Operation Hail Storm

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

“These are the people I wanted you to meet,” the President said as she and Hail entered the round room from the east door of the Rose Garden.

Hail saw a smiling Trevor Rogers to his right, standing in front of a well-worn leather chair. Trevor gave Hail a told you I would see you again nod and smile.

Standing in the middle of the room was a big man. He was wearing a dark uniform and just about every inch of the material was embellished with a colorful doo-dad or shining medal. The grey-haired man held out his hand toward Hail.

“Hi, Marshall. My name is Quentin Ford. You probably don’t know me, but I knew your Dad. He was a good man.”

Well, at least someone thought he was a good something, because he sucked as a Dad, Hail thought to himself.

Hail allowed his hand to be crushed by the General. He smiled and thanked the man for nerve damage.

There were two couches in the room that faced one another and two men were standing in front of each one. Hail thought it looked territorial, like if they moved to greet him they might lose their place on the couch and then have to stand the rest of the day.

Therefore, Hail walked over and stuck out his hand to a tall man, grey hair, good bones, wearing a grey suit. The man shook Hail’s hand almost reluctantly, as if Hail had cooties.

“Jarret Pepper, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” the man said sternly.

Hail felt like saying, Marshall Hail, King of the World, or some such nonsense, but decided on “Marshall Hail”. Hail took an immediate dislike to the CIA guy, but that was easy because the man was already trying to be disliked.

Hail turned to the man guarding the other couch. He was the opposite of his couch guarding counterpart. This was a short man, no hair, bad bones and he was wearing a dark black suit. Unlike Jarret Pepper, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency this man smiled cajolingly and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hail. My name is Eric Spearman and I’m with the NIA.”

Hail turned to look at all the folks in the room and said, “NIA, FBI, CIA and the General represents the good old USA, so I think we have all the acronyms covered.”

Hail said it in the way of a joke to break the ice. Everyone laughed except for the CIA guy.

Instead of sitting behind her desk, the President walked to the other side of the room where two high-backed peach colored chairs were positioned. To Hail, the chairs looked like something his great grandmother would have owned. The two chairs, along with the two couches, created a somewhat intimate and informal seating arrangement. Joanna Weston motioned with her hand for Hail to take the peach chair next to hers. The men guarding their spots in front of the couch plopped down and Hail’s friend and the general both sat down as well, each of them selecting the end of one of the two couches.

With everyone in place and all comfy, the President started off with, “Mr. Hail and I just had a nice working business lunch. He is aware that we all know that he and his crew, or staff, or however he would like to refer to them, were indeed responsible for the death of North Korea’s Kim Yong Chang. To get directly to the point, which is the way I like to do things, Mr. Hail has requested the assistance of our combined talents to help him locate the remaining persons on the FBI’s top ten list.”

Pepper was the first to speak up.

“Why the FBI’s list? What about the CIAs list?”

Hail looked at him for a moment, wondering if the question was rhetorical. When no one said anything, Hail responded, “As far as I know, you don’t post a top ten list. Heck, you don’t even post how many people you employ, even though your agency is supported with tax payer’s dollars.”

Trevor Rogers smiled. The General smiled. The banker looking guy had his nose in his iPad. The President just looked annoyed, like, Oh… here we go.

But Pepper looked pissed.

The CIA man checked his tone before speaking and leveled it.

“Much of what we do is secret, as you well know, Mr. Hail, so divulging how many people we employ is essentially providing our enemies with our troop count, so to speak.”

Pepper waited for a reaction. When none came he asked, “How many people work for you, Mr. Hail?”

“Thousands,” Hail said.

“No, I mean, how many people work with you on this new, ah… how should we call it… pastime that you have undertaken?”

“Thousands,” Hail repeated.

Pepper made a face, part annoyed, part irritated.

Hail stared at him blankly.

“Well, let me change the subject a little bit,” the General interjected. “How did you kill Chang? I think that’s the question on a lot of our minds.”

