Hail Warning

Above Southern Egypt Aboard the Air Cress Antonov An-26 Cargo Plane

Kara Ramey pretended to have fallen asleep. Her chair on the plane was fully reclined, and her head sagged to one side. She breathed heavily as if she was in deep REM. She even considered eliciting a light snore, but she hated the sound of snoring. She hated listening to people who snored, although she didn’t know if she snored when she slept. Over the years, she had few lovers, but they had not mentioned if she did or didn’t snore. If they had provided such feedback, she would have been offended and ended the relationship. What woman wanted to be told that she snored? That was stuff you told your wife, not your girlfriend. By then it was too late, and either party would just have to live with it. When her parents were alive and she had lived at the mansion, she had a massive bedroom, and thus her parents had no idea if she snored. The cacophony of sound the old cargo plane was making would have covered up just about any nocturnal sound known to man.

Gratefully, Kornev had left her alone. He no longer attempted to make agonizingly obnoxious small talk, which she understood was difficult for him. Normally those bad at small talk were also very poor listeners. Kara found that type of person developed a distinct I don’t care what you’re saying look in their eyes, and may even resort to reading a text during a conversation. Kara figured that pretending to sleep was less stressful for them.

“What in the hell is that?!” she heard Kornev ask in Russian. Initially, Kara decided to pretend not to awaken. But there was a sound of fear and urgency in his voice she hadn’t heard before. Then he repeated the words, but this time louder and even more agitated.

“What the hell is that?” Kornev asked, maybe to his pilots or maybe to himself.

This time her curiosity got the best of her, and she blinked open her eyes and sat up in her chair.

She looked toward the cockpit and saw it.

Just outside the cockpit’s windshield, a drone about as long as a limousine and narrow like a fifty-gallon drum was flying just yards in front of their plane. Kornev’s pilot reactively began descending to dodge the drone. The drone mirrored the action and dropped as well, staying right in front of them.

Kornev got up from his chair, and he went to the front of the plane. He stood behind his pilots, hunched over to prevent hitting his head on the low ceiling of the cockpit. The copilot looked up from his controls, expectantly, awaiting Kornev’s instructions.

Kornev studied the aircraft, initially thinking it was a United States Predator drone. Even though he was looking at the back of the aircraft, he could tell it was not a Predator because it didn’t have the peculiar front that dropped down as if the aircraft had a bad nose job. This drone was much more streamlined — almost in the shape of an aerodynamic rocket. But this rocket had large, swept back wings. And under those large wings were two missiles, which Kornev had heard about but had never seen this close. He could tell, without reading the stenciled markings on the missiles, that it was the new Joint Air-to-Ground Missile called LOCO.

He had read about them. They were rumored to be horribly destructive. But what bothered him more than the damage caused by the LOCOs was the potential that someone with enough clout could get their hands on a pair. They could mount them to the aircraft flying just in front of him. But not just anyone could get their hands on them. He concluded it was obvious this person had the backing of a superpower nation that was majorly pissed off at him, enough to send this drone to intercept his plane.

Just as Kornev was about to tell his pilots to make some sort of evasive maneuver, his cellphone rang. Kornev reached for his phone in his pocket, which was not in a lead-lined bag as he had told Tonya. There was no lead-lined bag, but it was a stress-free lie to tell her to prevent her from pouting and begging for her cellphone. Kornev pressed the icon on his phone and answered the call.

No one was on the other end, but a phone continued ringing.

He then realized it was not his but Tonya’s phone that was ringing. He reached into his other pocket and took out Tonya’s phone. Both phones shared the same default ringtone.

He swiped his finger against the screen and said, “Hello?”

“I guess you didn’t take me seriously when I told you that you were no longer allowed to sell big arms to bad people.”

The voice on the other end was familiar to Kornev. The man on the other end of the call did not introduce himself. It was the arrogant cowboy that had humiliated him in the desert.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kornev said, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. His neck hurt from hunching behind the pilots.

“Surface-to-air missiles is what I am talking about — two of them,” the voice said.

