“See, nice and smooth,” Hail consoled his terrified passenger.
If Kara’s hair was on fire, Hail wouldn’t have noticed much of a difference in her demeanor.
“See, no problems. Everything is under control,” Hail said in his most compassionate tone.
“Everything except that no one is flying the plane,” Kara shot back.
“No, someone is flying the plane. They just aren’t on the plane.”
“Oh, let me correct myself,” Kara snarled. “I mean that a boy that shouldn’t be driving a car, let alone flying an airplane, is flying us like a remote-controlled toy.”
“That’s more correct,” Hail told her, “but our flight systems are much more advanced than toys.”
Kara looked at Hail as if she wanted to punch him in his face. Now she was more angry than scared. “Why in the world would you not have a pilot on the plane? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure, it does,” Hail responded. “He is not old enough to fly the plane. Therefore, he can’t be on it while he is flying it. There are all sorts of Federal Aviation Administration rules about that. Heck, he couldn’t legally fly this jet over U.S. soil.”
“But he is flying it!” Kara yelled incredulously.
“But there are no laws that govern remote pilots, only pilots that are actually on board. And ninety-nine percent of the time, most planes are flying using the autopilot. It’s only the takeoffs and landings that may require a pilot. And many planes these days could do it all if they were trusted to do so.”
“But why?” Kara tried to reason with Hail. “Why not just have a regular old pilot fly the plane?”
“Lots of reasons,” Hail said.
“Give me one.”
Hail thought for a moment and said, “It’s a long flight back to Balikpapan Bay–over fifteen hours. I don’t want my pilot to fly any longer than six hours. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“Where?” Kara asked. “What’s Balikpapan Bay?”
Hail ignored the question and continued, “So I have my pilots fly in six-hour shifts. I want them fresh. If you think about it, having someone at the controls for fifteen hours is pretty crazy. Having a remote pilot fly this plane makes a lot more sense.”
Kara’s mind swam with questions, and she didn’t know which to ask first. She decided on—
“Where are they flying this thing from again? You said it was a remote command center. Is that in Balikpapan Bay? – wherever the hell that is,” Kara asked, sounding lost and scared.
Hail was quiet for a second and mulled over his response. She would soon see his ship and everything inside, so keeping its location a secret didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“The command center is in Balikpapan Bay which is a seaport on the east coast of the island of Borneo in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. It’s a pretty big city for that area with a population of a half million.”
Hail knew it was important to start building some trust. He felt confident that his last statement was truthful. He looked at Kara, and she looked completely overwhelmed. All her tough CIA bravado had been stripped away, and she was still freaking out. It was time to make nice.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ve done this trip dozens of times. Not to the United States, but all points around the globe. My pilots are good, and we have backup feeds from mirrored satellites if the communication link were to go down.”
Hail realized that had been a mistake. He could see the question forming in Kara’s mind before she asked it.
“What feeds are you talking about? Are you talking about the connection to the controls on this plane from your remote pilots? Is that the feed, and if so, what happens if both feeds go down?”
Hail smiled reassuringly. “Yes, that’s the feed, but like I said, the plane remains in autopilot for almost the entire trip. So, if the feed went down, the plane would just continue on until the link was re-established. No problem.”
Kara didn’t look convinced.
Hail looked serious and said, “Listen, I don’t want to die any more than you do,” which was a lie. Hail guessed that she wasn’t as damaged as he was and had more respect for her own life. “And if I thought that my technology wasn’t rock-solid, I wouldn’t fly around the globe like this. I have good people who work for me and we dazzle in this form of robotics. So, you need to just chill and go with the flow. If it makes you feel any better, I’m certified to fly this plane and could do so in a pinch.”
Kara understood at this point that she didn’t have much choice.
“Do you have anything to drink?” Kara asked, looking over her shoulder at the bar.
“Sure,” Hail said. “But I have to make a call to Balikpapan Bay to have them turn off the Please buckle your seat belt sign.”
Kara looked around for the indicator Hail was talking about.
“I’m just kidding,” Hail chuckled. “This plane doesn’t have anything like that.”
The woman didn’t think it was that funny.
Hail unbuckled his seat belt and stood. Kara did the same, taking a moment to arrange her black skirt and straighten her black vest.
Hail noticed again that she was wearing a one-piece full black body stocking. “That should come in useful,” Hail thought.
He motioned for Kara to sit on the white leather couch. She did so and began looking around the cabin.
“Do you think you have enough monitors on the plane?” she asked sarcastically as she began counting them.
“These days everything is video. I don’t like to carry around a tablet, so I try to make sure that most of the places I spend a great amount of time have plenty of monitors.”
“What are you drinking?” Hail asked.
“Southern and seven,” Kara replied.
“An old-fashioned girl,” Hail commented.
“Not really. I don’t drink much but my roommate in college drank southern and sevens, so that kind of became my drink.”
Hail picked up a glass in one hand and a bottle of Southern Comfort in the other.
