Operation Hail Storm

Washington, D.C. ― The White House Oval Office

It had taken Trevor Rogers and his staff all of ninety minutes to put together the digital dossier on Marshall Hail. Dozens of FBI analysts had used Google and the FBI’s powerful servers to download everything they could find about Marshall Hail. Compiled onto the tiny USB drive that was sticking out of Roger’s computer was an extensive history of Hail’s company. The identity and backgrounds of all of Hail’s friends going back to childhood had been researched and itemized. Birth records, death records and a complete genealogy of Hail’s family and extended family were on the flash drive. An overview of Hail’s lifestyle had also been provided, which included his police record and current medications he was on, as well as any known extra-curricular activities Hail was involved with. Every bit of the data that had been collected were zipped into an encrypted file and then had been spit out onto a flash drive.

Confident his team had done all they could do in the short time frame, Rogers reached down and removed the flash drive from his computer. He pulled on his dress coat and placed the plastic stick of information in his coat pocket. The FBI man then had his secretary call his car around so he could make his meeting with the President at the White House.

Now, ninety minutes later, Rogers removed the USB drive from his coat pocket and stuck it into the slot on the President’s big screen TV. It was show time and Rogers hoped that he had all the answers to all the questions that would soon be asked.

Rogers had an advantage in this briefing because he and Marshall Hail had been childhood friends. Their fathers had both been in the military and had ended up being stationed at many of the same locations. Therefore, the Hail family and the Rogers family were neighbors much of the time. Trevor recalled little Marshall coming to his birthday parties and vice versa. Guam, Berlin, Japan, so many places and Rogers had so few memories of each of those countries because they moved all the time. But Marshall Hail was the one constant in Trevor Rogers’ life. Marshall was just about the only thing he remembered from his childhood.

Trevor Rogers cleared his throat and began to address the room of the most powerful people on the planet.

“First, I would like thank you all for your support in my new position as Director of the FBI. I will do my utmost to make you pleased with that decision. Thank you, Madam President for allowing me to update you and your staff with an issue that has recently come to my attention.”

The newly elected president, Joanna Weston, responded politely, “Thank you, Mr. Rogers for accepting this difficult assignment. We look forward to you bringing us all up to speed.”

Rogers glanced around the room at the other attendees. A few of the men he knew, and a few he knew of, but he knew none of them very well.

Sitting on the couch was a four-star general who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His name was Quentin Ford. He was a big and imposing guy. Ford was outfitted in full military dress. Rogers felt that was appropriate, considering this General was the highest-ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, President excluded. Ford looked battle worn and hard as nails. He had a big face. His thick cheeks sagged like an old hound dog. General Quentin Ford was large and overbearing. Roger’s had heard a rumor that the new President thought that General Ford was a big teddy bear. Rogers knew better, but the new President would have to learn those things for herself in due time.

Seated on the couch to the left of the General was the Director of National Intelligence, Eric Spearman. He had been sworn in four years earlier by the previous administration. Spearman was a short, bald, meek looking man; the antithesis of the General sitting next to him. Rogers suspected that in a fight the General could beat the shit out of Spearman without ever getting off the couch. Spearman looked more like a banker than a bureaucrat. He had round glasses and a round gloomy face. He was dressed in a dark blue suit that was similar to the suit Rogers was wearing. Rogers certainly hoped he looked better in his. Spearman’s sad face was buried in his iPad.

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Jarret Pepper, was sitting on the other side of the coffee table, across from Ford and Spearman. Pepper’s grey hair went this way and that. It wasn’t all that long, but each follicle seemed to have a mind of its own. Being new to the job, Rogers hadn’t seen Jarret Pepper very often. But thinking back, he couldn’t recall ever seeing Pepper dressed in anything other than a grey suit. Maybe his tie was the same as well. Pepper also had an iPad down by his side, but he wasn’t currently using it.

