Hail Warning

by Brett Arquette

  What did concern her was when Kornev suddenly stopped halfway down the tunnel. She wasn’t expecting it, and she bumped into him. Kornev turned quickly to face her, and he casually placed the end of his Glock on the delicate bridge of her nose.

  Kara guessed that Kornev was waiting for her to make a move of some type. Maybe step back, fall to the floor, maybe scream or maybe cry. But she did none of those things. Instead, after taking the briefest of time to compose herself, she smiled.

  This was apparently not what Kornev had been expecting.

  Tonya said, “I know you like to play with guns, Victor, but don’t you think this is a little over the top?”

  In Kara’s eyes, Kornev didn’t look like he was playing around. He looked dead serious.

  The Russian said, “Turn this way—turn that way—all the way up until we run into the only cowboy in the entire desert who just happened to be waiting for us in the middle of the road. Who are you?”

  The gun was beginning to leave an indentation in Kara’s white nose, but she didn’t attempt to move away.

  “Who do you want me to be?” she asked in a deadpan voice.

  Kornev looked frustrated and said, “I can pull this trigger, and no one will even hear the shot since we are deep underground. I can leave you here to rot. Answer me. Who are you?”

  Kara said in a measured tone, “Honestly, does it make any difference to you who I am? I thought you wanted to have some fun. Isn’t that why you called me? But so far, we have been chased by some crazy-looking machines that were shooting real bullets at us. Then you get accosted by a cowboy in the middle of the frickin’ desert. Then we go visit some ancient friend of yours who ogles at me. His breath could kill a dead horse. Now, here we are in the middle of a tunnel, and you are resting your heavy gun on my little nose. I’ve got news for you, Victor. This might be exciting for you, but it really isn’t all that much fun for me. I have had just about enough of this. I was picturing dancing and drinking and partying.”

  Kornev looked more confused than angry. He wasn’t getting an answer to his question, and this woman didn’t seem to be concerned in the least a gun was still centered in the middle of her face.

  Kara pushed the gun to one side and said, “Who do you think I am? What kind of job do you do? I was telling you to turn the SUV because the flying things were on my side of the car, so it made sense to turn away from them. After all, you didn’t appear to be doing anything other than panicking.”

  Kornev slowly lowered the gun to his side. He didn’t know what to say. And Tonya had a point. Worst-case scenario she was working for an intelligence agency of some sort. But did that really matter at this point? The Americans had already made it very clear that they didn’t want him dead. On the contrary, they wanted him alive so he could work for them. From a pure safety standpoint, the woman was not a threat. And if she was, as she claimed to be, a woman who just wanted to have fun, he would find that out soon. They were headed to a beautiful beachfront home at an exotic locale called Snake Island.

  *-*-*

  Kornev returned the gun behind his back, tucking it back into the waistband of his pants. He apologized to Tonya.

  “I’m sorry. You understand that in my line of work I have to be careful?”

  It was a trap. She wasn’t going to take the bait.

  “I don’t know what line of work you are in, but something tells me I don’t want to know. Just so you know that as far as a second date goes, this one really sucks.”

  Kornev tried to shrug it off. He gave her a little hug and told her, “I am going to make it up to you—I promise.”

  “And what does that mean?” she asked suspiciously. “Are we going to go skydiving without parachutes? Are we going to go run with the bulls? I don’t believe you know how to make it up to me,” Tonya huffed. She pouted.

  This time, Kornev laughed at her joke. He put his arm around her waist and they began walking further down the dank tunnel.

  Kornev patted Kara on her round bottom as they came to the stairs that led up to the compound. As Kornev patted her other cheek, he found her cellphone and removed it from her back pocket.

  “You won’t need this,” he said. “They barely have phone service around here.”

  Kara considered protesting, but understood it was pointless. She decided to say nothing and began climbing the stairs.