Kornev was stunned into silence. How in the hell did they know that he had two surface-to-air missiles on board?

The cowboy said, “Now, this is what you’re going to do. You are going to descend right now and land on an old airfield located at the coordinates that are being texted to this phone right now.”

“This phone—” the words bounced around in Kornev’s head, not initially making sense of the words. This phone — this phone — this phone that belonged to Tonya. Why would they be calling him on this phone? How could they be calling him on this phone, unless this phone belonged to an intelligence agency that—”

Kornev felt the bulge that had been pressing in the small of his back disappear. A coolness where the metal had once been taking its place.

The Russian turned around slowly and saw Tonya holding his gun that had been in his back waistband. The muzzle of the Glock was an inch from the bridge of his nose. The woman wasn’t smiling, but she seemed quite smug in some respect, as if she had checkmated him in a game that he hadn’t known they were playing.

She aimed the gun to Kornev’s heart.

“Put the plane on the ground,” she told him. “And I’ll take my phone back, thank you,” Kara added, holding out her free hand.

Kornev looked mad. And when he handed the phone over to her, Kara backed up a few steps to put distance between them. She raised the gun toward Kornev’s head and very carefully took her phone from his open hand.

“Now, sit back down in your chair and put on your seat belt,” she told him.

Walking backwards, Kara kept the gun trained on the Russian until they had returned to their seats. She motioned with the gun towards Victor’s chair. The Russian sat, and Kara kept the gun on him until she heard Kornev’s five-point seat belt snap into place.

She then put her phone to her ear and addressed Marshall Hail, “Why did you call him on my phone? Why did you give me up?” Kara’s voice was seasoned with rage. However, she was whispering instead of yelling, not wanting Kornev to hear the conversation.

“I didn’t have Kornev’s phone number,” Hail said defensively.

“You could have gotten it from Pepper,” Kara shot back.

There was a hesitation on Hail’s end. Then he said in a tone of contrition, “I didn’t want you to have to—” Hail let the sentence hang in the air. Hail struggled to find the right words before speaking again.

“Kornev would have found out sooner or later. And sooner seemed better than later.”

Kara wasn’t accepting any of Hail’s lame excuses. She spat back at Hail, “That wasn’t your decision to make. Do you realize that Kornev could have turned on me, right here, right now and I couldn’t have done anything to protect myself?”

“Where is Kornev now?” Hail asked.

“He’s sitting in his chair with his seat belt fastened.”

“And why is he there?” Hail asked, leading Kara along.

“Because I took his gun from him.”

“See,” Hail said, as if he was the world’s foremost fortune teller. “I knew you could take care of yourself.”

“That’s not why you did it. You did it so I wouldn’t have to sleep with him.”

“I did it because it was the only way I knew to contact Kornev without involving your boss in my business. I’m sure that you probably noticed that Kornev is in the process of delivering surface-to-air missiles to someone — somewhere. They are on your plane right now. We can’t let that happen, remember? That’s what this is all about.”

There was no response from Kara, which made Hail feel as if he had won this small battle and had made the correct decision.

A moment later, Hail said, “I texted some coordinates to this phone. The digits correspond with an abandoned airfield about sixty miles away. Give the coordinates to Kornev’s pilots, and I will see you on the ground in a few minutes.

“This is not over,” Kara seethed.

On the desert floor, Hail watched Kornev’s plane make a single flyby over the airstrip before circling to line up for the landing on the hardpan runway.

Hail was positioned at the end of the long runway, although very little of the abandoned airstrip could still be considered a runway. The natural desert air, blowing sand and endless drought had sustained this bleached piece of inert soil. It was relatively flat and a reasonably good place to touch down a fixed-wing aircraft. Behind Hail sat his shiny Gulfstream, its nose pointing toward him. Renner was sitting in the cockpit with his iPad. His iPad was connected to their drone, U2, which was resting on its tripod legs next to Hail.

Atop a hill of sand, about fifty yards away, was Foster Nolan. He was lying on his belly, prone, fiddling with his long sniper rifle, dialing in the distance on his scope. There was hardly a breath of wind, so adjusting for windage was not an issue. At this distance, Nolan could put a round through Kornev’s left eye while eating a sandwich.

