Operation Hail Storm

Sea of Japan ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

“What’s Queen’s altitude,” Hail asked Knox.

“Two thousand feet,” Knox reported.

“Has the glide path been plotted?” Hail asked.

“Yes, Sir,” Knox said. “We are within gliding range and we are good to release.”

Hail pressed an icon on his screen and patched in Dallas Stone who was working in the ship’s security center.

“Hi Dallas. Is there any unusual air activity around Wonsan that we need to know about?”

The voice over the speakers said, “No, nothing on the radar. I’ve also been monitoring the video feeds from our drones stationed at the North Korean airfields and no combat aircraft have taken off.”

“Very good,” Hail said. “Please let us know if anything changes.”

“Will do, Skipper,” Stone said.

“Bring up the video from Blondie’s main camera,” Hail told Knox.

The large screen above the controller’s station blinked on but nothing appeared.

“What’s up with the camera,” Hail asked.

“The camera is on and streaming, but there is nothing down there to see,” Renner said. “No lights, no nothing. Maybe when we get closer to Wonsan we’ll see something.”

Hail asked Knox, “Are you ready?”

“Sure am,” Knox said with a measure of excitement in his voice.

“Then deploy the wings, recalculate the glide path and release Blondie from Queen.”

“Deploying the wings,” Alex Knox reported as he pressed the appropriate icon.

The nineteen-year-old pilot then pressed another icon labeled RELEASE and said, “Blondie’s free falling.”

Hail’s next order went to the mission pilot sitting two stations down on Knox’s left, Tanner Grant.

“Tanner, get Queen home. Keep it slow and just above the tree line. We don’t want to make any blips on any North Korean radar stations.”

“Understood,” Tanner Grant replied.

The mission control room was full tonight. All sixteen stations had pilots occupying the seats. Three-fourths were young men or boys, depending on who was making the determination and the other stations were occupied by girls or women, with the same caveat.

Hail knew each of his pilots to one degree or another. He had observed each of them in the flight simulator and he and Renner had both certified these particular pilots for this mission. This was the very first mission for most of his pilots. Hail hoped it would be the first of many missions they would share together.

Instead of gliding Blondie to its landing zone, Knox had become more of a spectator, relying heavily on Blondie’s computers to make critical flight adjustments. The night was windless, so keeping the drone pointed toward its landing zone was easy. And the rate of decent was a simple mathematical formula; ROD = GRAD x GS, which meant for a three percent glide slope, you multiply your groundspeed in knots by approximately five and you get the rate of descent in feet and minutes. The computers onboard Blondie were recalculating this formula fifteen times per second and making adjustments to Blondie’s flight surfaces and continually correcting for any anomalies. Essentially, the drone was flying itself. Blondie knew its landing coordinates, it knew its height, and it knew its rate of decent; therefore, short of snagging a power cable (of which there were very few in North Korean) this part of the mission was simple. The decision to fly in as a glider meant that the approach and landing would be completely silent. A guard could be a hundred yards away and hear nothing when the drone touched down on the other side of the chain link fence.

Hail glanced at the monitor connected to the armrest of his chair. A yellow line on a black background sloped from the top of the screen in the left corner, to the bottom of the screen in the right corner. At the top of the yellow line was a kite-looking graphic that represented Blondie. At the bottom of the yellow line was a green horizontal line that represented the landing zone. Blondie was slowly sliding down the yellow line while white digital numbers indicated the drone’s speed, altitude, distance and time to its LZ.

The room was quiet. Each of the pilots had pulled up the same plot that Hail was watching on their own screens. Blondie’s nose camera was turned on and sending back live video and each of the pilots was watching that as well. But there was still not much to see. The warehouse was on the outskirts of Wonsan and with only a limited amount of electricity, North Korea was not a cityscape of dazzling lights.

Knox would typically be announcing distance and altitude, but since everyone was watching the glide slope on their own monitors, he remained silent and kept his eyes on his instruments.

“Communications status?” Hail asked Shana Tran.

“Five by five. We have a really good night out there for flying. No clouds. Great signal,” she said.

The glider was now halfway down the yellow line. The distance showed five miles. The time until landing showed sixteen minutes and five seconds.

Hail heard the thick door to the mission center hinge open and saw Kara enter the room. She was holding her cell phone in one hand and her other hand was free. She walked up and stood next to Hail. This time, Hail couldn’t offer her a chair if he wanted to, because they were all taken. She had told him before that she liked standing, so he thought nothing more of it.

