Hail Warning

Sea of Japan — Aboard the Hail Nucleus

From the backseat of the helicopter, Lt. Commander Foster Nolan saw a ship appear on the horizon. As the Seahawk drew within two miles of the Hail Nucleus, backlit by the moonlit sky, the 80,000-ton deadweight cargo vessel looked massive. If not for all the strange cylindrical containers stacked on the ship’s deck like white logs, Nolan thought it resembled a large aircraft carrier like the one he had lifted off from an hour ago.

The lieutenant commander made a note to ask the pilots what those containers held, but his question was answered before the helicopter touched down on the ship’s hydraulic elevator. Staring out the window, and having discarded the blanket the young girl had given him, Nolan saw a symbol clearly stenciled on each containment storage container representing radiation hazard.

The chopper’s thick rubber wheels touched down onto the ship’s hard metal surface and the aircraft came to a stop. Nolan watched patiently as the pilots flipped switches and powered down the big helicopter. The young copilot began reading off a post-flight checklist with the pilot. The large rotor blades above their heads spun slower and slower until the carbon fiber behemoths sagged under their own weight. Before the last revolution had completed, the ship’s massive hydraulic elevator began descending, taking the chopper and its occupants deep within the bowels of the ship. Nolan looked up and saw some sort of door, or metal plate on a thick track being drawn across the opening where they had just landed.

The elevator emitted a high-pitched whine, and the big metal door up top made a metallic bang and then everything became very quiet. Lights inside the ship’s hangar snapped on, flooding the cavernous room with white light. Nolan remained quiet as he watched the pilots complete the last few items on their checklist. Once the final switches had been flipped and the gauges checked, the young girl opened her door on the Sikorsky Seahawk, stepped out and then pulled open the side door for her passenger.

Instinctively, the lieutenant commander placed his hand on his Beretta, its butt end sticking out of a holster on his chest rig. The girl saw him make the move but didn’t react in any manner.

She asked in a tired voice, “Are you going to use that?”

Nolan didn’t know how to respond, so his captor told him, “Good, then leave it alone, or it will be taken away from you. Let’s go,” she said nodding her head toward the other end of the hangar.

The lieutenant commander stepped out of the helicopter and his boots made squishy sounds, as saltwater squeezed out of them onto the painted metal floor. By now, the pilot had exited the aircraft and had walked around to join them. Nolan couldn’t believe the ages of the pilot and copilot. If the girl was no more than 14 years of age, then the male pilot couldn’t be any older than 16, at most. The young man had high school acne, and he looked like he wasn’t old enough to drive a car, let alone pilot a combat helicopter.

Doing his best to balance both tension and relief, tension won with his uncontrolled outburst.

Nolan blurted, “What is this place? Who are you guys? Where are we going?” The psychological imbalance was caused by the unknown factors. But the relief was the thought his captors might be in a hurry so they didn’t miss school recess. He didn’t feel he was in any danger from this pair of Jr. Pilots, so he allowed his hand to fall away from his Beretta and drop to his side.

The pilot and copilot walked through the aircraft hangar, and the lieutenant commander fell in behind them. As they walked, he rubbed the back of his neck. Now that the adrenaline of the ejection and rescue was wearing off, he was beginning to feel pain emanating from various parts of his body. His back was tweaked and, although the dull ache at the base of his neck was tolerable, it hurt more than his back.

As the trio walked toward the end of the hangar, being a man who had loved aircraft his entire life, Nolan found himself quietly admiring the half-dozen helicopters parked in a straight line. Many of the machines were military in design, but looked as though they had been customized for business purposes. Like the Sikorsky Seahawk that had plucked him out of the sea, the choppers had few basic design features which made them amenable for sea rescue. The helicopters didn’t appear to be parked in any order. Nolan recognized the first helicopter they walked past as an AgustaWestland AW101 VVIP. It was a very high-end, twenty million-dollar beauty that, depending on the configuration, could transport up to thirty passengers. And sitting next the AW101 was an immaculate Eurocopter EC 175. It was a passenger-friendly, eight million-dollar jewel. He was accustomed to seeing expensive aircrafts, but not like these. These were privately owned and cost more money than he would ever see in a lifetime. Or maybe even a hundred lifetimes.

The kids ahead of him were now walking faster. He noticed a Sikorsky S-76C. The base model of the chopper was commonly known as the Black Hawk, but this version was white instead of black, and it appeared to have leather seats. A Bell 525 Relentless was the next aircraft they passed. It was the top-of-the-line of the Bell business choppers, and Nolan guessed someone would have to lay down a cool fifteen million dollars to take it home. Before they had reached the thick white bulkhead door, they also passed a Sikorsky S-92 VIP Configuration as well as a little Bell 412.

“Do you guys think you spent enough on your helicopters?” Nolan asked the kids. They ignored the jet pilot. The boy spun open the door handle, pulled open the heavy door and then stepped through the oval opening. The girl followed without even looking back to see if the lieutenant commander had followed. Nolan turned and looked at the hangar and its opulent helicopters one last time before turning to step through the doorway.