Kornev’s big old heavy plane lumbered onto the runway, bouncing a few times on its fat and spongy tires before its tail touched down. The plane slowed and continued to roll forward, now only twenty yards in front of Hail. When the cargo plane finally came to a full stop, its dust cloud caught up with the plane and encompassed the group like a gray blanket.

Through the sand, Hail could see the two pilots, but he could not see Kornev. Hail suspected that Kara had not given the Russian permission to release himself from his seat belt. Hail smiled, as he imagined Kara on the plane’s intercom announcing, “All passengers should remain in their seats with their seat belts securely tightened until the plane has come to a full and complete stop.”

A moment later, Hail heard a mechanized door begin to open. He looked at both sides of the aircraft and saw nothing. Then, behind the back wheels of the cargo plane, he saw the tailgate of the aircraft lower to the ground. Thirty seconds later, Kornev and Kara emerged from the back of the plane. Kornev was walking in front of Kara. She was walking ten feet behind the arms dealer with a gun loosely trained on his back.

Hail looked on indifferently as the pair made their way over to him.

Kornev stopped in front of Hail and said nothing, which is what Hail would have done if he had been in Kornev’s shoes. There was really nothing for him to say. But there was something for Hail to say.

“I told you that if you tried to sell big arms to anyone without first notifying us that you would pay.”

Kornev responded indignantly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hail shook his head, “If we open those black cases on your plane, are you telling me that we will not find what we think is in there?”

Kornev said nothing. He simply stared at the large man in front of him. He was not wearing a cowboy hat, but he was still wearing cowboy boots, adding dark sunglasses to his attire. Looking up towards the jet behind the cowboy, Kornev saw another man sitting in the cockpit of the sleek jet. Giving a slow turn of his

head, Kornev scanned the desert. He saw nothing but dry and lifeless sand. No one would be coming to his rescue. That was a given. And he was equally certain that his own pilots, who were still aboard his plane, would not fight on his behalf. They weren’t paid to take that type of risk. They were paid to smuggle contraband from point A to point B, and then fly to many other locations. There was a significant difference between a soldier and a smuggler.

Hail told Kornev, “It doesn’t seem fair to shoot you just standing there. So, I will make it a little more of a challenge. I will give you a head start,” Hail told him.

Kornev said nothing.

“See this drone next to me?” Hail continued. “It runs on battery and only has a limited range before it runs out of power. If you are fast, you might be able to outrun it before it runs out of juice. But you have to run fast.”

Kornev said nothing. He simply stared at the man and wished he had a gun in his hands so he could blow him away.

As if the drone knew what Kornev was thinking, it hummed, buzzed and came to life. Sand was thrown up into the air as its powerful propellers whirled up mini-tornadoes beneath it. Kornev watched the drone’s thin legs retract into its body.

“Run!” Hail yelled.

But Kornev remained still.

“Run!” Hail yelled a second time.

But Kornev didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there, oscillating looks between Hail and the drone that was hovering next to him.

Hail began to understand that Kornev was not going to run.

“Go to Hell,” Kornev told Hail.

“I probably will, but I think you’re going to have to give me directions since you’re going to get there first,” Hail yelled at him.

Hail glanced at the drone hovering next to them, and yelled to it, “U2: Fire ten rounds at center mass!”

The short barrel that was hanging under the drone jerked to life.

Kornev saw the narrow muzzle pointing at him and guessed by the size of the opening that the drone was going to shoot a small-caliber bullet. Maybe it was a .22, just as lethal from this range as any other caliber bullet. At this distance, the bullet would probably poke a clean hole all the way through him.

But, before Kornev could react, the gun began firing. The projectiles hit Kornev directly in his heart. From two yards away, ten rounds fired at more than 500 feet per second and were smacking into him hard.