“I see you removed your underwear,” she said softly.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to give these young people the wrong idea,” Hail replied.

“That was some solid thinking,” Kara said. “So what’s going on with Hail Storm,” she asked.

Hail chuckled. For some reason, every time she said Hail Storm he thought it was amusing. It wasn’t that the name was funny; it was the fact that the CIA had to name everything they did. He assumed this was the case because they had so many operations going on at one time, that they had to name them in order to refer to them. But he also assumed that each operation had a budget line associated with it and all the financials were bundled under that name. It also had a little more flair when discussing the mission with congress after it had become declassified. He was certain that they would rather discuss Hail Storm with Congress instead of Operation 19,304.

“We are about to land Blondie next to the warehouse in the LZ we selected on the photographs,” Hail told Kara.

Hail pointed down toward his monitor so Kara could see the progress of the descent.

The legend was pretty easy to follow. Kara saw that the kite-looking graphic was three-fourths down the yellow sloping line and nearing the green bar at the bottom.

Hail then pointed up at the big screen above the controller’s stations.

“That’s the live feed from Blondie’s nose camera.”

Kara had to take a second look at the screen to be sure she was watching at the correct monitor. It appeared to be turned off. The entire screen was black. And then, just when she was going to ask Hail about it, she saw a light below. A second later she saw another light on the ground, far away. It was actually two lights close together. Kara thought it must be a vehicle of some type.

“Not exactly Times Square down there. Is it?” she said.

“Nope,” Hail said. “Good thing we are navigating by GPS or there would be no way to land this thing.”

Kara thought about taking this last moment before the drone landed to tell Hail about Washington’s backup plan. If his operation was called Hail Storm, then Hail Mary would be a good name for the backup mission. Kara knew that North Korea had been steadily building up its anti-aircraft missile installations. They had purchased much of their equipment from Victor Kornev. And in just the past few years, North Korea had also purchased and installed the new Chinese radar that could detect a stealth aircraft, but not clearly enough to give an accurate location to an interception missile. Still, this meant that the North Koreans could scramble their fighters to intercept such an incursion into their country. Kara felt sorry for the poor sucker that had volunteered to fly that mission. She hoped it would be unnecessary.

“Getting close to touchdown,” Knox reported.

Kara watched the live video being sent from the drone and she thought it was useless. A flash of light here, a streak of moonlight there, and that was the best the video had to offer. The pilot they called Knox wasn’t even looking at the video feed. He was watching a bank of virtual gages and holding on to the controls, but he didn’t appear to be actually flying the machine.

“Hundred feet and flaring to fifty knots,” Knox said, but he made no significant action Kara could detect.

Hail saw Kara watching Knox and said, “The drone is flying in auto-pilot. Remember when we were on my jet and I told you that the plane could take off and land itself?”

Kara nodded.

“Well, that’s what Blondie is doing now. The only unknown is how far it will slide when it hits the landing zone. The grass and weeds in the field are wet and slick.”

“Fifty feet,” Knox announced.

“Release the skids,” Hail ordered.

Knox touched the screen and confirmed, “Skids released.”

“What are the skids?” Kara asked.

Hail took a moment before answering.

“They resemble skis and are tucked up inside the drone to prevent drag when it’s flying. When we are getting ready to land, we deploy the skis, or skids as they are called, instead of landing wheels. The skids weigh less than wheels and don’t require the extra weight of breaks. They stop the aircraft by using friction. The skids have short spikes on the back of them. After the drone touches the ground, if we lift the nose of the drone, the skids roll back onto their spikes, which dig into the ground and quickly slow down the aircraft.”

“Neat idea,” Kara said.

“Old Rugmon came up with that one” Hail told her.

“Good old Rugmon,” Kara said dryly.

Now closer to the earth, shapes and forms began to show up on the video as the bright moon illuminated the ground and the landing zone dead ahead. To the right, the warehouse was clearly visible. A bright sodium vapor lamp was mounted to each corner of the building, casting out a wide cone of light that glittered off the newly installed barbwire fence.

The video swayed from side to side a little, but Kara thought it was surprisingly stable considering that no one was flying the drone. Or maybe the opposite was the case. The reason it was so stable was because a computer was flying Blondie and not some nineteen-year-old pilot. In either case, everyone in the room held their breath as the ground, which had looked brown only a second ago, now looked somewhat greenish as the nose of the aircraft skimmed just a foot above it. The video chattered and blinked and jerked as the drone’s skids dug into the soft earth.

