Hail Warning

by Brett Arquette

  The president shook her head and looked very serious.

  “No, that is not what we agreed upon. We agreed that we would work together to remove these parasites from our list. That’s why you currently have Kara Ramey, a CIA operative, on your ship. And now you have one of our top pilots as well. Oh my, your list of my people ending up on your ship is larger than the number of terrorists you have removed from the list.”

  Hail looked frustrated. Joanna Weston had the impression she was getting on his nerves. Well, now he could see what it felt like.

  Marshall Hail deeply inhaled and slowly exhaled. After he had composed himself, he said, “Joanna, it really doesn’t matter how we get there. I just want to get moving. I need another name. I need another location. I need information so I can find another person who can be removed from your list before they can do more harm to innocent people. Do you think we can at least agree on that?”

  The president took a sip of water from a clear glass. She then set it back down on the table. She purposefully waved her hand over the top of the drone sitting on the table. For a split-second, the laser’s connection was broken, and Hail disappeared. An instant later, he was back again.

  “What are you doing?” Hail asked.

  “I was just seeing if I waved my hand over your drone, if you would disappear. And you did.”

  The president repeated the motion.

  “Stop doing that,” Hail told her.

  “I’m the president of the United States, Marshall. I can do any damn thing I please.” And, to prove her point, she waved her hand over the top of the drone again and watched the screen go black for a beat.

  Joanna Weston laughed. When Hail reappeared, he looked mad.

  “Oh, that is so much fun. Now I see you; now I don’t.” She played with the laser a little bit more, this time allowing her hand to block the signal for a few seconds before removing it and allowing the drones to reconnect.

  “OK, OK, stop, stop,” Hail pleaded.

  The president leaned back in her chair. Her smiled faded, and she fell back into a serious mood.

  Weston asked, “Do you know how big of a problem you caused us when you made my marine pilots land their helicopter next to the Memorial of The Five?”

  Hail looked confused for a moment before saying, “If I recall correctly, I funded the building of that memorial, yet I had never seen it.”

  The president shook her head and said, “That’s not the point, Marshall. You had my pilots land their helicopter in the middle of the Washington Mall which is illegal. Your little stunt was caught on video on a tourist’s cellphone. It made the news, and my administration had to scramble to come up with a plausible explanation for a presidential helicopter landing in the middle of a populated space.”

  The president waited for Hail to respond. Hail asked, “And what did you tell them?”

  “Since the video ended before you exited the aircraft, we told the press that the helicopter was having a technical problem and needed to set down to sort it out.”

  Hail thought that they had provided a great explanation to the public.

  Then the president added, “Just so you know, the officers flying the helicopter have been relieved of duty and were dishonorably discharged from the Marines.”

  The president’s words hit Hail like a physical punch to his gut.

  “That’s not right,” Hail blurted out. “I told them to land the chopper. I pressured them into it.”

  “But you see, Marshall. That’s what happens. You push and push and others pay for your actions. You are insulated from all the consequences of your actions. You live on your ships and have safe havens in the poor countries that adore your cheap traveling wave reactors. So, others end up paying for your actions.”

  Hail did his best to compose himself, remembering that he was talking to the president of the United States.

  He then asked in a calm voice, “Can I please have the names and contact information of those officers?”

  Weston was surprised by the question and asked, “Why?”

  “Well, if the corps is done with them, then I would like to offer them jobs.”

  “And what could military men do for you, Marshall? They fly jets, not drones.”

  Hail considered how much he should share with the president, but figured if he didn’t tell her something, he wouldn’t get their names. And those names were important to him because he did pressure those officers to land the chopper in the middle of the Mall so he could see the Memorial of The Five. He could have just allowed them to pick him up at Andrews Air Force base, which for no apparent reason had been renamed Joint Base Andrews. He could have requested the Marine pilots to shuttle him to the White House for his meeting with the president and her staff. Instead, he had selfishly made the officers drop him off next to the new memorial. And that action had apparently cost them their careers and livelihoods; Hail couldn’t accept that. He viewed himself as one of the good guys. He was someone who made people’s lives better. He certainly failed these men, and he fully intended to make it up to them, in whatever capacity he could.

  Hail said, “I don’t have many people on my ships who have military backgrounds or experience. At this point, I need their knowledge.” He purposely didn’t disclose why he needed their skillsets, but he hoped his explanation would satisfy the president.

  The president ignored Hail’s request and said, “This is what we’ll do, Marshall. I will meet with the CIA, NSA, FBI and General Ford, and we’ll put together another mission for you. Does that sound good?”

  Hail smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, that sounds like it would work.”

  The president smiled back at Marshall Hail and waited.

  Hail volleyed, “What about those officers’ names and contact information?”

  The president thought he wore a forced smile. The president just stared at Hail, a wisp of a smile still on her face, but it was fading quickly.

  The uncomfortable silence lasted several seconds, until the president said, “OK, have a nice day. Shoo! You can fly away now.”

