Operation Hail Storm

Sea of Japan ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

“We’ve got eyes on them,” Alex Knox reported.

Renner was sitting in the big Captain Kirk’s chair in the mission control center. He looked at the video on the big monitor being streamed from the drone named Electric Light Orchestra or ELO for short. Since there was only one drone being manned, that meant that the rest of the crew in the room could turn their attention to the monitor as well.

The video was not high quality. The lack of light and the distances involved were difficult for the tiny camera on ELO to negotiate. Before they had released the drone to be flown into action, Eric Rugmon had warned Hail that the tiny lens only let in a tiny amount of light. That meant that night operations would be a challenge. It was a good thing to know, but both the men understood that they really didn’t have much of a choice.

“So we have a military looking guy and a mafia looking guy dressed all in black standing on the dock,” Renner said to the room. “And in the background we have a big truck with a big crane and long and low trailer. Well, this looks like what we expected. The next thing they should do is pull the missile part out of the boat and set it on that trailer.”

A rumbling of agreement went around the room.

The crew on the Nucleus watched the truck start backing up, bringing both the crane and the trailer closer to ship.

“How is our power on ELO?” Hail asked Knox.

“Good. We are around ninety-one percent.”

There was a loud clanging sound of steel against steel and the door to the mission control room opened.

Marshall Hail walked in and Kara Ramey followed.

Renner looked somewhat disappointed. He had been fully in charge of the mission to drop ELO onto the top of the Huan Yue and he was starting to get into the ‘being in charge’ thing.

Renner slid out of the big chair and greeted Hail with a handshake and Kara with a smile.

Kara looked around the room.

“What do you think?” Renner asked.

“Why does this all look so familiar?” she asked, making a slow 360 degree turn.

“Did you ever see the TV show Star Trek?” Hail asked.

“Yes, a long time ago. Is this the captain’s chair from Star Trek?” she asked, touching the armrest of the huge chair.

“Yes it is,” Hail confirmed. “Well an updated copy of it.”

“Why Star Trek?” Kara asked, turning to look at Hail and Renner.

“Why not?” Hail responded with a shrug. “It’s got to look like something and I always loved watching Star Trek when I was growing up, so wala, you have the Star Trek bridge.”

Kara looked both impressed and confused.

Hail explained, “Kara, we’re not the military. See, look at how everyone is dressed,” he said, swinging his finger in a wide arc around the room.

Kara looked at the Asian woman to her far right. She recognized her as Shana Tran, Mission Communication Analyst that she had met in the meeting. Tran was dressed in a colorful skirt and high heels. She smiled back at Kara and Kara nodded her head in a hello fashion.

Kara continued to scan the rest of the crew working at their control stations.

Next to the fashionable twentyish Shana Tran, was a teenage boy with long clean brown hair that glistened in the dim light. He was wearing shorts and a black hoody jacket. He was intently watching his screens and paying no attention to Kara.

Sitting behind the most outer circle of flight stations, was in an inner circle of computer stations. At two of the stations sat a distinguished looking man and a dark haired woman. She recognized the man as the French scholar she had met, Pierce Mercier. The woman was smiling and waving at her in a childlike fashion. Kara did not recognize her and knew nothing about her, but she seemed friendly enough. Kara returned the wave. Pierce Mercier stood up from his station and walked over.

“Good evening Ms. Ramey,” he said, collecting her hand in his and softly kissing her knuckles.

Kara said, “Bonne soirée à vous aussi, M. Mercier.”

Mercier asked, “Etes-vous ici pour le spectacle ou la nourriture.”

Kara laughed and said, “Les deux.”

Mercier smile and released her hand.

Hail and Mercier and Renner watched Kara complete her visual tour of their mission center.

“Wow, this is crazy,” was her final assessment. She said it with no emotion. It was more a statement than an observation.

Kara looked up at the big screen above the control stations and said,” Oh my God. That’s Kornev,” she exclaimed, pointing her finger at the big blond haired man standing next to the tiny Asian toy soldier.

Hail looked up at the monitor and asked, “Are you sure?”

Kara nodded her head and said, “It’s not the best video quality, but that’s Kornev alright.”

Hail studied the image closely. He watched the two men who were watching the big truck’s crane swing out over the deck of the ship.

“What’s our distance?” He asked Renner.

“No, no,” Renner told his friend. “I know what you are thinking, but we can’t do that. At least not right now.”

Kara didn’t initially understand what Renner was refereeing too, and then all of a sudden she got it.

“No way,” she said loudly. “We can’t take him out now. It will screw up the entire plan.”

Hail looked like a boy who had a toy taken away from him.

“I know,” Hail said innocently. “I was just wondering what our current distance was. That’s all.”

But he knew, that they knew, what he was thinking. Hail was hoping that the men at the dock were within range of the Nucleus’s railgun? Probably not, but it never hurt to ask.

The big man in black and the little man in the grey uniform were talking.

“I wonder what they’re saying.” Hail said.

“Oh, I can tell you,” Kara replied.

She watched the Russian and North Korean intently for a moment.

“Kornev is saying that as soon as the parts have arrived, he is expecting to get paid. And the North Korean is saying that as soon as all the parts are assembled, North Korea is going to turn America into a nuclear waste dump.”

Hail looked impressed.

“Really?” He asked. “You can read lips?”

“Of course not,” Kara said bluntly. “It’s a Russian mobster and a North Korean terrorist. What else would they be talking about? They sure aren’t discussing the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriot’s game.”

Hail felt foolish. Exactly how Kara wanted him to feel.

“Alright, let’s get to work, folks,” Hail announced.

Renner and Mercier went back to their stations and Hail climbed into his big chair. That left Kara standing next to Hail in the middle of the room, clutching her purse.

“Do you want to sit? I can get you a chair.” Hail asked.

“No, I like standing. Sitting makes your ass flat,” Kara said.

Hail wondered if she was joking, but Kara’s expression gave nothing away.

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that,” Hail said.

Kara watched the video for a few minutes before turning toward Hail and saying, “I think I should call my boss and give him an update.”

“Sure,” Hail told her.

Kara took the phone out of her purse and the dialed a number. A moment later she told Hail, “I don’t have a signal.”

“Of course you don’t,” Hail said. “You’re in a big metal box. How do you think a signal is going to get out of here?”

Hail reached into his pants pocket and took out his phone and handed it to her.

“Use mine,” he said. “It’s patched through the ship’s Wi-Fi to the satellite.”

Kara took the phone from him.

“Can I get that done to my phone?” she asked.

“You need to get permission from your boss,” Hail told her. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want us messing around with your phone without his permission,” even though Hail knew they had already messed around with it.

“You can still use your phone without us messing with it. You just need to be on the deck so it can get a clear signal to our cell tower uplink,” Hail added.

Kara dialed a number and it was answered in two rings.

“This is Pepper.”

“This is Kara,” she said.

“Are you on Hail’s phone again?” he asked.

“Affirmative,” she said.

“Am I on the speaker?” Pepper asked.

“No, but I am standing next to Mr. Hail, so we are on the record, so to speak.”

“Understood,” Pepper responded.

Kara said, “I wanted to let you know that I am looking at a live video feed of the dock at Wonsan.”

“Really?” Pepper said, sounding impressed.

“And I am also looking at Victor Kornev and it looks like the new Minister of State Security for North Korea, Kim Won Ding.”

Pepper corrected her, “Kim Won Dong.”

“Whatever,” Kara said. “Ding, Dong, Wang, Chung, Cheech and Chong, all their names are so confusing.”