Knox stepped on his control pedals, instinctively activating brakes that were not in fact brakes at all, but it made him feel better to do something. Once the aircraft had touched down, it took only a matter of four seconds before it came to a complete stop.

Quickly Hail ordered, “Microphone on, please. I want to see if we can hear anything.”

“Like boots running towards Blondie?” Kara asked.

“Yeah, just like that,” Hail said.

The microphone was opened and the room was flooded with the sound of a million popcorn kernels being shaken in a metal trash can.

“Turn it down,” Hail said. “What the hell is that?”

Pierce Mercier, who had been sitting very quietly at his station, fielded the question.

“Cicadas, or the more common term is summer crickets, known as “Maemi” in Korean. en mass, their call for a mate can reach in the neighborhood of 90 decibels or above.”

“Well, we’re not going to hear anything with that racket going on. Shut off the microphone and take the camera up and do a three sixty and let’s see what there is to see,” Hail told Knox.

Near the front of the drone, a small round hatch on Blondie’s back popped opened. A telescoping monopod slowly grew from the hole. On the tip of the pole was affixed a motorized 360-degree pan head. Mounted on the pan head was a small high-definition camera. The black drone sat on its long belly in the deep weeds and grass with only two feet of its profile exposed. The camera’s monopod extended Blondie’s horizontal elevation another three feet; high enough to clear even the tallest grass in the field.

Knox slowly rotated the camera as Hail had instructed.

The crew watched nothing but blackness for three-fourths of the camera’s rotation. In the last quarter turn, Knox stopped the camera when the warehouse centered into frame.

Hail took some time to look over the building.

The warehouse was galvanized grey in color. Hail estimated it was about forty feet high and the side they were looking at was about three hundred feet long. The aerial photos they had received from the CIA had already provided the team with overall dimensions of the warehouse, everything but its height. Even with all that information they had collected from outer space, there was nothing like looking at the warehouse from ground level to get an idea of the layout.

Hail detected some sort of movement in the right corner of the frame. A dark figure was crossing under one of the bright lights.

“Zoom in on that guy,” Hail told Knox.

Knox adjusted the camera to the right and tightened up the shot.

A soldier in a drab grey North Korean uniform was walking slowly down the side of the warehouse. He had a shiny black AK-47 slung over his shoulder. His strides were short and indifferent. He walked with his head down, looking at the ground.

“Is that guy awake?” Renner asked.

“Let’s hope not,” Hail said.

The camera tracked the soldier as he walked halfway down the side of the building and then stopped. The soldier then stood still, raising his head and looking off into the night. In fact, he was looking right at Blondie’s camera.

“Say cheese,” Knox quipped.

Of course the crew understood that there was no possible way the man could make out the black drone in the dark field a hundred yards away. He was simply killing time, waiting there instead of finishing his rounds. The guards body language said, “I’m tired and need a good night’s sleep.” Hail could only guess how long the guy had been trudging around or the last time he had slept.

They continued to watch the man stand on the side of the warehouse. Eventually he backed up and began leaning on the building.

“What are you waiting for?” Kara asked Hail.

We need to see what this guy does,” Hail told her. “Either he’s going to walk all the way to the back of building and check it out, or he is going to kill time on the side before walking back to the front. Either way, we need to know if there is some sort of guard schedule and if so, where do they go.”

“This guy looks like the only thing he is patrolling is the inside of his eyelids,” Kara responded.

“That works for me,” Hail said.

The soldier now looked as if he had literally fallen asleep. He continued to stand, leaning on the side of the warehouse, shoulders sloped, head down pointed towards the ground.

“Knox, wake up Black Eyed Peas and Electric Light Orchestra and run a full systems check on them. I need to know how much video time and communications time each drone has left.”

Knox began flipping through screens and pressing icons. It took him a few moments to collect the information.

“ELO has about two hours of power left to facilitate the communications between BEP and the satellite.”

He paused for a second and flipped to another screen.

“And BEP has a little over three hours of time left to stream video.”

Hail checked the time: 3:15AM

Kara checked the time on her phone as well: 3:15AM. She knew that Hail would be cutting things close and wrestled with telling him her little secret. Best outcome would be that Hail would quickly complete the mission and the air strike would be called off. Worst outcome would be that he would run long and the jet would polish off the warehouse. She decided to wait a little longer and see how things progressed.

Hail’s phone went off and he answered it.

“Hello,” was all he said.

“Hey Marshall, this is Dallas. We played back the last phone call Ramey made to Pepper. The time set for the air strike is still set for four hundred hours, Korea Standard Time.”

