Hail left his quarters and began walking down the long hallway toward the hangar.
He took his phone out of his pocket and dialed another six-digit number.
This time the phone rang twice before Gage Renner answered.
“Hey Gage,” Hail said. “I have to go to Washington to get paid by the POTUS herself.”
“Wow, that was quick,” Renner said.
“Yeah and I want to keep it that way. I want our momentum, the momentum of our mission to keep going forward. Things like this take forever, and I’m going to shorten forever to one day.”
“Do you need any company?” Renner asked.
“No, my friend. I have some private stuff I need to take care of, and it would just bore you.”
“I understand,” Renner said.
“As usual, I need you to run things while I’m gone.”
“I can do that,” Renner replied confidently.
Hail tried to think if there was anything else that needed to be said.
Finally, he offered, “That was a great first mission today. Wasn’t it?”
“Perfection,” was Renner’s one-word response.
“See you in a couple of days,” Hail said and hung up.
He had to climb several decks of steps and traverse the entire length of the ship, but in real-time it took Hail less than four minutes to reach the ship’s door that was labeled FIGHT DECK. He spun open the bulkhead’s wheel handle and stepped inside. Parked in front of him were several commuter helicopters. He walked past two of them before selecting the AgustaWestland AW101 VVIP.
The helicopter’s skids were sitting on wheeled dollies. One of the mechanics noticed Hail climbing into the eighteen-million-dollar aircraft. The mechanic walked over to a small tractor, got in and fired it up.
The helicopter mechanic didn’t need to know why his boss wanted to fly the machine; he just understood that he was going to fly it. But first the helicopter had to be pushed over to the flight elevator. Once the helicopter had been positioned on the elevator, the mechanic would then pull back the tractor and press the elevator button on a remote control attached to his belt. Huge hydraulic cylinders would lift the helicopter to the top deck, and it would be ready to fly.
As the tractor pushed the AgustaWestland onto the elevator pad, Hail began to go through a preflight checklist. He had never actually flown the AgustaWestland before, but he had over forty hours of simulator time in this model, and these days the simulator was just as good as the real thing. Maybe even better. The simulator offered a dozen different flight scenarios which included many combinations of adverse weather conditions.
The darkness and gloom of the artificial light on the lower deck turned into happy sunlight on the top deck as the elevator lifted the massive chopper to the top deck.
Hail pressed dozens of buttons and flipped another dozen switches. He stopped flipping and pressing when he heard the three turboshaft Rolls-Royce/Turbomeca RTM322 engines come to life and saw the rotor beginning to spin. The AW101 was a big helicopter, but Hail didn’t care. Once they were in the air, they all pretty much flew the same.
With the main rotor twirling furiously, Hail placed the stick in the neutral position and raised the collective. The helicopter became light on its tow dollies and then lifted off, leaving the dollies on the deck below.
Hail knew that the Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman Sepinggan International Airport was east from his position. Basically, all he had to do was fly over ten miles of the Balikpapan peninsula, and he was there. As a standard protocol, the Gulfstream was always flown ahead to the next port of call from whatever ship Hail was on. That way it was always available. Since the death of his family, Hail refused to fly on commercial aircraft. Psychologically, it was more involved than a simple choice. He couldn’t fly on commercial aircraft. He had developed some phobia that was all encompassing. But strangely enough, he didn’t have an issue either flying his own aircraft or being flown by someone in his employ. For some reason he felt in control under those specific conditions, and control was what his life was all about these days.
In stark contrast to the unending greenery of the Indonesian jungle, the land Hail was currently flying over was highly industrial. Other than warehouses and homes that were all crammed in against one another, there wasn’t much to see. Five minutes into the flight, Hail observed the area of the airport that was reserved for Hail Industries. The Gulfstream sat gleaming on the tarmac, all porcelain white with banded blue stripes running from its nose to its tail. Other than the plane’s registration numbers, the only markings on the aircraft was the G650 model number written in big blue letters on its tail. The machine looked fast just sitting there on the ground.