  GULF OF GUINEA—ABOARD THE HAIL PROTON

  T urtles’ was built like a tank, and it was clipped onto the belly of the drone, Foghat. Foreigner was lying on its back on the catapult of deck two aboard the Hail Proton waiting to be shot into the night. Turtles looked like a hunk of brown shell that sat like a blob of structured clay on the smooth conical carbon fiber drone.

  Hail Proton’s lab workers took great care inspecting the latch mechanism connecting the little drone to the larger one. Violent forces would stress all exterior surfaces when the drone went from 0 to 100 miles per hour in less than a second. If the connection between the drones was anything less than perfect, there was a very real chance of Turtles being ripped from the belly of Foghat. If that were to happen, it would sink to the bottom of the sea.

  Captain Mitch Nichols was waiting by the control panel on the wall, ready to activate the catapult’s charging field. When the lab workers were satisfied that everything was ready to go, the captain would hit the big red button.

  Both Lang and Parker looked apprehensive about the launch, as if the drone was their child, and they didn’t want to see any harm come to it. If it were a child, it was indeed a deadly one. Turtles held enough C-4 explosives beneath its shell to shred the inside of the hangar deck if it inadvertently exploded on takeoff. If component A ripped away from connector B and touched exposed relay C, all three of the people next to it would be D for dead, and the crew understood that real possibility.

  Foghat’s wings were swept into their far back launch position. The tail of the long-range drone had been retracted into the body of the aircraft. Nothing had been left sticking out of the drone that could cause drag as it shot into the air.

  Reluctantly, both technicians stepped back from the huge tube on the rail, and they gave their captain a thumbs-up. Nichols flipped the switch to charge the catapult. Moments later, the humming died away, and the green light came on, indicating the catapult’s capacitor farm was at full charge.

  “Let ‘er rip, Tater Chip,” Captain Nichols urged. He lifted the handset of a phone bolted to the iron wall next to the catapult panel. He held it to his ear and put his finger on the button to fire the catapult.

  “Jason,” Nichols asked, “do you have Foghat online and ready to fly?”

  Back in Hail Proton’s mission center, Jason Wilson was manning the control station and had Foghat’s flight control set loaded on his screens. As with many of Hail’s pilots, Wilson was young. He was a nineteen-year-old black kid who didn’t have anyone who cared about him. Jason Wilson was a byproduct of a broken home, raised in the bad part of a big city, surrounded by negative influences. He had struggled his entire young life, yet he’d avoided getting sucked into the neighborhood gang. Wilson paid for it with regular beatings. He had longed to leave behind the shootings, stabbings and robberies that were part of his everyday existence. At the age of fifteen, his mother had been killed in a drive-by shooting, and Jason found himself a ward of the State. He never fully understood how Hail found him, but he had. Hail walked into the halfway house where Jason was living while good-meaning government employees tried to find him a foster family. Hail had spoken with the lady who was in charge, and then he had come over to talk with Jason.

  “My name is Marshall,” Hail had said, reaching out with his huge white hand that swallowed up Jason’s little black hand. Hail’s manner was warm. Jason didn’t get the same heebie jeebies he had gotten when his mom had brought home men to meet him.

  “I’ve got a number of kids, orphaned because of The Five, who now call my ships home. They attend school and they have a lot of fun. There are op
portunities to learn life skills, but you are expected to work in the shops on the ship.”

  Wilson looked at the man like he was Santa Claus. He was big like Santa, just not fat, and he didn’t have a beard. But his name was Marshall, and that made Jason think of some of the old Westerns he had seen on TV. Those Marshalls had tin stars and fast six shooters. They were always the good guys.

  The big man continued, “I hear you got straight A’s at the school you went to before your mother passed away.”

  “She got shot in the head,” Jason had told the man named Marshall. Then he felt he had shared too much information.

  Hail had said in a kind voice, “I’m sorry about your mom, but I want you to stay with us. I want you to learn how to fly planes and drive cars and learn math and science and all the other great things you would learn if you went to a university. Is that something that you would be interested in doing?”

