Operation Hail Storm

Celebes Sea ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus

There was no difference in time zones between that of North Korea and the current position of the Hail Nucleus. North Korea was in the forty-degree latitude range and the Nucleus was south at seven degrees, but their longitudes were roughly the same. The distance between the two points was four-thousand, one-hundred and fifteen kilometers, but the satellites that sent the signals from the Nucleus to the drones surrounding the Korean’s house didn’t care about all that. The Nucleus could have been floating in North Korea’s Taedong River or even Kim Yong Chang’s swimming pool, and it would have made no difference. A signal was a signal, no matter how far away. As long as it was five by five.

The Nucleus’s mission crew had reassembled in the mission center.

Gage Renner and Pierce Mercier were acting as the real-time data analysts for the mission. They were also convenient as a second set of hands, if needed. Both analysts could assist in switching displays, looking up flight data, verifying coordinates and other tasks that didn’t directly involve flying a drone. Both men were seated at the analyst stations on the second tier behind the pilots.

Shana Tran was manning the communications console. Her job was straightforward. Make sure the drones all received a clear signal from the Chinese satellite. Unlike the other pilots that looked wound up, Tran looked cool and almost a little bored. She would have liked to have redone her fingernails before the mission, but she had overslept.

While Tran was sleeping, Tanner Grant had flown Foghat back to the Hail Laser and the Laser’s crew had already begun the refueling process. For now, Grant was an observer, but he would soon be back online and responsible for returning Foghat to the theater in order to retrieve the drones.

Alex Knox was responsible for the actions of the micro-drone known as Aerosmith. The drone was currently sitting high up in the red pine tree that looked down on the Korean compound below. Alex understood that he had the toughest part of the mission, but he had practiced it, not only in the simulator, but also in a special room that was set up for just that purpose. A section of a pine tree had been hauled aboard the Nucleus and erected in the special room. Knox had then practiced flying in and out between its branches. He was comfortable with his part of the operation and confident he could pull it off.

Junior pilot Oliver Fox was manning the controls of the drone called Styx. Styx was the main eyes-on drone that was responsible for streaming the main camera angles to the mission center. Its vantage point on top of the power-pole, less than twenty meters from the compound, could not be improved upon. If Styx became inoperable, then Aerosmith could also be used as the spotter drone, but its camera angle could be compromised. Even now, when the wind blew, the video being sent from Aerosmith was periodically being blocked by tree branches and pine boughs as they fluttered in front of its camera lens.

Junior pilot, Paige Grayson was operating the drone known as Stones. Like its name, Stones was a stone. It sat on the ground near the man-made brook and did nothing. It saw nothing. Its sole purpose was a backup to Aerosmith in case that drone had a technical problem and could not complete its mission.

The other seats in the mission control center were occupied by more junior pilots. Some were in training and others were ready to take on missions. Hail thought it was important that all the Nucleus mission pilots were in attendance. He wanted them to see and feel and experience what a mission was all about. Even though most of the pilots had firsthand experiences with death, it was important that they really understood what it meant. The finality of taking someone’s life. He wanted to watch his junior pilot’s reactions as their target fell. Hail had to know if there were any weak links in the chain and if his crew was sincere and dedicated. The youngest member of his crew was sixteen, but Hail knew that children as young as seven years old had served in the Revolutionary War. As many as twenty-percent of the Civil War soldiers were younger than eighteen. Of the more than 58,100 Americans who died in Vietnam, 11,465 KIAs were less than twenty years old. Hail understood that young people had been fighting and dying for the United States since the United States had become the United States, and Hail didn’t have a problem with it. If his young staff wanted to fight, at least he knew they would be safe on his ship.

Hail sat in his big command chair. Everything was in place. Thousands and thousands of hours of intelligence gathering, development, design, construction and planning, had all come down to this. Ten minutes from now, this mission would be over. Hail didn’t know how long all of the future missions would take to complete, but he really didn’t care. After the success of each mission, there would be one less terrorist in the world and that was just fine with him. A world with no terrorists sounded like a pretty good place to live.