Hail checked his power to the rotors, checked his airspeed and looked for a wide space near the jet to set down the big helicopter. Swinging the tail around to his right, he thought the 23,000-pound helicopter was more sluggish than it had performed in the simulator. But then most of the simulated flights Hail had taken were located in the mid-west of the United States. The thick Indonesian air probably had something to do with lethargic response to the controls, and Hail poured on extra power in order to set the beast down gently.
Hail touched the AgustaWestland down lightly onto the hard and black surface, he reached up and killed the engines. He opened the pilot’s door and stepped out into the heat. One of Hail’s mechanics began walking toward the chopper, meeting Hail halfway between the helicopter and the jet.
“How did she fly, sir?” the greasy man asked Hail.
“I’m not sure,” Hail said honestly. “It’s the biggest chopper I’ve flown and I didn’t know what I expected, but I guess it was OK. It’s kind of like driving a huge bus. A huge airbus.”
“Like a bus, right?” the mechanic repeated.
“That’s right,” Hail said. “Is the Gulfstream ready to go?”
“Yes, sir. Topped off, preflight checked and ready to fly.”
“Great, thanks,” Hail said and reached out to shake the mechanic’s hand. The mechanic hesitated, and Hail realized that the mechanic’s hands were covered with grease. He reeled his hand back in.
“No hard feelings.” The mechanic laughed.
Hail settled with patting the man on the back and then turned and started walking toward the jet.
The plane’s stairs were down, and Hail went straight up into the craft. As per international regulations, the cockpit door was closed and locked, so Hail turned right and stepped into the cabin.
When Hail had purchased the plane, he had been offered a number of different seating combinations. He had opted to start with four white CEO seats that faced one another at the front of the aircraft. Tables could be pulled up from the wall to create a desk in between each set of seats. Past that seating area was a long, white leather couch and a fixed inlaid mahogany coffee table that ran another ten feet down the side of the craft. Opposite the couch, on the other side of the aisle, was a full bar, sink and wine collection. Deeper into the aircraft was the bedroom area and a bathroom. This area was separated from the rest of the cabin with inlaid veneer wall panels and a formal sliding door. Mounted in dozens of spaces were various sizes of flat panel displays. The design of the multimedia system was laid out so a screen could be seen from any seat in the aircraft. No passenger had to strain their neck to watch a movie, take in a sporting event, check a computer display or attend a video conference.
Hail plopped himself down in one of the thick CEO flight chairs. The big overstuffed chairs were more like La-Z-Boy recliners with seat belts than aircraft seats. The main difference was these thick chairs were bolted to the fuselage.
The cockpit camera was already on, and his pilot Daniel Chavez was sitting at the controls. Hail could see the pilot on the video screen mounted to the bulkhead wall in front of him.
“How are you doing today, Marshall?” Chavez greeted him. “I see you survived your helicopter flight from the Hail Nucleus.”
“To tell you the tr
uth, Daniel, I’m getting old and I’m kind of tired,” Hail replied. “At least I feel like I’m getting old. Maybe I need to work out more.”
The pilot said nothing.
Hail looked at his young pilot over the video link and thought to himself, “Daniel has no idea what I’m talking about.” Hail recalled when he was the same age as his pilot. Was he ever tired at that age? Did the word tired even enter his mind back then? Getting old certainly didn’t, but at that age, you thought you would live forever.
The pilot checked over his controls and pressed a few buttons, and Hail heard the engines begin to spin up.
“All righty,” Chavez said. “Well, you get some rest, Marshall. I’m sure you’ll wake up when we touch down at Dakhla for fuel. You might want to get out and stretch your legs a bit.”
“Sounds good,” Hail responded. He retrieved a remote control from a hidden compartment under his chair’s armrest. The pilot clicked off, and Hail switched the input of the screen to CNN. He didn’t think that the North Korean’s death would make prime-time news, but then he didn’t know how the North Koreans would play it. They would either keep Kim’s death an internal matter and no one would ever know the man was dead, or they would try to blame it on someone and make an international incident out of it.