  Considering that Jason’s only other choice was being handed off to a family he knew nothing about, the man offering a pipe dream won hands down.

  At the age of 15, Jason Andrew Wilson became the legal ward of Marshall Hail. A week later, Jason found himself aboard the Hail Proton inside a simulator flying a Piper Cub airplane.

  Now, two years later, he was Hail Proton’s best pilot.

  Jason checked the numerous virtual gauges, lights and sensor indicators on two of his four monitors.

  He spoke into his headset, “Captain, Foghat is good for launch.”

  Back at the hangar deck, with the phone still pressed to his ear, and his finger still on the big red button, the captain of the Hail Proton began the countdown. “We will be away in five, four, three, two, one—”

  The captain pressed the red button, and Foghat vanished with a hiss and a roar.

  Captain Nichols said into the phone, “The drone is away.”

  Once the drone had been thrown into the sky, the engine fired, and both the wings and the tail sprung from the fuselage. When the flight surfaces were in place, back in the mission center, Jason pushed his flight yoke all the way to the right, rolling the drone 180 degrees into its proper flight attitude. As the drone climbed and picked up more speed, the wings began to slowly sweep backwards, creating less drag without sacrificing lift. This would not only increase the speed of the drone, but also get better gas mileage.

  Back on the hangar deck, Lang, Parker and Nichols watched through the deck hatch opening as the drone vanished into the night sky. The captain flipped another switch, and a huge iron slab above them rolled forward. The trio watched as the deck hatch closed until it had fully slid back into place with a metallic clang.

  Back in Hail Proton’s mission center, Jason reached cruising altitude in no time, considering it was no more than 500 feet. He would keep the drone below radar for the entire trip. Once he was close to his target, he would dip Foghat lower to drop off the turtle drone into the waters encircling Snake Island, Nigeria. This would be an uncomplicated flight. He would be flying over water the entire way, with the coastline to his left.

  Wilson eased himself back into his comfortable seat and relaxed. On one of his high-definition monitors, he watched the moonlight dance off the water below while the drone raced towards its destination.

  TWO YEARS AGO

  CARIBBEAN SEA—PORLAMAR, VENEZUELA

  T he Nigerian Princess docked in Porlamar, Venezuela which is a few miles from the mainland. By this time, Afua was in remarkably bad shape. His body had not been able to replenish the blood he had lost from his leg wound. Obano called ahead for an ambulance to pick up himself and a semiconscious Afua at the dock. The ambulance had taken them to the nearest hospital staffed with a surgeon. Neither man knew much about the condition called hypovolemic shock, also known as hemorrhagic shock. Unlike Afua, who had seen men die from this ailment, Isaac had not. The medical condition was explained to him by a triage doctor, who had told him that if a person lost more than twenty percent (or one-fifth) of the body’s blood supply, it was impossible for the heart to pump adequate amounts of blood to their organs. Hemorrhagic shock, untreated, resulted in organ failure and death.

  The doctor and the staff initially asked Isaac how Afua had cut his leg. Obano had anticipated this question. He told them Afua had been servicing the yacht’s diesel engines while they were running. He explained his first mate’s leg came in close contact with one of the many rubber belts that crisscrossed the front of the large engine and the powered ancillary generators. Just a mere tap of soft flesh on one of the belts would result in an injury that resembled getting tapped on by a chainsaw. The actual wound on Afua’s leg agreed with the reason Obano provided. Thus, the doctors didn’t question Obano any further about the incident.

  Obano had been asked to go to the waiting room. He had been assured by the hospital staff they would let him know more about Afua’s situation after they assessed his medical situation.

  But, instead of waiting for him in the cramped waiting room, Obano went to the intake counter and provided the lady at the desk his cellphone number. He asked her to have the hospital call him with any information about Afua Diambu, who was registered at the hospital as Jesus Savage. When Isaac was asked for his first mate’s name during the intake process, he had given the name, Jesus. He almost added the last name Afua had given them – Savage. Instead, he mumbled out the single word Nazaer. The lady looked quizzically at him for a moment before jotting it down.