“Poison,” Hail said.

The General responded, “Well, son, we guessed it was poison with the video and all, but we were wondering specifically, what was the delivery device?”

“Orange juice,” Hail told them honestly.

“Well, son, we determined it was in the drink, but I guess what I’m driving at is how did you get the poison into the orange juice?”

“We had a spy working in Chang’s compound who put it in the orange juice,” Hail said.

“He’s lying,” Pepper blurted out. “There is no way he had anyone in that compound and we all know it.”

The General looked at Hail like his father used to look at him, as if his son had just disappointed him… again.

“Well, he’s got a point, son,” the General said.

Hail was getting tired of being called son by the General and he was tired having to explain anything to Pepper.

“What difference does it make to any of you how it was done? Or even more to the point, what difference does it make to you how it will be done in the future. All you have to know is that it will be done in the future. The same way we got to Kim Yong Chang. You guys give me the location of the next person you want to disappear and we will make it happen.”

No one said anything.

“Isn’t that what you want?” Hail asked.

“We want to be part of the process,” Pepper said.

“That’s why I am here,” Hail said. “So…”

“No, I mean we want to be part of the process. We want to have someone on your team. Someone on your end of the wire that works for us,” Pepper declared.

“No way,” Hail said immediately.

“To bad,” the President said. “We really wanted to work with you on this… this… project,” she decided on.

“But right now, Mr. Hail, we have more of a pieces problem than we have a people problem,” the General said.

“What do you mean?” Hail asked.

“It would be better if Pepper had one of his men brief you on it. Hopefully you can help. And if you can help us out of this jam, then hopefully we can help you,” the General said.

Pepper stood up and walked toward the waiting room, known as the outer office. Pepper opened the door and said something to someone on the other side. A minute later a woman walked in.

The first thing that went through Hail’s mind when he saw the woman was this was the CIAs secret weapon.

She was so beautiful that everyone in the room looked downright ugly in comparison.

Hail tried not to look at her, or more to the point leer at her, but it was a difficult task at best.

She reminded him of a movie star he had seen in an old movie. Nicole Kidman popped into his mind, but this lady was like the porn-star version of Nicole Kidman. She was tall, she had curves that went on for miles and she moved like a panther. She was wearing some sort of full black body stocking outfit. Over the stocking she wore a short straight black skirt that hugged her frame. Over the upper part the stocking, she wore a tight black vest that did little to obscure her ample breasts. The body stocking must have been put on by unzipping it from the front and then stepping into it, because a good four inches of the zipper remained unzipped showing off the woman’s cleavage. Her red hair and brilliant white skin looked amazing against all of the black. But Hail guessed she already knew that.

The woman walked up to Hail and hung out her hand.

Hail took it and shook it gently.

She allowed it to be shaken.

“Are you Pepper’s man that the General said was going to update me,” He asked playfully.

“Yes I am,” the woman said confidently. “My name is Kara Ramey and I catch bad guys.”

“My name is Marshall Hail and I kill bad guys.”

Kara shook Hail’s hand harder and said, “It sounds like we’ll make a good team.”

Hail didn’t know what she meant by that. Hail already had a team and he wasn’t looking for any new players.

She let go of his hand and smiled at him. Something was going through her mind. Her eyes were piercing. They were set a perfect distance apart, bright green; a vivid shade of green he couldn’t believe was real. He thought about accidently poking her in the eye to see if she was wearing contacts, but he couldn’t think of a way to nonchalantly pull that off.

Nothing about this woman added up. Not her timely introduction to the meeting; or her looks; or her implied notion of being on his team. This woman, this vogue model was a setup of some type and Hail knew he had to stay on his toes. It was so damn difficult to register this face, this body, this female package with a hardcore CIA agent. Hail half expected a camera man to jump out from a closet and tell him he was being punked.

“Sit down everyone,” the President requested.

