Operation Hail Storm

by Brett Arquette

  The pilots who had flown the THINGS had left their stations and were standing around the room watching the video on the big screens being sent by Men at Work and Blondie.

  Gage Renner pulled in the throttle trigger and angled the propellers to the right. Still on its side, the drone was dragged a few feet before righting itself and taking flight. The drone gained altitude quickly, and for the first time, Hail and his crew got a look at the devastation from above. As the drone passed over the missing warehouse roof they saw the floor of the warehouse was now replaced by a large pit. Tons of flammable debris had fallen into the shallow pit and was burning, creating North Korea’s largest campfire.

  “Wow,” Kara said. “There is absolutely nothing left.”

  The areas inside the warehouse where the large perfect missile sections had once rested, wrapped snuggly in protective plastic, now looked like jagged metal teeth that protruded from dirt and broken concrete.

  “We did all of that,” Hail reminded Kara. “We didn’t need your help.”

  Kara shot back, “It wasn’t me.”

  “Could you have stopped it? Could you have warned me?” Hail asked, but it sounded more like condemnation.

  Kara said nothing, and Hail added, “I thought so.”

  Renner’s drone had finished its pass over the warehouse and had flown back over the fence and was closing in on Blondie’s position in the field.

  He asked Knox, “Give me a light, please?”

  Knox reached down and flipped on an icon that read ID LIGHT.

  An infrared light appeared on Men at Work’s video feed. Renner turned toward it and continued to fly out into the field and toward Blondie’s light.

  Dallas Stone’s voice came over the mission room’s speakers, “The North Koreans have eyes on the F-35. Prince’s radar just detected two military aircraft taking off from Wonsan Air Base.”

  “Damn,” Hail said. “Do we have any idea what type of aircraft they scrambled?”

  “Checking now,” Stone said. A moment later, “This doesn’t look good. The ICAO ping indicates they are Chengdu J-20s.”

  Renner and Hail looked at each other, confused about the information.

  “Are you sure? The Chengdu J-20 is the new Chinese superjet. How in the world could North Korea get their hands on those?”

  Dallas came back with, “You got me. I Googled it, and you’re right. They shouldn’t have any.”

  Hail looked at Renner and rolled his eyes.

  “The Chengdu J-20 is a badass aircraft,” Dallas added. “They were built specifically to go up against the American F-35.”

  “I understand. Thanks, Dallas,” Hail said.

  Then almost as an afterthought, Hail told Stone, “Bring the ship’s railgun online and load a guided projectile.”

  “Roger that, Skipper,” Stone responded.

  Hail turned to Kara who was still standing nervously next to him. “Your pilot is in a world of hurt,” he told her.

  Kara gave him an angry look and said, “I told you, it wasn’t my call.”

  Hail ignored her and looked back to Renner and asked him, “What’s the status of Men at Work?”

  “I’m already down,” Renner said.

  Hail looked at the screen. Both Blondie’s and Men at Work’s cameras showed the identical image. It was the same long-distance shot of the burning warehouse. Renner had landed Men at Work on the back of Blondie.

  “Do it,” Hail told Renner.

  Without hesitation, Renner typed in four digits and pressed the icon on the screen labeled SELF DESTRUCT. Men at Work blew another deep hole into the North Korean soil, blowing Blondie to tiny pieces along with it.

  Over Wonsan, N. Korea—on the F-35C Lightning II Jet Aircraft

  A

  s Lieutenant Commander Foster Nolan approached the target site, he drastically reduced speed in order to look at the warehouse below. At his previous speed of a thousand miles per hour, the warehouse would have passed under him so fast, it would have looked like a firefly. The blaze from the warehouse was clearly visible.

  Nolan made a long slow circle above the target until he was convinced that it had been destroyed in its entirety. Just as he was preparing to throttle up and run for the sea, another explosion erupted on the ground. The lieutenant commander estimated the blast was a good hundred yards away from the warehouse. But it didn’t make sense. Any explosive material that had been in the warehouse would have gone up in the initial blast. As he tried to determine what it might be, cockpit alarms began beeping. He checked his heads-up display and was disturbed to see two bogies in the air, headed in his direction.

