Hail Warning

Sea of Japan — Aboard the Hail Nucleus

Prior to the meal, Foster Nolan been escorted to a locker room. He was liberated of his combat vest and flight suit, and given a pair of thin gray sweat pants and a blue Polo shirt with the Hail Industries logo embroidered on the front pocket. A table for four had been set at the ship’s Italian restaurant. Gage Renner, Kara Ramey, Lt. Commander Foster Nolan and Marshall Hail filled the seats.

“Wow,” was the only thing he’d said since they entered the restaurant five minutes ago. He appeared hypnotized by the full-length windows. The windows were 82-inch LCD monitors that ran the entire length of one wall of the restaurant. Playing on the windows was a video taken from the inside of an Italian restaurant looking onto a city sidewalk and the passersby. Foster Nolan watched a man stroll by walking three dogs. A thick wooden vertical beam separated each of the massive display screens, so as the Italian man left one screen, he momentarily disappeared behind the wooden pillar and then reemerged in the next window. Nolan watched the man walk all the way to the end of the block before turning at the corner, or the end of the restaurant, until he was lost to sight.

“Wow,” the jet pilot said. “Who dreamt up this place, and why?”

Hail answered, “I have a lot of people aboard who don’t get a chance to leave the ship very often, so I spent a little extra Moola to make the restaurants on board special.”

“Restaurants?” Nolan asked. “You have more than one?”

The smaller man to Hail’s left, Gage Renner, responded, “There are five restaurants on board, as well as a few bars.”

“And they are all like this with the special fake windows and all?” the jet pilot asked.

The woman, Kara, if Nolan remembered her name correctly answered, “Yes, they are. Of course, if you are eating in the Asian restaurant, the videos playing on those windows are of China or Japan.”

Kara Ramey was dressed in a white blouse. Her hair was red and hanging in long loose curls resting on her shoulders. Her skin was fair. Her eyes were emerald-green and inviting. Kara looked at her menu.

“Wow,” Nolan said again, but this time he was looking at Kara, not at the windows.

A waitress arrived at their table. She was a cute woman in her mid-twenties with dark hair. She was wearing a white button-up shirt with a checkered handkerchief around her neck which looked like a festive tie.

“Good evening,” the waitress stated. “What can I get y’all to drink tonight?”

The lieutenant commander detected a Texas accent and asked, “Where in Texas are you from?”

“Houston,” the woman responded.

“Dallas,” he replied, pointing at himself using his thumb.

“It’s great to have more of us Texans on board,” she said, smiling warmly at the pilot. “Remember the Alamo,” she joked.

“What’s the Alamo?” Nolan shot back with a coy smile.

The waitress smiled at him and asked, “What would y’all like to drink?”

Once the drink order had been taken, the waitress removed the single flower from the vase in the middle of the table. She retreated behind a door leading to the centralized kitchen.

While they were waiting, Hail asked the pilot, “So, how long have you been in the military?”

He gave the question some thought before answering, “Ever since I was 22 years old. So, that would make it about fourteen years. I took ROTC in high school and entered the Navy right after college.”

“Let me guess,” Kara said, “Texas A&M University?”

“Man, you must have a crystal ball or something,” Nolan replied. There was a slight southern twang in the jet pilot’s speech which Kara found interesting. Very few Texans from Dallas had any twang at all these days, since Dallas was much more metropolitan and less rural.

“What is this all about?” Nolan asked. “I mean, this ship and these youngsters picking me up in an expensive helicopter? What’s going on?”

Hail looked first at Kara and then to Gage. They looked back at Hail and smiled.

“What?” the pilot asked.

“This information thing works the same way as in the Conference Room,” Hail informed Nolan. “We answer a question of yours. Then you answer a question of ours.”

“Ah, we still doing that? I thought that we were all friends now?” Foster Nolan asked.

Hail told him, “The answer to your question is that this ship — my ship is a sophisticated cargo ship that hauls thousands of tons of nuclear waste to my repurposing plants scattered around the world. We repurpose nuclear waste to burn in my traveling wave reactor power plants that we also manufacture.”

“So, what does that have to do with the kids pulling me out of the drink in the Sikorsky Seahawk?”

“Sorry, that was your question, and I answered it. So, it’s my turn,” Hail said. “My question is, do you want to stay on this ship, or do you want to go back to your Navy carrier?”