Kara made a little scooting gesture with her hand toward Pepper, who then moved to the center of the couch. This allowed Kara to sit on the end of the couch, closest to Hail’s chair.

Kara was holding a rolled up photograph in her right hand. She handed it to Hail.

Hail unrolled the paper and looked at it.

“This man’s name is Victor Kornev. Have you ever heard of him?” she asked.

Hail looked at the color eight by ten photograph. He shook his head and began to hand it back to the CIA woman.

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “What if I told you that he supplied the terrorist with the missile that killed your family?”

Hail pulled back the photograph and unrolled it and looked at it again, this time much more intently.

“Are you sure about this?” Hail asked.

“We can’t be a hundred percent certain,” Kara said, “but is ninety-five percent close enough for you?”

“I would kill this guy at fifty-one percent,” Hail said in a dead serious tone. “How do you know?” he asked.

“How did you kill Chang?” Kara responded.

Hail remained silent. He continued to stare at the photograph as if he could kill the guy with pure mind control. He was starting to understand how this new game was going to be played. You don’t get something for nothing; his Dad had always told him. Currently, this was the most profound advice his Dad had ever given him, other than to change his underwear every day.

Realizing that this line of conversation was not working out well, Hail decided to change tactics and take the high ground.

“The General mentioned that you had a problem with ― what is it? Pieces and parts. What’s that all about?”

Pepper jumped in before Kara could answer.

“It’s about working together as a team to prevent the United States from becoming nuclear target practice. That’s what it’s about.”

“Seems a little melodramatic,” Hail stated. Hail took out his phone and snapped a photo of the photograph before rolling it up and handing back to Kara.

“It may be a little on the melodramatic side of things,” the General said, “but there is some bite in that dog. The gist of it is that Kara created a communications link that allows us to see everything that goes across Kornev’s cell phone. Kornev had completed a deal with Kim Yong Chang, before you killed Chang, to deliver several ICBMs to North Korea.”

The General paused for effect.

Hail looked passive and hard to read.

The General continued.

“Well, Marshall, those missiles are already on their way to North Korea. And short of carpet bombing the entire country, we only have one way to stop the North Koreans from obtaining the missiles.”

“And how is that, General?” Hail asked.

“You,” Kara answered.

Hail thought about it for a second and said, “I would rather kill Kornev.”

“You say that, Mr. Hail ― I’m sorry, Marshall,” the President corrected herself. “But you don’t believe that. We are talking about a radical country that already possess nukes. Obtaining ICBMs provides them with the means to fire them at the United States. No matter what your convictions happen to be at this point in time, I can’t believe that your sensibilities are that skewed.”

Hail didn’t like any of this one little bit. This was exactly why he avoided alliances and strived to be completely self-sufficient. When you worked with the government, it was inevitable that you would get sucked into their shit. And Hail didn’t need their shit. He had a big o’l pile of his own shit he had to take care of.

Hail let out a soft groan and rolled his eyes.

“What’s the deal with these missile parts?” he asked, not really wanting to know. Maybe he could figure out a deal killer if they describe the situation.

Kara answered, “Kornev was able to dig up retired replacement parts for the Russian R-29RMU Sineva. This is one of the ten longest range ICBMs in the world. Its range is 11, 547 kilometers. The distance between North Korea and the United States is 10,337 kilometers. Are you starting to see a connection?”

Hail shook his head penitently, regretting he had ever made this trip to Washington.

Kara continued.

“Kornev’s real expertise is not weapons, per se. His real talent is the delivery of weapons. From the intelligence we’ve gathered, Kornev is shipping hundreds of pieces of the missiles separately, using dozens of planes, boats, ships, fishing vessels, luxury vessels and submarines. It’s brilliant because there isn’t one shipment that is a deal killer. Even if we were to stop a dozen shipments, enough parts would still get through to build at least a few missiles.”

“OK, well, right there you said it,” Hail responded. “There is not really anything you can do or I can do. I certainly can’t stop all the shipments.”