The President, Joanna Weston, who had only been on the job for four months, was sitting behind her big desk. She was wearing a black pantsuit outfit and had a little golden American flag pinned to her breast pocket. Weston was from good political stock. Strong features, strong willed, strong opinions, but she was equally strong in allegiances and was a good friend to have. She was in her late forties. She had a shock of grey hair that sprang directly from the middle of her forehead. The grey streak then meandered backwards and was eventually lost in her thick mass of brown hair, thinning as a river’s tributary would disperse over a great distance.

Rogers had no idea why she didn’t dye that strange grey snake out of existence. It was disconcerting when you were looking at her or talking to her. But the woman had become the President of the United States, so the bolt of grey must have had some positive impact on the voters.

Rogers had requested this special meeting to inform the President of the new international incident that needed to be discussed. None of the other attendees had any idea what he was about to share with them, and he liked that feeling. It felt like power.

Pressing his finger on the tiny remote control, the first of many PowerPoint slides popped up on the screen. The introductory slide was a photo of a handsome looking man in his late thirties. The picture appeared to be a professional photo taken for publicity or possibly a magazine cover.

“His name is Marshall Hail,” Rogers began, pointing the remote control toward the photograph of his friend on the big screen.

His audience waited for the explanation.

Rogers pressed the button and another photo flashed onto the screen.

“His name is Kim Yong Chang. He is ― well, was the Minister of the People’s Armed Forces of North Korea. Marshall Hail emailed me less than two hours ago and Hail is claiming responsibility for the assassination of Kim Yong Chang. Hail is also making a claim for the twenty-five-million-dollar bounty the FBI placed on Chang.”

The new President looked stunned.

“You have to be kidding me?” General Ford said. “Kim Yong Chang never steps a foot out of North Korea. And as we all know, no one ever steps a foot into North Korea.”

Rogers shrugged.

“I would have thought the same thing,” Rogers told the General. “But this snippet of video was included in the same email.”

Rogers pressed the button on the remote control and a video began playing on the screen. The quality was excellent.

The video showed an Asian man and an Asian woman sitting at an outside table. It appeared to be someone’s backyard. The edge of a pool could be seen at the bottom of the frame. The woman was picking up a drink of what looked like orange juice. Without warning, the man leaned forward and rapped the woman on the hand with a piece of silverware.

Rogers pressed the pause button on the remote and said, “Our analysts ran face recognition software on the man in the video and it came back as a ninety-five percent match for Kim Yong Chang. Either this is the real guy or they have a great double for him.”

Rogers pressed play on the remote and the video continued.

There was a nasty exchange between the couple at the table and the woman retreated into her chair and sulked. A servant came out and the man who Rodgers had identified as Chang, pointed at his orange juice and then pointed at the woman and said something in Korean.

A moment later, everyone in the Oval Office watched Chang reach over and pick up the glass of orange juice. He held it up in front of the woman. Making sure she was watching him, he greedily drank half of the glass.

A server returned and topped off Chang’s glass and filled an additional glass for the woman.

For two long minutes nothing happened. The man chewed on some toast. The woman looked like she was afraid to drink her orange juice. She remained in her chair with her head down.

The man who was supposed to be Chang reached across the table and picked up his coffee cup. As the cup touched his lips, Chang made a strange face. He pulled the cup back from his lips and he made another face that looked more like a grimace. The coffee cup in his right hand began to tremble slightly and Chang coughed once.

Everyone in the Oval Office appeared to be spellbound.

The President and her staff quietly watched the video as Chang stood up, his coffee cup still in his hand. He began to shake. Just a tremor at first. Then the trembling turned into an uncontrolled ferocious vibration that seemed to consume Chang’s thin frame. The coffee cup fell from the man’s hand and landed on the glass table with a crash. Hot coffee went flying and landed on the Asian woman who then began to scream. Both of Chang’s hands went up to his neck and he clutched at it as if he were trying to choke himself. His entire body began to shake and convulse. Chang’s face had turned beet read. One hand came away from his neck and he began to reach across the table toward the woman. The woman screamed louder. Chang made loud choking sounds and staggered a few steps forward, arms extended in front of him. His face was red and grossly distorted in pain. The woman used her feet to propel her chair away from the table. She continued to scream. Two servants appeared from the sliding glass doors and came running out toward Chang. Chang straightened up like he had been tased. He grabbed at his chest with both hands and fell face forward onto the glass table. The North Korean’s face smashed into the bowls and the plates and the glassware. The table shattered and Chang fell through the center of it. His feet came off the ground and head over heels, the North Korean rolled into the middle of the broken glass mess.

