Operation Hail Storm

Makassar Strait ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

Hail was back in his big chair, back in the mission control center and back in charge.

The time in Kangdong, North Korea was about one in the morning. The Nucleus was entering the Makassar Strait. It was now only two hundred miles south of their destination Balikpapan City in East Kalimantan Indonesia. The time zone of the Nucleus in its current position and that of Kangdong were still the same.

With the success of their first mission, Hail had gotten some good sleep; downtime Hail would consider real sleep. His normal pattern of sleeping was problematic at best. He would fall asleep for an hour and then be jarred awake for absolutely no reason. Falling back asleep wasn’t a problem. All he had to do was read a book or watch TV and he would eventually drift off. But as soon as the next hour of REM clicked by, bang, back awake again. The pattern would repeat and repeat and repeat again until he was tired of the farce and got up and went on with another day of living.

But last night was the best sleep he had in years. He felt alive and exhilarated. Who would have guessed that the death of someone would bring so much life back into someone else?

His mission crew had reassembled for the final part of the mission, the extraction phase.

“Were there any problems during the day?” Hail asked his mission specialists.

Pierce Mercier, who had stayed most the day to observe the events that had taken place after Chang had gone down, reported, “No. None whatsoever. The response was just what we predicted. Slow. After several hours, the North Korean Security Police arrived and went through all the commonsense steps. They started by searching the grounds and of course found nothing. None of them wanted to venture into the thorny bushes where Led Zeppelin is hidden. They cuffed Chang’s girlfriends and his servants and yelled at them as they smacked them all around a little. Then they took them all away. The same men removed Chang’s body. The house was left as it was and there hasn’t been anyone back on the property since that time.”

“Good,” Hail said. He removed a mug of coffee from a holder on his chair and took a sip.

“What’s the status of Foghat?” Hail asked, setting the cup back in its hole.

Tanner Grant answered.

“I’m circling about two miles south, southwest of the compound. I made a couple of passes over the property and everything is nice and quiet. There is nothing moving down there but squirrels, chipmunks and some rats are licking up Chang’s blood under the table.”

“I hope they don’t get glass in their little tongues,” Hail quipped.

The rest of the crew chuckled. Gruesome, but funny. That was the mental space they were in. Each person in the room had their own reason for wanting Chang dead, but they all agreed on one thing. They all wanted Chang dead. And he was. The aftermath was just that. Simple Math. Lots of monsters, minus one monster, makes one less monster on the planet.

“Who wants to go first?” Hail asked.

“Let me get Aerosmith out of this tree before any wind comes up,” Knox suggested.

“OK with me,” Hail told him. “Feel free to clear Aerosmith when you’re ready.”

Knox pulled the control surfaces in front of him and brought up Aerosmith’s control panel on his monitor. He took a moment to check power levels, communications and then spun the rotors to make sure they were free of obstructions.

Hail brought up the video from Aerosmith’s camera onto the big screen above Knox. Just like all the other drones, the night vision camera was powered on and the screen was green.

“Damn am I sick of green,” Hail commented to no one in particular.

“And…” Knox sung out. The and was long and Knox drew it out for several seconds before he terminated the phrase with the words, “we’re up.”

“I think the fastest way out is forward,” Knox said to himself.

Knox worked the controllers, making tiny adjustments as he crept the aircraft forward inch by inch. It was critical to the mission that all three micro-drones made it back to Led Zeppelin intact. If they crashed and were discovered, then not only would the technology fall into the wrong hands, but the North Koreans would know that someone on the outside had killed their General. It was better all the way around if they suspected that Chang was killed by one of their own. The North Korean government operated like the ancient Roman government so many hundreds of years ago. If someone didn’t like their boss or they felt the need for advancement, they would simply kill their boss and move into the vacated position. So casting suspicion inside the North Korean government helped to fuel their own death machine. Paranoia was a great catalyst of death.