“You are missing the point,” Kara said. “We don’t need to stop all the parts from getting into North Korea. All we need to know is where the parts are going.”

Hail started to see the logic.

“So all the parts are going to end up in the same place,” Hail said, thinking aloud.

“Yep,” Kara said. “And that’s where they are going to be assembled or moved to an assembly area somewhere else.”

“Well, where is that area?” Hail asked.

“We don’t know,” Kara said. “That’s one of the reasons we need your help.”

“How am I supposed to help with that?” Hail asked.

“We need you to track the parts to the warehouse, or wherever they take them.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? You already told me that the parts are coming in from every direction. How are you or your agency going to track them all?”

“We don’t have to track them all,” Kara said. “All we have to do is track one of the parts.”

Hail thought about the situation for a moment.

“You know where one of the parts is coming in. Don’t you?” Hail probed.

“Yep,” Kara said. “One of the second stage sections of a missile is in the hull of a Chinese fishing trawler called the Huan Yue that is steaming through the Sea of Okhotsk right now.”

“Huan Yue,” Hail repeated. “Doesn’t that mean joyful or happy?”

“Why, yes it does, Mr. Hail. Are you good with languages?” Kara asked, thinking they had something in common.

“Not really, I just remembered eating at a place called Huan Yue and their food sucked. I was neither joyful nor happy.”

The President let out a little laugh.

Hail looked at Pepper. The man was sitting on the edge of the sofa. His face kept twitching. It was obvious that Pepper didn’t like his pretty female CIA person doing all the talking, but it was going pretty well, so Pepper was keeping it zipped.

Hail looked at Kara. She was done talking now, at least for the moment. He liked the way she talked. Direct and to the point. She didn’t posture or make the situation any bigger or smaller than it actually was. She didn’t try to jam in details that would only obscure the focus of the point she was trying to make. Her voice was nice to listen to, as well. It wasn’t husky, but it carried a certain amount of weight to it. Her tone was neither biting nor nasally, but it was crisp and distinct. Her S sounds were precise and controlled. Her diction was crystal clear. Hail detected a hint of someone who spoke more than one language. Maybe more than a dozen languages. When he looked at her and watched the way she spoke, he was certain she had a very talented mouth and tongue; the basics of speaking many dialects.

Everyone appeared to be waiting on Hail to say something or suggest something or agree to something. But at that exact moment there was nothing on the table. There had been a request made by the United States to help the CIA with their missile dilemma, and Hail had made a request for the CIA intelligence group to help him track down more people who needed to die.

Pepper decided to frame the deal and said, “So you need our help and we need yours. Do you think that you can put together an operation that can track this missile section on the Huan Yue until it reaches its final destination inside North Korea?”

Hail mulled it over.

“How many days until the Huan Yue reaches North Korea?” he asked, trying to sound noncommittal.

“Four days,” Pepper said. “Maybe less.”

Hail shook his head. “That’s really tight, almost un-do-able.”

“We would like to offer Ms. Ramey’s services to help with the logistics,” the President told Hail.

“That’s a gracious offer, but if I decide to move forward with this operation; once we have the specifics on the where the Huan Yue is going to dock, then we can take it from there.”

The President looked frustrated, as though her point was clear, yet not understood.

“Marshall,” she said. “We want Ms. Ramey to be part of your team. Wherever it is you are going back to… Madagascar wasn’t it? Well, we would like Ms. Ramey to go to Madagascar as well. We need someone working for us who is also working next to you. We need a measure of control in operations that we feel are extremely sensitive. If you require information or intelligence, we would like Ms. Ramey to vet the request and contact her office for that information.”

Hail looked irritated.

The President sensed his consternation and tried to smooth things over.

“It’s not that we don’t trust you. But we can’t allow a private citizen to simply request top secret CIA information without any type of review or coordination. After all, some of the persons you may be targeting might already part of a current CIA operation.”

“But I don’t understand why you need someone physically on my team.”