“Oh my God!” the President called out.

Joanna Weston was an attractive woman, but for those few seconds she looked anything but attractive. Her face was warped with shock.

Rogers guessed that she hadn’t watched many men die during her career in government.

The Director of the CIA and Director of NIA looked concerned but remained silent, opting to gauge the President’s reaction before committing to a position.

The General, on the other hand, looked pretty damn happy. He smiled and muttered the words down you go asshole as Chang finished his table dive.

Rogers pressed the pause button on the remote and explained, “The video continues on for about ten minutes; long enough for us to know that the man on the video is dead. Our best guess is that a fast acting poison was delivered into a drink or possibly a dart.”

“A dart?” the President asked. She had recomposed herself but still looked shaken.

“Well, we’re just guessing here,” Rodger’s said. “We can rule out a few things. This was not a gunshot. A gunshot would look much different than what we just saw. Our analysts believe what we saw was the result of a poisoning. All the pieces fit. Chang’s weird motions, his choking, his loss of muscle control. Our experts say that Chang’s blushing or red color would indicate that a cyanide compound was used.”

The General stood up and pointed at the frozen screen.

“OK, let’s say for the sake of argument, that this man is Kim Yong Chang and he was poisoned and he is dead. My first question is how?” The General held out his arms, hands up, as if waiting to receive the answer in the form a thrown football.

Rogers noticed that the General liked to use his hands when he talked; at times using great swooping gestures and pantomime.

“If it was indeed Marshall Hail who did the hit, then we don’t know how he got to him,” Rogers responded in a confident tone.

“How did they get the video?” the General asked, tossing his hands in the air. “The video is high quality, maybe even high-def. Did Hail have a God damn camera crew sitting in the North Korean’s pool?”

“We don’t know that either,” replied Rogers, inadvertently taking a small step back from the large General who was crowding him.

The General looked back at the screen and shook his head. He pointed at the screen again.

“This just doesn’t make sense. We have known where this scumbag Chang has been for years. We’ve know that Kim Yong Chang is the mind behind obtaining missile technology for his esteemed leader. But what we didn’t know was how to get to him.”

The General paused for effect. He had the room’s attention. His voice was loud and imposing.

Continuing, the General said, “So, you’re telling me that the combined power of the United States Armed Forces couldn’t get to Kim Yong Chang, but a… a…” the General trialed off and started over.

“Other than nuclear power, what the hell is Marshall Hail in to?”

The General turned and looked directly at Rogers, staring him down, daring him to say something other than what they all wanted to know.

Rogers responded by pressing the tiny button on the remote control. A biography of Marshall D. Hail came up on the screen. The photo contained within the data, looked like it was taken by a professional photographer. Hail was holding up a miniature model of a traveling wave nuclear reactor. Hail was smiling and looking very proud of his accomplishment.

Rogers continued, “This photo was taken when Hail won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hail was in his early-thirties. He was on top of his game, but not yet a billionaire. That came later.”

The Director of the CIA, Jarret Pepper, opened his iPad and began flipping through screens.

Rogers considered reading all the data on the screen and then decided to go another direction.

“OK, almost everyone in this room knows something about Marshall Hail, unless they have been living under a rock. So why don’t we cut to the quick and find out what we all know so we can focus on what we all don’t know. Does that make sense to everyone?”

Without waiting for a response, Rogers looked at the man in uniform and asked, “General Ford. Can you please start us off, considering that you knew Marshall Hail’s father.”