  Hail considered requesting the names again, but it appeared this request was something the president would need to consider. Hail understood that he was not going to get an answer today.

  Hail suggested, “Would it be OK if I just flew over there by the door and set down on the ground? I mean, if we’re going to meet soon, then I can just shut the drone down, and when you’re ready to meet, you could just text me.”

  “What?” the president asked, not really understanding what Hail was asking.

  Hail explained, “I thought it would save me time if I could just park the drone over there, so I didn’t have to fly it out of here and then back again for the meeting.”

  “No, Marshall. You can’t just park your drone on White House property.”

  “I could just fly it up on the roof if that would work for you? That way, it would be out of the way.”

  “That will not work,” the president stated emphatically. “Someone on my staff will e-mail you when the meeting will take place, and then we will conduct our meeting via our encrypted video conference infrastructure. I’m assuming you have the technology aboard your ship to facilitate a video meeting. Thus, there will not be a need to have your drone flying back and forth.”

  Hail looked disappointed.

  “Are we good with that, Mr. Hail?”

  “Marshall,” Hail corrected.

  “Are we good with that, Marshall?” the president repeated.

  “Well, what type of time frame are we talking about? Later today is good for me,” Hail suggested.

  “We will get back to you…when we get back to you,” the president said sternly.

  “How about tomorrow? Either that, or I can fly back so we can discuss a time?”

  “OK, tomorrow,” the president reluctantly agreed. “Now fly away. Shoo, I have a schedule to keep.”

  Hail looked down at something offscreen.

  The preside
nt assumed Hail was looking down at his flight controls, but nothing happened.

  Hail looked upset. He looked back up at Joanna Weston and asked, “You didn’t hit anything with your hand when you were blocking the drone’s signal, did you?”

  Hail looked back down and appeared to be pressing buttons and moving controls.

  The president looked irritated at the accusation, but she was upset Hail and his drone were still on her table.

  “No, I didn’t touch anything on your drone,” she responded derisively.

  Hail looked serious, as he diligently tried to get the drone fired up and off the table. “I just don’t know what happened,” he said.

  Then a few seconds later, he laughed and said, “Gotcha.”

  Even before the words finished leaving his mouth, the drone’s propellers spun up, and the aircraft began to lift off the table.

  The president felt like telling Mr. Hail to go to Hell, but twenty seconds later, both the video drone and the falcon flying high above had disappeared.

  EAST CHINA SEA—ABOARD THE HAIL NUCLEUS

  M arshall Hail eased back on his flight control yoke. He wanted to talk with Nolan about the conversation he had with the president. He turned to Alex Knox and asked, “Can you please take over flying Cheap Trick?”

  A young man sitting at a flight console on the perimeter of the mission room replied, “No problem, Marshall.”

  Hail watched his right monitor until the outside edge of his control icons turned from green to red. A message popped up in the corner of his screen that read, “Cheap Trick has been acquired by Top Gun.” Cheap Trick was the code name for the drone that had been sitting on the table in the White House Rose Garden.

  Hail turned his chair toward Lt. Commander Nolan, standing to his right.

  “So, you saw and heard for yourself,” he told Lt. Commander Foster Nolan. “The president herself said you are good to stay onboard our ship.”

  The jet pilot didn’t look convinced.

  Nolan asked, “Do you think she actually has the authority to grant something like that? I mean, isn’t that a military decision?”

  Hail said, “If the president can get someone off death row with a stroke of her pen, then I’m pretty sure she can assign you duty aboard the Hail Nucleus.”

  “Is that what this is—a military assignment?” Nolan questioned.

  “Hell, if I know,” Hail responded. “You just need to take stuff at face value and go with it. That’s what I do,” Hail told him. “I mean there are no guarantees in life. You know that better than anyone. Each time you climbed in your jet to fly off to fight the bad guys, there was no guarantee you would be coming home. I’m surprised you’re not used to the uncertainty by now.”

  “It’s just not the way the military works. They make a big deal out of everything. I mean, the jet I crashed cost more than $300 million dollars. Just that alone is enough to raise some eyebrows.”

  Hail put his hands in the air.

  “Don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “At least for now, you work for me. Are you good with that?”

  Nolan took a moment to look around the mission room.

  “Did you know that this room looks just like the bridge on the Starship Enterprise?” Nolan asked.

  Hail smiled and said, “Then we did a good job recreating it. I always loved Star Trek as a kid. Thus, when we were deciding what this room should look, the bridge on the Enterprise was a natural selection for me. I mean, look around.”

  Hail stood up from his chair and waved his hand in a broad arc around the room as he talked.

  “I love the way this room is tiered. It has sixteen flight stations that encircle the room. Then over the top of each of those flight stations, we have sixteen large monitors tied into a video router. That allows us to display anything we need to on any one of those big displays.”

  Nolan did a slow 360-degree turn until again he was facing Hail again.

  “And on the second tier,” Hail continued, “we have two consoles for the mission analysts. Typically, one of the analysts is responsible for providing us information about the weather, indigenous flora and animals that might pose a threat to the mission, and the other analyst serves as a translator.”