  “Oh, hell no,” he muttered.

  But the lieutenant commander was ready for a fight. He had been for years. He was flying one of the world’s most sophisticated aircraft and he was armed to the teeth. There was no doubt in his mind that he could certainly take out two crappy North Korean jets. They were probably those outdated Chengdu J-7s or possibly a Russian MiG or two.

  But they were not. “Oh, hell no,” he said again, vehemently. On his screen, the designator J-20 was clearly marked next to each of the two dots closing rapidly on his position. At first, he thought it was a mistake, but there was no mistaking the fact that they were hauling ass and would intercept him in less than one minute.

  Nolan pressed the engine throttle forward to its full extent and the jet screamed, pinning him back into the seat. For a moment he considered turning his radio back on and explaining his precarious situation. And then he thought to himself ― why? He was a lone pilot flying over North Korea on a clandestine mission with two J-20s on his ass. No one was going to help him.

  Foster Nolan checked his display again, and he saw that the J-20s were vectoring to cut him off before he could make it to sea. It was either fight or flight, and he was already in the process of flight. But there was another option that appealed to him as well. Actually, not exactly an option. More like an added bonus.

  Up ahead, he saw a target. It appeared to be a fully lit multistoried structure. The reason the target stuck out was because it was the only thing below that had lights blazing. And this was a big target. A big bright target. Obviously, it was something very important to the North Koreans. Most probably a military installation of some type.

  Nolan flipped a switch and armed the new Joint Air-to-Ground Missile called LOCO. If the North Koreans thought the old Hellfire missile was nasty, the LOCO would truly rock their world.

  Five miles out, Lieutenant Commander Foster Nolan pointed a laser beam at the brightly lit military complex. He yelled, “This is for my brother,” as he pulled the trigger.

  Wonsan, North Korea

  V

  ictor Kornev was as close to a panic as he had ever been. He had pushed the UAZ, the goat, just as fast as the lightweight vehicle could go. Never in a million years did he think he would be grateful to see the ugly city of Wonsan come into view but he was. The Pyongyang–Wonsan Highway was the frickin’ yellow brick road, and he longed to be in the safety of Oz up ahead.

  Kornev turned off the highway onto the road that led to Kaeson-dong. If he remembered correctly, the circle in Kaeson-dong led to the Dongmyong Hotel. Even though he hated the place, he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. The minister of state security for North Korea, Trang Won Dong, was his connection with his cargo plane to get out of North Korea. From the explosion he had experienced as he was driving away from the warehouse, and then the massive explosion when the warehouse had been vaporized; Kornev had to assume Trang had been fried to a crisp.

  Kornev reached the circle in Kaeson-dong. He drove around it twice until he found the road that led to Pongch’un-dong. He yanked the wheel to the right and saw some light ahead on the horizon.

  Once he checked into the smelly Dongmyong Hotel, he would then call in a favor from an influential friend to find a safe way out of the country. He sure wished he knew who was trying to kill him. It wouldn’t help him now, but at least he could plan his next mo
ve based on a factor other than fear.

  There it was up ahead. The wretched Dongmyong Hotel. And it would appear that his luck was changing. For maybe the first time in a month, the hotel had electricity. That meant a working elevator, a shower and a—

  The blast was so intense that Kornev felt his face blister and his ears rupture. He slammed on the goat’s brakes, but his eyes were closed. When the car went into the skid, Kornev was helpless to do anything but hang on to the steering wheel and ride it out. The car slid sideways, flipped into a ditch and ejected Kornev fifteen feet into the thick muck.

  Kornev lay in the ditch, dazed, face down, and unmoving until his senses returned enough so that he realized he was drowning. Pulling his face from the muddy water, coughing and spitting out black mud, Kornev raised his head from the ooze and looked up. What he saw amazed him. The Dongmyong Hotel had been turned into fiery rubble.