Foster Nolan hadn’t had much of a chance to think about his future. Up until Hail had asked this question, he had assumed that he was here for the day. Then he would return to his own ship. Now that he thought about it, going back to his squad would be ugly. After all, he had disobeyed orders and had attacked a North Korean hotel. To compound his insubordination, he had been shot down, losing the 337 million-dollar aircraft. Chances were, he would be court-martialed and thrown into the brig. Best scenario, he probably would never fly jets again for the Navy or any other branch of the military. Hell, he would be lucky if he got to fly commuter flights for Delta.

The lieutenant commander rubbed the stubble on his chin before cupping his jaw with his right hand. He huffed once and asked, “Do I really have a choice?”

“I think so,” the beautiful woman responded. “I believe we have some latitude and a bargaining position with the Armed Forces.”

“How’s that?” Nolan asked the CIA agent.

Kara looked at Hail, and Hail gave her a little nod.

“Well, Marshall here, has started taking on military types of projects. And currently, he doesn’t have anyone in an advisory position with any military background. Many of the methods he uses in completing his projects use air-based assets. You, being a pilot, have specialized knowledge in those areas. Thus, you could be of significant use to him.”

Nolan shook his head and said, “I don’t really get what you’re talking about. What types of projects are you referring to? Why does a cargo ship need an advisor in military avionics and tactics?”

Gage, Kara and Hail looked among themselves again. It was a conspiratorial look of three people deciding the extent of information they could divulge, especially to a person who could very well be headed back to his aircraft carrier within the next hour.

“Do you have any family or any other personal issues that would prohibit you from staying on board?” Hail asked.

He was going to protest and repeat his question prior to remembering the rules regarding information exchange.

“No. No wife or kids. I had a twin brother, but he was killed in The Five.”

The faces staring at him looked shocked.

“You had a brother who was killed in The Five?” Gage asked.

“Yeah,” said the pilot. He then dropped his head and looked down at the assortment of silverware that was set neatly in front of him.

Everyone at the table knew about The Five. Hail assumed that the only people in the world who had never heard about that terrorist attack were the entire population of North Korea. The Five, the lieutenant commander referred to, was a mass terrorist attack that took place two years ago. Five terrorist organizations had shot down five commercial aircraft, using five shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles, within five minutes of one another and in five different countries. The combined death toll had been 1716 people.

Hail broke the silence by saying, “I lost my entire family in The Five — my twin daughters and wife.”

Before Nolan could offer his condolences, Kara added, “And I lost my mother and father in The Five.”

“Holy hell!” Nolan said finally.

The long moment of silence was broken by the waitress who arrived with the drinks. She placed the various beverages in front them and asked, “OK, so what will y’all be having for lunch?”

Gage, Marshall and Kara all ordered, while the lieutenant commander looked over the menu.

When the waitress had finished jotting down the orders on her electronic tablet, the pilot told her, “I will have the spaghetti and meatballs.”

She said, “Very good, it will be done in a jiff. If you need anything just put the flower in the vase.” She turned and walked back toward the kitchen.

“Is she single?” the pilot asked.

“Yes, she is,” Hail responded.

“So, what does this cargo ship have to do with military projects for the CIA?”

Hail said, “Nope, it’s my turn. You just asked about the status of Jacky, the waitress.”

“But—” Nolan began. Hail cut him off.

“What do you think would happen to you if you were to return to your squad?”

The question caught Nolan off guard. It took him a moment to assemble an answer. “I don’t know for sure,” he said in a crestfallen tone. “I would probably be washed out. Maybe serve some time in the brig.”

“Is that something that you want to do?” Hail asked. It seemed like a dumb question, but maybe the lieutenant commander was into paying for his mistakes as part of some skewed code of honor.

“No, if I didn’t have to go back and face all that drama, I’d rather not. There is no longer a future for me in the Navy. And to tell you the truth, I have already done everything I wanted to do for Uncle Sam.”

Nolan looked up from the table with a hopeful expression. “Is there something you can do for me, to avoid going back?” he inquired.

“Maybe,” Kara said.

“So, what kind of projects do you do?” Nolan asked.

“Nope. It’s our turn to ask a question,” Hail said. “When you said that your brother was killed in The Five. Which plane was he on?”

“Virgin Atlantic flight 1082. It was shot down leaving Orlando International.”

There was a long silence.

Hail told Nolan, “It’s your turn to ask a question.”

He took a moment and then asked, “What type of projects do you do?”

Hail answered, “After my family was killed in The Five, I just couldn’t go on with life as usual, business as usual. So, I decided to have my ships modified with both defensive and offensive weaponry. I did this in preparation for killing every person on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Terrorist list. The CIA also has a list, but it’s classified.”

