Hail Warning

Termez, Uzbekistan

The Hail Industries G650 Gulfstream sat gleaming inside a small hangar at the Termez Airport. Hail, Renner and Nolan were sitting comfortably around a table inside the aircraft. The interior of the jet was designed for comfort. At the front of the aircraft were several huge white leather seats that could be used during takeoffs and landings, or they could be spun around in different configurations, depending on the need and circumstance. The seats were currently being used as conference room chairs. A dark mahogany table had been pulled out from its storage compartment in the wall, and it was now evenly separating the white leather chairs.

Hail had a laptop on the table. Renner had an iPad set into a case with a kickstand. Nolan was watching a college football game on ESPN on one of the dozen screens that seemed to be infused into every spare wall and nook of the aircraft.

On another screen was the face of Dallas Stone, currently conferenced in from the security center of the Hail Nucleus. Dallas was monitoring the video feed of Hail’s pilot, Taylor, who was flying the drone U2. This was the drone that Hail had ordered to keep track of Kara Ramey and Victor Kornev.

“Can you please give me an update?” Hail asked Dallas over the high-def connection.

The young man looked to the side to confirm information with someone offscreen. He then informed Hail, “Kara and Kornev have stopped off at a little home in the middle of Termez. They walked up to the door about ten minutes ago and have not yet come out. We will continue to monitor the situation and keep you updated with their movements.”

Hail asked, “Do we know who owns the home?”

“No,” Dallas responded. “Little towns in the middle of nowhere like this don’t keep electronic records. Other than having someone knock on the door, there is no way to tell us who owns the place.”

“Is there any intelligence on friends, business partners or safe houses that Kornev may have in Termez?” Hail asked.

“If there are, only Kara would have that information. We have not been given access to any CIA databases or made privy to a detailed dossier on Kornev. The home he stopped at is about a half-mile from his own residence in Termez.”

“Keep an eye on them,” Hail told Stone.

“Will do, Marshall,” the young man assured him. “We have U2 sitting on the house’s roof. We will see them when they leave, and we will continue to track them.”

Hail pressed an icon on his laptop screen, and the video feed with the Hail Nucleus had ended. He turned his attention to the map of the Boko Haram’s compound on Snake Island that filled his laptop screen.

Hail asked his friend, “Gage, please get the lab people from the Hail Proton on a video conference so we can discuss the interdiction at Diambu’s compound.”

Renner used the controls on his iPad to pair the Bluetooth to the plane’s communications system. It only took about five minutes before the faces of Tabitha Parker, John Lang and Captain Mitch Nichols appeared on separate monitors inside the plane. Parker and Lang worked for Hail Industries Labs. Parker specialized in chemicals. Lang worked with drone manufacturing, retrofitting and fabrication. Like Hail Nucleus, the crew on the Hail Proton had its own lab and drone fabrication shops. Both ships had the facilities to build and modify a drone that could carry any type of explosive, gun, assault rifle, grenade launcher or missile launcher. The trick to the science was marrying those deadly payloads with drones that had the lifting capabilities to carry the weapons. This involved another pesky algorithm related to how far the aircraft could carry the payload and for how long. Those last two factors were mission critical, and it was very difficult to determine due to a variety of factors. If the drone did nothing but hover in place with its payload, it took less battery power than if it was flying forward and forced to contend with wind and other environmental factors.

The lab specialists on the video conference built the drones and made them explode, on purpose. Tabitha Parker was a black woman in her early thirties, and John Lang was an Asian man in his late forties. Both wore white lab coats, even though Hail gave them complete autonomy over their choice of clothing. He guessed their white coats were functional to them in some manner he did not understand. They must serve some purpose other than to make one look geeky.

“Hi, Tabitha and John,” Hail greeted them. “You know Gage Renner, but we have a new member on our team, Lt. Commander Foster Nolan from the Navy.”

There was an exchange of pleasantries before Hail continued.

“We have all had time to look over the video Seagulls shot of the Snake Island compound. By the way, that was some great video. That is a wonderful drone you guys built.”

Parker and Lang thanked Hail.

Hail continued, “I was hoping that you had some ideas on not only egress, but also how to get to Diambu without leaving any trace that we were there.”

Tabitha Parker was the first to respond. Her black hair was tied into a tight bun on top of her head, and she looked excited.

“Well, this might sound kind of crazy, but if you guys could pull up the image we labeled turtle1.jpg, we would like to show you something.” Parker had lived most of her life in the UK and had a pleasant English accent.

Renner searched their NAS for the file Parker referenced. He clicked on it and a sharp image of the beach in front of the Diambu compound appeared on the screen. It was an aerial shot looking directly down on the long wide strip of white sand that led from the water up to where a layer of green foliage began.

Renner, Hail and Nolan studied the screen intently. On their video conference monitors, Captain Nichols, Parker and Lang watched Hail Nucleus’ crew intently, apparently waiting for them to discover something that Hail Proton’s crew had already found in the image.

After about a minute, Hail stated, with a degree of frustration, “I don’t see anything. How about you, Gage?”

Renner commented, “Nothing but sand and the narrow sandy trail that leads up to the house.”

Nolan remained quiet, so Hail assumed that nothing jumped out at him either.

“OK,” Hail said to the crew on board the Hail Proton. “We give up. What do you have?”