The video feed from Styx was being sent to the large screen above Knox. It was more or less in the center of the room with Tran’s station to the right and Grant, Fox and Grayson’s stations to the left. That left five stations to Tran’s right that were being occupied by junior pilots and four more stations to Grayson’s left that sat four more junior pilots.

Hail watched the feed from Styx for a moment. The video being sent from the drone on the pole was a wide angle shot of the backyard of Chang’s compound. At the bottom of the frame, the pool had been bisected. Only half of the pool could be seen. That left room at the top of the frame that showed the patio and the porch.

One of Chang’s servant’s was outdoors and setting the breakfast table. Neither of Chang’s two girlfriends or Chang himself had exited the house this morning. Up to this point, the video that Eagles had recorded coincided with this morning’s schedule. If yesterday’s schedule matched today’s schedule, then Chang would emerge from the back sliding doors in about five minutes. His girlfriends would drift out of the home whenever they wanted. In the three days that Eagles had shot video, the girls had never emerged from the house before Chang. That was an important timing element for this mission. Chang was always the first one out, first to sit down at the table and first to start eating.

Typically, Hail would ask for a weather briefing from Mercier, but Hail could tell from Styx’s HD video feed that it was a beautiful morning in Kangdong. The sun was shining brightly and in the background the trees and bushes showed little sign of wind. The sensitive microphone on Styx picked up birds chirping, dishes at Chang’s table being set and somewhere in the distance a dog was barking.

“Is everyone good to go?” Hail asked his crew.

“Yes, Sir,” was heard all around.

“OK,” Hail said in an uplifting tone, “Here goes nothing.”

“What’s the status of the B-52s,” he asked.

Knox flipped through a few screens, read some data and said, “The B-52s are ready to strike.”

Hail nodded his head.

“Please open the hatch on Aerosmith,” Hail ordered.

Knox pressed an icon labeled Hatch Release and announced, “Hatch is open.”

“OK then. Launch the B-52s.” Hail told him.

“Lifting off now,” Knox reported.

From the top of the micro-drone called Aerosmith, a pico-drone called B-52s emerged.

The pico-hub was twelve millimeters long, or roughly half an inch. It was oblong in shape and seven millimeters wide. Two tiny rotors spun ferociously at its sides and made a sound like a bee. The craft even looked like a bee, hence its name B-52s. The tiny drone was light blue and off white. If it were viewed from the ground, the light blue would blend with the sky and if it was viewed against the pool bricks, then the white would help to mask its appearance.

“Communications?” Hail asked.

Shana Tran checked the signals and responded, “We are five by five.”

“Bring up the feed from B-52s on large screen number one,” Hail instructed.

Renner touched a few icons on his monitor and a bouncy video appeared above them.

“Wow,” Hail exclaimed. “Having a little trouble there, Alex?” Hail asked.

“Man, this bee drone is a bitch to fly. It’s too small to hold any auto-correcting electronics and even the slightest wind wants to blow it away.”

“And…” Hail asked.

“And there is no problem flying this little thing,” Knox told him. “It just takes a lot more flying skills than the other drones.”

“Good man,” Hail told him.

The crew watched the video as a clump of pine boughs drifted to the left of the screen and then disappeared from sight behind the drone.

“This is the hairy part,” Knox told them. “If I just touch one of these idy-bidy rotors to a single pine needle, then this thing is toast.”

Ahead were more bunches of pine needles. To the tiny drone, they were massive obstacles that had to be negotiated and avoided.

The video was not smooth or stable. The little drone seemed to jump and drift as Knox did his best to make his way out of the tree.

“Almost there,” Knox announced as he jammed his feet deep into his foot pedals.

Hail could see bright sunlight ahead and only a few of the green shafts of sharp needles were still in their way.

Knox bent both of his control sticks to the right and the video rocked and tilted violently to the right, before Knox corrected by angling both sticks back to the left.

Hail was getting dizzy watching the feed. He wondered if the others were as well.

“Clear,” Knox said, and the tiny pico-drone entered open sky for the first time in its short life.