Hail listened for something of interest, but so far he hadn’t heard anything.

Pepper asked, “How are you able to see the dock and the men?”

Kara looked at Hail and asked him, “He wants to know how we can see them.”

“Tell him that we dropped a drone down on top of the Huan Yue and it’s streaming the video to us.”

Kara repeated what Hail had told her.

“You have to be kidding me?” Pepper said. “How can a drone be sitting on top of the ship and not be seen.”

“The drone was designed to look like one of the navigation lights on the wheelhouse of the Huan Yue,” Kara said told Pepper.

There was pause and then Pepper asked, “Can you get a moment of privacy so we can talk.”

Kara turned and asked Hail, “Do you mind if I talk to my boss privately for a minute.”

“Make it quick,” Hail replied. “I’ve used up almost all of my long distance minutes.”

Kara gave him a funny look and Hail said, “It’s a billionaire joke. It really goes over great in the Indonesian comedy clubs. Trust me.”

Kara stepped away from Hail and began talking to Pepper.

“What’s the plan?” Hail asked Renner.

Renner reached out and grabbed his mouse. A cursor appeared on the big screen, superimposed over the video.

Renner explained, “What we want to do is release the magnets and fly the drone over to this truck and set down right here on top of the cab.”

Renner moved the mouse until the cursor was hovering over the top of the big truck’s roof.

Renner continued, “I think the best time would be when they start lifting the missile section out of the hold of the ship. That way everyone’s attention will be on the cargo and no one will be looking at the front of the ship or the front of the truck.”

“That makes sense to me,” Hail said. “It looks like they’re almost ready to start the lift.”

The truck’s crane was fully extended and pointing down into the cargo hold of the Huan Yue. A bright light was mounted on the boom-arm of the crane and pointing down at the ship’s deck, leaving the rest of the ship and surrounding area in relative darkness.

The video swayed to the left and then back to the right as the boat began to lean one way and then the other.

“They’re making the lift,” Renner announced.

“Retract the magnets,” Hail told Knox.

“Pulling up the magnets,” Knox confirmed. “We’re loose.”

Kara appeared to Hail’s right and handed him back his phone.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Hail said politely.

“Do we have a good line of site to the truck?” Hail asked his crew. “Are there any wires or telephone poles or any other obstructions in the way?”

“No. We are clear,” Knox said.

“Alright then,” Hail said. “No time like the present.”

“What are you doing?” Kara asked.

“You’ll see,” Hail said.

“Spinning up,” Knox reported and then the video began to move.

To Kara, it appeared the Huan Yue was getting higher as if being raised by a massive wave. And then she realized that the camera was flying. The video tilted to the right and Kara reached out and steadied herself by grabbing on to the armrest of Hail’s chair.

“Nice and smooth arc,” Hail told Knox. “Keep ELO in the dark as much as possible.”

“Will do,” Knox confirmed.

“What is ELO?” Kara asked.

“Electric Light Orchestra,” Renner answered. “We name each of the drones so we can keep them straight when we are flying more than one at a time.”

“That’s kind of a long name,” Kara said.

“That’s why we call it ELO,” Hail told her.

“Coming in for a landing,” Knox said, making small corrections on his flight controls.

The top of the truck’s cab was an insignificant white rectangle in the middle of the video frame. But as the small drone approached, the landing zone became larger and larger until it filled the entire field of view. For a moment, all anyone could see was the dull white top of the truck. And then the camera jerked to the right and became still.

“We’re down,” Knox said. “Engaging the magnets.”

Knox made another adjustment and the camera tilted upwards toward the front of the truck. The monitor showed nothing but a dark thick misty haze.

“Let’s turn the camera around 180 degrees,” Hail told Knox.

“Roger that,” Knox said, pressing a button on his pistol grip hand controller and twisting the handle to his right. The fuzzy dark image began to brighten as the camera rotated from the darkness and came to rest pointed at the lit Huan Yue. As the light flooded into the lens, the chip in the camera had something to work with and quickly sharpened the image. A clear image of the crane came into view. A massive cylinder wrapped in white plastic was hanging from the crane by several thick cables.

From this new perspective, both Kornev and Dong’s backs were now facing the camera.

Hail watched the men for a moment and waited to see if there was any sign that they had spotted the drone. Five minutes later, Hail said, “And it would appear that we were successful again.”

Hail looked at Mercier.

“As for the dismal statistics of success that you mentioned during our planning mission…” Hail said to the Frenchman.

“We have not completed the ride to where they are storing the part yet,” Mercier protested in his thick French accent.

“That wasn’t part of your statistics. You said that we couldn’t get the drone on the boat. I even threw in getting the drone off the boat and onto the truck. Now you’re saying that your crappy statistics included getting the drone to the delivery point?”

“It always did,” Mercier said with a smile.

“Bullshit,” Hail told him.

Kara spoke up and said, “I think it’s amazing that you guys got this far, statistics or no statistics.”

“Just good old American engineering,” Hail said.

Hail leaned forward in his big chair and rubbed the back of his neck. He then reached behind and rubbed his lower back, wincing at the pain.

“Are you ready for that workout, now?” Kara asked, watching the forty-year-old acting more like a sixty-year-old.

“I’m ready,” Hail said. “Be gentle.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” Kara mocked.

Marshall Hail left the mission center and went up to his stateroom to change. He pulled on some grey baggy shorts and a white tee-shirt. He glanced at the mirror and thought to himself, “Man, you have really let yourself go.” He grabbed a few inches of belly fat and tried to puff out his chest to compensate for the bulge, but his effort made his stomach stick out another two inches as well. He sighed and left his cabin.

On the way to the ship’s gym, Hail made a short detour and badged himself into the ship’s security center. Dallas, Tayler and Lex were all on duty.

Tayler was flying Queen, the ships security drone, in a twenty-mile radius above the Hail Nucleus.

Lex was monitoring the ship’s sonar and radar for perceived threats.

Dallas had on headphones and was listening intently to something, so lost in concentration that he didn’t even notice Hail walk into the room.

Hail tapped him on the shoulder.

Dallas looked up, pressed the pause button on his screen and swiveled his chair around so he could talk to his boss.

“What did she say when she was using my phone and talking to her CIA boss?” Hail asked.

Dallas shook his head and made a confused face.

“It’s pure gibberish,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell they were saying.”

Before Hail could ask him what he meant, Dallas said, “Here you go. Give this a listen.”

Dallas pressed an icon to pipe the sound of the recording over the security center’s speakers. He then pressed the play icon.

“Zipadub zubadap sub zub zipzapadub zipadadadub zubub.”

Dallas let the recording drone on with Kara saying the nonsensical words. When she had completed a phrase, the nonsense reply would be issued by a mechanical voice that was talking in the same crazy manner.

After a moment or two, Dallas paused the play back of the recording and said to Hail, “What do you think about that?”

“That is some crazy shit, is what I think about it. What do you think is going on?”

Dallas shook his head.

“It’s a language of some sort. I think we should have Alba listen to it. After all, she is our analyst in charge of language communications. Maybe she would have a clue.”

“But what’s that weird voice responding to Kara? It doesn’t sound human.”

“I don’t think it is,” Dallas agreed. “I think it’s an application of some sort that is instantly translating what Kara is saying.”

“So you think that Kara knows this language, but whoever responds to her replies in English and then it is mechanically translated back into the weird language that Kara understands?”

“That would be my best guess,” Dallas said.

“Very interesting,” Hail said. “Every time I think I’ve seen all the dimensions of Ms. Ramey; she then shows me another.”