Hail wanted to say damn or some other expletive, but with Kara standing next to him, all he said was, “I understand,” and he pressed the END icon on his phone.

He looked at Kara inquisitively for a moment, as if his gaze alone might prompt her to spill the beans.

Kara looked back at him innocently.

If he confronted her with the information, then she would know that they were still monitoring all of her communications. That was an advantage that Hail was unwilling to give up at this time. And this would not be the best time to get into a pissing match with the CIA woman. He needed to get the operation moving quickly considering that there was less than forty-five minutes left.

He looked away from Kara.

On screen one, was the close up of the guard still leaning on the building, which was being sent from the monopod camera on Blondie.

And on large screen number two, were fresh images from inside the warehouse. BEP was alive and streaming.

“Let’s get the show on the road,” Hail said.

He told Kara, “Excuse me.”

Kara stepped away from his chair. From under the armrests of his chair, Hail slid two flight hand-controllers into place. He locked them into an upright position on top of each armrest. He then reached down on the side of his chair and flipped a latch that released a platform that contained foot pedals that protracted under his feet. In less than ten seconds, Hail had converted his big chair into a flight control station.

Kara looked impressed, but she said nothing.

Hail adjusted each of his small monitors, as a motorcyclist would adjust rear view mirrors for a better view. He then skimmed his finger across the small screen to his right, again and again until he found the page he wanted.

“I’m going to take Guns N’ Roses out for a little look around,” he told the crew.

Renner started to say something and stopped and decided to let it ride. He knew that Hail was just as qualified to fly the drones as any of his other pilots, but this ‘look around’, as Hail referred to it, had not been planned. One of the other pilots was supposed to fly that combat drone.

Hail set his feet on the pedals and wrapped his large hands around each of the flight controllers. He took in a breath and squeezed the throttle trigger on the right controller.

A large flat pizza sized section of Blondie’s backend lifted out of its sealed compartment. The composite plastic lid rose into air. The round disc had four large propeller cut outs. Four powerful electric motors spun four propellers at 1200 revolutions per minute, two spinning clockwise and the other two spinning counter-clockwise to offset the torque or the turning force. Just under the lid, two cameras were mounted one inch apart from one another. One was a day/night-vision camera, and the other was a targeting camera specifically calibrated for the gun located directly beneath the cameras.

Renner activated the camera on the drone called Guns N’ Roses. An obscured view of tall grass appeared on the night vision camera on big screen number three.

As the drone continued to rise out of Blondie, a nasty black 9 millimeter M4 mini gun was exposed to the North Korean air. Due to its thick sound suppressor that was mounted to its stubby barrel, the gun looked more substantial than it really was. Still, Hail and the designers of the drone knew that the weapon was all business. In full auto-mode, the little gun could fire thirty-two rounds in less than three seconds. With a hundred and twenty-eight rounds on board in a condensed drum, the compact drone would be something that none of the North Koreans would want to mess with. Under the machine gun, three thick legs sprang out at 120 degree angles, creating a tripod base for the drone to rest upon when it returned to earth.

Hail gently nudged the drone up into the air and hovered about ten feet above Blondie to have a look around. Nothing had changed. There was no additional activity near or around the warehouse. Hail squeezed the throttle and bent the right controller forward. The drone responded by gaining altitude and moving forward toward the twelve-foot barbed wire fence. Two hundred feet before reaching the wire, Hail veered Guns N’ Roses sharply to the left and began a long arch around the property. He tilted the angle of the drone backwards slightly to bring it to a hover. He was now positioned about a hundred feet from the fence in back of the warehouse. Hail scanned the backside of the property for guards or dogs or any other living thing that could send an alert. Seeing nothing, he slowly nudged the drone forward and over the top of the razor wire. The drone approached the wall of the back of the building, still hovering just under the roof line. From there, Hail rotated the drone left toward the side of the building they had not investigated. Hail allowed the drone to peek around the corner. Nothing. No guards. No dogs. No threats of any type. He then spun the drone 180 degrees and flew it to the other corner of the back of the warehouse. He tilted the control stick to the right and the drone looked down that side of the building. One sleeping guard. No dogs. No real threats of any type.

“We’re clear,” Hail told his crew. Then he added, “I need to set this thing down to save power.”

Hail tilted the aircraft backwards and the drone began drifting back away from the light and back toward the inner perimeter of the fence. He brought it down slowly and directed it toward the corner of the fence. From that vantage point, the drone had a good view of both the backside of the building, as well as the entire side of the structure the guard was leaning on. Gently, silently, Hail brought the drone down on to its tripod base and then he released the throttle. The video image stabilized and Hail relaxed.