Hail watched CNN until the wheels of the Gulfstream left the ground and the plane climbed. The video began to show static, but Hail was already sleeping comfortably in his big white chair. As he slept, his dreams drifted in and out between love, death and heart-crushing loss.
Mansion on the Chain Bridge Road—Fairfax, Virginia
The poor little rich girl went home to her mansion. At least she was sure that’s what her co-workers at the CIA thought of her. And she couldn’t argue the fact. It was true; all of it except for the fact that she wasn’t little. At five-foot-eleven, she was taller than most women, but the rest was true. She was rich. Well, her parents had been rich. Being the only child when they had died, she had inherited it all. Everything. The Virginia mansion, the vacation homes, the cars and the millions.
But when her rich neighbors walked by the mansion, walking their dog Fifi or Fufu, they would probably assume that the property was vacant or maybe even abandoned. The only reason they might suspect that someone was living in the estate would be the dirty McLaren F1 her father had driven and her mother’s Pagani Huayra. The luxury car and supercar sat unused on the circular paved driveway, neglected to the point they were literally rotting away. She drove the dirty Aston Martin One-77 that was only a tad cleaner than the more expensive cars.
The poor little rich girl had never been one of the tidiest people in the world. She never had to be. Even as a young little rich girl, she could never recall a time when there hadn’t been a maid around to pick up anything she had dropped onto her bedroom floor. She would leave a huge mess in her bathroom, and minutes later, she would come back from getting clothes out of her massive walk-in closet, and the bathroom would look like brand new. It was kind of spooky. It was like little cleaning ghosts were always floating around the mansion just looking for messes to descend upon. For the longest time, she thought Mr. Clean, the guy who did those funny old commercials for some cleaning liquid, was real. She thought he lived in the mansion and followed behind her, magically cleaning messes she had made.
When her parents had died, all the upkeep on the mansion just kind of went away. The sad little rich girl neglected opening mail and paying bills, and one day those ghosts just stopped cleaning. The outside ghosts that mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedges, tended to the pool, cleaned the scum out of the pond and all the other things that grew stale—well, they all went away. The yards encircling the mansion were overgrown to the point where trick-or-treaters were too scared to walk up to ring the doorbell.
Not knowing how to clean clothes, make food or perform most of the other skills humans learn when growing up, she was operating in a world that was very foreign to her. She bought clothes and threw them away when they were dirty. She ate at restaurants or picked up take-out to eat at home, alone. And all of those workarounds made her feel like she was dumb—that she wasn’t a real person. She had been the beautiful doll that had been kept in the immaculate dollhouse her entire life. And dolls didn’t have to know how to do anything. Everyone knew that.
The poor little rich girl had turned into an unhappy rich adult. She had become consumed by the deaths of her wonderful parents. They were good people. She knew they had cared about her a great deal and had always told her how much they loved her. When they had died, the purpose of her life had died as well.
Like everything else in her world, her life had already been planned for her. She didn’t have to worry about that. She would go to college and become a famous doctor like her father or maybe a real estate mogul like her mom. That’s the way her parents told her things would work out, and she always believed them. Her parents had always been in control and very much in charge of their own lives. Therefore, when they said something would happen, it normally did. But her folks hadn’t counted on a natural talent being ensconced in their child’s DNA. And that was the ability to learn languages very quickly.
So, what are parents supposed to do when they plan for one thing, but then a natural talent pops up, and their plans go askew? It probably happened to other kids who weren’t rich kids. Boys who could throw a football or shoot a basketball into a hoop were redirected into such ball throwing and basketball shooting occupations.
Her parents would have liked her to do something other than learning languages, but her particular skill did have a value associated with it. Not the kind of value that could make millions of dollars, but then she didn’t really need to have a profession that made a lot of money. After all, she would inherit all her parents’ money if they were to ever die. But long before that, she would marry Richie Rich and go on living her fairytale life.