  Any man in Victor’s current condition might consider himself ill-fated to be shot in the hand, almost assassinated, ejected from a car, burnt, temporarily deafened and was now lying in a ditch face down in North Korea. But, on the contrary, Victor understood that if he had arrived a few minutes earlier, he would have been checking into that hotel at the same instant it was being obliterated. Kornev was a very lucky man, and he knew it.

  Someone was on his side. Not God, but someone else that he believed in—and they believed in him. But somewhere along the way, he had also had made a formidable enemy—a person or persons so powerful they had the resources to blow up an entire hotel in North Korea in order to kill him.

  Now all he had to figure out was who.

  The White House Situation Room—Washington, D.C.

  “I

  would like you to precisely define what you mean by ‘a rogue pilot’,” the president asked General Ford.

  Just moments ago, she had been happy. The mission had been successful, and Hail had done what he said he could do. No messy loose ends. No political fallout. Everything had been peachy. And then the general had come over and told her something about a rogue pilot”. In her line of work, a “rogue” anything was bad news. The word rogue could even be used in place of a profanity. So, when the general had said, “rogue pilot” the president connected that with the fact that this person was flying one of the most destructive planes in the American arsenal. The situation didn’t sound positive; therefore, the president’s mood was not optimistic.

  “He is a very good pilot. Loyal. Great combat record. He’s been decorated,” the general explained.

  “What’s the problem?” the president asked. Her tone was abrasive, and the general suspected it was going to get worse after his next sentence.

  “The pilot has not responded to our orders to return to base, and he is continuing to fly into North Korea.”

  The president was dumbfounded. She didn’t even know how to respond.

  The general filled in the silence. “I’m sure it’s just some sort of communications issue. Maybe the North Koreans are jamming our radio transmissions. I’m sure after the pilot has a look at the blown-up warehouse, he will put on the afterburners and return to the carrier.”

  The president’s face looked pale. Moments ago, Joanna Weston had been flushed with pride. Now a wave of abject horror washed over her. She made a quick calculation of how many days she might have left in office if this mission got much worse. But the mission mess was out of her hands. It was now in the hands of a crazy rogue pilot—as was her career.

  President Weston turned and watched the big screen as the warehouse continued to burn. Another bright spot flashed on the screen a little way away from the big bright spot. It may have been another explosion. Or possibly another communications issue.

  Sea of Japan—Aboard the Hail Nucleus

  T

  he entire ship hummed. To Kara, it sounded like a hundred electric shavers being run at the same time. “What’s that sound?” she asked Hail.

  “It’s the railgun being charged.” Hail hesitated before adding, “To be more accurate, it’s the capacitors for the railgun that are being charged.”

  That meant nothing to Kara. But she did understand that the ship’s big gun was being loaded and brought online. How it worked, she didn’t care.

  Hail had brought up a map on his personal screen. A real-time plot of the jets showed they had just passed over Wonsan and were heading out to sea. He moved the image up to the big screen, so the crew could see it as well. The good news was the F-35 had made it to sea without being cut off by the North Korean J-20s. The bad news was they were right on his tail.

  Dallas Stone was still conferenced into the mission center speakers.

  “Are the J-20s in range?” Hail asked.

  Dallas responded “Yes, they are and the railgun is at full capacity and ready to fire.”

  “Do we have a smart projectile programmed to the J-20 profile?”

  “It’s been programmed and is ready to go.”

  Hail thought that the smart projectiles should work. But other than testing the new depleted uranium projectiles on his own drones, they had never fired them at anything as fast as a Chengdu J-20. Unlike their dumb projectile brothers, the smart projectile had a computer that took over the guidance once the shell was within striking range. Fins on the nose and the tail of the heavy piece of metal would be deployed and manipulated by the computer to reach its final target. At these speeds, Hail was concerned that the projectile guidance software might get confused and take out the F-35 by mistake.

  Hail held his arms up in the air and crossed his index fingers on both of his hands.

  “Fire the railgun,” He told Dallas.

  There was a deep concussive bang, followed by an abrupt change in the ship’s attitude as it leaned hard to port.