“And where did you go to college?” he asked.
“Middlebury College in Vermont.”
“Nice place. Vermont is beautiful in the summer, but damn cold in the winter. As I get older, I find that I don’t like the cold ― at all.”
Hail opened a small refrigerator and retrieved some ice cubes and divided them between two glasses. He then poured half a can of 7 Up and a shot of Southern into each glass and swirled the mixture with a swizzle stick.
“Cold doesn’t really bother me. Sometimes it’s nice, like around Christmas and such. Well, it used to be nice,” Kara corrected herself.
“Cold isn’t nice anymore?”
“No, Christmas isn’t nice anymore.”
“And why is that?” Hail asked.
He handed Kara her drink and sat next to her.
“Because I lost my parents a few years ago. They loved Christmas, and I was their only child. So now with them being gone, Christmas is just kind of a sad time for me.”
Hail considered how much of his personal life he should share with this woman. There would be common things in his life that she had already looked up in their powerful CIA computers. Therefore, telling Kara stuff she already knew was no risk at all. Plus, it would give him an opportunity to find out a little more about her. After all, he was certain that if he Googled this woman, there would not be a single hit, photo, Facebook or anything about her on the Internet. She was CIA all the way.
“I can understand how you feel about Christmas,” Hail sympathized. “I lost my entire family a few years ago as well.”
Hail watched Kara for a reaction and was surprised to see very little.
Kara said, “As you may have guessed, I already know a lot about you. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your loss.”
Hail nodded his head once in place of a thank you and took a sip of his drink.
Kara took her first sip of her own drink and made a face.
> “Too strong?” Hail asked.
“A little,” Kara said. “I’m not used to drinking, and it always catches me off guard.”
“I would assume that being a CIA agent would create a lot of missions where you would have to drink.”
“Yeah, but mostly champagne or wine. The hard stuff is—well—hard,” Kara gave a little giggle.
“So how did your parents pass on?” Hail asked, “If you don’t think that’s too personal?”
Kara hesitated and then said, “Yes, I do.”
Hail was surprised by her reaction but tried not to show it. Hail said nothing.
Kara took another sip from her drink but didn’t make a face this time.
She asked, “So how exactly did you become a kazillionaire?”
“You don’t have that information in your files?” Hail inquired.
“Sure, but I wanted to hear it from you. ‘Get the real poop,’ as they say.”
Hail considered giving her a little of her own medicine and saying he thought that was too personal, but instead he said, “It’s pretty simple. I’m a garbage collector.”
“Are you now?” Kara responded suspiciously. “I’ve never known a garbage man who had his own Gulfstream.”
“Well that depends on what type of garbage you collect. I collect nuclear waste,” Hail confessed.
“And that pays well?” Kara asked, already knowing the answer, but still wanting confirmation.
“The collection part doesn’t pay well. Actually, it’s downright expensive to do the collecting. You need big cargo ships to pick up the stuff, and you need to haul it across many oceans. Then, of course, you have to reprocess the nuclear waste.”
“Reprocess?” Kara inquired. “How does that work?”
“We reprocess the nuclear waste into what we call a fuel bundle. It’s probably our best-kept secret, and that’s how we make our money. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t readily give out blueprints of our wave reactors either, but the real heart of the technology comes from the science of packing the fuel bundle.”
“I thought that the fuel was just a bunch of nuclear waste, so why does it matter how it’s packed?”
“Oh, that’s really important. Pack it right, and a wave reactor can run for ten years on a single fuel bundle. In some cases, it will emit enough energy to power half a small state. Do it wrong, and you don’t get the initial reaction that starts the burn process, or the reaction dies out somewhere inside the bundle. Either way, it’s “No Bueno.”
“So why is your reactor so special? I’m just not getting it,” Kara said.
Hail explained, “Consider that conventional reactors only use about one percent of their energy potential. My reactor design is fifty times more efficient, but it still requires a nuclear reaction to make it work. Conventional reactors require enrichment. My reactor doesn’t. It runs off of mostly depleted uranium, which is a byproduct of nuclear enrichment. With just my reactors and the world’s supply of depleted uranium, there is enough fuel to power every country in the world for the next 100,000 years. But we also repurpose old fuel rods, liquid radioactive waste and such, and it all gets burned in the reactor.
Hail looked at the woman to see if she was following along. She still looked interested so he continued, “But the wave part of the wave reactor is the most important. To start the power flowing, a small piece of enriched uranium ignites the nuclear reaction which starts the burn on one side of the fuel bundle. After the reaction is started, it burns through the bundle as if it was a wave washing over the sand. That’s where the term traveling wave reactor comes from. The reaction starts on one end of the bundle and keeps burning depleted uranium and converting it into low-level plutonium until it gets to the other end. It’s beautiful. Twenty years from now, every country will have one of my reactors, and oil-producing nations will have to figure out how to sell sand for a living.”