“Because that’s the deal,” Pepper said bluntly. “We either have someone on the inside monitoring your missions, your planning, your requests for intelligence, the execution of your missions, or we don’t want anything to do with it.”

Hail was very close to washing his hands of these people and catching a cab back to the airport, but he knew he needed them more than they needed him. They probably felt that he was more a problem to them than an asset.

Pepper said, “Now, if there is someone other than Ms. Ramey you prefer, then we could work that out. But I want you to understand that she is the best we have. She knows most of the players that you are going to come in contact with. She is also an expert in many languages. We could give you someone else, but that would be second or third party information you would be getting from those agents. Kara has personally interacted with the principles and she knows what she’s doing. We trust her and hope you will as well.”

Kara looked at Pepper like, who the hell is this guy? As long as she had known the man, he had never said a single positive thing about her, let alone brag about her in front of the POTUS.

Hail looked at Kara, who was looking at Pepper. It was just so damn difficult to take this supermodel for real. Hail did his best to separate his stereotyped preconceptions from what Pepper had just told him, but failed to do so. As far as he was concerned, the vote was still out on this woman. The only way Kara Ramey could convince Hail of her usefulness was by her actions. After all, her boss had his own agenda.

Hail was not a stupid man. He understood that Pepper wanted to get Ramey into the mix so she could report Hail’s best kept secrets back to the CIA. That wasn’t going to happen. Kara could go back to his ship, but she wouldn’t be a very happy supermodel once she discovered the restrictions she would be under.

“Is that it?” Hail asked the group.

“Well, you didn’t give us an answer,” Pepper said.

“If we have four days then we need to leave now. Do you have any bags?” Hail asked Kara.

“No, I really don’t need anything. I assume they have stores in Madagascar. Right?”

“Right,” Hail smiled.

The President picked up her desk phone. Without dialing any numbers, she said into the handset, “Please bring in Marine Two to take Mr. Hail plus one back to Andrews.”

Hail looked at a smiling and radiant Kara Ramey.

He could think of worse secret agents to have aboard his ship.

Hands had been shaken and good lucks had been thrown all around.

Now Hail found himself standing on the back lawn of the Whitehouse next to his boyhood friend Trevor Rogers, waiting for the helicopter. About thirty yards away and well out of earshot, Pepper and Ramey were having a conversation.

Hail looked at the two and could only imagine what was being said. He could hear Pepper in his head.

Kara, I want to know everything about Hail that you can get your hands on. I want to know about his technology, about his people, size, numbers, dollars, research, production, anything and everything you can get your hands on. I want a full update every day. I want schematics and designs and blueprints and sketches and basically everything about everything that Hail has ever done since the moment of his birth.

Or something like that.

Hail was certain Pepper wasn’t telling her to go and have a good time and get a tan and bring him back a hand whittled set of Ring-tailed lemurs. The CIA was the CIA, after all, and they were not hard to figure out. They did CIA stuff.

“I wish you could have stayed longer,” Rogers said. “I thought we could have had some dinner and catch a ball game or something.”

“Maybe next time,” Hail said.

“There isn’t going to be a next time. Is there?” Rogers asked. “I mean you haven’t been back in years. When do you plan to come back?”

Hail didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so,” Rogers said flatly.

“Well, what about you taking a boat ride someday?” Hail offered. “You know, when you don’t have a month of important FBI stuff to do.”

Rogers laughed. “I think you might be back before that happens. Mine is not a job you can just leave for a month.”

“I didn’t think so,” Hail said. “And mine really isn’t either.”

Rogers looked thoughtfully at his friend.

“And what is your job these days, Marshall?”

“Nuclear power for the downtrodden masses. Penny’s for power,” Hail said, as if he was reading a Hail Industries pamphlet.

Rogers shook his head slightly and looked disappointed.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Rogers asked.

“It’s as good a job as any.”

“No, I mean your new job is killing people. Doesn’t that bother you at some level?”