  Kara felt like she was falling and grabbed for the first stationary thing near her, which was Hail’s neck. She half fell and swung around to the backside of Hail’s captain’s chair.

  “You’re choking me,” Hail gurgled, as the ship rocked back over to its starboard side.

  Kara got her feet back under her and stood, releasing his neck.

  Hail placed a hand on his Adam’s apple and gave it a soothing rub.

  “Sorry,” Kara said. “Why didn’t you tell me that was going to happen?”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry,” Hail croaked.

  On the big screen, the plot of the projectile showed it moving toward the trio of jets that were headed in the direction of the Hail Nucleus. But Hail knew that this animation would not provide them any significant information. It would simply show them if their bullet had made it within a mile of the group. The rest would be up to the guidance programming code that had been written by his smart guys in the IT lab.

  There was nothing for any of them to do but watch and wait.

  Dallas Stone’s voice came back over the speakers. “Prince’s radar has detected a rocket fired from one of the J-20s.”

  Hoping for the best and planning for the worst, Hail gave Stone the order. “Recharge the railgun and get another guided projectile on the rack.”

  Over the Sea of Japan—on the F-35C Lightning II Jet Aircraft

  L

  ieutenant Commander Foster Nolan was crazy. Crazy with fear. He had successfully blown up the North Korean military complex and had beaten the North Korean jets to the sea, but now they were right on his ass. He had tried to maneuver his jet out of harm’s way, but for every turn and dive he made, the J-20s had mimicked his actions. At one point he had placed his F-35 into a sustained six-g turn as he tried to get behind his pursuers. But their planes appeared to be just as nimble as his F-35. Around and around they went until Nolan thought he was going to pass out from the g-forces. He then straightened it out, pointed his jet toward Japan and poured on every ounce of speed he could get out of his aircraft.

  The North Korean jets were still on his six, and he was expecting to hear a sound that no pilot wanted to hear. And then there it was.

  An ala
rm went off indicating at least one of the jets behind him had a radar lock on him and was ready to fire something nasty his way. A rocket, a gun, a missile—it really didn’t matter. At the current ranges and speeds, any would be fatal.

  Crazy Lieutenant Commander Foster Nolan had less than a second to decide if he would live or die. On one hand, if he let the North Koreans shoot him down, he was certain he would die a hero. He would have given his life for his country. His brother would have been proud of him. And this would be an end to those lonely endless nights, followed by dismal mornings as he mourned the loss of his beloved brother.

  For some odd reason, out of the blue, he decided he wanted to live. There was no conscious thought involved with the action. He simply reached under his seat and pulled the ejection handle. The clear canopy flipped open and disappeared a second before the rocket under his seat lifted him and his chair out of the aircraft. The wind hit him like a brick wall.

  Less than thirty yards away from his aircraft, Foster Nolan observed a projectile cut the left wing off of his F-35. His multimillion-dollar aircraft rolled to the left and disintegrated. Nolan’s large secondary chute deployed, and everything became very still as pieces of his jet dropped toward the sea below.

  With his parachute now fully inflated, Lieutenant Commander Foster Nolan was now nothing more than an observer. He looked into the sky at the J-20s.

  Out of nowhere, a shell, missile, or projectile of some type, silently passed through one of the J-20s that had shot him down. For a split second, Nolan could make out a clean hole that had punched directly through the jet’s thin skin. For a fraction of an instant, he could actually see the bright moon through the opening. Of course, you can’t cut a hole through a jet at 1200 miles per hour and not expect problems. And Nolan guessed that the pilot of the jet may not have even known he had a problem. That was until the hole disrupted the airflow enough to pitch the nose up a tiny bit. But at 1200 miles per hour, a tiny bit is quite a lot. And that’s all it took. The air pressure on the jet’s compromised frame cracked the J-20 in half like a breadstick. It was quick. Snap! The front end of the J-20 fell toward the sea, and the backend broke up and exploded as the trailing jet fuel erupted in all the colors of the rainbow.