Each of the B-52s prototypes were so small and delicate that after two flights, they were completely worn out. The heat created from the intense load on their rotors, burned through their bearings like they were made of butter instead of metal. This was the first flight for this particular unit, so the entire crew had high-hopes and kept their fingers crossed for luck.

A round of applause erupted and then quickly died away as B-52s darted out into the open.

“What’s the status of the target?” Hail asked.

Oliver Fox put four fingers on his screen and pinched them together, zooming Styx’s camera in closer to the breakfast table.

“At this exact moment, we are all clear,” Fox reported. “The table is set and no one is sitting at it. Drinks have been poured. No one is in the backyard.”

“Great,” Hail said. “Proceed with the bombing run,” he told Knox.

Renner said, “Good, because we are running out of flight time. B-52s has used up sixty-five percent of its battery.”

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Hail told Knox.

“Right, Skipper,” Knox replied, pushing both of his flight sticks forward.

The edge of green grass disappeared from view. Now all that was in front of them was a pool, the bricks that surrounded the pool and further ahead was the outdoor table.

“Commencing the bomb run,” Knox announced.

Knox was making less flight corrections as he had been while escaping from the tree, but the video was shakier than it had been with the micro-drone Aerosmith. Knox understood that the tiny flying drone was not very stable, but then it was only designed to last five minutes.

Unknown to the Hail and his crew, their tiny drone B-52s was being observed.

From far up in a tree and on the other side of the pool; a pair of eyes watched the bee fly towards the table. A mind plotted an intercept course and an action was taken.

From the view atop of the power-pole, the camera on Styx recorded a colorful bird fly into the frame and pluck B-52s right out of the sky.

“What the hell!” Knox yelled.

B-52s camera was still in operation. It was transmitting video of the ground below. However, the ground was going by sideways.

“What is going on?” Hail yelled.

Fox had seen the whole thing happen in real time on Styx’s main monitor.

He told Hail, “A bird got B-52s.”

“You have to be kidding me?” Hail groaned.

“Sorry, but I’ve got it recorded. Check it out.”

On Hail’s right was the live video still being transmitted from B-52s that was tracking a crazy path over ground, and then a moment later all he could see was sun and sky. On the left large overhead monitor, Fox began playing the video of the bird strike. It happened just as Fox had said. In the time it took fifteen video frames to click past, a bird could be seen snatching the tiny dot out of the sky and then disappearing to the right.

“What the hell…” Hail said, totally exasperated.

“Told you it was a bird,” Fox said.

“Actually it was a Summer Tanager to be exact,” Pierce Mercier piped in. Then like analysts do, Mercier went into a big long explanation about how there are not many birds that eat Bees, but the Summer Tanager happens to be one of them. They also eat wasps, hornets, and dragonflies. The birds are mostly found in Africa, Asia, southern Europe and Australia. Their main habitat is…

“That’s enough,” Hail interrupted.

Video was still being streamed from the captured B-52s. Hail turned his head sideways to reference what he was seeing. It appeared that the bird had the tiny drone in its mouth and was flying back to the tree from which it had come. With his head still sideways, Hail recognized the pool and the courtyard twenty feet below. Then the screen went crazy with motion. B-52s took three jarring hits that scrambled the video and then a fixed image appeared on the screen. The drone’s camera was now focused on several thick blades of grass.

“Looks like the Summer Tanagers do not like B-52s. The bird dropped it,” Mercier said.

“Perfect,” Hail snarled, infuriated.

There was silence in the room as the crew regrouped.

Then the timeline kicked in.

Renner informed everyone, “We have probably less than three minutes to complete the bombing run before Chang walks out that door and sits down.”

Hail asked, “Is there any way to get B-52s off the deck?”

Renner answered, “It doesn’t matter. It’s already exhausted more than eighty percent of its battery. Even if it could fly, it may not even make it to the target.”

Knox added, “And there is no way to spin up when the drone is lying on its side. Those are external propellers and one of them is pinned to the ground.”

“Alright, quickly,” Hail told the crew. “Let’s go with Plan B.”

Paige Grayson moved into action made. She made some selections on her screen and said, “Opening the hatch on Stones.”