Hail looked his friend square in the face and said, “It revives me, Trevor. It brings me back from the dead. It might be the only reason I’m still around and haven’t jumped off my ship on some moonless lonely night. I don’t know if that’s something you can understand or not.”

Rogers said nothing.

The lull in conversation was filled with the flap, flap, flap sound of approaching rotor blades.

The private conversation between the CIA folks broke up and Kara walked over and stood next to Hail and Rogers. Pepper headed back up the lawn and toward the Whitehouse. He didn’t wave goodbye.

Kara looked nervous and said, “I hate flying.”

Wow, Hail thought. The beautiful tough CIA woman is afraid of something. Not the first card he would have played if he had been in her shoes. Best not to show any faults until you were firmly in place.

“I’m afraid of flying as well, but only on commercial aircraft,” Hail told her sympathetically. “Don’t worry. The Marine guys fly these things in their sleep.”

Kara said nothing and Hail let it go.

The calm day turned into a wild windstorm as the Black Hawk touched down in front of them.

Hail shook Roger’s hand and yelled, “Take care of yourself my friend.”

Rogers said something that Hail couldn’t quite make out, but he shook Roger’s hand and nodded his head none the less.

Hail and Ramey turned and ducked their heads and began walking hunchbacked toward the door that had been pulled open on the helicopter. Ramey used her right hand to uselessly corral her mass of red hair. The same marine lieutenant was waiting at the door and he offered his hand to Kara, who took it and stepped into the aircraft. The soldier then offered his hand to Hail who didn’t take it and also stepped into the aircraft.

Both were seated, buckled and the door was drawn shut. Through the tinted glass, Hail waved at Rogers as the chopper spun up and began to rise into the Washington haze.

Kara startled Hail by reaching over and clutching his arm as she nervously looked out the window. Hail thought the woman actually looked terrified and he didn’t think she was acting one little bit. As they got higher, her grip tightened. It was a short ride to Andrews so Hail decided to allow her to cling to him. He wondered if he would have said something if Pepper was the one grabbing his arm. Pretty women got all the breaks.

In less than five minutes, Marine Two touched down next to Hail’s jet. The door slid open and Hail and Ramey disembarked.

Kara looked toward the hanger to her left and then began to walk toward it. Hail caught her elbow and instead of screaming over the howl of the Black Hawk, he pointed toward the Gulfstream to their right. Kara began shaking her head, no. The Black Hawk lifted off and Hail nodded his head, yes. For a moment, Hail thought that Ramey was going to make a break for it and dash across the tarmac and hide inside the hanger. But she didn’t. Reluctantly, she began walking toward the sleek jet and Hail released her elbow.

When she was certain the Black Hawk was far enough away so she could be heard, she said, “I hate flying. Can’t we take a train or a ship or something?”

“Is that how you get around on the CIA’s dime?” Hail asked.

“No, but I do a lot a Xanax before I fly. Don’t suppose you have any?”

If I did I would have overdosed on it years ago, Hail thought.

Hail was getting tired of reassuring the CIA agent and therefore said, “If you don’t want to go, I understand. Just give me your phone number and I will call for the information we need.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Kara said, all of sudden finding the courage to walk up the jet’s stairs.

Hail followed her up and closed the door behind them.

“Wow,” Kara said. “Nice digs!”

“It beats flying commercial,” Hail said, sounding a little ashamed of the opulence of the aircraft.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a plane like this. I mean when I went on trips with my folks, we went first class, but this ― this is first class.”

Hail didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there waiting for her to sit down somewhere.

“Where should we sit?” Kara asked.

Hail gestured toward the CEO flight seats to their left.

“I really like to sit in the flight seats when we take off or land. Just in case it gets bumpy,” Hail said.

Kara didn’t look like she liked the word bumpy all that much. She sat down in a chair, away from the window and facing forward. Instead of sitting across from her so they were looking at one another, Hail selected the window seat next to Kara’s.