Hail had a great deal of respect for his pilots. He didn’t think he could do what Knox was doing right now. Take for example the tree. The pine needles were green. The screen was green. The tree was green. The night-vision optics were green. Hail didn’t understand how the young pilot could determine how to fly through minor shades of green. The air was one shade of green and the darker hue was that of a solid object that could turn Aerosmith into a very expensive weed-wacker.

“Almost out,” Knox said, afraid he might be jinxing himself. Twelve hours ago he had been flying B-52s out of the tree and that hadn’t turned out all that well.

“I’m out,” Knox reported. “Unless some huge frickin pterodactyl flies down and takes me away to feed to its babies, then the rest should be easy.”

And it was.

Less than sixty seconds later, Knox slowly lowered Aerosmith down onto the frame of Led Zeppelin and then locked it in place.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Knox boasted.

“Great job,” Hail told his pilot.

“Are you ready to go, Oli,” Hail asked Oliver Fox.

Fox had been the original pilot that had flown the micro-hub known as Styx onto the top of the power pole.

“I still have eyes on the house. I think it would be better if I stayed and watched until Stones gets out.”

“That makes sense,” Hail agreed.

Hail swiveled his chair in the direction of Paige Grayson.

“Are you ready to go, Paige?” Hail asked the pilot of Stones.

The young woman responded, “Yes, Sir. I’ve already run pre-flight diagnostics and everything looks good. The only problem we may have is the damn sprinklers are on, so I’m going to blow some water around.”

“Is the water going to cause any flight issues?” Hail asked.

Grayson shook her head and grabbed on to the controllers.

“It shouldn’t. We have tested the ground laying drones in these types of conditions. If it was raining cats and dogs, I would say wait it out. But all I have to do is gain four feet and I’m out of the water.”

“Let’s do it then,” Hail ordered.

Hail switched Stones’ camera over to the big screen. There wasn’t much to see until the craft rose a few inches above the grass line.

“Alright,” Grayson said, moving her controls, rotating the drone clockwise while it was still ascending. “Now we’re in business.”

Hail watched more shades of green dance around on the screen. He could tell that Stones was at least fifteen feet in the air and still climbing. The pool came into view and a moment later Stones was looking down on the white house below.

“This sure is a squirrely little drone to fly,” Grayson commented. “But it’s still fun.”

To Hail it was like he was watching the movie from yesterday in reverse. He now saw the grass and then the electric fence and then wild growth and then the four infrared diodes that glowed white on top of Led Zeppelin.

As smooth as silk, Grayson approached, hovered, set down, locked on and turned off the power to Stones.

“Two onboard,” Hail said.

“Alright, Oli. Let’s make it three for three.”

Since Styx was taking off from the easiest launch point, it only took Fox a couple of minutes to dock Styx to the back of Zeppelin.

“Not to minimize all your efforts,” Hail said in an apologetic tone, “but that was the easy part. Are we ready for the hard part?”

No one said no, so Hail pressed forward with the extraction.

“It’s important that we get the timing right on this,” Hail warned his crew.

“How much flight time do we have left on Led Zeppelin?” Hail asked Knox.

Knox looked over some battery data and responded, “About five minutes depending on how fast we ascend. If we climb slowly, maybe another minute.”

“That should work. Right, Renner?” Hail asked his analyst.

“It should,” Renner responded, having already done the math hours earlier. “I’m just concerned about the humidity.”

“Clarify?” Hail asked.

“The thicker the air, the harder the rotors have to beat to put air through the aircraft. Harder means more power and that means it will consume the battery faster. I still think we’re going to be OK.”

“Shana, how are the comms?” Hail asked his communications specialist.

The attractive young lady checked the strength of the satellite feed and replied, “We are looking good. We are five by four and the atmospheric disturbances are minimal.”

Believing he had covered all the bases, Hail announced, “OK, then let’s do this thing. Blow the balloons on Zeppelin.”

Knox pressed an icon labeled TETHER LAUNCH.

Hidden behind the mounds of Flying Dragon bushes, a hatch in the middle of Led Zeppelin opened and a helium balloon began to slowly fill. After thirty seconds, the black balloon had filled to the size of a watermelon. Three plastic fingers no larger than toothpicks retracted and let the balloon rise into the sky. A few seconds later, a second balloon began to fill on top of the drone. Another thirty seconds and the second balloon was released into the sky.