“And she has some great dimensions, if you don’t mind me saying,” Dallas proclaimed.

“No arguments there,” Hail confirmed.

Hail thought for a moment and said, “Have Alba listen to it and see what she thinks. I have to go work out with Ms. Ramey right now. It would be nice if I could ask her about it, but then I would have to start the conversation by saying, ‘So, I was listing to the phone call you had with your boss that we secretly recorded…’”

“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Dallas agreed.

“Besides Ms. Ramey and her language skills, how is the Sea of Japan looking today? All quiet?”

“So far so good. All the Asian countries are behaving themselves today.”

“That’s good news,” Hail said. “I will be in the gym if you need me.”

“Don’t have a heart attack,” Dallas quipped with a smile.

“No guarantees,” Hail said as he left the room.

The gym was on the other side of the ship and Hail was winded by the time he got to his workout. He felt that was probably a bad sign.

Kara was already running on a treadmill, watching a TV monitor that was mounted to the front of the contraption. A wire led from the TV to a pair of ear buds that were stuck into each of her ears. She didn’t notice Hail when he walked in, but Hail noticed her. Kara was dressed in black yoga pants that hugged her perfect rump like dark skin. At her thin waist, where her yoga pants ended, a patch of porcelain white skin covered up her hard abs until they disappeared under a silver bra made from spandex. At least to Hail it looked like a bra, but it was probably some sort of exercise top. Whatever the hell it was, Hail approved. The woman looked stunning. Her crazy curves bounced and jiggled seductively as she ran. Her red hair flew out behind her, being blown by two fans that were built into the control panel of the treadmill. Kara was glistening with perspiration and her face was flushed with a healthy pink hue.

Hail walked up and stepped onto the treadmill that was next to her. Kara saw him from the corner of her eye and pulled out her ear plugs with a single yank of the wire.

Hail said hello and Kara pressed the pause button on her treadmill and it came to a slow stop.

“So what did you think?”

“What did I think of what?”

Kara looked bemused. She smiled knowingly at Hail and said, “Come on, Marshall. Keep in mind that I’m a CIA agent. So, if I were in your shoes, the very first thing I would have done before I came down here was stop and see your techno-nerds and have them play back the recording of me talking to my boss.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” Hail said, doing his best to act surprised and somewhat insulted.

“Really? That’s the trust you want to nurture between us?” Kara said, shaking her head disapprovingly at him.

Hail thought about it for a moment, gave in and said, “What kind of language is that?”

Kara smiled like she had won a small battle and said, “I call it Zub-a-dub language.”

Hail pressed the slow button on his treadmill. His machine came to life and Hail started walking.

Kara pressed the slow button and then pressed the up arrow until her belt was moving twice as fast as Hail’s. Kara started walking.

“What is Zub-a-dub language?” Hail asked, already knowing the answer would be as confusing as the language.

Kara smiled and increased her treadmill to a slow run. “Now, why would I tell you that? Obviously it’s a language that I can use to talk to my boss when you are secretly recording my conversations.”

“I thought we were trying to build trust,” Hail said, sounding hurt.

Kara smiled. She enjoyed this chess game.

“I’m going to tell you about Zub-a-dub only because it’s nothing that you can research or figure out. It’s not like the Navajo language they used in the Second World War that totally baffled the Germans.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I made it up,” Kara said with pride.

“You made up a language?” Hail asked skeptically.

“Yep. When I was a little girl I made up Zub-a-dub.”

Hail didn’t know how to respond. He was going to ask if that was a common thing for little girls to do, but before he was put on the spot, Kara added, “As you already know, I’ve always had a knack for languages. Even back when I was little, they were fun. I played around with some of the common gibberish languages like Pig Latin and Ubbi dubbi, but they bored me. So one day, I decided to make up my own language. It was like Ubbi dubbi, but instead of substituting sounds into words, I made up a unique word in Zub-a-dub that matched thousands of English words.”

“That would hurt my brain,” Hail said. “Who did you talk your new language with?”

“I don’t think that was a sentence in any language,” Kara stated.

“OK. I will rephrase. Whom did you find to converse with in your new language?”

Kara laughed, but it was somewhat sad and hollow.

“I spoke it with my maid.” She said it like it was a confession and something to be ashamed about. “She didn’t speak English very well and I didn’t speak Spanish very well, so we came together on Zub-a-dub. We would have fun talking about my parents behind their backs, literally. My maid was kind of like my best friend for a while.”

Kara paused for a second and added, “How sad it that?”

Hail didn’t want to get sucked in too deep into Kara’s personal life, so he asked, “So you taught Pepper this Zub-a-dub language?”

“Not hardly,” Kara said. “If you haven’t noticed, Pepper is pretty much a doorknob. It would take him ten years to learn Zub-a-dub, if at all.”

“So how was he able to reply to you?”

“I worked with the CIA programmers to create an app for Pepper’s phone that works like SIRI for the iPhone. I say something in Zub-a-dub and it then translates it for Pepper. He then says something in English and it speaks his phrases back to me in Zub-a-dub.”

“That’s what we figured, but we didn’t know you had invented the language,” Hail said.

“That’s why I’m telling you all this. See, you could keep recording me and put together a team of encryption experts. They would then start to decipher the language by breaking all the words apart. After hundreds of recordings and thousands of man-hours, in about a year you might be able to hash out the language, but why would you waste all that time? I will be gone in a few days.”

“You will?” Hail asked.

“Well, whenever this operation is over. Won’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Hail said honestly. “I’m not even sure what defines the end of the operation. Would that be when I am done blowing up missile parts or when I rid the earth of all the terrorist leaders?”

“Good point,” Kara said.

Hail pressed the up arrow on his treadmill and transitioned into a fast walk.

Kara then pressed the up arrow on her treadmill and began a medium run.

Hail looked at Kara and she looked back at him and she smiled, as if to say, you will never catch me.

Hail had never met a woman like Kara Ramey. Or was it that he had never met anyone like Kara Ramey that he was interested in. Was he interested in her? Because as far as he was concerned, she was not his type. Hail’s type was a woman in crisis. A dependent female that needed him more than she loved him. Marshall to the rescue. And for some irrational reason, he found solace in that type of partnership. But even though he sensed that Kara was damaged goods, her trauma had not undone her. In fact, it appeared that she had become emboldened by her pain and it had given her a renewed purpose in life. Kara had emerged from her tragedy and had become reincarnated as some sort of CIA bad-ass. And even though it went against all of Hail’s nurturing instincts, he found the independent Ramey invigorating and exciting. Who knows, maybe Hail had also emerged from his own tragedy as a different person. A better person? That was subjective. Only God could make that judgement, but for some strange reason he cared what Kara thought of him.

“After we get some good air moving through you, we are going to start with some sit ups and see if we can shrink that tire around your waist,” Kara said, letting out phrases between breaths.

Hail looked hurt.

Kara saw Hail’s puppy dog expression and said, “I mean it’s not bad. Maybe thirty extra pounds, but you can burn that off in a few weeks, easy.”

Hail was breathing hard and hadn’t even approached running speed.

The phone in his pocket went off and he pressed pause on the treadmill. Once the machine had come to a complete stop, he let go of the handrails and removed his phone and put it up to his ear.

“What’s up, Gage?”

Kara kept her machine running and kept herself running, but watched Hail take the call.

“OK,” was all Hail said, but his body language told Kara that something was up.

Hail clicked off his phone and reached over to Kara’s treadmill and pressed the stop button.

“What’s up?” Kara asked.

“The truck is pulling into a warehouse off the Wonsan highway. We’ve got to go now.”

