Hail Warning

Gulf of Guinea — Aboard the Hail Proton

Turtles’ was built like a tank, and it was clipped onto the belly of the drone, Foghat. Foreigner was lying on its back on the catapult of deck two aboard the Hail Proton waiting to be shot into the night. Turtles looked like a hunk of brown shell that sat like a blob of structured clay on the smooth conical carbon fiber drone.

Hail Proton’s lab workers took great care inspecting the latch mechanism connecting the little drone to the larger one. Violent forces would stress all exterior surfaces when the drone went from 0 to 100 miles per hour in less than a second. If the connection between the drones was anything less than perfect, there was a very real chance of Turtles being ripped from the belly of Foghat. If that were to happen, it would sink to the bottom of the sea.

Captain Mitch Nichols was waiting by the control panel on the wall, ready to activate the catapult’s charging field. When the lab workers were satisfied that everything was ready to go, the captain would hit the big red button.

Both Lang and Parker looked apprehensive about the launch, as if the drone was their child, and they didn’t want to see any harm come to it. If it were a child, it was indeed a deadly one. Turtles held enough C-4 explosives beneath its shell to shred the inside of the hangar deck if it inadvertently exploded on takeoff. If component A ripped away from connector B and touched exposed relay C, all three of the people next to it would be D for dead, and the crew understood that real possibility.

Foghat’s wings were swept into their far back launch position. The tail of the long-range drone had been retracted into the body of the aircraft. Nothing had been left sticking out of the drone that could cause drag as it shot into the air.

Reluctantly, both technicians stepped back from the huge tube on the rail, and they gave their captain a thumbs-up. Nichols flipped the switch to charge the catapult. Moments later, the humming died away, and the green light came on, indicating the catapult’s capacitor farm was at full charge.

“Let ‘er rip, Tater Chip,” Captain Nichols urged. He lifted the handset of a phone bolted to the iron wall next to the catapult panel. He held it to his ear and put his finger on the button to fire the catapult.

“Jason,” Nichols asked, “do you have Foghat online and ready to fly?”

Back in Hail Proton’s mission center, Jason Wilson was manning the control station and had Foghat’s flight control set loaded on his screens. As with many of Hail’s pilots, Wilson was young. He was a nineteen-year-old black kid who didn’t have anyone who cared about him. Jason Wilson was a byproduct of a broken home, raised in the bad part of a big city, surrounded by negative influences. He had struggled his entire young life, yet he’d avoided getting sucked into the neighborhood gang. Wilson paid for it with regular beatings. He had longed to leave behind the shootings, stabbings and robberies that were part of his everyday existence. At the age of fifteen, his mother had been killed in a drive-by shooting, and Jason found himself a ward of the State. He never fully understood how Hail found him, but he had. Hail walked into the halfway house where Jason was living while good-meaning government employees tried to find him a foster family. Hail had spoken with the lady who was in charge, and then he had come over to talk with Jason.

“My name is Marshall,” Hail had said, reaching out with his huge white hand that swallowed up Jason’s little black hand. Hail’s manner was warm. Jason didn’t get the same heebie jeebies he had gotten when his mom had brought home men to meet him.

“I’ve got a number of kids, orphaned because of The Five, who now call my ships home. They attend school and they have a lot of fun. There are opportunities to learn life skills, but you are expected to work in the shops on the ship.”

Wilson looked at the man like he was Santa Claus. He was big like Santa, just not fat, and he didn’t have a beard. But his name was Marshall, and that made Jason think of some of the old Westerns he had seen on TV. Those Marshalls had tin stars and fast six shooters. They were always the good guys.

The big man continued, “I hear you got straight A’s at the school you went to before your mother passed away.”

“She got shot in the head,” Jason had told the man named Marshall. Then he felt he had shared too much information.

Hail had said in a kind voice, “I’m sorry about your mom, but I want you to stay with us. I want you to learn how to fly planes and drive cars and learn math and science and all the other great things you would learn if you went to a university. Is that something that you would be interested in doing?”

Considering that Jason’s only other choice was being handed off to a family he knew nothing about, the man offering a pipe dream won hands down.

At the age of 15, Jason Andrew Wilson became the legal ward of Marshall Hail. A week later, Jason found himself aboard the Hail Proton inside a simulator flying a Piper Cub airplane.

Now, two years later, he was Hail Proton’s best pilot.

Jason checked the numerous virtual gauges, lights and sensor indicators on two of his four monitors.

He spoke into his headset, “Captain, Foghat is good for launch.”

Back at the hangar deck, with the phone still pressed to his ear, and his finger still on the big red button, the captain of the Hail Proton began the countdown. “We will be away in five, four, three, two, one—”

The captain pressed the red button, and Foghat vanished with a hiss and a roar.

Captain Nichols said into the phone, “The drone is away.”

Once the drone had been thrown into the sky, the engine fired, and both the wings and the tail sprung from the fuselage. When the flight surfaces were in place, back in the mission center, Jason pushed his flight yoke all the way to the right, rolling the drone 180 degrees into its proper flight attitude. As the drone climbed and picked up more speed, the wings began to slowly sweep backwards, creating less drag without sacrificing lift. This would not only increase the speed of the drone, but also get better gas mileage.

Back on the hangar deck, Lang, Parker and Nichols watched through the deck hatch opening as the drone vanished into the night sky. The captain flipped another switch, and a huge iron slab above them rolled forward. The trio watched as the deck hatch closed until it had fully slid back into place with a metallic clang.

Back in Hail Proton’s mission center, Jason reached cruising altitude in no time, considering it was no more than 500 feet. He would keep the drone below radar for the entire trip. Once he was close to his target, he would dip Foghat lower to drop off the turtle drone into the waters encircling Snake Island, Nigeria. This would be an uncomplicated flight. He would be flying over water the entire way, with the coastline to his left.

Wilson eased himself back into his comfortable seat and relaxed. On one of his high-definition monitors, he watched the moonlight dance off the water below while the drone raced towards its destination.