Hail realized he was talking a lot, probably more than he should. But his traveling wave reactor was his baby, and he loved talking about it.
“So, how did you become a kazillionaire, again?” Kara asked. She understood the technical stuff that Hail was explaining, but she was more interested in the man than his machine.
“In a nutshell, I get my nuclear waste for free. I resell it along with my reactors to countries who want cheap power.”
Kara was quiet and had apparently run out of questions. They both took another drink and stared off in no particular direction. The plane flew on.
Kara tried to drain even more drops out of her empty glass. Hail stuck out his hand and waited for Kara to place her glass into it. Instead, she placed it back into her lap. Hail lowered his hand.
Hail pulled at his tie and loosened it from around his neck. He stood and removed his suit jacket.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go change into something more comfortable. You hate to fly, and I hate suits.”
Hail reached down and set his half-empty glass on the coffee table. He retrieved a small remote control from a slot on the side of the table and handed it to Kara.
“We have a lot of movies, and we even get a live satellite feed for network TV, if you’re interested.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Kara asked cynically. “This plane has everything but a pilot.”
*_*_*
The Gulfstream touched down at the Dakhla Airport in the Western Sahara of Morocco for refueling. Kara was shaken badly, knowing they would be landing via remote control by some kid in some city she could barely pronounce.
Once the airplane had made its way to the terminal, Kara asked Hail, “Why did you tell me that there was no pilot flying the plane, especially after you knew how nervous I was about flying?”
Hail thought about it for a moment.
“There are probably a few reasons. One reason that should now be very apparent to you is because I’m a devious ass and enjoy watching people squirm. I don’t know why. It’s not an admirable trait. But my father was a devious ass, and he liked watching me squirm, so maybe it has something to do with that. Another reason is that I’m nervous flying as well. Knowing that you were much more nervous about flying than I was made me feel better about my own failures. You know, like I’m not alone in this world.”
Kara looked at Hail like she wanted to punch him.
“And third,” Hail continued, “at some point if we’re going to work together, we have to trust one another. Not mentioning to you that there was no pilot on the plane seemed like a lie of some sort. You know like the opposite of telling your wife she looks great in something that looks terrible on her. But the real reason goes a little deeper than that. You not only have to trust me in the operation that is coming up, but you also have to trust my technology as well—completely—trust it with your life, because a lot of lives will depend on it. And I could think of no other way to show you how well our technology works other than proving it to you during a live 15-hour demonstration. It doesn’t matter if it is a Gulfstream or a HobbyZone Sport Cub. All the same aeronautic and communication rules apply.”
Kara looked out the window at the Dakhla Airport and its surroundings. Nothing but sand and brick and boxy looking cement buildings and asphalt and more sand. She suspected that anything that was the color of green on the outside of the plane had been imported from regions that grew more stuff than just sand.
Hail had changed out of his suit into his casual attire – green polo shirt and khakis. Kara had kicked off her black high heels when they had first sat on the couch.
Kara had insisted on buckling back up in the CEO flight chairs for the landing at Dakhla. Hail thought it was a prudent decision but had little confidence that the flight chairs would protect them in any way if the plane did a nose dive into the hot sand of Morocco. He didn’t see a need to mention that to his guest.
One of the video monitors came to life, and the face of Gage Renner appeared on the screen.
“Hi, Marshall,” Renner said. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“No, not at all,” Hail said. “I would like you to meet Kara Ramey. She is a superspy for the CIA.”
Kara looked at Hail like he was an idiot.
Hail continued on with his introduction.
“Kara, this is my friend and the guy running the show while I’m away, Gage Renner.”
“Nice to meet you,” Kara and Renner said at the same time. Both gave a wave in place of a handshake.
“Marshall, I’m calling to alert you to a security situation at reactor number two in Haiti,” Renner said.
Hail looked serious.
“What’s the issue?” Hail asked.
“It doesn’t look too bad, but three men have scaled the perimeter fence of reactor number two, and they’re making their way toward the control building.”
“Are they armed?” Hail asked.
“No, they look young, like between sixteen to eighteen years old. They look hungry if you know what I mean.”
Hail thought for a moment and asked, “Can you put the feed on screen number three here in the jet?”
“Sure,” Renner said, looking down at a control panel. He pressed something.
Hail and Kara looked at the screen to their right. A second later, the video began streaming images from the camera atop the control building in Haiti.
Kara was amazed at what she was seeing but remained silent.
Hail analyzed the feed. Three rail thin Haitians were about a hundred yards away and walking slowly toward the camera. One young man was tall, and the other two were relatively short. The tall man was the only person wearing a shirt, but it wasn’t much of one. It was an old T-shirt that was too dirty to make out the lettering on the front. At one time, it had been blue. All three boys were wearing old gym shorts and were barefoot.
“What quadrant are they in?” Hail asked.
Renner checked a screen and replied, “They are currently in quadrant 10-C, but they’ll be passing into 10-D in about thirty seconds.”
Operation Hail Storm Page 21