Nolan laughed, “And how in the world do you expect to do that? Most of those targets are so hot and dug in so deep, it would take a volcano to bring them into the light.”

Hail nodded toward Kara and said, “That’s why we have Ms. Ramey on board. She provides us with CIA intelligence, so we can track down the terrorists and kill them.”

The pilot chuckled again and shook his head. “Do you have any experience killing people, let alone taking out hardened targets?”

“We just killed Kim Yong Chang,” Hail said with pride. “The public doesn’t know this, but he was a North Korean who was trying to buy and build ICBMs. We also blew up his warehouse, the place where all the ICBM parts and pieces were located.”

Kara picked up where Hail left off, and she said, “That was what your mission was all about. Blowing up the warehouse just in case Hail’s crew failed.”

“That was you?” he asked, truly stunned.

“Yep, and then you came along and screwed it up,” Hail added with an accusatory edge to his voice.

The lieutenant commander cringed at the accusation and sat back in his chair. He looked like he’d been hit by a blast of arctic wind.

“So why did you bomb the hotel?” Hail asked, now sounding more fatherly than antagonistic.

Nolan remained pushed far back in his chair — as far from the table as he could get without physically getting out of his chair. At first, he said nothing. But Hail let the question hang out there. They were waiting for an answer. For some reason, Foster felt that this answer was pivotal to his future. He could give them some BS story, and Hail might keep him on board, but he sensed that they already knew the answer. They were simply waiting for him to confirm or deny it the truth.

“I think it has something to do with my brother,” he began, explaining quietly, as if the weight of the truth was crushing his words before they could leave his mouth.

“Like I said, he was killed in The Five. We were very close. Hell, man, we were twins. I don’t know many twins who aren’t close. But after my brother was killed, I was really bummed out. I didn’t give a damn about anything. I stopped doing a lot of stuff that normal people do, like bathing and eating and taking care of myself. And deep down, I knew that I needed to resolve the unresolvable, and the only way I could think of doing that was by getting some payback. You know like bombing the hell out of the people who were responsible. It’s my only gift. Bombing and shooting people is my only talent.”

Nolan paused for a moment and looked down at the table. He continued, now softer than before.

“How sad is that?” Another pause. Tears formed in his eyes.

Continuing in a shaky voice, Nolan said, “But that payback thing never happened. The United States never really responded to the attack of The Five. The intelligence side of the government went into overdrive trying to figure out the who and the why, but like killing Osama bin Laden, it was taking too long. At least

too long for me. So, I guess when the mission to go into North Korea was given to me, it seemed like it was destiny. It was my time to do something to avenge the death of my brother.”

Nolan paused and took a sip of water.

“When my commander came over my radio and told me to return to my ship, the words just didn’t register. I mean, you must understand, it was my destiny to go in and bomb the hell out of North Korea. And then, right when I’m five miles off the coast, I get called back.” Nolan’s tone oscillated to anger.

“I was pissed. I switched off the radio and decided to have a look around, maybe find some prime targets. The two things I didn’t count on was taking out a hotel and being shot down by a Chengdu J-20. Hell, the North Koreans weren’t supposed to have any advanced aircraft like that at their disposal.”

The lieutenant commander pulled back on his justification as if he were slowing wild horses. He realized that his little speech may have been interpreted as a rant, but it was true. Up to this point, he had never shared those facts with himself, let alone perfect strangers.

There was another long foreboding silence that fell across the table as if someone had died.

“What do you want to do?” Hail asked the pilot.

“What are my options?” Nolan sounded beaten down, as if the pressure he was under had just crushed him.

Kara Ramey responded. “I think we can either get you assigned to our little black ops project we have here, or we can get you discharged from the Navy. Whether that would be an honorable discharge or not would have to be determined.”

“What about now, like today and tomorrow and next week?” the pilot asked.

Hail responded evenly, “Until we get things sorted out, you can stay on board. We will set you up with a stateroom. I’d like you to teach some of our pilots some of what you know about flying a jet. Mostly attack and tactical instruction.”

“Your pilots? Are those the youngsters that came to pick me up in the ocean?”

“Those are two of them.” Hail said.

“Why kids? I don’t get it.”

