Operation Hail Storm

Sea of Japan ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

During the entire time Kara had spent in high school and then college, every time she had sat in front of a complicated math problem of any type, she had always thought to herself, “When in my life will I ever need this shit?” And up to this point, she had never run into a situation that required complicated math. Her phone had a calculator and her CIA job didn’t require trigonometry or calculus or any of that geek mathematics. And technically, right at that moment she still didn’t need those skills either, because everyone around her appeared to be a math genius. She was good at languages, but when it came to paying attention in algebra or calculus, it was always easier to find a smart guy to help her out.

From the moment she had pulled up a chair at the big conference table and begun to look at the warehouse aerial photos, the meeting had turned into math. The topic of math initially reared its ugly head when there was a need to know how far the mother drone would be away from her baby drones, and then how far the baby drones would have to fly to get to the warehouse. Kara thought that was complicated enough, but the math that followed those issues was dizzying.

Renner, Hail and Mercier were crunching numbers based on power consumption versus flight time versus battery weight versus total payload. The lab coats, Garber and Rugmon, where working on weight distribution and oxy-fuel cutting calculations, using acetylene or methylacetylene or propylene. Their math tinkered around with the oxy/fuel ratios for maximum tip temperatures versus weight factors. Garber and Rugmon looked absolutely electrified as their calculators spit out numbers related to pre-heat flame temperatures which effected the oxygen stream throughput which was related to the torch and cutting nozzle diameter, which also varied the numbers involving cutting speed versus the material being cut.

Each group was jotting on pads, writing on tablets, entering data into spreadsheets and then changing numbers when the ones they tried didn’t work.

Kara couldn’t feel more out of place if she had walked into an insurance seminar.

Then the graphs started. These were shown on the big screens in the conference room so everyone could look them over and comment on how they were too flat or dipped too quickly or spiked where it shouldn’t be spikey. Then the math would start in again, making the dips less dippy and spikes less spikey.

By the time the meeting had concluded, Kara didn’t have a clue what had transpired.

“If everyone is happy with all of this, then I think we’re a go,” Hail said, smiling a tired yet accomplished smile.

Kara felt foolish simply being in the meeting and decided that anything she had to add would be met with either distain or indifference. So she said nothing.

Hail’s phone when off. He took it out of his pocket and noted it was his old friend Trevor Rogers from the FBI giving him a call.

“I’ll be back in a second,” Hail told the group. He stepped out of the room and into the hallway and answered his phone.

“Hey Trev, what’s up?”

“Nothing good,” was the answer.

“How so?” Hail asked.

“I just wanted to give you a heads up that I just got out of a meeting with all the people that were in the meeting when you came out here.”

It was apparent that Trevor was being careful not to use names.

“OK,” Hail said to let Trevor know he understood.

“They are planning an entire backup mission, just in case you can’t get the job done.”

“What?” Hail asked.

“That’s right. At zero-four-hundred hours, your time, they are going to swat the fly if it hasn’t already flashed on the satellite.”

Trevor was being cryptic in his verbiage, but Hail understood exactly what he was saying.

“You have to be shitting me?” Hail said.

Trevor said nothing.

“Are they going to use a drone?” Hail asked.

“Nope. The don’t have any in the area. They are using the real deal. One butt in one seat.”

“Holy shit,” Hail said. “Do they have any idea how hot the air space will be once we take out the target? Every North Korean asleep at his radar station is going wake up and start scanning the air like their life depended on it. Anything larger than a bird is going to get a Chinese made Flying Crossbow missile enema.”

“I know,” Trevor said. “But you know how it is. I’m just the FBI to these people. What does the FBI know about bombing sorties and such?”

Hail was mad.

“You know Trev, that’s why I didn’t want to get involved with the government. It would be one thing if we coordinated the strike, but doing two separate missions and one of them is secret; that’s got cluster fuck written all over it.”

“I agree, but I’m just the messenger.”

“Do they know you called me?” Hail asked. “Was this supposed to be a secret backup plan?”

Rogers said, “I made of point of not asking during the meeting. Therefore, if in the future they ask me if I told you about it, I can say, oh, my bad, I didn’t know we were keeping this a secret.”

Hail calmed down a bit and said, “Well, you know I appreciate the call.”

“It was the most I can do,” Trevor said. “You take care of yourself and I’ll talk to you on the other side.”

“You do the same and thanks again.”

Hail clicked off his phone and stood in the hallway for a moment, considering this new information.

The first thing he needed to decide was should he share this information with his team. If his guys completed the mission before four in the morning, then they could be clear of the country and it wouldn’t even be an issue. But if his team was running late, then why even bother with the mission. Hail would lose a lot of gear if they had everything in place, only to have a jet turn it all into rubble before they could hit the switch.

And if Hail decided to tell his crew about the backup plan, would it be in his best interest to tell the CIA woman as well? But then, maybe she already knew. Maybe it was even her idea. There was no way to know unless he asked her, and asking her would be telling her. And what would happen if she knew that Hail knew this backup plan was in place. Would the White House advance their timeline?

Hail tried to remember if Kara had been in the room when they had been discussing timelines. Off the top of his head, he didn’t recall her being there during that time. She had been late to the meeting that day and that’s when they had decided on the time. Hadn’t she?

Then he started to get mad again and on the surface he didn’t know why. After all, his high-level partners in the USA were just backing him up. Just being good allies. But there was more than just that. To Hail, this was his deal. His mission. He had planned it. He had designed new drones for the task and had everything ready to go.

Then he realized the ugly fact that his anger was based on pride. And the strange thing was, Hail was good with that. He had immense pride in his crew, as well as his ship and his company and everything that he had built. If he hadn’t been wired that way, then none of this would have ever happened. He would have simply done his 9 to 5 job and then gone home to sit on the couch and watch Baywatch reruns while eating Cheetos.

He thought about it some more and tried to run through some scenarios in his mind. Hail stood there in the hall for about five minutes tossing it around. In the end, he decided that he would tell his crew about the backup mission, but he would not tell Kara. There was no point to it. Kara would be nothing more than a spectator in the mission room when the operation went down, and her knowledge would have no impact on the outcome. His crew, however, it was important for them to know that there may be friendly aircraft in the operational theater. If planes came too close to the Hail Nucleus for comfort, then his team had to be choosey about which ones they shot down.

Hail pressed a contact on his phone and listened for Renner to answer.

“Yeah,” Renner said.

“I need you to leave the meeting and walk with me over to ship security. We have some new developments we need to discuss.”

“Now?” Renner asked.

“Now,” Hail told him.