Kara grabbed her phone and a towel and some water. Hail draped a towel over his shoulder. They left the gym and quickly made their way through the ship’s corridors, all the way back to the mission control center.

“Nice outfit,” Gage Renner told Hail sarcastically as he entered the room.

Then he looked at Kara Ramey in her workout clothes and said, “Nice outfit,” and he meant it.

Gage relinquished the captain’s chair to Hail and moved over to his own control station on the front line.

Hail sat down and asked Kara if she would like a chair.

“No, I like standing.”

“Oh, that’s right. It was something about your flat ass, wasn’t it?” Hail recalled.

Kara flipped him the bird.

Only the principles in the room were in attendance.

Gage Renner, Alex Knox, Shana Tran and Pierce Mercier. Hail figured that Alba Zorn, their language specialist, was currently pulling her hair out trying to make sense of Kara’s Zub-a-dub recording.

Hail looked up at the large screen above the control stations. The view from inside the warehouse was clear and bright. The drone sitting on the roof of the truck provided an elevated vantage point.

“Can you please do a slow 180 with the camera so I can get a sense of the place?” Hail asked Knox.

“Sure thing,” Knox replied and began panning the camera clockwise very slowly.

The front of the truck was pointing toward the back of the warehouse. Hail estimated the building was about twenty yards deep. Crates upon crates were stacked thirty feet in the air. The ceiling above the crates was probably another ten feet higher. An aisle between the crates, wide enough to accommodate a small fork lift, had been left in order to move stuff around.

“Hold there for a moment,” Hail asked. “Good, now point the camera up in the rafters so we can find a place to park the drone.”

Knox adjusted the camera so it was pointing toward the ceiling of the warehouse.

“Looks like it’s a galvanized roof, eighteen gauge maybe, laid across the top of steel beams,” Renner commented. “It’s not insulated, so we should be able to find some good magnetic spots to land the drone.”

“Is galvanized a ferrous metal.” Hail asked.

“Galvanized isn’t a metal at all,” Pierce Mercier said. “That roof is a thin sheet of steel that has been galvanized in zinc. Zinc is nonferrous, but it’s such a thin coat that the magnets on the drone should still be able to stick to the steel beneath the zinc.”

Hail and his crew continued to watch the video, realizing that every minute they watched, they were draining the drone’s battery power.

“Man, this place is packed,” Hail said, as the camera zoomed back and continued to make a 360-degree pan.

Kara said, “This has to be one of the last pieces to arrive. They don’t have any more space left.”

“Unless they have more than one warehouse,” Hail suggested.

“How many missiles are they buying?” Renner asked.

“Three,” Kara said.

“I’m no missile expert, but right there,” Hail said, pointing his finger at some large cylindrical pieces to the left, “are six separate stages. Keep going with the camera and let’s see what’s on the other side of the truck.”

As Knox rotated the camera around, their view was temporarily blocked by the backside of the crane’s boom that was already being positioned to lift the huge missile part off the truck.

“Keep going,” Hail instructed.

Three men in North Korean uniforms came into view. Each soldier held a thick piece of chain in their hands and were busily connecting the links to the missile section on the trailer.

“Right there, stop.” Hail said. “I see one more missile stage on the ground, right there at the bottom left of the frame.”

The group looked where Hail was pointing.

“So that means that one more stage has yet to arrive,” Kara said.

“Would that last piece do them any good if all these stages were already blown up?” Hail asked.

“No,” Kara said, “Unless they want to make it into a big hot tub or something.”

The truck’s suspension groaned and rocked to one side as the crane hefted the metallic cylinder off the trailer and slung it out to the left. The camera tilted slightly as the load was being lowered to the ground.

“Now’s the time to get flying,” Gage reminded Hail. “Everyone’s eyes are on the cargo.”

Hail sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“Unlock Black Eyed Peas and fly it up in the rafters,” Hail told Knox.

“Roger that,” Knox said, reaching over and bringing up a screen that read INTERLOCK ON.

Knox moved the graphic slider to the OFF position and said, “Black Eyed Peas is loose and we are spinning up in three, two, one.”

The view from the drone’s camera rose as the matte black drone lifted off from the center of the yellow ring, leaving the outer ring, the outer drone still stuck to the top of the truck.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Kara said. “I thought the drone was called ELO?”

Hail shook his head.

Without taking his eyes off the big screen, he explained, “We actually landed two drones on the Huan Yue. The outer drone, the drone that looked like a round yellow reflector light, is called ELO. It’s a communications drone. It has a camera for navigation but it doesn’t support audio. That would be too much combined weight. Inside the ring called ELO is another drone called Black Eyed Peas. The inner drone is the surveillance drone. It supports both video and audio and is used exclusively for observation. The outer drone functions as the satellite uplink drone.”

“I don’t get it,” Kara said. “Why do we need two drones?”

“Look at the video,” Hail said, pointing up at the big screen. “Right now, those big warehouse doors are open and we can communicate pretty well with the drones via satellite. But when those doors close, we need to switch Black Eyed Peas’ communications from satellite to Wi-Fi communications. Even inside the warehouse with the doors closed, Black Eyed Peas will be able to pick up the Wi-Fi signal being sent from ELO. So when the truck leaves the warehouse, we’ll fly ELO off the top of the truck and land it on top of the warehouse. Once it’s up there, it will receive a strong satellite signal. It will then convert those signals to Wi-Fi and network in with BEP.”

“BEEP?” Kara asked.

“Black Eyed Peas,” Hail told her.

“Of course. What was I thinking?”

Hail watched the ceiling of the warehouse get closer and closer. He could make out a bird’s nest of some type about three feet away that was resting on the steel girder they had selected.

“You guys really have all this stuff figured out,” Kara said, without a trace of sarcasm in her tone.

“I’d like to think so,” Hail said. “We put a lot of time and money and into these designs.”

Knox hovered BEP over the beam and turned the drone on its axis 180 degrees so it was pointing toward the front of the warehouse. Shooting down at a forty-five-degree angle, the video provided a clear view of the front of the truck. Lying on each side of the truck were the stored missile sections. Behind the truck, the warehouse doors were open and beyond that was pitch darkness. The crew in the mission center could all clearly see the yellow light ring called ELO that was still sitting in on truck’s roof, lost in an array of other yellow lights and red reflectors that peppered the vehicle.

“What do you think about setting BEP down here?” Knox asked Hail.

“That bird’s nest is pretty close and there appears to be a bird in it. What do you think, Pierce? Is that thing a woodpecker or something? Is it going to mess with us?”

Knox brought the camera around and zoomed it in on the bird. The medium sized bird had a narrow black head with white stripes running down its side. It had a black sharp beak and Hail guessed it could probably do some damage to the drone if it hammered its little feathery face on it.

Pierce Mercier looked closely at the bird and said, “It’s a Korean Magpie or Oriental Magpie or Pica Sericea, known as the kkachi in Korean. It is a smaller bird with a…”

“We don’t need an ornithology lesson right now, Pierce. Is it going to peck on us or isn’t it?”

“No,” Mercier said, sounding disappointed that he couldn’t provide a full report.

“Set BEP down,” Hail said, “and be sure to touch down on the edge of the beam so we can point the camera down and see the floor.”

The camera swayed from side to side for a moment. A second later the video stream became fixed and focused as if the camera had been set on a tripod.

“We’re down,” Knox reported.

“What’s our power reserve?” Hail asked.

Knox looked up the information.

“We have about forty percent battery left on BEP.”

