on some level. And he knew that Marshall had no intention of making him feel that way, but he just did.

“Anyway,” Hail continued, “that drone is low on power. I was hoping you could do me a favor and plug your phone charger into the drones to charge them overnight?”

“Are these my personal pets now?” Trevor asked. “Do I need to charge them and walk them in the morning? Maybe pick up little microchips they deposit in my neighbor’s yard?”

Hail laughed and said, “Hell, they could walk you and keep you out of trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised, in the future, if you’re your FBI personnel had drones watching your back.”

Trevor laughed, but in the back of his mind he could visualize exactly what Hail was talking about. In the future, maybe the Secret Service would be flying armed drones instead of relying on the human factor. Drones don’t need to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom or any of those pesky things that people require. But, they do need to be charged periodically, so they were not without some pitfalls.

Rodgers looked down at his phone and at the person halfway around the planet. Trevor reminisced on just how far technology had come since he and Marshall were kids. The Internet had been in its infancy. Their mothers had to walk into a bank to make withdrawals and deposit money. Trevor’s father had told him about a time when there had only been three channels on their rabbit ear TV set. During a family car trip, you either read, slept or looked out the window. In rare instances, there would be singing and/or talking as well. But now, as Rodgers stared at a high-def video of Marshall on his phone, he realized those times were gone forever. Was this change good or bad? It was hard to tell. All he knew was things were radically different, and it would only continue to move in that direction.

“So, did the president call a meeting about my visit?” Hail asked.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. He would not divulge further information.

“And—” Hail coaxed.

“And, you should know that those meetings are not only private but Top Secret as well.”

“Come on, Trevor. Just tell me what went down so I can start gearing up for whatever lays ahead.”

“I can’t do that, Marshall, and to tell you the truth, I don’t like you putting me in that position. If the situation was reversed, I wouldn’t put you and your job on the line.”

Marshall was quiet for a moment and then said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I just — I just need to—” and his words trailed off.

Trevor tried to make nice saying, “What I can tell you is that the president has requested a meeting with you tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., Washington time, to discuss new opportunities that you might be interested in.”

Hail perked up and smiled.

“I like opportunities. Are they good opportunities?”

“There you go again,” Trevor said, exasperated. “You will just have to judge for yourself. Like our fathers always told us, “You don’t get nothing for free.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Hail commented. “I like free stuff.”

“Yeah, doesn’t everyone?” Trevor chuckled.

“Could you do me a solid and charge up the drones so I can meet with the president tomorrow morning?”

“Do you a solid?” Trevor asked. “I didn’t know you were a fourteen-year-old and rode a skateboard around your ship. Where did you pick up lingo like that?”

Hail laughed and said, “I’m surrounded by a bunch of young people, and I guess their coolness just rubs off on me.” Trevor smiled and shook his head.

Hail asked, “So, how about charging the drones for tomorrow’s meeting?”

“Not necessary,” Trevor said. “The president’s secretary will send you an encrypted e-mail tomorrow with information on how to connect to the White House’s secured video conferencing system in the Situation Room.”

“That’s not as much fun as flying my drones in for the meeting, but I guess it will work.”

“Yeah, about that flying in unannounced drone thing you did. The president didn’t feel all that warm and fuzzy about that visit. I think you scared her.”

“She should be scared,” Hail replied. “If I can fly a video drone in, it wouldn’t take much for a terrorist to fly in a drone with a gun or a bomb attached to it.”

“I think that’s why you scared her,” Trevor said in a more serious tone. “She reportedly read her White House security team the riot act. And the problem is, other than draping the White House Rose Garden and lawn with a tarp, they don’t know how to keep drones like yours from entering the property.”

“I understand,” Hail said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have those answers. I play better offense than I do defense.”

Both men were quiet for a moment, as each of them decided if there was anything else left to be said.

Trevor had never married and didn’t have a family. Hail had been married twice and had twin daughters with his second wife. All three of Hail’s family members had been killed in The Five. So that didn’t leave much family life to talk about. Hail’s work, building and installing new traveling wave reactors in different countries was boring to Trevor. And talking about cases the FBI was working on was out of the question. Tomorrow, they would be discussing Marshall Hail’s new hobby, eliminating terrorists on the FBI’s Top Ten Terrorists list, so there was no need to talk about that now. So, what did that leave?

“Pepper e-mailed me and asked that his agent, Kara Ramey, be present at the meeting on your end of the video call,” Trevor informed Marshall.

Hail didn’t say anything, but he looked irritated by the request. Rodgers knew that Pepper and Hail didn’t like one another, so just about any request from Pepper would be met with disdain by Marshall.

“That CIA agent currently aboard your ship is very attractive,” Trevor probed.

Hail brightened a little.

“Yes, she is,” he said.

“Yep, pretty and single, and she is on your ship.”

“Affirmative,” Hail said coyly.

“So, is there anything, or should I say, do you have any—”

Hail interrupted.

“If you are asking if we are interested in each other, I think the answer would be yes,” Hail stated.

“So, you haven’t — ah—”

“The answer would be no,” Hail said. “Are there any other personal things you would like to ask me?”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Trevor responded, sounding a little hurt. “I just want you to be happy. And I don’t know Kara Ramey very well, but I think she is looking for happiness as well. I just get that vibe.”

“Oh, and you are the expert on vibes, Mr. I can’t find a woman who will put up with me Rodgers.”

“Ouch!” Trevor said. “Man, going for the jugular on that one.”

Hail either looked, or acted, embarrassed.

He said, “Sorry, I just don’t want to rush into anything. For some reason, it seems like if I went down that path, I would somehow be abandoning the memory of my family.”

Trevor nodded and said, “I don’t have a family, but I can understand that. Still, you have to move on at some point.”

Hail nodded back, bunching up his lips.

“I’m sure I will eventually, but not today and probably not tomorrow.”

“Well, today is over in my part of the world, and your tomorrow is already here.”

Hail laughed. “Well, you better get some sleep if you want to be chipper for our meeting,” Marshall suggested.

“Yep, tomorrow will be a very interesting day.”

“Interesting, how?” Marshall asked.

“Goodnight, Marshall,” Trevor said. He pressed END.