“Good job,” Renner told him.

“Now it’s your turn,” Hail told Renner.

“I’m on it,” Renner said.

Mimicking the motions Hail had performed only moments ago, Renner lifted an identical drone out of the back of Blondie. Its name was Sex Pistols and its job was to land on the opposite corner of the warehouse property. With both of the combat drones situated in those positions, three sides of the warehouse could be covered with only two drones.

With Gun N’ Roses having already performed the recon and with the drone silently standing guard, Renner didn’t have to worry about being spotted. Therefore, he took a more direct approach by gaining altitude and flying directly over the fence and then over the top of the warehouse at two hundred feet in the dark sky. If five fully awake guards were doing nothing but watching the sky, they might have been able to detect something flutter in front of the bright moon, but that was not currently the case down below. Therefore, Renner flew forward, over the top of the warehouse and quickly brought the drone down in the other back corner, inside the barbed wire fence.

“Good job,” Hail said, retuning the compliment.

“Nothing to it,” Renner said.

“Alright. So much for the known. Now for the unknown,” Hail announced.

“Knox, let’s get Men at Work busy,” Hail ordered.

“Roger that,” Knox said.

The young pilot wasted no time lifting the third full sized mini drone out of the back of Blondie. Rugmon had taken the same combat drone that Renner and Hail had flown, and had replaced the ammunition drum with a small acetylene and oxygen tank. The M4 mini gun had been replaced by remote operated control valves and a 3-axis arm that held a cutting torch. The weight was approximately the same as the combat drones, but as Knox flew Men at Work toward the fence, he realized that the balance was off. The drone wanted to go to the right. Instead of correcting the problem by adjusting the speed of each propeller, Knox opted to let the drone lean in that direction and feathered the propellers so the drone was flying sideways. By flying sideways, he was using less power than if he was overcoming the balance issue with engine power alone. This peculiar flight position meant that Men at Work’s camera was leaning at an angle as well. Hail tilted his head slightly to compensate as he looked at the video on big screen number three. The fence appeared in the periphery of the lens and then quickly passed underneath the drone. The roof line of the warehouse appeared next and Knox slowed the drone into a hover. Only then, when he needed to see precisely where he was going to land, did he adjust each of the propeller speeds for balanced flight. Now positioned a foot from back wall of the warehouse, Knox scanned the ground below for the best place to touch down.

“Are we still all clear?” Knox asked both Hail and Renner.

“We are clear,” Hail answered for the both of them.

Knox hovered the drone next to the back wall of the building and eased off the trigger, slowing the motors and causing the drone to slowly sink toward the ground.

“Keep it tight against the wall,” Hail instructed.

“No problem,” Knox said making small adjustments as he lined up his landing spot. The crew was watching Men at Work’s primary camera, which was now pointing directly into the steel wall of the warehouse. Knox, however, had switched to the drone’s vertical landing camera that was mounted between the aircraft’s tripod legs. The camera pointed straight down and reminded Knox of those old clips he had seen when they had landed on the moon. And sure enough, a foot off the ground he was able to say a few of those words he had seen in the clip.

“Picking up dust,” Knox said as dirt flew in all directions. “Two more feet down. Position looks good.”

The view from the main camera had not changed. The side of the warehouse was no more than nine inches from the lens. If it wasn’t for the bright moon reflecting off the tin-like surface, it would be a black wall and therefore invisible.

“Tranquility base here,” Knox said. “Houston, the Eagle has landed.”

“Nice,” Hail told his pilot.

A smattering of applause and atta-boys rose up from the crew waiting for their turn.

Hail checked the time: 3:31AM.

“Man, you have to get this thing cutting fast,” He told Knox, who had already begun unhinging the long arm that held the cutting torch.

In order to pack the complicated arm into the drone, Rugmon had designed it to fold over on itself; much like a wrist, elbow and shoulder could move on a human. Unlike a human, all three of these joints could fold up to a very flat five-degree angle. Knox had to unfold each joint, each section of the arm one section at a time. The crew watched the arm come into view on Men at Work’s main camera. At first, only the brass looking torch could be seen. Then as the next section unfolded, the arm extended closer to the wall. And when Knox had fully extended the arm, he had to point the camera up at a higher angle in order to see the entire cutting arm in a single shot.

Knox wiggled the arm around and then pointed the torch down at the camera and waved it at the crew.

“Hello, down there,” he clowned.