“So taking into account the energy used to communicate with the Wi-Fi, that would give us about four hours of video streaming,” Hail estimated.

Knox flipped to another screen.

“Three hours and thirty-seven minutes,” Knox corrected.

“And if we need to move to another location, then how much flight time does that give us?”

“About six minutes, give or take,” Knox said.

“What do the comms looked like, Shana?” Hail asked Tran, their communications expert.

“Wi-Fi signal is strong between the drones, but the satellite signal to ELO is degraded because it is semi-indoors. But that’s to be expected.”

“How much flight time do we have left on ELO?” Hail asked Renner.

Renner checked and said, “We have about four minutes of flight time. But what concerns me more is that we only have about two hours of power to facilitate the communications between the satellite and BEP. When ELO’s reserves are gone, then both drones will go black. We won’t be able to communicate with either of them.”

Hail told Knox, “Record a video for me. I want a quick 360-degree pan of the entire warehouse and then put BEP to sleep. Copy that recording to my NAS so I can look at it later.”

“Will do,” Knox said.

Hail told his crew, “Let’s focus on getting ELO out of the warehouse and up onto the roof. And then I want to put that kid to bed as well and save its power.”

Renner said, pointing at the big screen, “Looks like the Koreans are done with the lift. They’re removing the chains from the crane. I hope they aren’t going to leave the truck there overnight.”

“We’ll see in a minute,” Hail said.

A minute came and went. And then another. And then another.

“What are they waiting for?” Kara asked.

“I don’t know. I’m sure the truck driver can hardly wait to get home to his starving family,” Hail said.

Kara did not look amused.

Renner looked amused.

Knox looked amused.

So Hail was happy with his joke.

The truck driver, a small man with a dirty baseball cap, was standing patiently by the door to his truck. He smoked nervously and kept looking down at the ground.

A minute later, the Minister of State Security for North Korea, Kim Won Dong walked over and handed the man what looked like money. The man bowed several times and then climbed up into his truck.

“Looks like he was waiting to get paid,” Kara said.

“It’s go time,” Hail said.

“Are you ready, Knox?” he asked his pilot.

“Yes Sir,” Knox replied. “All of ELO’s flight systems are online and we’re good to go.”

The truck shook and the video vibrated as the engine kicked over. A dark puff of smoke came out of the dirty exhaust stack to the right of ELO. With no microphone built into the drone, it was like watching a silent movie.

“The truck is moving,” Renner said.

With BEP shut down and its video screen black, the only video in the mission center was being sent by ELO. ELO’s camera was pointing toward the back of the truck. The crane had been lowered and stowed and was no longer obscuring the view from the rear. The warehouse doors were wide open and it looked as if the truck was backing into a murky abyss.

Hail glanced over at Kara standing next to him. She watched the video like Hail suspected she watched surveillance videos at the CIA office. All of her concentration was focused on it and she looked even prettier when she was focused.

“The truck is out of the warehouse,” Renner reported.

The drone’s sensitive light detector chip transitioned into night mode. In order to let in as much light as possible, the camera lens opened to its full extent. A night-enhancement software kicked in and sharpened the image further, turning blobs of black and white into lamp poles and security lights and bright lights on top of the truck.

“If there’s no one around then let’s get this thing in the air,” Hail instructed.

Thirty yards from the warehouse, the truck driver placed the truck into first gear and began to make a wide swooping turn through the dirt lot and headed for the front gate.

“Retracting the magnets,” Knox said. “OK, we’re loose. Taking off in three, two, one and liftoff.”

Watching the video rise and then sway to the right messed with Kara’s equilibrium. She reached over and balanced herself, using Hail’s right shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she told Hail, but she didn’t remove her hand.

“No problem,” Hail responded, somewhat surprised that he found her touch comforting.

Hail understood the drone had only four minutes of power for flight and still had to use its remaining power to facilitate comminutions with BEP, so he told Knox, “No fancy stuff. There are no trees around so just get it on the roof and stick it somewhere. Flight time is power we can’t afford right now.”

“You got it,” Knox said, angling for a security light that was mounted on the corner of the warehouse. Knox pulled the flight controller to the right and throttled up the drone. He made his approach from the east side of the warehouse. ELO swung out over a barbed wire fence and darted back in, gaining altitude as it flew.

“We have burned thirty seconds,” Renner warned.

A football field of sheet metal appeared under the drone and Knox tilted the leading edge of the drone up into the air to create a stall and shed speed. Once the drone had transitioned into a hover state, Knox eased off the power and lowered the drone onto the roof of the warehouse.

“We’re down,” Knox said. “Lowering the magnets.”

“Great job,” Hail told everyone, but most of the praise went to Knox. “Put ELO to sleep to save power.”

Renner asked Kara, “Do you have any idea how much time we have before the North Koreans move all this stuff to another location?”

Kara removed her hand from Hail’s shoulder and said, “None at all. It could be days. It could be an hour from now. We don’t know where their assembly facility is located.”

Hail got up from his chair and began walking for the door.

“I would like to meet with the mission planning crew in the conference room in twenty minutes,” He announced.

Kara followed Hail out into the hall and closed the door behind them. Hail began walking and she pulled up next to him and matched his strides.

“Am I invited to the mission planning session?” she asked.

“Absolutely. The first thing we need you to do is to contact your people and get some aerial shots of the warehouse so we can get a lay of the land. We need to find the most isolated area to land the drones.”

“Can’t you do a fly over in one of your drones to get those shots?” Kara asked.

“We can, but it’s risky for us. Daylight, slow moving drones, we might take the risk if we were planning the mission a month from now, but time isn’t on our side and we don’t want to do anything that will spook the North Koreans. If they see the drone, then they’ll move the missile stash, maybe even underground. That would be a much harder target. Don’t you guys have satellites that can snap a few photos for us?”

“Yes we do and I’ll check with Pepper and see if he can take the photos at first light, weather permitting. Of course, if it’s overcast then that would be a no go.”

They reached a door that read SHIP SECURITY.”

Hail stopped and turned to look to Kara.

“I also want to know how long Kornev will be at the warehouse. Any information you can provide us on that will be greatly appreciated.”

Kara hesitated for a beat.

“You said us, but you really mean you. Don’t you?” Kara asked disapprovingly. “I told you that Kornev is not part of this mission. I have not been given the clearance to remove him. He is currently a valuable conduit of information for the CIA.”

Hail looked annoyed.

“Last time I checked, I don’t work for the CIA and therefore I don’t need permission to kill this piece of shit. It’s not like he’s a protected American citizen.”

“You’re working for the CIA right now,” Kara shot back. “This is a CIA mission that you agreed to execute.”

“Execute. I like that sound of that. Let’s get down to some executing. Blowing up missile parts is not an execution, but killing Kornev is. You think that he sold the missiles to the The Five terrorists, so he’s an asshole that needs to go.”

Kara looked like she was ready to spit fire.

“You need to get over yourself, Mr. Hail. You think you’re untouchable, but you are sitting in the middle of the Sea of Japan on a frickin cargo ship. Don’t you understand that military assets could take you out at any time?”

“They wouldn’t do that unless they were idiots. We are currently carrying thousands of tons of nuclear waste. Do you have any idea what a cataclysmic environmental disaster that would cause? Let’s consider that for a moment.”

Hail stopped talking and thought for a second how best to frame his point.

Kara primed herself for whatever he was going to say.

Then Hail surprised her by asking, “Have you ever heard of Sado Island?”

“No, is there something special about it?” she said irritably.