“Switching control to Beatles,” Knox announced, pulling up a new screen and pressing the corresponding icon.

From the inside the core of Stones rose the drone called Beatles. It was identical in every way to B-52s, except that it had a fully charged battery and had not been chewed on by a big bird.

“Anyone watching for the bird?” Knox asked as he carefully flew the drone toward the breakfast table.

“Does it matter?” Hail said. “Just complete the mission and be quick about it before Chang comes out. If the bird makes another run, then it makes another run. There is nothing we can do about it.”

Knox didn’t reply. He simply concentrated on keeping the drone flying low to the ground. After traversing what seemed like miles of bricks, Knox began to gain altitude as he neared the table.

The tiny drone buzzed louder as Knox increase thrust and spun the rotors faster. Plates, silverware and glasses of various shapes and sizes filled with liquid of different colors, came into view as the drone crested the edge of the table.

“All right, easy now, Alex. We only have one shot at this,” Hail cautioned.

“But no pressure, right,” Knox shot back sarcastically.

The dishes and glasses on the table were so close to the drone that they looked like small buildings in front of the camera.

Knox found the glass of orange juice in the spot where Chang had sat the last three mornings. He worked the controls until Beatles was hovering directly over the glass.

“Are you sure you’re in place?” Hail asked.

“As close as I’ll ever be, Skipper,” Knox confirmed.

“OK,” Hail said, “Bombs away.”

Since Knox’s hands and feet were busy, Hail himself push the icon on his monitor labeled BOMBS AWAY.

A tiny valve opened and allowed a small amount of compressed air into a chamber inside Beatle’s tail. The air pressure pushed out a squirt of clear liquid that landed directly in the glass of orange juice below.

“We’ve got company!” Fox warned.

On Styx monitor, Fox noticed that the sliding glass door was being opened. “It’s Chang,” Fox added.

“Go, go, go!” Hail yelled at Knox.

Knox whipped both flight sticks to right. The tiny drone whirred and buzzed and went rocketing off, totally out of control.

“Get it out of there,” Hail told Knox.

Knox squeezed both triggers on his controllers, pouring full power into the drone’s rotors. The video was nothing more than colorful static that flew by. Knox made no effort to fly the drone; he just needed to get it as far away as possible. Seconds later and five feet into the grassy area, the drone stuck a tree at full throttle and disintegrated on impact. It went from a buzz, to a pop and then to complete silence. The big screen that was showing the video being streamed from Beatles went black and a message popped up that read NO SIGNAL DETECTED.

“Are we good?” Hail asked his team.

Knox released his controllers and shook out his cramping hands. He checked his instruments and saw that everything was dead.

Satisfied that Beatles was dust, Knox announced, “We’re good here,” and gave everyone a thumbs up.

“We are good up here, too” Fox said. “Chang didn’t see anything. He is sitting down now.”

The loss of both B-52s and Beatles was inconsequential. Even though each drone cost ten-thousand dollars to build, the crew understood that their mission was only a one-way trip. Neither drone was designed with enough battery-life to make it back to their mother-drones. It was a suicide mission for the picos. They were the kamikazes of the Hail drone fleet.

The crew watched the video feed from Styx. Everyone in the mission center was quiet and pensive.

“If anyone wants to leave, then feel free to do so. There are no judgements here. What you are going to see is not going to be fun or pretty.”

Hail looked at the faces of his crew. They continued to watch the video feed from Styx. No one left.

Fox refocused the camera and zoomed it in tight on Chang sitting at his table. It was understood that there was a certain degree of error involved with Beatle’s mission. There was really no way to know for sure that the liquid dispensed from Beatles had found its mark and had landed inside the glass. The drone was too small to have more than one camera, and the camera it did have, only showed a view from the front. There was no camera underneath the drone. But the rim of the glass had been smack in front of the camera, so if the load had exited the craft in the way in which it was designed, then gravity should have done its job.

Chang sat back and allowed his servant to place a napkin in his lap. Chang then reached over for the glass of orange juice.

“Here it is,” Hail said, realizing that he sounded a little too happy.

But Chang picked up his coffee mug instead and took a tiny sip. The coffee must have been hot, because Chang quickly pulled the cup away from his mouth and made a face.

