Operation Hail Storm

by Brett Arquette

  The president looked concerned. “Is this something we should prepare for?” President Weston asked her staff.

  “I vote yes,” General Ford said.

  “I agree,” Eric Spearman said. “I mean; we don’t know if Hail can pull this off. And if he can’t, and we have actionable intelligence, and we just can’t ignore it.”

  “What do you think?” the president asked the FBI director.

  Trevor Rodgers made a concerted effort to remove his personal feelings and friendship from the situation. “I think having a reasonable drop-dead date and time would be prudent,” he suggested.

  Joanna Weston thought about the consequences of launching an attack on the North Korean warehouse. If it was quick and surgical, and they could get in-and-out without detection, then it was something to consider. And even if they were caught red-handed, how in the world could North Korea spin it so anyone gave a damn. Would North Korea complain to the international community that the bad Americans destroyed all the new ICBMs that North Korea intended to launch at them? It was best if Hail succeeded in the task, but her advisors were right. They had to have a Plan B in case Hail failed.

  Weston asked, “What do we feel is an appropriate amount of time to wait for Hail to complete this mission?”

  Pepper spoke up, “I would be surprised if he doesn’t take action tonight, Pyongyang Time.”

  “I agree,” General Ford said. “Hail has to understand, the same as we do, that all the parts can be moved at any time. If I were in his shoes, I would hit the warehouse tonight as well.”

  “So, we’ve decided that our cutoff time is tonight?” the president confirmed.

  Everyone in the room nodded in agreement, except for Trevor Rodgers, but no one noticed.

  “So, our Plan B is sometime before sunrise?” the president confirmed.

  “I think around four in the morning, North Korean time, would be the latest we would want to strike,” the general suggested. “It would give us time to get out of theater before the sun comes up and paints our jet in the sky.”

  “What assets do we have in that area?” the president asked.

  “Off the top of my head, I know that the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is approaching our Fleet Activities Chinhae Navy Base in Busan, South Korea.”

  “Is the Gerald R. Ford equipped with Predator drones?” Spearman asked.

  “No,” the general responded, the sound of disappointment in his tone. He understood that sending a drone in to do the dirty work would be much better than sending in a manned aircraft. Less downside all the way across the board.

  “But I’m confident that our new F-35 Lightning II can do the job just fine,” the general said.

  The general was referring to the new Lockheed Martin F-35, an all-weather stealth multirole fighter. It was a fifth-generation combat aircraft and was designed to perform ground attacks. The 337-million-dollar fighter was the best of the best, and the general had complete confidence in its abilities.

  “What’s the flight time to the target?” Spearman asked.

  “Well, I’m sure we don’t want to fly directly over the DMZ border for this sortie. It would be much better to make a big looping flight path over the Sea of Japan and then come in low, avoiding ground radar,” the general explained.

  No one in the room could fault the general’s logic.

  Continuing, the general said, “But hell, at 1300 miles per hour, it’s like taking a stroll around the block to an F-35. Time is not a real issue. From takeoff to target, we’re talking maybe fifteen minutes.”

  The general paused to see if anyone had anything to add.

  After another moment the president asked, “Does anyone else have anything to add?”

  The man from the FBI spoke up. “What if Hail is successful in blowing up the warehouse. How will we know?” Rodgers asked.

  Pepper fielded the question, “We’re watching the warehouse closely with one of our satellites. Of course, it can’t see the building in the dark, but it will detect a flash if the building blows up. Also, I’m sure that my agent Ramey will notify me of the strike.”

  “Unless anyone has anything else, then that sounds like the plan,” the president said. “I would like us all to be in the Situation Room tonight to observe the operation.”

  The general said, “Excuse me, Madam President, but there is a thirteen-and-a-half-hour difference between Washington and North Korea. Four o’clock in the morning would be 2:30 p.m. tomorrow.”

  “I will see you then,” President Joanna Weston told the men. “But right now, I have a lunch meeting with the President of Nauru.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Trevor Rodgers asked, “Where is Nauru?”

  “It is more like what is Nauru?” Eric Spearman asked. And then answering his own question he added, “It happens to be the smallest country in the world.”

  “Third smallest,” the president corrected, already getting up from her chair and heading for the door.

  “And they get a lunch with the President of the United States?” Rodgers asked to no one in particular.

  The president had exited the room so the general answered, “You never know when you’ll need a military base on a tiny island in Micronesia, and if all it cost you was a lunch with the POTUS, then that sounds like a good deal to me.”

  Sea of Japan—Aboard the Hail Nucleus

  D

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Hey, Trev, what’s up?”

  “Nothing good,” was the answer.

  “How so?” Hail asked.

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

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

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

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

  “What?” Hail asked.