The pain was horrific. As the projectiles hit Kornev’s chest, it felt each one was a venomous snake taking bites from his heart. The cluster of gunshots was so close to one another it felt like one big bullet had put a hole through him. Kornev fell onto his knees and put his hands up to his heart. He looked down at the blood that would be pouring from his wound, but he was surprised at the absence of blood on his hands. Not one drop.

“U2: Fire five rounds in his neck,” Hail ordered.

The drone obeyed. The gun readjusted and five more projectiles left the barrel and hit Kornev directly in his Adam’s apple. Kornev began to scream, but nothing other than a bubble of saliva came out of his mouth. Kornev’s hands left his heart and flew up to his throat. He performed the same action as before, checking his hands for blood but there was no blood.

The arms dealer stared at Hail, looking both confused and terrified, like he had invented a new type of weapon that could hurt, or maybe even kill, but wouldn’t leave a trace of blood behind as evidence.

Kornev stayed on his knees, one hand holding a mysteriously benign wound on his chest, and his other hand was busy vigorously massaging his throat.

“Are you starting to understand how this game will be played?”

Hail told the Russian. “Right now, the gun on the drone is loaded with airsoft pellets. Just moments before you landed we swapped out both the gun and the real ammo, just to give you one last chance. This is your final warning. The next time you try to sell your big weapons to the bad guys, we will not be changing out the gun’s ammo. All those rounds will be steel-jacketed, and that will be the end — at least the end of you. Please send me that postcard from Hell to let me know what the weather’s like so I can dress accordingly.”

Hail looked at Kornev indignantly, like the Russian were a horse on his way to the glue factory.

Kara walked in front of Kornev and stood next to Hail.

Kornev feebly pointed at Kara and croaked out, “Who are you? And, who is she?”

Hail considered disregarding the question, but then thought about what Kara had told him. Kornev needs to respect the man behind the weapons. And the only way for Kornev to do that was to know a little about him.

“I’m a freelancer,” Hail told him. “And she can tell you whatever she wants you to know about her.”

Kara turned to Hail and said to him, “Wow, that’s mighty nice of you, Marshall. You give me up. Then you are gracious enough to let me tell this piece of trash who I really am?”

Hail looked at her and remained quiet, believing anything he said would just anger her even more.

Kara turned to address Kornev. “I can at least tell you this, Victor. The man standing beside me is Marshall Hail.”

A look of distant recognition showed on Kornev’s face. He slowly got back to his feet and asked in a scratchy voice, “You mean the Physics Nobel Prize winner?”

“The one and the same,” Kara said, turning and giving Hail a mocking smile.

“That wasn’t fair to let this scumbag know who I am,” he told Kara. Now, Hail looked mad.

“And it wasn’t fair for you to let this piece of garbage know who I am either!” Kara shot back.

“Hello, I’m right here,” Kornev protested, raising his hand, but Kara and Hail continued quarreling.

“I never told him who you were,” Hail said.

“Oh, no,” Kara said sarcastically, “You just contacted him on my phone, and Kornev is way too stupid to put two and two together.”

Kornev stood patiently, still rubbing his neck, getting increasingly pissed off at the insults.

Understanding they were getting nowhere and had things to do, Hail said, “We can talk about this later. Right now, we need to get those missiles loaded onto my plane and get them to Batman. You can either go with Nolan and Renner in the Gulfstream back to Batman, or you can stay here with me and wait for them to return.”

“I’m torn,” Kara fumed. “I’d like nothing more than to get away from you right now, but I also want to stay and tell you what’s on my mind.”

Hail looked away from Kara and back to Kornev. Kornev gave him a little shrug, like Hail was screwed no matter what she did.

Kara thought it over for a minute before announcing, “I’m staying.”

Neither Hail nor Kornev responded.

Hail noticed Kornev looking off to his left. He followed Kornev’s gaze to watch as Nolan walked back toward them with his huge sniper rifle pointing down toward the ground.

“Let’s get the missiles loaded onto my Gulfstream,” he told Kara and Kornev.

As a group, they turned and walked toward the back of Kornev’s plane.

Gage Renner followed them closely, flying U2 alongside the group, ensuring Kornev didn’t try any funny stuff.