“We see it can wave,” Hail commented. “The question is, can it cut?”

“Let’s find out.” Knox said.

“I’ll operate the gas and you do the cutting,” Renner told Knox.

“Wait a second,” Hail said. “Let’s check the inside of the warehouse before we get started.”

Hail took over BEP’s camera and zoomed in toward the office window. Behind the glass he saw the North Korean Minster of Defense sleeping and that was all. He assumed that there was probably a guard stationed outside the front door of the warehouse and at least one more at the front gate. But right now, no active guards were in sight. Hail didn’t find this level of security unreasonable, considering that the entire country was under guard. It wasn’t as if they had a huge immigration problem with all sorts of unknown people clamoring to get into North Korea. A few guards were more than enough to guard a place that the North Koreans would assume was safe to begin with.

“All is quiet,” Hail reported. “Start cutting,” he told Knox.

Knox twisted the torch back towards the sheet metal and told Renner, “Light it up.”

Renner turned on the gas nozzles and pressed and icon that was labeled IGNITOR.

Mounted under the tip of the torch, a small jagged wheel began to spin under a spring loaded flint. A flash of sparks caused the video image to grey out momentarily as a long orange flame grabbed on to the end of the touch. The video image now turned white as the camera tried to compensate its exposure going from moon dark to sun bright. Renner adjusted the gas mixture until he produced a long blue flame. Renner then messed around with different camera filters, until he found one that allowed enough light into the lens to see the metal, yet shielded enough light to prevent the video from blooming out.

“OK, you are good to cut,” Renner told Knox.

Using his control sticks to remotely operate the arm, Knox slowly pressed both controllers forward and the torch moved toward the sheet metal. This was not a new experience for Alex Knox. During the last few days he had used a test control station in the lab, as well as the same exact drone, to cut a two by two-foot hole in a similar piece of galvanized steel. The first hole he cut in the lab looked like a dinosaur had ripped into the metal with its teeth. And Knox had run out of gas before completing the ragged mess. But as Knox got more time at the controls, his next attempt looked like a lawnmower had gnawed on the steel. On his next try the hole looked like a large rock had been shot through the metal and the next try looked like a blob of searing plasma had melted the metal. And then finally on his fifth attempt, Knox had cut out a relatively square and precise opening. At least it was good enough to fly a drone through.

Knox manipulated the robotic arm and pressed the torch up against the metal. The flame flattened and hissed in protest. The torch began to cut. From his practice sessions, Knox knew that he had to move quickly. Rugmon had built the tanks to hold specific amount of gas; just enough to complete the hole with about one minute of burn time left in reserve. Just one minute of leeway in case Knox screwed up the cut. If indeed the cut was incomplete, then the only choice Hail’s team would have would be to shoot out the remaining bits of metal. And if it came down to that, they might as well just go through the front door with guns blazing.

Knox began the cut high and to the left, reaching up and out as far as the drone’s arm would extend. He then began cutting in a downward direction, slowly, watching the metal separate under the flame.

Through the lens of Guns N’ Roses, Hail monitored the sleeping guard. So far. So good. The North Korean had made no movements.

Renner watched the other side of the warehouse from the camera on Sex Pistols.

Both men also watched the screen above them that showed video from the inside of the warehouse. No activity. The Minster of Defense was still sleeping soundly in his chair. If there were any guards in the warehouse or outside of the office door, they could not be seen from BEP’s current camera angle.

Knox finished his first vertical cut, a gash in the steal about twenty-four inches long. Molten red metal dripped from the cuts and onto the ground in front of the drone.

“Eighty percent gas left,” Renner told Knox.

“Rugmon didn’t leave much to play around with,” Knox complained, concentrating on the new direction of the cut.

“Sorry, I know you wanted to sign your work when you were done, but we don’t have the gas or the time,” Hail quipped.

“The guard is waking up,” Kara warned Hail.

Hail checked the video feed and sure enough the guard had pulled himself off the wall and was standing up groggily and rubbing his eyes.

“Should I stop cutting?” Knox asked.

“No, not yet,” Hail told him. “We’ll keep an eye on the guard and see what he does.”

The horizontal cut that Knox was making was almost done and he prepared to start moving the torch upwards.

The guard looked to his right for a moment, and then to his left toward the back of the warehouse. Hail watched him closely from Guns N’ Roses camera. For a moment it looked as if the guard had made up his mind to walk toward the front of the building, but then, almost as an afterthought, the soldier made a slow turn toward the back of the property and began a slow plod in that direction.

“No,” Hail said. “Don’t do it.”