“Not unless you’re visiting one of its beautiful beaches, such as Nyuzaki, Tassha, Sawata, Sobama or Mano-Shinmachi to name a few. It’s a stunning Japanese island in the Sea of Japan. Sink the Hail Nucleus and a thousand years from now everyone will be saying, remember how beautiful Sado Island was before it became a barren moonscape of rock and sand. Sink the Hail Nucleus in the Sea of Japan and the list of countries that no longer have beach access would be Japan, North Korea, South Korea, China and Taiwan. The Russians won’t be that happy either. But the positive side is hardly any Russians live in that part of their country and none of them are swimming in the Sea of Okhotsk since its average summer temperature is about 50 degrees. And what do you think those countries will do to the country that causes such a catastrophe?”

“Let me ask you this,” Kara responded austerely. “You used the word country, as in, what do you think those countries will do to the country that causes such a catastrophe.” Kara punched the word country in her sentence.

Continuing, she said, “But what if it’s not a country that sinks the Nucleus. What if a terrorist organization sinks the Hail Nucleus?”

“What are you implying?” Hail asked, his confusion diffusing his anger.

“You may not know this, but you are doing this mission for both of us ― the CIA and yourself. After all, terrorists love to cause disasters and they don’t care much about the environment. North Korea doesn’t seem to care about much of anything and are more of a terror organization than a country. If North Korea is successful with their missile program, they could just as easily blow your ship out of the water with conventional missiles and cause maybe even more destruction than if they had nukes strapped to them. After all, your cargo is nastier than any nuclear bomb. The Hail Nucleus is a terrorist’s wet dream!”

Hail looked as if he had been slapped in the face.

This woman made him mad. And the flip side was that she also made him kind of happy. It felt like a young marriage.

Hail turned his back on Kara and faced the door of the Security Center. He swiped his badge across the sensor and opened the door. Before entering, he turned back around and said.

“How would you like to swim home?”

He then slammed the door, leaving a steaming Kara Ramey on the other side with the clang of metal ringing in her ears.

The wind felt good on her face. She surfaced on the top deck around mid-ship and began walking toward the bow of the Nucleus. The air was warm and the night was heavy with humidity. A thick iron railing was to her left and then past that there was nothing but ocean. On her right were huge cylindrical containers of nuclear waste. Each container was the size of a truck. Each of them was painted white like innocent looking storage tanks. They were seated and latched into cylindrical slots on the deck, like a beer can being placed into a holder on its side. Kara surmised that the containers and their matching slots on deck were designed before the ship was ever built. The massive slots in the deck were too substantial to have been an afterthought or a retro fit conversion. Part ‘A’ was designed to go into slot ‘B’. The ship designers had then determined how many slots they could pack onto the deck and still leave room for the pool. As she walked along the railing, she was troubled by the natural beauty and calmness of the dark sea to her left, in comparison to the unnatural and hideous toxic slurry that was contained no more than ten feet to her right. She inadvertently rubbed her arm, wiping off any imagined radioactive contaminates that might have leaked out and stuck to her. She knew it was silly, but the feeling that she may be walking through invisible radioactive clouds was hard to shake. Hail was right when he had told her that someone would be crazy to bomb the Hail Nucleus. There were literally mountains of nuclear sludge onboard. And Kara was also right when she had told him that the Nucleus was a terrorist’s wet dream. She suspected that the Nucleus had some defenses against those who would want to sink or board her. She just hoped they wouldn’t be enough if her agency was the one assigned to do that job. Kara shuddered at that thought. This was not the calming walk in fresh air she had thought it would be. But she was there for work, not for pleasure.

As she neared the bow of the boat, she pulled up short and stepped in between some containers and removed her phone from her pocket. She typed in her password and brought up an app that uplinked to a secure communication’s satellite that was floating several miles above her.

The app took a moment to find the elusive satellite. It made a little ding sound when the uplink had been consummated. Kara dialed the number for her boss. She had no numbers stored on her phone. In her line of work, her phone could be liberated from her at any time. The first lesson in Spy School 101 was to keep your phone clean. No numbers. No history. Nothing that could provide an adversary information if her phone was taken from her.

The phone made a peculiar ringing sound, as if it were an echo of a ringing sound. The echo sounded four times before the phone was answered.

“Hi Kara, this is Jarret.”

“Hi Jarret. How are things back at the ranch?”

“Fine, however the president is waiting on an update. I’ve got you on speaker right now and I also have Paul Moore, the Directorate of Operations and Karen Wesley the Directorate of Analysis in the room in case they need to ask you some questions or visa-versa.”

“Understood,” Kara said.

There was a moment of silence while Pepper decided on how to kick off the call.

“First of all, I see you are calling on your own phone. Is that correct?”

“Affirmative,” Kara replied.

“And do you feel that your phone is secure and that you are not being surveilled?”

“I do,” Kara responded confidently. “Hail gave me back my phone and told me that I could use the ships communication channels if I proxy through their gateway or connect to their cell repeater on deck. But right now, I am on the ship’s deck and connected directly to our satellite, so I believe we’re clean.”

“Very good,” Pepper said. “Can you please provide us a mission summary?”

“I am on the Hail Nucleus and somewhere in the Sea of Japan. As you know, the Nucleus is a cargo ship that’s carrying tons of nuclear waste, destination unknown. Pertaining to the mission directly, Hail’s crew was successful in flying in a drone, correction, two drones and dropping them down onto the Huan Yue. The Huan Yue then docked in the city of Wonsan, North Korea. Via the drone’s camera, we then watched the center section of a Russian R-29RMU Sineva unloaded from the Huan Yue and onto a low boy trailer. The trailer was then driven out of the city and exited a few miles off the Wonsan highway. It then drove three miles down a dirt road to a secluded warehouse. I will text you the exact coordinates of the warehouse. At that point, a surveillance drone was positioned inside the warehouse. I watched a live video feed of the missile stage being unloaded from the trailer. Based on nothing but observation, it would appear that almost all the parts have arrived at the warehouse. There still appears to be one missile stage missing.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Hello,” Kara said.

“We’re here. We were just waiting to see if you had anything else to report,” Pepper said.

Kara said, “I’m expected to be present in a mission meeting that started about ten minutes ago. I’m assuming that Hail’s plan to destroy the missiles will be finalized in this meeting.”

“Are there any complications so far?” Pepper asked.

Kara thought about this for a moment, sifting through information that would matter to the staff in the CIA conference room. Except for Hail’s constant insistence on killing Victor Kornev, there really hadn’t been any complications. But what did that have to do with the CIA. She was pretty sure she could convince Pepper to give the order to kill Kornev, but she didn’t want Kornev dead. She wanted Kornev alive. She wanted information from the man. She wanted to know who had shot down her parent’s plane. Marshall Hail was proving to be short sighted. He really didn’t care who had pulled the trigger. He simply wanted to annihilate all the figure heads that had told their jihadists to pull the triggers. Kara wanted ― no ― Kara needed to look the man in the eyes who had pulled the trigger of the surface to air missile that had wrecked her life. A reasonable Kara Ramey would realize there was a good chance the shooter could already be dead. After all, he was in a very dangerous line of work. The terrorist could have died a number of ways, with disease and starvation right at the top of the list. But for some strange reason she felt that the man was still alive; still out there living while so many of his victim’s families were dying on the inside. And Kara also assumed that the shooter was a man. For no other reason than women in that region were so marginalized that the only reasonable person would be a man.

“Are you there, Kara?” Pepper asked.

“Yeah, I’m here. The only thing I have to report is that Hail is a pompous power hungry ass,” but she didn’t say that.

She simply said, “Nothing else to report.”