The group went down one flight of stairs and began walking down a long hallway that had the words DECK 3 imprinted on the wall every fifty feet. They stopped in front of a door that read Conference Room. The girl opened the door and gestured with a wave of her hand for the lieutenant commander to go inside. He did, and he was somewhat alarmed when the door immediately closed. The kids had not accompanied him. However, the room was not empty.

Two men and one woman sat at a banana-shaped, stainless-steel table. Both men looked about the same age, in their early forties, but one was larger than the other. Nolan’s mind turned to threat assessment. Part of that process was to analyze the physical features of those within the room. Since everyone was sitting down, it was impossible to determine the height of the men. However, one of the men was wider in the shoulders and appeared more muscular than the other. Nolan estimated the larger man’s weight at approximately 220 pounds and the other guy at 175 pounds. The larger of the two men wore a green polo shirt. The other man wore a blue T-shirt with a sentence printed on it, “No, I will not fix your computer.” Much like the kids who had plucked Nolan from the ocean, neither of the men appeared to be military.

No one in the room made any attempt to stand, so Nolan shifted his gaze to the woman. His brain had to change gears, because the woman was strikingly beautiful. She was beautiful in the wreck your car into a telephone pole because she was standing on a street corner beautiful. He noticed her red hair, high cheekbones, perfect nose, strong chin, white skin and green eyes currently scrutinizing him. She was wearing a black blouse that showed a small glimpse of cleavage.

“Please sit down,” the larger man said, gesturing for Nolan to pull up any one of the dozens of office chairs haphazardly strewn about the room. The lieutenant commander corralled the closest chair and rolled it across the iron floor to the table. They didn’t appear to be concerned that the chair was fabric and the pilot was still very wet. If they didn’t care, neither did he. Nolan sat and stared at the strangers before him.

The man in the green polo asked, “What’s your name?”

Nolan responded, “Foster Nolan, Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, service number 452-29-3692.”

“That’s all good to know,” he said, “but what we really want to know is ‘What in the hell were you thinking when you bombed the North Korean mainland’?”

“Just doing my duty,” Nolan responded.

“Really?” the woman shot back angrily. “We were told that you were a rogue pilot ordered back to your carrier. Rather than following your commander’s orders, you decided to go on an unsanctioned bombing run.”

The lieutenant commander looked shocked and asked, “Who told you that?”

The larger man answered, “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Quentin Ford, told us that.”

The pilot was now one stage past shocked. He looked totally stunned, as if he had been hit by a jolt of electricity and had become paralyzed. A few seconds ticked by, and the lieutenant commander slowly regained a small measure of his composure.

He looked at the three people in front of him and said in a muted and somewhat defeated tone, “Who are you people?”

The trio stared back at him with adjudication, making Nolan feel as if he were a pupil sent to the principal’s office, and now they were deciding his punishment.

“My name is Marshall Hail,” the big guy said.

Nolan recalled the helicopter with the writing on the side, Hail Industries.

Hail continued with the introductions. Gesturing toward the woman, Hail said, “This is Kara Ramey. She works for the CIA.”

Gesturing to the guy wearing the T-shirt, Hail said, “This is Gage Renner. He and I work together.”

“Where — where — what — where are we? What ship is this?” the pilot asked. Nolan appeared confused.

The man introduced as Gage Renner answered the question. “We are on the Hail Nucleus. This is a cargo vessel.”

“Why is there an agent from the CIA on your cargo ship?” Nolan asked, taking in the fact that Renner had told him the ship was the Hail Nucleus. The lieutenant commander directed the question to whom he assumed was the ship’s owner, Marshall Hail.

“No, that’s not the way this is going to work,” Hail told the pilot. “You get to ask a question. Then we get to ask a question. You got your question answered. Now it’s our turn.”

Bluntly, Hail asked, “Why didn’t you call off your airstrike when you were ordered back to your carrier?”

“Can I get out of these wet clothes?” he asked, looking down at the puddle of water forming around his boots.

“Not yet,” the CIA operative told him. “We fished you out of the ocean. But we’re not sure if we’ll keep you or throw you back. Your honest answers to our questions determine whether an hour from now you are in dry clothes or floating around in a brand-new raft in the middle of the ocean. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think the next people who come to your rescue will be as pleasant.”

“Why didn’t you call off your airstrike when you were ordered back to your carrier?” Marshall Hail repeated his question.

Nolan looked down at the puddle again trying his best to wrap his mind around the question. To be honest, he didn’t know why he had turned off his radio and continued into North Korean airspace even after his mission had been scrubbed. It probably had something to do with the death of his brother. Two years prior, his brother had been killed in a terrorist attack that had taken the lives of thousands of people. His brother had been an Air Force jet pilot. They had been very close, and his death had really messed with Foster’s head. He had waited for years to get some payback, and this mission seemed to provide that unique opportunity. He would fly a single jet fighter into North Korea to blow up a warehouse holding ICBM parts that would soon be assembled into missiles. If that wasn’t destiny, Nolan didn’t know what was, and when the voice on the radio ordered him back to his carrier, he was only minutes from the warehouse. He figured a little look-see couldn’t hurt. He had been briefed on the purpose of the mission. A ground team had been sent in to neutralize the warehouse. His mission was to act as backup for the ground team, just in case the boys on the ground couldn’t get the job done. But it never hurt to check.