Kara fuddled around with her seat belt, until she was sure that everything was snapped and in place. Hail noticed that her right eye was twitching a little, a nervous tick of some sort to be sure. Besides that, Ms. Ramey still looked good. Really good.

“Where should I put my purse?” she asked.

Hail flipped opened a compartment between their seats and she dropped it in. Hail then released the padded top and it fell shut.

“So you said that you have your own pilots that fly your planes?” Kara asked.

Hail felt that the question was more than just idle conversation.

“Yes, I do.” Hail said.

“And they are all great pilots, I assume,” Kara said with a nervous laugh.

“I trust my life with them, and I can’t say that about just any old pilot.”

Kara winced when she heard the engines begin to start.

There was a click of an intercom being activated and a voice above them said, “Hi Marshall. We have received clearance to taxi and should be in the air in about five minutes.”

“Sounds good,” Hail said into the air. “Let’s make sure we keep things extra smooth for our guest here. She doesn’t like flying.”

“No problem-o,” the voice responded.

The plane started moving forward in a tight right turn and pulled away from the hanger area. The engine’s tone rose in pitch as they strained against the still air to push the aircraft forward.

“The pilot sounds so young,” Kara said.

“Would you like to meet him?” Hail asked.

Kara shrugged indifference.

Hail pressed a button on the side of his chair. A video link to the pilot appeared on the screen mounted to the bulkhead wall in front of them.

The camera angle inside the cockpit was shooting the back of the pilot’s head. Hail and Kara could see the entrance to the taxiway through the windshield of the jet. The plane completed its turn and began to pick up speed as it neared the head of the runway.

“Is this a bad time to talk?” Hail asked his pilot.

“No, I’m good,” the pilot responded.

The plane came to a stop and waited for final clearance to take off. Hail could hear radio chatter from the tower.

“This is Kara Ramey,” Hail said by way of introduction. “She will be staying with us for a while.”

Hail reached down and switched the camera angle so it was now looking at the pilot’s face from a camera on the plane’s dash.

“Nice to meet you,” said Daniel Chavez, looking into the camera and giving a little wave.

Kara looked disturbed and leaned over to Hail and whispered, “He looks so young. How old is he.”

“How old are you?” Hail asked Chavez.

“Almost seventeen next month,” Chavez said, smiling into the camera and giving a thumbs up.

“You have got to be shitting me?” Kara said in a stunned tone.

“It’s OK,” Hail tried to comfort her. “He has probably two hundred hours flying this bird. Well, simulated hours,” he corrected himself.

“What are you talking about?” Kara asked, panic rising in her tone.

Hail wondered how much he should tell the CIA woman, but he was having fun with the situation and decided to play it out a little longer.

“Well, this is only like the second time Chavez has ever flown this plane. I change pilots a lot as more of them become certified on this model.”

“Oh, good,” Kara said, letting out a big breath. “So there is another pilot in the cockpit that is more experienced.”

Hail let air escape through his teeth. “Well, about that. There are no pilots on this plane.”

“What do you mean,” Kara asked, sure that Hail was trying to mess with her mind. “I see him right there. The seventeen year-old that doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.”

Hail made an I’m sorry expression and shook his head. “No, what you are looking at is a flight control center about twelve-thousand miles from here. That’s where Chavez is located. He’s flying this plane via remote control.”

Kara began to frantically fumble for the latch on her seatbelt.

“I’m out of here!” she screamed.

Hail clicked off the video and the big screen went black.

He reached over and placed his hands on Kara’s hands. She yanked at the seatbelt latch and Hail caught her hands and held them still.

“No time,” Hail told her.

The plane’s engines wound up and the high pitch of the turbines screamed outside the Gulfstream’s windows. The brakes on the jet were released and the plane accelerated forward, pinning Hail and Kara to their chairs.

“I hate flying!” Kara cried out as the jet reached rotate speed and the wheels left the runway.