  “Why do you need an expert in animals?” Nolan asked.

  “Well, on our last mission, one of our drones was almost eaten by a large bird. If we hadn’t had a back-up drone, the mission would have been scrubbed.”

  Nolan nodded his head, but still looked confused.

  “And lastly,” Hail said, patting the arm of the massive chair in the middle of the room, “we have the third tier, complete with a replica of Captain Kirk’s chair.”

  “Nice,” Nolan stated. “But I don’t remember his chair having the large displays mounted to the armrests.”

  “You’re right,” Hail agreed. “But that was then, and this is now. Every contraption these days has screens mounted to it. Hell, the toilet in my stateroom has a touch screen on it—so does my toaster.”

  Hail rested his hands on one of the chair’s monitors. “I use these as touch screens to control whatever it is that needs controlling. I can even fly a drone from this chair, if need be.”

  “Why do you need to fly a drone?” the lieutenant commander asked. It was a simple question. The same question could be asked. Why did anyone on Hail’s ship need to fly a drone?

  Hail gave the question some thought, and he finally responded, “I wouldn’t typically provide you operational details, but you are in a very unique situation. If you decide to go back to your unit, you will probably spend a few years in the brig. Therefore, any information I share with you will make little difference. But if you decide you’re going to stay on board you may need to quickly comprehend what we do as soon as possible, so you can make a difference. So, I don’t see any reason to beat around the bush with you, Foster.”

  This was the first time that Hail had used the lieutenant commander’s first name. This reminded Nolan that within the time it took for the earth to do a full rotation, his entire world had changed. He would no longer be in the military. He didn’t fully understand what type of special operations Hail ran, but it wasn’t run by any of the United States’ armed forces. It was a private operation, and Nolan was no longer a lieutenant commander of anything. He was simply Foster Nolan, an employee of Hail Industries. One rotation of the earth and everything he had worked for had vanished as well. Years of ROTC and his BA from Texas A&M, but his training hadn’t stopped there. In order to fly jets, Nolan had been required to take twelve to eighteen months of additional flight training and accept a seven-year active duty obligation. Dozens of countries, hundreds of missions, thousands of sorties, several promotions had all vaporized in one rotation of the earth. He would now, and forever, only be known as Foster Nolan. His only other choice would be prisoner #325469 at some Naval prison God only knows where. Considering the sensitivity of his last mission and how bad he had boned it, if he went back, he may never see daylight again, except for the hour in the prison yard.

  Foster Nolan was so lost in his thoughts that he had to return his attention to what Marshall Hail was saying.

  “—so, after my family was killed in The Five, I decided that life couldn’t just go on as usual. I knew I could use my wealth and technology to make the world a safer place. If all I achieve is to kill five of the jihadis on the Top Ten Terrorists list, that is money and time well spent. Maybe some other family won’t lose all they have to a mad man.”

  Nolan nodded and asked, “So, all of this and all of your ships and all of your time is now being spent to track down and kill terrorists?”

  “No, not all of my time. We still refine nuclear waste to be burned in our traveling wave reactors we manufacture. And we still sell and install those reactors in power-challenged countries. I would consider my time tracking down these scumbags as a hobby.”

  Nolan looked around again.

  “Looks like it’s an expensive hobby.”
>
  “It ain’t golf,” Hail said.

  Nolan focused on the only two other people in the large mission room. Both young adults appeared to be flying some sort of remote drone.

  “What are they doing?” Nolan asked, nodding in the direction of the young men.

  “Let’s go over and check it out,” Hail said.

  Both men stepped down one level, passed the analysts’ stations and stepped down to the bottom tier. They stood next to the pilots.

  Nolan and Hail watched a drone, from the point of view of the pilot, fly over the tops of buildings and swoop down into what looked like a residential area of apartments and condos.

  “This is Alex Knox,” Hail said. “Alex, meet Lt. Commander Foster Nolan with the United States Navy. He’s a jet pilot.”

  “No kidding?” Knox asked, not taking his eyes off his monitor. “Just give me one second.”

  Marshall and Foster watched as he moved his flight joystick and worked the pedals under his feet.

  “Just about there,” Knox said. His drone was now darting down a street, maybe thirty feet in the air, barely clearing power lines and street lights.

  “It’s up here on the left, isn’t it, Skipper?” Knox asked Hail.

  “Yeah, it’s that big brick building coming up.” Hail bent over and put his finger on the screen that was streaming back video from Cheap Trick.

  “It’s that balcony right there,” Hail pointed.

  Knox pulled back the joystick, and the drone began to slow. He pushed the throttles forward to increase power so he could bring the drone into a controlled hover.

  “Where do you want me to put it down, Marshall?” Knox asked.

  “Just set it down on the balcony’s table. I’ll text Trevor when he gets home from work and have him collect both drones to bring them inside.”

  “Both drones?” Nolan asked.

  Hail took a few steps to his left and centered himself behind the other pilot, who was also flying a drone.