The General turned away from Rogers and softened a little. He looked at the President and softened a little more. Rogers guessed that must have been the teddy bear face the President saw in Ford.

“I’m sure that we all know that Marshall Hail’s father was Tucker M. Hail, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a five-star Fleet Admiral. For those of you who are not military, that is the highest rank the Navy has to offer. It is equivalent to the General of the Army.”

Ford paused for a moment and considered what else he could say about Tucker Hail that had any relevance to the matter before them.

“I was a few years behind Tucker ― actually a decade,” Ford corrected himself. “By the time I was moving up in the higher ranks, Tucker was on the verge of retiring from both the service and politics. From what I heard, Tucker was proud of his son, but not proud like a life-long tough military man would be of a son who opts to go to MIT instead of WestPoint. Don’t get me wrong, I suspect that Tucker was proud of his son. I mean, hell, his boy was a Nobel Prize winner, but Tucker would have much preferred Marshall to be a soldier. Does that make any sense?”

The President spoke with a measure of aversion in her tone.

“Not really,” General. “Marshall’s father sounds like a piece of work to me, although I’m sure his service to our nation was impeccable.”

No one argued the point with the President.

“What I know about Marshall Hail,” the President continued, “is that he was some kind of whiz kid. He went to MIT and was a marvel in physics. He then took the TerraPower traveling wave reactor design, the nuclear company Bill Gates chaired around 2015, and redesigned the reactor so it would efficiently burn our old nuclear waste. I know from reading probably the same stuff you gentlemen have read over the years, that Marshall Hail made a fortune by installing his new reactor in dozens of countries. To my knowledge, five of his new reactors have recently been installed and activated in our own United States.”

“Well, that’s not exactly where Hail made his money,” General Ford said. “We can’t forget the contribution the United States made to the Hail Corporation.”

“And what is that?” the President asked.

The General considered how best to phrase his facts. After a moment, he decided there was no way to sugarcoat it, so he said, “Hail bargained a deal with our United States government to collect and remove all of the nuclear waste we had stockpiled since our first reactors went online in 1958. Hail agreed to transport our entire nuclear waste stockpile out of the United States. Where? We didn’t care. And that stockpile included the 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride we had in our storage yards.”

“And what is the significance of that?” the President asked.

“Well, Hail’s new traveling wave reactor burns nuclear waste as fuel. Our nuclear waste as fuel. So those new Hail Nuclear power plants you were referring to, we are actually buying back our own nuclear waste from Hail’s company. Sure, Hail Industries packaged it up so it will burn correctly in their reactors, but it cost Hail virtually nothing, and he is selling our own nuclear waste back to us for millions.”

General Ford looked at everyone looking at him. He finished up his little speech with, “So that’s where his fortune came from. All the countries around the world acquire Hail’s reactors cheaply, but the fuel bundles cost them a pretty penny and Hail owns it all.”

The room was silent for a moment as they all absorbed the General’s information.

“How was he able to set up that deal?” the President asked.

“It was a combination of things,” the General told the group. “First, it was perfect timing. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository near Las Vegas was a total bomb, no pun intended,” the General laughed. No one else did.

“We spent billions of tax payers’ money on literally a hole in the ground and never put a single neutron of nuclear waste into the facility. So along comes Hail who says he will ship every stick and barrel of nuclear waste off of our continent, as long as he gets it for free.”

“You said it was a combination of things. So what were the other factors?” the President asked.

“His father was the appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. Do you have any idea how much political power Marshall could bring to bear on the issue? It was a no-brainer for the Administration at the time to green light the deal. We had a problem with storing our nuclear waste and Hail was the solution. What no one understood at the time was that Hail already had a solution but he didn’t have any fuel to burn in his reactors, and that was his problem.”

Finally, Rogers spoke up.