“Many of them are like you, like me and like Kara. They lost someone in The Five. Many of my pilots lost their parents in The Five, and I’ve become their legal guardian. Some of my other pilots won online flying contests that my programmers created and hosted. The prize the winners received were high school and college

educations, which they attend aboard my ships. Some of my young adults are from bad neighborhoods and needed to escape so they had a chance to reach their full potential. These kids, as you like to refer to them, can do amazing things with drones. They can fly them sideways, if required. It would be interesting to put them in a simulator next to you, flying an F-35, and see who comes out on top.”

The lieutenant commander thought about it for a moment.

“Well, it certainly sounds better than spending time in the brig at Miramar. OK, you have yourself a speed test dummy. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

The waitress arrived with the food.

“Sure, eat up and we’ll get you situated,” Hail told his new pilot.

Nolan reached over to take a sip of wine.

“Are we still doing the you ask a question then I ask a question? Because I still have a lot of questions.”

Hail shrugged and poked his fork into his food. “I think we can just have a normal conversation. But you don’t want to be asking the CIA anything. They don’t like to talk about their work, as I have found out.”

Hail gave Kara a playful smile and then stuffed a wad of lasagna into his mouth.

“What do you want to ask?” Kara asked with a polite smile.

“I know a little about Hail Industries. Aren’t you a startup nuclear company of some type?”

Hail responded. “We’re more than a startup. We’ve completed the beta tests of our new traveling wave reactors, and now we have many of them up and running in countries without any other options for power.”

Nolan said, “You know, I thought I’d heard something about your reactor being outfitted on some older aircraft carriers.”

“Yes, we have been contacted by the U.S. Armed Forces to talk about putting a reactor on one of their old Nimitz aircraft carriers.”

“Has it been tested on other ships?” Nolan asked.

“It’s running everything on this ship right now,” Hail told him. “And we have twice the potential energy output as even the latest ship or subs in the American fleet.”

“Wow,” Nolan responded. “I had no idea. So, in laymen terms, how does your reactor work? What’s so special about it?”

“Oh, no! Don’t ask him that,” Kara complained.

Hail had just stuffed another forkful of food in his mouth, so Renner fielded the question.

“The traveling wave reactor starts with an initial reaction of a small amount of refined uranium. Then, inside the fuel bundle, it begins to burn its way through depleted uranium, which is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment stage. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the United States alone created enough depleted uranium to power the world for more than a thousand years. And the spent fuel from the Hail reactor is very low-level stuff. It can be disposed of without any residual problems.”

“What makes the reactor so special? Is it safe?”

Kara jumped in, “Don’t ask him that. It’s like starting someone in on talking about their beloved pet. He will never shut up once he gets started talking about his reactors.”

Hail was done chewing.

Ignoring Kara, he responded, “It is physically impossible for our reactor to melt down.”

“Here we go,” Kara said, exasperated, putting her hands over her ears.

Hail continued. “It runs at atmospheric pressure, so there is no chance of the reactor blowing its top off. It also uses liquid sodium as a coolant, so there is no need for massive amounts of water to cool the reactor. It could be in the middle of a desert.”

“Isn’t salt corrosive?” asked Nolan. “I know it screws up just about everything on a ship.”

“Good question, and yes, it is,” Renner said. “But all the pipes around the reactor are lined with a special blend of ceramic we invented which is impervious to salt.”

“Please continue,” Nolan said, getting a kick out of watching Kara squirm.

“No!” Kara pleaded.

“And the wave reactor burns very slowly,” Hail said, smirking at Kara, who made a face as if she were going to be sick.

“Just like a wave washing over the sand, the nuclear reaction slowly burns through the depleted uranium. There are no control rods to drop in or out of water tanks. Once lit, our fuel cells can burn for ten years and power an entire city. It’s pennies for power. It will change the world.”

“Wow,” Nolan replied. “That is cool.”

“That’s boring,” Kara corrected. “I beg of you, please no more talk about nuclear reactors. I’ve only been on this ship for a month, and I’ve heard as much

as I ever want to know about power and uranium and plutonium. And let’s not forget the favorite topic of discussion — depleted uranium.”

“I know in the military they use depleted uranium on tanks as armor plating and on the end of armor-piercing projectiles,” Nolan said.

Renner added, “It’s also used in radiation therapy and in industrial radiography equipment.”

“Stop, stop — I can’t take it,” Kara protested.

Kara snatched a fork off the table and brought it up under her throat. “I’ll do it, I promise. If just one of you says another single nuclear word the rest of the dinner, I’ll drive this fork all the way into my jugular vein. I’ll end it all.”

The three men looked blankly at Kara. All four tines of the silver fork were making tiny pink indentions in her beautiful white neck.

Hail smiled at her and said, “Atom.”