  Given the serious nature of Afua’s injuries, dehydration, and immense quantities of blood loss, Obano determined it was possible the jihadi could be

  there for several weeks, that is, if he lived. Fortunately, there was no big rush to return to Nigeria. Afua’s mission had been time-critical, but his mission was over. Thus, the longer Afua was in the hospital, the more time the Obanos could spend with one another to enjoy their vacation in the beautiful Caribbean. Obano gave the hospital’s finance administrator his credit card number, and then he returned to the yacht.

  GULF OF GUINEA—ABOARD THE HAIL PROTON

  F oghat came in low and slow. Turtles was heavy and would make a big loud splash when it hit the water. Wilson had been told to make the drop at very specific coordinates. It would be dumped far enough away from the beach, so the drone could not be seen by the guards stationed on the beach. But not so far away that Turtles ran the risk of running out of battery power before climbing out the water to its designated spot. Wilson checked the drone’s flight altitude and slowed Foghat down enough without stalling the aircraft.

  Captain Nichols was sitting behind Wilson in the captain’s chair, two tiers up.

  “You got this,” Nichols encouraged his young pilot.

  This drop was important for Wilson since it was his first real mission. But it was important for the entire Hail Proton crew since it was the first assigned to their mission center. No one wanted this first mission to be their last. It was critical for everything to work perfectly as a matter of pride for Hail Proton’s crew.

  “Altitude is fifty feet. Airspeed is 75 miles per hour,” the pilot reported. Wilson knew that the stall speed of Foghat was 62 miles per hour, but there was no sense testing that parameter.

  “One mile out,” Wilson announced. He made a small flight adjustment and slid his finger under a button protector on his flight yoke. This protected button could be coded to either fire missiles or guns. For this mission, the button had been programmed to release Turtles from Foghat’s belly.

  Above Wilson’s control station were massive 80-inch screens attached to the wall which streamed the real-time video sent from the front-facing camera on Foghat. The drone was flying in an easterly direction down the coastline of Nigeria. Beneath and to the drone’s right, there was nothing to sea but endless ocean. To the drone’s left was a smattering of lights that appeared to be glowing from small homes, docks, or boats nestled in close to the shoreline.

  Up ahead, and to the left, was a much brighter grouping of lights strung from a large building on the beach.
The light cast a bright glow back into the jungle. The building on the hill, above the beach, was so large it appeared to be a hotel. A small strip of land separated the compound from the intracoastal waterway. Jason had been informed this waterway was known as Badagry Creek, and it fronted Afua Diambu’s home. Wilson made a flight adjustment and flew over the narrow sandy parcel, and he centered his aircraft over Badagry Creek.

  “The compound is coming up on your left,” Nichols told Wilson.

  “Roger that,” Wilson responded. The young pilot checked the coordinates on his lower right monitor, did some quick calculations in his head and then reported, “Releasing in five, four, three, two, one—”

  Jason pressed the button on his yoke and prayed that Turtles had disengaged properly from the underside of Foghat. Since he was still flying Foghat, the task of getting Turtles into place now rested in the hands of Sarah Starling.

  Starling’s story differed ONLY as it related to her skin color. Leave the backstory in place—and bingo—you had Sarah’s life story in a nutshell. She had lived in Arkansas with her mother who was addicted to crack, and her father was long gone. Starling was a girl in a no-win situation striving to escape the crappy trailer she lived in. She hung out at the Sip-and-Go. She was determined to make it out of the crappy neighborhood and the crappy town in which she lived. Very much in the same manner Hail had found Jason Wilson, he had found Sarah Starling. She was a year older than Jason and, during their time on the ship, Sarah and Jason had become very close friends. They liked the same types of clothes—dark, baggy and warm items with cool graphics and lots of shiny brass zippers. They liked gangster rap, tacos, and black-and-white movies.