Pepper asked, “Can you hold for a minute?”

Before Kara could say, “Sure,” she was already listening to elevator music.

Her confrontation with Marshall Hail had upset her more than she had anticipated. And that was a strange emotion because she was the amazing Kara Ramey, master manipulator of all things created male. But there was something about Marshall Hail that was different than the other men she had mastered and she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was rich, but most of her assignments had been wealthy. Poor men didn’t have much power and therefore were inconsequential when it came to big world stuff. Most rich men were powerful. Either that or they had inherited their wealth, which made them rich and powerful and lazy. Hail was not bad looking, but he was no twenty-nine-year-old male model, so that wasn’t it. Hail was indeed powerful. In order to build up his business, he had effectuated a great many dominant and influential actions to get where he had ended up. But that in itself didn’t carry any great weight with Kara.

She thought about it and decided the trait in Marshall Hail that attracted her was his love for his deceased family and his crew ― his friends. It had been so long since she had witnessed a man who could show unabated love for someone that she doubted if a man like that still existed in the world. She knew her father had loved her, but she had yet to witness that emotion first hand in another man. Hail loved people. But the dark side of the man also hated people. It was a tarnished spot on a silver soul. Kara knew why that dull spot was ensconced in the man, because she had the exact same tarnished areas that could no longer reflect light. Her dark spots devoured evil; actually wanting to touch evil before killing it. It was ugly. It was not her choice and therefore inescapable. And she could see her reflection each time she peered deeply into Hail’s eyes. She was right there on the surface. Right next to him. They were so different and still just the same.

“We’re back, Kara,” Pepper said. Kara brushed her red hair away from her face and put the phone closer to her ear. The ship must have changed direction. The spot between the containers she had chosen to escape the wind was no longer working.

She said, “I’m here,” as she walked deeper into the maze of containment vessels.

Pepper’s said, “After discussing the situation, our question is, do you have any idea of how Hail is going to destroy the missiles?”

“None,” Kara said honestly. “But I guess I will know that answer after the meeting I am missing right now.”

“Do you need anything from us?” Pepper asked.

“Yes I do. Hail asked me to request satellite photos of the warehouse. We need them quickly. If you can get them at first light and then email them to myself and Hail, we can then use them to determine the LZ for the final approach on the target.”

“Understood,” Pepper said. “Are you OK?”

“Affirmative.”

“Alright, then. Text the warehouse coordinates and we will get busy. Good luck,” Pepper told her.

Kara clicked off and pulled up a text message that she had already composed which contained the warehouse coordinates.

She clicked SEND and watched the message hourglass for a moment as it disappeared and flew through the air on its way to Pepper. She put her phone back in her pocket and walked back to the ship’s railing.

The night was beautiful, just the way God had made it. Kara let out a breath and then breathed in the ocean’s scent. Somewhere in the dark she heard the distant chatter of porpoises as they played and socialized. At least something was happy on this sultry night. She took in another deep breath and held it like it was her last. She then let it out slowly, releasing all her frustrations out into the nothingness that laid before her for hundreds of miles.

Hail heard the door to the conference room open and from the corner of his eye he saw Kara walk into the meeting.

Renner was talking.

“So the only thing we have left to figure out is how to get into the warehouse.”

Kara walked up to the conference table and nudged in next to Hail. Almost everyone was standing in close and studying still photos of the inside of the warehouse that had apparently been snipped from the video that BEP had taken hours ago.

“Hi Kara,” Renner said.

Hail said nothing. He continued to study the photos, paying no attention to the CIA woman.

“Hi Gage. Hi Marshall,” she said purposely.

Hail turned to look at her briefly and said, “Oh, Hi,” and turned back to the photos.

Lifting her mouth up towards Hail’s ear, speaking with just enough volume for only Hail to hear, she asked, “Are you still grumpy?”

Hail continued to ignore her.

Two white coats were again present at the meeting; Eric Rugmon their drone designer and Terry Garber, Hail’s lab manager. Pierce Mercier stood quietly, patiently, knowing that his value to the meeting involved weather and nature and therefore, at this moment, he was simply a spectator. Shana Tran was the only person sitting down. She wasn’t looking at the photos. She was looking at her long red fingernails. Kara was sure that if Shana had a nail file on her, she would have been perfecting her pretty nails right there in front of everyone.

“Does anyone have any ideas on how to access the warehouse?” Hail asked his team.

“I think in order to frame that answer, we need to define some operational parameters,” Renner suggested.

“I would agree with that,” Hail said. “I think the first parameter is silence. However we intend to breach the warehouse, it has to be silent. We can’t alert the guards and have them run in and start blasting away with their guns.”

“Agreed,” Renner said.

Renner asked Kara, “Are we getting those overhead shots of the warehouse from your agency in the morning?”

“Yes we are,” Kara said. “They will be emailed to me and to Marshall as soon as they are acquired.”

Hail said, “To move forward with our planning, we have to assume that there is a spot we can touch down within two hundred yards, or else our math won’t work.”

“I agree,” Renner said. “So now our two mission parameters are two hundred yards out and we must stay silent.”

“Is that all?” Hail asked.

Pierce Mercier offered, “Another parameter is WHEN ― you need a date and time when you plan to breach the warehouse. I need to know so I can check the weather and visibility and other factors.”

Shana Tran looked over the top of her extended fingernails and added, “All those weather factors can affect the satellite transmission and communications, so they are important to me as well.”

Hail summarized the input of the others.

“Alright, well the date and time will be determined by other factors as well. The first one that comes to mind is the time it will take to fabricate the drone that will breach the warehouse. As you all know, we currently don’t have anything like that in our inventory. We could always blow a hole in the side of the building, but that’s not quiet. So the first thing we need to figure out is how to get into the warehouse?”

There was a lull in the meeting while everyone considered the problem.

Renner broke the silence by saying, “I don’t see any way that we can open the doors, so our only other option is to cut a hole in the building.”

“Is that practical?” Hail asked.

“Practical or not, I don’t see any other choice. I think we need to fly a drone in next to the building, set it down on the ground and then create a hole large enough in the side of the warehouse for our purposes.”

“How thick do you think the steel is?” Hail asked Renner.

“Eighteen gauge, maybe sixteen gauge. That would be about a sixteenth of an inch thick. Not very substantial.”

“We could hook up a cutter grinder to the arm of a drone,” Eric Rugmon suggested. He made a box in the air with his finger while doing calculations in his head. “I estimate the drone could probably have about an eighteen-inch reach both horizontally and vertically.”

“That would give us a hole in the metal about a foot and a half square,” Renner said, using his hands to demonstrate the size one way and then the other.

Hail shook his head, shooting down the idea with, “It’s too loud. Can you image the reverberation through the sheet metal structure once the cutting wheel started in on it? The guards would have to be dead not to hear it.”

“That’s another possibility,” Renner said. “If we kill the guards then…”

“What about a laser?” Kara said. “I mean a laser is quiet and could cut through thin metal. Couldn’t it?”

Everyone turned and looked at Kara.

Kara looked back at the blank faces that were staring at her.

“What?” she said defensively.

Hail said, “We do science. Not science fiction.”

Kara looked hurt and embarrassed.

“Well nobody else was coming up with anything,” she shot back.

“That’s because we haven’t had a chance to think it all out,” Hail said.

Kara wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves, but she sucked it up and kept her cool.

“I’m sure if you thought about it for a moment, you would figure out why a laser would not be possible,” Hail told her.

Nobody spoke.