  “That’s right. At 4 a.m., your time, they are going to swat the fly if it hasn’t already flashed on the satellite.”

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

  “You’ve got to be kidding me?” Hail said.

  Trevor said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You do the same, and thanks again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yeah,” Renner said.

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

  “Now?” Renner asked.

  “Now,” Hail emphasized.

  Wonsan, North Korea—Warehouse

  T

  he official name of the vehicle was the UAZ-469, but it was essentially an open-air jeep with a canvas top. Manufactured in Ulyanovsk, Russia, the North Koreans used it as an off-road, military light utility vehicle, but Victor Kornev was trying to use it as a bed. He was exhausted and needed some sleep. The cramped office in the warehouse didn’t have any place to lie down, but that didn’t seem to bother Trang Won Dong. His highness had fallen asleep easily in his hard wood chair; his head flopped over on his shoulder, massive snores escaping from his gaping drooling mouth.

  Kornev had watched the ugly little man for a while, until he knew he couldn’t spend another minute in the same room or he would have to take out his well-oiled Glock and first put a hole through Trang’s head and then his own. But instead of that detrimental action, he had decided to leave the office that smelled of stale snakehead fish stew and fermented cabbage to see if the vehicle he had arrived in could offer a place to recline in comfort.

  Now that he was in the UAZ, he discovered that the front seats didn’t recline and the back seats were actually three poorly padded seats that were welded together to make one. As he lay there, he could feel each of the bars between the seats pushing up into his back. He sat up and glanced forward at the vehicle’s dashboard. The key was right there sticking out of the ignition. One turn of that key and only a twenty-minute drive and he could be lying in a hot and smelly bed at the Dongmyong Hotel. If he was lucky, it could be a good electricity day and he could take a hot shower.

  Victor grunted as he tried to work his phone out of his shorts pocket. He put it up to his face, checked for a signal, saw three bars and tried to call the truck driver again. The call went to voicemail. Kornev cursed and checked the time. One in the morning. The truck carrying the missile part was more than eighteen hours overdue. Victor wanted to reach through the phone, grab the truck driver and choke the hell out of him. He was up for choking the hell out of anyone right now.

  Sweat dripped from the tip of Kornev’s nose and onto his phone, as he sat there in the back of the UAZ, miserable and with no place to go. No place to sleep. No place to eat. Even the water was highly questionable. The unreasonable part of his brain told him that it wasn’t worth it. It told him that he already had enough money, and that the bag of diamonds he would get for this gig was just a bag of rocks. But the other part of his mind—the part that had taken him from a common Russian thug and had moved him up the ladder to wea
lth and respect—that part of his brain told him that he would sit there no matter how long it took. That sensible part of his brain knew he would sit there in the heat, in the car, in the office—hell, he would sit in a pigpen of poop, if it meant getting paid. Each contract for arms could be his last. He just hoped this one wasn’t. He would prefer to go out on a high note, if possible.

  So, with that decision made, he put his phone back in his pocket, laid down in the back seat, felt the bars dig into his ribs, cussed again and drifted off into a painful and unrewarding slumber.

  Sea of Japan—Aboard the Hail Nucleus

  G

  age Renner made his final inspection of the large drone called Queen. The sky-blue drone sat perched on a long steel beam that angled up from inside deck number two of the Hail Nucleus. The solid beam rose at forty-five degrees and terminated at a large opening in the main deck above.

  Gage asked Rugmon, “Can you think of anything we haven’t thought of?”

  The bald man in the white lab coat shook his head.

  “We’ve been over the check list three times. It’s good to fly.”

  Renner knew that this step was critical, because once they had launched the drone there was no turning back. The only way to retrieve the machine would be to splash it down next to the ship and use the crane to pick it up out of the water and set it back on deck. That would kill their schedule.

  Rugmon looked at his watch. He pointed the face of his watch toward Renner and tapped on it with his finger.

  “Tick-tock,” Rugmon reminded Renner.

  Renner made one more loop, walking the entire way around the big drone.

  Connected to the top of the large drone was a smaller drone with the given name of Blondie. The top of the smaller drone was flat, making it easier for Rugmon to fabricate doors that could open and close remotely. Blondie was referred to as a parasitic drone—meaning that it clung to its host until it was time for action, similar to a parasite. Blondie was the heaviest parasitic drone that the Hail Team had ever launched. And since Blondie was so heavy, it would be released and then flown to its landing zone as a glider. Flight was nothing more than math. Making sure Blondie could complete the task was a relatively simple equation of weight, lift, drag and distance. If all those variables were constants, and weather wasn’t a factor, then an unmanned computer could glide Blondie to its target. But they would use Alex Knox instead. He was almost a computer when it came to flying.