Now the poor little rich girl was all alone in the big world with no one to clean up her messes. No one to mow the lawns. No one to advise her on what to do or how to do it. The only thing she had to go on was an instinct to avenge her parents’ deaths. Her gut instinct wasn’t to save lives, in contrast to what her father had spent his career doing. Her overwhelming desire was to take the lives of those responsible for screwing up her life so badly. The only thing she had truly taken responsibility for during her entire life was to leave college and join the CIA in hopes that her looks and language skills could get her close to those she longed to kill.
Someday it would happen. Not long from now, she would find those responsible for her parents’ deaths, and then she would not be the poor little rich girl. Instead, she would be the happy and merry assassin. And, she would make sure that there was no one left alive to clean up that mess.
Joint Base Andrews—Maryland
H
ail’s Gulfstream had not been shot down prior to landing on the tarmac of Andrews’ 11,300-foot western runway. Hail was happy about that. He was also happy that the local time in Washington was 10:30 a.m. With a little luck, and a big helicopter, Hail would be on time for his lunch with the president.
Hail had slept wonderfully on the flight across two oceans. After the first hour of trying to sleep in the chair, he got up, drank a glass of orange juice and crashed on the comfy bed in the rear of the plane. He never even stirred when they had landed and refueled in Dakhla. By the time they had arrived in Washington, Hail was cleaned up and dressed for his meeting with the president.
Although Hail had never liked wearing suits, he was going to lunch with the President of the United States, and anything less than a suit would have been disrespectful.
The Gulfstream taxied to the area where the president’s VH-60N White Hawk was located. Of course, both helicopters used by the president and vice president had been modified for comfort rather than military use. Hail deployed the Gulfstream’s stairs, and grabbed the handrail and eased himself out into the dry cool air, careful not to hit his head on the doorway.
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In the background, he heard the helicopter start its engines and was pleased that his taxi was waiting. He just hoped that the pilots wouldn’t be too pissed off when he changed the destination once they were already in the air.
Hail made his way over to the big red, white and blue chopper. Out of habit, Hail saluted the lieutenant who was dressed in ACUs and waiting at the open door of the helicopter. The soldier looked at Hail funny and then returned the salute.
Hail immediately felt foolish. He knew why he had saluted the man. It wasn’t because Hail was in the military or had ever been in the military. It wasn’t because he was intimidated. It wasn’t from an outburst of patriotism. Hail had saluted the man because his father had always made him salute officers since he was a little boy. Instead of a hug, he was instructed to salute his own father every time he came home from work. Just about any uniform with important insignia got Hail’s hand moving up to his forehead. Old habits were hard to break.
“Step in please, sir. Sit down and buckle up,” the lieutenant said.
Hail did as the young officer instructed. The chairs were not nearly as comfortable as they were on his plane, but it would be a short flight and he thought he could endure it. The lieutenant followed Hail into the helicopter and sat to Hail’s left.
Two pilots could be seen via a video camera and monitor. The lieutenant made a twirling signal with his finger. The rotors increased in speed and the door was drawn shut. The White Hawk rose straight up from the ground, made a 180-degree twist and then leaned forward and began to gain speed.
Hail had flown the same model helicopter in the simulator on the Hail Nucleus and actually had more simulator flight time on the White Hawk than on the AgustaWestland. He considered asking the lieutenant if he could fly it, but realized he might think Hail was crazy and throw him out the side door. Hail didn’t like that idea very much, so he kept his mouth shut. It was only a short fifteen miles from Andrews to the White House, and it was a nice ride. Hail looked down at the old and proud city below and felt absolutely nothing. It didn’t inspire him in the least and that worried him. Hail actually felt sick about visiting the nation’s capital, but he knew why, and he would confront those issues in about five minutes.
Operation Hail Storm Page 16