Kara already knew it was a stupid idea as soon as the word laser left her mouth. But there were no second chances with this bunch of techno-nerds. If you said something stupid, it appeared that you were going to get called out on it.

“Not enough power,” she answered indignantly.

“Correct,” Hail confirmed.

Kara looked indifferently at Hail as if she had never met him before. She wished she had a nail file so she could passively work on her nails or stick it in to Hail’s arm. Both seemed like a good use of a nail file at that moment.

Hail looked away from Kara and back at the others and asked, “What about a torch?”

The others thought about it for a moment.

“It’s pretty quiet,” Renner said, “but two possible issues come to mind. First, it will be bright, especially if we decided to go in at night. Second, high pressure oxyfuel tanks weigh a lot. Flying them in will take a lot of power.”

“Not necessarily,” Rugmon said. “If we calculate the exact burn time that is required to cut the hole, we could use lightweight miniature aluminum tanks. Once the cut was done, we could release the left over fuel and fly the drone back out.”

“Is that possible?” Hail asked.

“I need to do the math, but off the top of my head I believe the tanks would be within the lifting range of our mini drone,” Rugmon said.

“Sounds good to me,” Hail said. “Gage, are you good with that?”

“So far it’s the best of our options. It will be awfully bright when we’re cutting, but if we cut on the backside of the building and there are no guards walking the perimeter, then it could work.”

“I’m good with that,” Hail said. “Eric, how long would it take for your team to modify a mini drone with that configuration?”

“We could have it done in twelve hours, give or take.” Rugmon said boastfully.

Hail looked at the photos on the table and tried to think if there was anything he had missed. Not coming up with any items of consequence, he said, “OK, let’s turn our attention to the explosives.”

Terry Garber came to life like a robot that had all of a sudden been activated. A moment ago, passive and introverted, she now smiled and waited for input.

Hail asked her, “What type of explosives do you think we should use to destroy the missile sections?”

“I think we should use a cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine based explosive.” Garber said.

“Oh, here we go,” Renner said, rolling his eyes.

Hail laughed and said, “Terry, I know you get off on saying those long chemical words, but how about you cut that down for us non-laboratory folks.”

“OK,” the little woman said snobbishly, “How about we shorten that to nitroamine?”

“How about you shorten it to RDX,” Renner suggested. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Basically,” Garber said, but it was apparent she wasn’t very happy with just those three letters.

“So is RDX going to do the trick?” Hail asked Garber.

“Generally speaking, it will do a good job if you stick a wad of it against a large crate of parts,” the woman said. “But it won’t be effective in destroying the thick metal missile stages without some special work.”

The laboratory woman stopped talking. Everyone waited for her to expand on her thought. When it became apparent that she was not going to clarify her last statement without being prompted, Hail decided to drop another quarter into the robot and get her talking again.

“What type of special work would you need to do?” He asked.

Terry smiled and said, “The cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine needs to be molded into a shaped charge.” She gave Renner a look.

“Is that a problem?” Renner asked.

Before the woman could answer, Kara asked, “What’s a shaped charge?”

The little woman beamed with vitality, as if she had been waiting all her life for that particular question.

Before Hail or Renner could stop her, she began with, “A shaped charge is known as the Munroe effect, named after Charles E. Munroe, who discovered it in 1888. It’s the science of focusing the blast energy by cutting a hollow or void cut on the surface of an explosive.”

Terry stopped and looked at Hail.

“Go on,” Hail told her, knowing how much enjoyment she was getting out of this.

“The most common of the liner shaped charge is conical, with an internal apex angle of 40 to 90 degrees. Different apex angles yield different distributions of jet mass and velocity. Small apex angles can result in jet bifurcation, or even in the failure of the jet to form at all, if you can believe that,” she laughed knowingly, “and this is attributed to the collapse velocity being above a certain threshold, normally slightly higher than…”

“OK,” Hail interrupted. “That’s enough.”

The woman stopped talking and looked as if something very valuable had been yanked from her grasp.

“I’m sorry,” Hail said, softening his tone. “But we are short on time, Terry. I hope you understand.”

The woman said nothing.

Hail explained to Kara, “In a nutshell, if you cut a V shaped notch into a block of RDX, and then place the RDX on a thick slab of metal, when it blows up it will cut the metal in half.”

“Oh,” Kara said, content with Hail’s explanation.

Renner told the group, “So it’s important to keep track of the shaped charges and the non-shaped charges, because the shaped charges need to be used only on the missile sections.”

“Correct,” Garber said.

“So I’m assuming that outfitting this mission with both types of charges will not be an issue in a twelve-hour time frame?” Hail asked Garber.

“It will not be an issue,” Garber said, making sure she kept her responses short and succinct.

Hail looked back down at the photos, not because they were of any interest to him any longer, but the tranquil bland images helped him to clear his mind. He appeared to study the photos with such intensity that his crew began to look at them again, believing they had missed something.

A minute later Hail looked up and said, “I can’t think of anything else. We need to have a quick meeting in the morning when we get the aerial photos of the warehouse. Those images will enable us to determine the final landing zone coordinates. But other than that, I think we’re ready to go.”

“I must have missed something,” Kara said. “How are you going to get the explosives into the warehouse?”

“We already discussed that,” Rugmon told her. “Remember, you were late to the meeting.”

Kara thought that Rugmon might send her to the principal’s office for being late to class.

“That’s OK,” Hail said, defusing the situation. “I’ll update you later on that. But right now we need to agree on a time of the attack.”

Hail let the question float around the room for a moment before suggesting, “What about 3:00AM tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll check the weather,” Mercier said.

“I’ll check on the availability of the satellite,” Tran said.

“We should have all the drones flight-ready by that time,” Rugmon confirmed.

“Explosives will be ready before that time,” Garber said, one-uping Rugmon.

Renner smiled, “I think we are a go.”

“I think so too,” Hail agreed.

“Let’s do this thing,” Hail said. “Gage, please meet with the pilots. Each of them needs to be assigned a specific task. If we have time, we should run this solution in the simulator and see if the weight and power and flight time makes sense.”

“I agree,” Renner said.

“OK, let’s get to work,” Hail said.

The meeting broke up and the crew began heading for the door.

“Gage, can I speak to you for a minute?” Hail asked.

Kara was not heading toward the door. She stood quietly next to Hail.

“Privately,” he added, giving Kara the not so subtle hint to leave.

“Sorry,” Kara said and she turned to leave the room.

Hail walked across the room and closed the conference room door behind her.

“What’s up?” Renner asked.

“You tell me. What did Kara talk about with her CIA buddies when she was just up on deck?”

“It was pretty straight forward,” Renner said. “She gave them a run down on all of our mission activities since we left Indonesia.”

“If you understood her, I’m assuming that she wasn’t talking in her Zap-e-dee language, or whatever she calls it?”

“No, but then it didn’t sound like she was telling them anything she wouldn’t want us to know about. Like I said, it was just the facts.”

Hail’s hand came up and rubbed his chin. He stood in the middle of the room shaking his head slightly from side to side.

“Why is it that I just don’t trust her? Is that a me thing or do you feel it too?”

Renner laughed. “That’s one of my faults, Marshall. You should know that I always trust beautiful woman, no matter who they work for. I don’t think I’m the right guy to ask.”

“Big help you are,” Hail told his friend.

“I think you have some feelings for the woman. That’s what I think,” Renner said, patting Hail lightly on his back.

“No way,” Hail said, but somewhere hidden inside his brain were a few rogue cells that didn’t believe his own words.

“Right,” Renner said, his voice so mushy with sarcasm that they both started laughing.