“Balloons are away,” Knox reported.

“What height did we agree on?” Hail asked Renner.

“Hundred feet should be good,” Renner responded confidently.

“You heard him, Knox,” Hail said. “Spool the line out to a hundred feet.”

“Will do,” Knox said, watching a red digital meter on his monitor count upward from five.

On top of Led Zeppelin, a monofilament line unreeled and the dark balloons disappeared into the night. Each of the balloons were connected to one another by the same line, creating a triangle of heavy-duty line that would soon be floating a hundred feet over the top of Zeppelin.

The mission room was quiet. Everyone was doing their job and it didn’t require a lot of chatter.

Knox watched the meter as it finally reached a hundred and he pressed the icon STOP on the reel control.

“Tethers are in place,” Knox reported.

“We all understand that we only get one shot at this. Right?” Hail warned his crew.

The question didn’t require an answer.

Hail told Grant, “As we discussed during the mission plan, we need to bring in Foghat as slow as possible. We can’t break the line or Zeppelin is screwed.”

“Understood,” Grant said.

“Beginning the pass,” Grant announced, disconnecting Foghat’s auto-pilot and taking manual control of the drone. “We’re one mile out and will be on target in two minutes.”

“Let’s spin up Zeppelin,” Hail told Knox.

“Rotors are tuning,” Knox replied, pressing his index fingers into the triggers of each control stick.

“Coming up,” Knox added.

Hail and the rest of his team watched the green and fuzzy video on the large screen as Led Zeppelin cleared its hide and began to climb into the thick Korean night.

“Half a mile out,” Grant reported.

“Hundred feet and climbing,” Knox added.

In Hail’s mind, he began calculating the speed of the drone, the distance to intercept and the climb rate of Zeppelin.

“What’s your altitude, Grant?” Hail inquired.

“I’m at nine hundred feet and descending,” Foghat’s pilot responded.

Hail looked down at his right monitor and pulled up Foghat’s video control panel. He touched his finger to the screen. The video feed being sent from the nose camera of Foghat popped up on the large screen above the crew to Hail’s left.

“I’m at three hundred feet and climbing,” Knox said. “Man, this thing is climbing like a pig,” he added, looking concerned. “You were right about the humidity, Renner.”

Hail spun his chair around toward his flight analyst, Gage Renner.

“How much flight time does Knox have left, Gage?” Hail asked.

Renner glanced over Zeppelin’s flight data, energy reserves, power on the rotors and he looked troubled.

Almost imperceptibly, Renner shook his head just once and then looked up and Hail and shook it again.

“Not looking good. Maybe thirty seconds of spin time left.”

“I’m at four hundred feet,” Knox stated.

“Level it off,” Hail ordered. “Grant, you have to get in there fast. Zeppelin is going to drop in about twenty seconds.”

“Roger that,” Grant said, pushing both controllers forward, putting Foghat into a controlled dive.

“I have a visual on the diodes and I am plotting an intercept,” he added.

On the big screen, two white dots glowed brightly on the dark green screen. They were separated by several meters and appeared to be hovering in the darkness. Each of the balloons had tiny infrared diodes affixed at their bases. The light spectrum from the diodes could only be seen by the night vision camera on Foghat. If not for these points of reference, Led Zeppelin and its snatch rig would be invisible to the approaching drone. The pickup procedure was nothing new. As Renner had explained during the mission planning session, the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS) was developed by the inventor Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s. But it had never been used on a drone before. Making it even more complicated was the fact that it had never been used on a drone to retrieve another drone.

Grant’s task was to drop the hook from under Foghat and then fly Foghat between the balloons. The hook would catch the line suspended between the balloons that were tied to the hovering Zeppelin below. Once the snatch had taken place, then Zeppelin would be reeled up to Foghat’s belly and secured for the flight home.

“This is going to be tight,” Grant warned. “Keep it still, Alex,” he told his fellow pilot.