“Should I stop cutting?” Knox asked.

“Wait one,” Hail told him.

An icon on Hail’s screen read GUN CAM and Hail pressed it and the video was swapped out with a high-res image that had a gunsight painted in the middle. Hail reacquired the guard who was still walking toward the rear of the warehouse. Hail zoomed in and placed the M4’s virtual crosshairs on the man’s forehead.

“Don’t do it, dude,” Hail said, and he meant it.

It would be bad all the way around. Hail really didn’t want to kill this guy if he didn’t have to. The man was nothing more than a cog in the evil North Korean machine. The soldier was doing what he did so he could eat. Shooting the man this early in the mission was a problem as well. The drone’s gun was relatively quiet, but it wasn’t the whisper that movie-makers made it out to be. A silenced gun made noise, maybe enough noise to be heard by the guard up front or at the gate. And even if he had to put this guy down and no one heard the shot, the other guards might come looking for him. And when they found him, then all hell would break loose.

A hundred feet from the rear of the building and Hail told Knox, “Stop cutting and stay silent.”

Renner pressed an icon and extinguished the torch. The metal glowed red in the dark night. It was bright enough to where Hail thought it might be detectable from the guard glancing around the back of the building, but it was what it was.

The soldier stopped walking for a moment and shook a cigarette out of a pack he pulled from his pants pocket. He lit the cigarette and sucked in some smoke. The tip glowed red and illuminated the man’s face. His was young. Maybe early twenties. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in days.

Hail kept the gunsight fixed on the red tip of the soldier’s cigarette. A triple tap from the mini gun and it didn’t matter if it impacted the guard’s forehead or his throat. It would still be instant lights-out for the guy. But the bright red dot in the darkness was a great target.

“Go back,” Hail willed the guard. “Go back and visit your buddies up front.”

But the guard did not go back. Instead he proceeded to walk the remaining distance down the side of the warehouse toward the back corner.

Hail felt his finger tighten on the trigger of his control stick. With his drone positioned in the corner of the property, and the guard just arriving at the corner of the warehouse, this was as close as the soldier would be to Hail and therefore the best time to take a shot. Hail pressed an icon and switched the gun from auto into manual mode. Maybe just one quick round would do the trick and therefore minimize the noise, Hail thought.

The guard stopped at the corner. Instead of walking around to the backside of the warehouse, the soldier simply poked his head around the corner of the warehouse and took a quick look. By now the glowing cutting marks had cooled and were no longer a red flag waving in the darkness. The guard must have been satisfied that no trespassers were on the property, because he turned back toward the front of the warehouse and began the long walk.

Hail took his finger off the gun trigger and told Knox, “Start cutting again. Our friend is gone.”

Renner turned the gas back on and Knox pressed the ignitor and lit the torch. Knox repositioned the torch an inch under the third side of his vertical cut, so if any metal had fused back together, the flame would separate it again.

Hail checked the time: 3:38AM.

Hail told Renner, “Gage, break open Blondie and get your pilots ready to fly. We are running out of time and as soon as the hole is open, they need to be in the air.”

“Understood,” Renner said.

He accessed Blondie’s command and control systems and pressed an icon.

Back in the dark field, both of Blondie’s cargo doors began to open. Tiny electric motors barely made a sound as they lifted the counterbalanced thin sheets of carbon fiber from Blondie’s back. Once the doors had fully opened, the motors stopped and the drone became perfectly silent again.

Renner got up from his station and walked into the middle of the mission room. He stepped up on to the next tier where analysts were stationed. All of the young pilots were already looking at him and waiting for instructions.

“We are going to do this exactly as we performed it in the simulator,” Renner began. “Each of you has a particular drone assigned to you, as well as a specific location where to land that drone. Our time frame has tightened up, so instead of one drone at a time, we are going to fly in pairs with less than a minute between launches. Are there any questions?”

Twelve pilots looked at him and none of them spoke up. Renner felt that was a good omen.

“Starting the last cut,” Knox reported, moving his control stick to the left to complete the box. Sparks, smoke and red hot goo fled from the cutting torch.

“Less than one minute,” Hail said. “I think you can get them in the air, Gage,” Hail told Renner.

“Roger that,” Renner acknowledged. “Pilots one and two, you are good to lift off.”

Pilots one and two happened to be the most experienced junior pilots on the ship.

Oliver Fox and Paige Grayson prepped their stations and ran a full systems check on their drones.