The sliding glass door opened again and one of Chang’s girlfriends came out to join him at the table. She was wearing a bikini under a colorful sheer cover up.

She said some words that sounded like good morning in Korean.

Chang didn’t respond or even look at her. Instead he picked up a butter knife, sliced off a thick slab of butter and began to work it into his toast.

“What an asshole,” Shana Tran said.

“That he is,” Hail agreed. “And if he drinks his OJ like a good boy, he will soon be a dead asshole.”

His girlfriend took a moment to look over the table. Drinks had been poured for Chang, but as of yet, nothing had been poured for her. She looked directly at the single glass of orange juice that had been poured and began to reach for it.

“Oh shit,” Mercier said. “I think she’s going to drink the orange juice.”

The woman’s hand closed around the glass.

A split second later, like lightning, Chang flipped over his butter knife and rapped the woman on the back of her knuckles with the knife’s thick handle.

She flinched, let go of the glass and cried out and in pain. She held the back of her hand and teared up and Chang yelled something at her that could only have been, “Get your own orange juice.”

The little Asian woman’s body visually shrank as she meekly leaned back in her chair and lowered her head.

Chang’s servant had heard the commotion and came outside.

Chang pointed at the orange juice and then pointed at the woman and told the servant to get her a glass.

The woman raised her head and did her best to smile appreciatively.

“Really teaching her a lesson. Huh?” Shana Tran commented. “What a jerk.”

A moment later, Hail’s team watched Chang reach over and pick up the glass of orange juice. He held it up in front of his girlfriend. Making sure she was watching him, he greedily drank half of the glass.

“You haven’t seen jerking yet,” Hail remarked.

Hail looked down and pressed his finger to his screen and started a digital timer on his right monitor.

The servant returned with more orange juice and topped off Chang’s glass and filled an additional glass for the woman.

The crew looked on; each of them readying themselves for the spectacle to follow.

“Are we still recording?” Hail asked Fox.

“Yes, Sir,” Fox responded.

The image from Styx showed what would appear to be a common breakfast being consumed by a common Korean couple in a picturesque surrounding.

But what was really happening was four-thousand miles away from the Hail Nucleus, a prostitute was about to witness the horrific death of a maniacal terrorist in a picturesque surrounding.

At that exact moment the metabolic compound was breaking down in Chang’s body.

Hail looked at the timer on his monitor.

“One minute,” he announced.

During the planning of Chang’s death, his lab staff explained to Hail that cyanide poisoning created a form of histotoxic hypoxia. The cells of the surrounding organism were unable to use oxygen. Once the brain no longer received oxygen, then it was lights out. This particular form of cyanide was more concentrated than the pill form due to the fact that the pico-drone could only carry a tiny amount. Therefore, time was the tradeoff. It would take longer to do its damage, but Hail’s chemists assured his team that it would work just fine.

“Two minutes,” Hail announced.

Chang reached across the table and picked up his coffee cup again. Apparently the man was confident the dark liquid was now cool enough to drink.

As the cup touched his lips, Chang made another strange face; similar to the one he had made when he had burned his lips the first time. Chang pulled the cup back from his mouth an inch or two and grimaced. The coffee cup began to tremble in his hand slightly. Chang cleared his throat with a single cough. Brown hot liquid slid over the edge of the coffee cup and on to the table. Without warning, Chang stood up from the table with his coffee cup still in his right hand. His eyes were now wide and he looked panicked and began to shake. A few seconds later, the coffee cup fell from his hand and landed on the glass table with a crash. Hot coffee splashed up from the table and landed on his girlfriend who began to scream. Both of Chang’s hands flew up to his neck and he clutched at it as if he were trying to choke himself. As he stood there, immobile, trying to choke himself, his entire body began to shake and convulse. Chang’s face had turned beet read. One hand flew away from his neck and began to reach across the table toward the woman, as if beckoning her for help. The screaming she had let out when the hot coffee had splashed on her was nothing compared to the scream she belted out now. Chang looked like he was trying to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was some guttural choking sounds as if he had swallowed his tongue. Chang had now become a zombie. He let go of his throat and both of his hands rose out in front of him. His eyes widened and his eyeballs looked like they were ready to pop out of his red face. His girlfriend scuttled her chair backwards across the bricks and continued to scream. Two servants opened the sliding glass doors and came running out. One of them approached Chang and tried to assess the situation. The servant quickly determined there was very little he could do for his boss who couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk and was making weird zombie choking sounds. The servants had good intentions, but they were not fast enough to catch their boss when he fell. In one great convulsing act, Chang straightened up as if a rigid pole had been driven up his spine. He then grabbed at his chest with both hands and fell forward onto the glass table. Chang’s face smashed into the bowls and the plates and the glassware. The force of the North Korean’s body landing on the table shattered the glass top inward and he continued to fall forward. His feet came off the ground and his body cartwheeled over the thick table rail that had supported the glass. With all his weight on the rail, the opposite side of the table lifted off the ground and the frame went shooting up onto its side.