“You have about ten seconds of still left and then you will have to scoop this thing off the ground,” Knox shot back.

“Almost there,” Grant said in a strained tone. He began feverishly working the control sticks, first one way and then the other; making tiny adjustments as he zeroed in on the blinking lights.

“Beginning to lose power,” Knox called out. “Starting to descend.”

“Hold it steady, just another few seconds,” Grant pleaded.

“Hook deployed,” Grant announced, “and passing in three, two, one…”

Everyone in the room, including Tanner Grant, held their breath.

The video being sent from Led Zeppelin was still for an instant and then it went haywire. The video turned into a pixelated green hue of static, but still presented a sense of motion.

“Got it!” Grant yelled. “Switching to the belly camera.”

“Out of power and shutting down,” Knox said. “I hope you have me Tanner or Led Zeppelin will be a bucket of bolts in a few seconds.”

“I got you, man,” Grant assured him. “Look.”

With Knox’s control panel now dark, he looked up at the big screen above him and saw Led Zeppelin being reeled in from below Foghat.

“Yeah, hell yeah!” Knox yelled, jumping to his feet and clapping his hands together. He then shook both of his fists in the air in victory. “Yeah, we good, we good, we got it going on!”

Hail watched Knox do some sort of circular happy dance in the confines of his control station. Knox smiled and shook his hips and worked his arms.

Hail couldn’t help but laugh at the young man. It was as if he had caught a touchdown pass in the Super bowl.

“Work it,” Shana called out. “Shake that bumpidy-bump, Knox.”

Grant would have loved to have taken place in the festivities, but he was still flying Foghat and trying to clear the drone from the theater.

Over the mission control speakers, the voice of Dallas Stone came on the comm.

“Hi Skipper, just an FYI. We have verified the takeoff of two Chengdu J-7s from Hwangju Airfield in Pyongyang. If they spotted Foghat on their radar, then you have about two minutes before they’re on you.”

Hail took in the information and quickly did his best to interpret its meaning. The Chengdu J-7s were MiG-21 clones made by the People's Republic of China. The Chinese jet was built as a fighter interceptor and easily had the firepower to turn Foghat into fog. But Hail also knew that all of his main drones were built with the latest stealth capabilities. Radar absorbing paint, weird surfaces that bounced radar waves harmlessly into the stratosphere and his drones flew low and at subsonic speeds. They left only a hint of emission footprints in the sky. Hail seriously doubted that the scramble of the Chengdu’s had anything to do with his operation, but it was a good thing to know.

Hail spoke into the room, knowing that the room’s sensitive microphones would pick up his voice and transmit his words back to Dallas in the security center.

“Do you have a vector on jets, yet?”

“No Sir,” Dallas replied. “They just took off. I’ll update you in a few minutes.”

“Didn’t you say they would be here in two minutes?” Hail asked.

“Wait one. I’m watching their flight path as we speak.”

“Thanks, Dallas,” Hail said in a calm tone.

For this mission, days earlier several micro-drones similar to Stones had been deployed at Taetan Airfield, Onchon Airport, Pyongyang Sunan International Airport, as well as the field that Dallas had just referred to, Hwangju Airfield. All of those airfields were close to Pyongyan, therefore close to Kangdong. Hail didn’t expect an interdiction from these locations, but better safe than sorry.

“Let’s keep Foghat low and slow until we get some distance between us and Kangdong,” Hail told Grant.

“Roger that,” Grant confirmed. “Dropping down to two-hundred feet. I will be threading through the hills for a while.”

“That’s fine,” Hail told him. “I mean what else do you have to do tonight?”

“Good point,” Grant agreed. “I was going to get in some time in on the flight simulator, but I think that would be superfluous at his point.”

Dallas came over the speakers again.

“False alarm, Skipper. The J’s are headed south toward Chollima.”

“Thanks for being on it, anyway,” Hail said.

Hail took a sip from his cold coffee, made a face and stuck it back in the hole.

“I’ll be in my quarters if any of you need me,” Hail told his crew. “Great job everyone.”

I wonder if I have any new email, Hail thought as he exited the mission center.