So, he had done just that. He had done a flyby and verified that the warehouse had been blown to smithereens. But what he hadn’t counted on was the launch of two Chengdu J-20 jet fighters. The damn North Koreans were not supposed to have those advanced planes. The J-20s had just rolled off the floor in a Chinese factory no more than a year ago. No one, except for the Chinese, were supposed to be in possession of those advanced jet fighters. But lo and behold, the North Koreans did have them. And the rumor about those Chinese jets designed to go up against the American F-35 appeared to be true. Once the J-20s were airborne, those fast and nimble jets had run Nolan and his F-35 down. Before the lieutenant commander had cleared the North Korean mainland, he knew he was toast. Even before he had seen the military complex ahead of him.

The large structure had been well-lit and multistoried. Since most of North Korea had little to no electricity, the lieutenant commander had assumed that the building was a special complex, maybe even a military installation. Prior to the target locked alarm, and before ejecting from his 337 million-dollar plane, Nolan had expelled a brand-new, never used in combat LOCO missile into the heart of the building. He still regretted that he barely had any time to enjoy the explosion. As the building disintegrated, Nolan heard a target locked alarm blare in his cockpit. He understood that he had a marginal chance of escaping one J-20, but two, no way José. All his instincts as a pilot told him it was time to leave the party. Once he was over the Sea of Japan, he yanked the ejection handle and that was that. Mission over.

Hail was still waiting for an answer. The lieutenant commander mulled it over a little and ended up saying, “I just went in to verify that the target had been neutralized.”

“And what about the missile that you fired?” Hail questioned.

Without hesitation, and a little defensively, the pilot responded, “I was painted by the Chengdu and saw a target of opportunity, so I decided to take it out before I was shot down.”

“And what type of target did you believe it was?” the beautiful woman asked Nolan.

“A well-lit military target. After all, the North Koreans don’t waste energy powering anything that isn’t important to them.”

Kara responded by asking, “Would it surprise you to know that the military target you mentioned was a hotel?”

He responded with a big long, “Nooooo. It wasn’t.”

But, in the back of his mind, now that she mentioned it, now that he thought about it, it did resemble a hotel. And there had been very few structures to use as a reference. The target had not been surrounded by other buildings. Other than an expanse of bright light, there was very little to see in the dark North Korean city. And to complicate matters, he was flying at full speed on full afterburner, hitting around Mach 1.5. The landscape unfolded like the track of the Monaco Grand Prix. One second nothing was there. And a second later, there was a big building with lights ablaze. Nolan was proud that he could hit any target at that speed, but he was very disappointed to find out it was a hotel.

To be totally honest with himself, he really didn’t give a damn what it was. He hated the North Koreans, as he did most radicalized nations. His personal view was a few less North Koreans was not a great loss to the world at large. Hell, their government had allowed 2.5 million of their citizens to die from starvation, while the leaders dined on imported Beluga caviar and drank Cristal champagne. The people of North Korea were damned from birth, and the entire population was nothing but brainwashed drones. For those citizens favored by the North Koreans in power, they enjoyed nothing more than adequate lives. Those who were not in favor knew nothing but suffering.

Hail, Gage, and Kara sat studying Nolan, and he realized he’d been silent for quite some time. He felt like a rat in a cage being watched by scientists attempting to determine if he would be selected for the next drug trial.

“Was it a hotel?” Nolan asked meekly.

Hail sniffed twice and said, “We don’t know for sure.”

Hail was lying. They had already received word that the Dongmyong Hotel in Pongch’un-dong had been vaporized. Hail simply felt that this information was something he could save to potentially use in the future. The questions they had been asking the pilot were designed to zero in how truly messed up the pilot was to disobey orders. For the pilot to go completely off the reservation during a straightforward mission was one thing. But the safety of Hail’s crew and his vessel were his main priorities. If they detected destructive tendencies in the pilot, he needed to leave. But, if Hail and his team sensed that Nolan was relatively stable, Nolan had a skillset Hail could use.

“My turn to ask a question,” Hail said.

“OK,” the pilot said with the meager tone of forfeiture in his voice.

“Are you crazy?”

“What do you mean?” The question caught him off guard.

Louder, Hail said, “I don’t like to play games or waste time, Nolan. Are you crazy or not?”

Nolan Foster contemplated the question before responding with great confidence, “I think everyone is crazy. I think the people who tell you they aren’t crazy are people that you should watch like a hawk.”

Hail and Renner laughed. Kara did not. She didn’t even smile.

Hail asked, “Are you going to kill anyone with that Beretta of yours, if we let you keep it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, tapping his hand on the weapon stuffed into his chest rig. “Do you have anyone that needs killing?”

Hail smiled and said, “Yeah, I have a lot of people that need killing.”