“We can’t fault Hail for inventing a brilliant reactor, or understanding the lay of the land better than all us non-MIT graduates. His reactor takes high-level nuclear waste and burns it for a decade until it’s low-level waste that can be literally thrown away. Just the stockpile of nuclear waste fuel that Hail has right now, can safely power the world for the next hundred-thousand years. And I want to emphasize that his traveling wave reactors are a completely new design and they are safe. They don’t come with any of those scary problems that people are always afraid of when they think of nuclear.”

“Are you referring to the meltdowns, the China syndrome?” the President asked Rogers.

“Yes Ma’am,” Rogers confirmed. “The first safety design change is that the Hail traveling reactor operates at atmospheric pressure, so there is no chance of blowing the roof off the containment vessel, which happened in the Chernobyl disaster. Another safety feature is the reactor uses liquid sodium as the coolant instead of water. That means the plants don’t have to be built next to large water supplies such as rivers and oceans. This eliminates flooding and tsunami issues, which happened in the Fukushima disaster. This eliminates the issue of water contamination as well. So by way of design, Hail’s new reactors cannot meltdown. We need to face the fact that Hail built the perfect energy machine. Drop in a fuel bundle of our own nuclear waste and you can power an entire large city for ten years. It’s pennies for power instead of dollars. We are as close to the end of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels as we have ever been.”

The people in the room looked at Rogers for a moment and studied him.

The President asked, “And how do you know all of this?”

Rogers looked uncomfortable for a moment and then confessed.

“Marshall Hail is a personal friend of mine. But everything I told you is general straight forward information. You can read about it in MIT magazine. I’m just a little more versed on it because Marshall told me about it over and over and over, throughout the years as he was developing the technology.”

Rogers looked at everyone, looking at him, judging him.

Rogers added, “But to tell you the truth, I never fully believed Marshall. You hear all the time about a medical breakthrough that’s only a decade away or that we can travel through black holes to other dimensions, if we can only figure out how to fly at the speed of light and not disintegrate. Marshall’s new reactor was a lot like that. I thought he was close, but I really didn’t think he had it all figured out.”

“Well, we all believe it now,” General Ford said. The big man was still on his feet and slowly pacing around the perimeter of the room. “Can we get back to the question of how did Hail infiltrate North Korea, kill their top General, film it and still get out alive?”

The President looked around the room. “Anyone have any ideas?”

Rogers raised his hand like he was in first grade.

The President rolled her eyes. “Yes, Trevor.”

“Well, one of the concerns our government had in allowing Hail to transport all of our nuclear waste out of the country, was security. It was the same concern we had when we were considering transporting our own nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. But Hail had an answer for that. He hired dozens of MIT’s best aeronautic minds and their specialty was building drones.”

The President nodded that she understood and Rogers continued.

“You see, Hail’s answer to the security problem was to build drones that could protect the shipments. The drone would fly above the trains and barges and even above his own ships that transported the waste overseas.”

The General jumped in.

“And we wanted this project to work. We wanted all the nuclear waste removed from US soil, so we offered to provide Hail Hellfire missiles and other armaments that he could mount to his high flying drones. That took the onus of security off of our government and made it a private contractor issue. If anything went wrong, then it would all be pinned on Hail Industries.”

“I’m still not following what you just told me. How did Hail get into Korea?” the President asked.

The Director of the CIA, Jarret Pepper, who had been using his iPad to look up Hail in the CIA computers, finally added his voice to the conversation.

“I think that Hail’s drone technology has matured beyond what we can imagine. I mean, common sense would indicate that he didn’t have boots on the ground in North Korea. He doesn’t own an army; he owns a business. A business that has top-of-the-line laboratories, manufacturing facilities, shipping and God only knows what else. For all we know, Hail has his own munitions factory. After all, ninety-percent of his facilities are located in foreign countries. And the countries in which he does have brick and mortar locations are indebted to him for the power he provides them. A red carpet is probably rolled out every time one of Hail’s ships docks in these poor countries.”

General Ford added, “And he sells those reactors to the poor energy-starved countries at a discount. Hell, he may even give them away for free. There is no way for us to know the specifics. That’s why these third world countries provide access to their ports and free land where Hail can build his plants.”