The microphone on Styx had been optimized to pick up speech at a distance. The sound of Chang falling through the table was so loud inside the Nucleus that one would have thought that a car that had crashed into a glass factory.

“Holy shit!” Knox yelled, verbalizing what everyone else was thinking.

Chang’s body finally relaxed and came to a rest face up, his white suit covered in crystal shards of colorful china, brown coffee stains and orange blotches from the deadly juice. His face was still bright red, which was a telltale sign of cyanide poisoning.

On the screen, Hail watched Chang’s ex-girlfriend jump up out of her chair and run back inside the house. Chang’s servants began picking their way through the rubble, negotiating broken glass and what was left of the misshapen frame of the table.

Mercier used his right hand to trace a cross over his heart.

Tanner Grant said, “Damn, if the cyanide didn’t kill him, then the glass table sure the hell did.”

Under her breath, Shana Tran said, “Goodbye to bad garbage.”

Gage Renner stared on in disbelief as if he was waiting for someone to rerun the footage so he could be sure that the man was dead.

The remainder of the crew began to talk amongst themselves. Some conversations were animated; others were factual and a few were stilted and sullen.

Hail looked down at the timer. He pressed STOP and the meter read 00:03:23.

Hail told Renner, “Please save a copy of Chang taking his table face plant to my NAS. I have an email to write.”

“No problem,” Renner responded.

“If Chang comes back to life, you will notify me immediately,” Hail joked.

“You will be the first to know,” Renner smiled.

The hubbub in the mission center wound down and then drifted off to nothing. Everyone wanted to hear what Hail had to say.

Hail got to his feet and looked around the room, nodding his head in approval. He bunched up his face and then smiled. For a moment, to the crew it looked as if Hail was a little choked up and was trying to hold back a tear.

Hail rubbed his stubbly chin and thought about his wife and his kids.

When he spoke, his voice sounded distant, as if he were physically in the room but his soul was a million miles away.

“We are all here for the same reason,” Hail began softly. “We all do what we do for the same reason. And today we have done something good. Something that will make a difference. Something that will change how the game is played. And don’t fool yourself for a moment. This is a game to all these tyrants. A game played with human lives.”

Hail paused for a moment and looked back at the screen. Chang’s servants were slapping him softly in the face; a rudimentary method of revival.

Not even your supreme leader is going to be able to bring that guy back, Hail thought.

Hail continued addressing his crew.

“You should all be very proud of yourselves and what we have accomplished. Your loved ones would be proud of you. I can guarantee that. Your country is proud of you. I am proud of you.”

The crew in the Nucleus’s mission room began clapping and cheering.

Three thousand miles away, the crew in the Hail Proton’s mission room began clapping and cheering.

And five thousand miles further around the globe, the crew in the Hail Electron’s and Atom’s mission room began clapping and cheering.

They had all been watching the feed. They had all shared the same experience.

Hail stoically walked to the door, pulled it open and stepped through to the other side.

He then turned around and made sure the watertight door was closed securely.

He no longer heard the crew and knew they couldn’t hear him.

Only then did he allow himself to scream the word YES and pump his fists in victory.