Lang smiled and said, “Do you see the marks in the sand that lead up from the water?”

Hail looked closely at the image and said, “Yeah, I think so. Are you talking about these narrow prints that look like they were made by some type of animal?”

“Yes,” Parker said eagerly. “They were made by turtles. It’s mating season for turtles. Each night they emerge from the water. They make their way up to the deep sand to lay their eggs and bury them. If you look closely, you can see dozens of turtles in the sand near the compound. They are a natural occurrence, and nobody pays attention to them.”

Hail and Renner were starting to get the picture, but Nolan was still confused.

Nolan asked, “What do the turtles have to do with killing Diambu?”

On the other end of the video connection, Lang said, “This.”

Lying on the table was what appeared to be a turtle. It was the size of a dinner plate, patterned in dark hues simulating a turtle shell.

“Very nice,” Hail commented.

“Cool,” Renner said.

Nolan shook his head, but he said nothing.

Lang held up the turtle, lifting it a few inches off the table. As he talked, he began to turn the turtle one way and then the other.

Lang explained, “Total weight with the C-4 explosive and ball bearings is less than five pounds. Battery life, including the crawl out of the ocean, is about twenty-four hours. It has both a communication chip and a camera located where the turtle’s head would pop out.”

Parker stated, “It’s fully submersible. We installed tracks underneath the shell, so it will have no problem transitioning from the ocean to the hard sand, and then to the thick and softer sand up near the compound.”

“It can’t leave tank tracks on the sand,” Hail said, finding the first issue with the turtle drone.

Lang fielded Hail’s concern and said, “Check this out.” He turned the turtle over so its bottom tracks faced the camera. Hail Nucleus’ crew leaned in closer to their monitor to get a better look.

Lang explained, “The turtle has tracks, but we welded these claws to the tracks every two inches. When the turtle travels across the sand, instead of leaving tank tracks, it will leave little turtle scrapings that look just like all the other turtle tracks coming out of the water.”

“Ingenious,” Hail told the lab staff aboard the Hail Proton. “You guys thought of everything. How big of a bang will it make?”

Since Parker oversaw the explosives, she fielded the question.

“You mentioned that there were a lot of land mines protecting the property. The explosion will be about the same yield as your typical land mine, but this explosion will travel out, rather than up. The ball bearings will hit anything within twenty yards with a lethal effect.”

Nolan couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He asked, “What? So, I guess I’m not really following? How is this turtle thing going to work?”

Renner responded.

“We will use one of the Hail Proton’s long-range drones to do a night drop of Turtles into the water near Snake Island’s shoreline.”

Renner asked the lab staff, “I’m assuming this has a communication tether float, right?”

“Right,” Parker and Lang said in unison.

Renner continued, “When the turtle is dropped into the water, a tiny communication wire is reeled out. On the end of the wire is a tiny float. The wire

is an antenna, so we can communicate with the drone while it’s submerged. Before the sun rises, we will take control of the turtle and drive it out of the water, up to the compound. We then park it next to the trail and wait for Diambu to come out for his morning swim. When he passes the turtle, we press the button, both Turtles and Diambu will go BOOM. End of story.”

Nolan understood the plan, but he still thought it was audacious. It was the antithesis of everything he had trained for, which was blowing stuff up from the sky.

Marshall took over to further refine Renner’s explanation.

“The tracks of the drone have been modified to look like those made by the real reptiles. So, in the morning, when the guards are walking the perimeter of the compound, they won’t see anything out of the normal. They’ll just see the same turtle tracks they do every morning.”

“I get it,” Nolan said. “It’s just so— so—”

“So crazy?” Hail offered.

“It’s not crazy,” Nolan said, “I just can’t think of the word.”

“Radical?” Renner suggested.

“Yeah, I can go with radical,” Nolan said.

Hail asked Parker, Lang and their captain, Mitch, “Do you have a code name for the drone?”

Captain Nichols answered, “It’s not very imaginative, but we named it The Turtles after a 1965 rock band.”

“You know, I probably could have guessed that,” Hail laughed. “Turtles it is.”

Hail looked over the drone as Lang continued to rotate it, exposing every angle of the machine on the off-chance any of Hail Nucleus’ crew saw something they wanted to discuss.

Hail said, “I guess all we have to do is determine a time when you guys want to drop it in theater.”

Captain Nichols suggested, “Is tomorrow night good for you guys? If you don’t have any issues with it, my team will drop the drone and get it into position. Then we will turn over the operation to your crew and let you push the button.”

Hail contemplated for a moment and said, “Yeah, that works for me.”

Hail added, “I’d like someone to check the weather to make sure that it won’t be raining on the morning of the mission. I’m sure Diambu won’t be swimming if it’s storming outside.”

Renner said, “I’ll have Pierce check the weather and provide us a report.”

The room on the Hail Proton and inside the Gulfstream fell silent while Hail ran through his mental checklist.

Believing he had covered everything, Hail finally said, “Well, OK. Let’s shoot for a drop at 3:30 a.m., Nigerian time. Thank you, Tabitha, John and Mitch. You really did a fantastic job. We will be back in touch with you at the time of the mission.”

Hail clicked off the video connection, smiled and he gave Nolan and Renner two thumbs-up.