The Director of National Intelligence, Eric Spearman asked, “What kind of drone sits in a pool and takes high-def videos. Is it like a magical invisible drone of some sort?” he asked cynically.

There was a lull in the conversation. Lots of questions had been asked and not many answers had been provided.

The President tapped her pen on her desk. She looked contemplative and then she said one word, “Why?”

“Why what?” Rogers asked.

“Why does Hail want to kill Kim Yong Chang? What’s his motivation?”

“Oh that,” Rogers said, looking down at the floor.

“What do you know, Trevor?” she asked.

“Well, Marshall Hail is kind of damaged goods.”

“Aren’t we all?” Spearman said, and then looked around the room nervously, as if he had divulged a personal secret.

“Hail lost his wife and both of his twin daughters in The Five,” Rogers told the group.

“Oh my lord,” Joanna Weston said, putting her hands up to her face and shaking her head from side to side.

The rest of the room paused for a moment of silence, which was a typical reaction when someone mentioned The Five.

The President then slowly lowered her hands from her face and took in a breath so deeply that it made her rise in her big chair. In a quick huff, she let out the breath and said more than asked, “So we are talking about revenge as the motivation; a billionaire that has his finger on the nuclear pulse of the planet and is out for a little payback. That has disaster written all over it. Does anyone agree?”

“I don’t know,” General Ford stated. “I mean if we were to look at Hail as a weapon, then he is only as dangerous as where he is pointed. If Hail has developed technology that can kill anyone, anywhere, at any time, then that could be a great benefit to our nation.”

The President looked at her General as if he was off his rocker.

The General looked mystified.

“Hail is an American,” the General said, as if Hail’s allegiance to the United States was absolute.

The CIA man, Pepper, looked at the screen of his iPad.

“His ships are registered Panamanian,” Pepper said. “His business is incorporated in Ireland. Hail doesn’t even own a home or property in America. Hell, Marshall Hail hasn’t entered the United States in over two years.”

“He did have a home here,” Rogers said, defending his friend. “But after his family was killed in The Five, after the funeral he never returned to the United States. But that doesn’t mean he is not an American. He simply lives on his ships. He has everything he needs on his ships.”

The President said, “But something doesn’t ring true with what we’ve been discussing. Rogers, you just said he has everything he needs. Let me ask you this. Why is a billionaire asking us to send him a check for a measly twenty-five million dollars?”

Rogers thought about it and remained silent.

“See what I mean?” the President said. “Hail needs something from us. I don’t know what it is, but the request for the money is an olive branch of some sort. He wants to open a dialogue. No, the man who has everything still needs something and I think we need to find out what that something is.”

The room was quiet. Either the men in the room were still thinking over what the President had just said or they were all thunk out.

But Joanna Weston, the new President of the United States, was not done thinking.

“Trevor, do you know if Hail told anyone else about this assassination? My fear is this will turn into a much bigger issue if Hail wants the North Koreans to know that he was the man who killed their General.”

Rogers shook his head.

“No, that doesn’t sound like Hail’s style. He understands the political fallout. Hail’s a business man. I’m sure he doesn’t want to paint a big target on his back, unless he’s forced into a corner.”

The President appeared to be pleased with that response. She considered the situation for a few moments. The CIA and NIA men went back to perusing their iPads. The General, being in the military his entire life, was accustomed to staring blankly at walls while decisions were being made. He appeared to be content doing so now.

“Rogers,” the President finally said. “I want you to contact Mr. Marshall Hail and tell him that I would be happy to hand him that check in person. Please have him provide you a date when he and I can have lunch together out in the rose garden. Tell him I would be happy to work my schedule around his visit.”

Rogers looked at the President. He couldn’t come up with a reason why it was a bad idea or why Hail would turn down such and invitation; unless Hail had become a recluse and was afraid to leave the sanctuary of his ship.

“I will do that immediately, Madam President.”

“Great. Now Gentlemen, if we are done with this issue then let’s move on to other matters.

And they did.