Inside the belly of Blondie, twelve drones sat patiently waiting to get airborne. Each of them was stacked on one another, four stacks, four drones per stack. None of the drones were anything special. They were designed with just enough battery power to get them to their LZ and nothing more. They were provisioned with large motors, wide propellers to carry their payload and nothing other than a light-weight low resolution camera.

“Are we ready to fly?” Renner asked Fox and Grayson.

“Yes, Sir,” they both reported.

“Go Oliver,” Renner said.

Fox pulled the trigger throttle on the drone called Thing 1.

Fox watched his video monitor as his drone cleared Blondie’s cargo bay doors. Once it had risen four feet, Fox swiveled his controller in the direction of the warehouse. The video on the drone spiraled into focus. In front of Fox sat a well-lit warehouse.

“Moving towards the wire,” Fox announced.

“Go Paige,” Renner ordered.

Trying to stay close to her flight partner, Paige Grayson pulled the trigger and began swiveling her drone toward the warehouse before it had even cleared the hatch. As soon as she saw the warehouse lights, she tilted her drone forward and began to make up ground on Thing 1.

“The cut is almost done,” Knox reported. “Only one more inch.”

Hail didn’t know how much noise the metal flap would make when it came loose, so he checked BEP’s camera inside the warehouse to confirm that the room was still unoccupied. The two by two-foot piece of metal could fall inward or outward, and they had to be ready for either contingency. If it fell inward and landed on something flammable, then they had to have all their drones inside and in place before the warehouse became an inferno. If the flap landed on the outside, then Knox had to make sure that it didn’t damage his drone. Either way, Knox understood that once the cut had been made, he still had to move Men at Work out of the way to make room for the dozen drones headed toward the new opening.

Knox didn’t have long to wait. Five seconds later, the torch found its starting point and the metal sheet dropped away and fell inside the warehouse.

Hail brought up Black Eyed Peas’ control panel. He accessed the camera pan-head and rotated it 180 degrees so the lens was pointing toward the back of the warehouse. The steel beam that BEP was resting on blocked some of the floor of the warehouse below, but Hail could clearly see a gaping black hole cut in the wall at the end of one of the wide aisles. He watched the new opening for a moment, waiting to see if there was a flare up of smoke or fire.

“Looks like we’re good,” Hail said. “Good job, Alex,” he told Knox. “Now you need to move your drone out of the way so the Things can get in.”

“Will do,” Alex said, discarding the screens that dealt with all the cutting tools and pulling back up the flight control screens. He pressed a few icons and wrapped his hands around the control sticks and lifted Men at Work off the ground.

“It’s a lot lighter without the gas,” Knox commented.

“Where do you want me to set it down, Marshall?”

“I’d like to get some eyes on the front of the warehouse. Why don’t you go over the top of the wire and set it down in weeds where you can get a good visual of the main gate.”

“OK,” Knox said and pressed the throttle and watched the drone gain altitude. As Men at Work cleared the razor fence, Knox saw THING 1 and THING 2 pass over the fence about five yards away, heading in the opposite direction.

“Wow, it’s getting so busy around here that we’re going to need a flight controller,” Knox joked.

Fox and Grayson flew their drones up to the hole Knox had cut in the warehouse. Very carefully, Fox maneuvered THING 1 through the opening, followed immediately by Grayson’s THING 2.

Hail watched closely, understanding that the first nine drones were the most important. Each one of them carried the two pound shaped charge of RDX or cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine as Terry Garber liked to refer to it.

Fox carefully flew his drone down the aisle, staying low in case of a malfunction or a communications problem. If THING 1 was going to fall to the floor, then Fox wanted to make sure it was a short distance in order to minimize the noise of impact.

Directly behind him, Paige mimicked his movements and direction.

“Get the next set in the air,” Hail told Renner.

“I’m on it,” Renner confirmed.

Very close to the front office, Fox spotted his designated landing zone. He applied more power to the propellers and climbed five feet in the air before turning to the right at the end of the aisle. Fox flew THING 1 directly over the top of one of the large individual sections of the missile. Making very small control stick adjustments, Fox positioned THING 1 in a hover over the top of his designated section of an ICBM. He then slowly eased off the throttle. The drone dropped a foot and then gently touched down, resting on top of the massive piece of metal.

Paige’s target was the missile section in front of the stage Oliver had landed on. She climbed at a forty-five-degree angle and brought THING 2 into a hover. She then set her aircraft down on her assigned landing zone without incident.

By the time THING 1 and THING 2 had touched down, THING 3 and THING 4 were already inside the warehouse and floating down the aisle.