Operation Hail Storm

by Brett Arquette

  The pirate standing next to the gunner on the Whaler dropped his rifle on the deck, and without warning, jumped into the water. The other pirates didn’t seem to notice. The glow inside the container was getting brighter. Two semicircles of red and yellow, with a vivid core of blue, took on a physical form. The colors were more than just a shape. They were alive somehow. The sound got louder, and the pirates on the Whaler were still hypnotized. None of them were moving. Everything seemed to stand still. Their boat was immobile. The waves that had been lapping at both of the pirates’ boats had been vibrated into nothing more than faint ripples. The breeze died away and was replaced with the faint smell of insulation being burned on a wire.

  The gunner on the Whaler turned and screamed something at the other pirates, but his voice had been reduced to nothing more than queer vibrations of indiscernible tones. That’s when two more pirates on the Whaler jumped into the water and started swimming for home. That left four pirates on the Whaler and five on the wooden boat. But now, the pirate that was driving the wooden boat turned and began distancing themselves from the white mother boat.

  Aboard the Hail Nucleus, Marshall asked, “What’s the firing status?”

  Dallas checked his screens and replied, “Almost charged. About another fifteen seconds.”

  Back down on the water, the buzzing bees had been replaced with the sound of a thousand woodpeckers hammering their beaks on the inside of the metal shipping container. The air around the vessels became electrostatically charged. The pirates turned to look at one another as the hair on their arms and heads began to elevate. The thick anchor chain on the deck of the Whaler rattled and then scuttled across the deck, magnetically snapping together and forming a huge metal ball. Two more of the pirates had seen enough. They dropped their guns on the deck and exited the Whaler. That left two combatants on the mother boat—the gunner and the driver.

  The edges of the cylindrical container had become less defined as the atmosphere surrounding the railgun became murky with ozone and electrons. The light inside the hole was so bright that the pirates had to shield their eyes. The gun’s fire warning tones blared from the ship’s horn and the last two pirates, who were literally shaking with fear, threw in the towel and bailed off the boat head first, so scared that they forgot to unstrap their guns.

  “Fire!” Hail ordered.

  Dallas pressed the button.

  There was a deafening sound like a redwood tree being broken over God’s knee. A bolt of lightning shot from the container, followed by a depleted uranium projectile and a ring of purple fire. The concussion and transfer of energy rolled the Hail Nucleus twenty-degrees to its starboard side. At 5000 miles per hour, the projectile took less than a tenth of a second to impact the Whaler. The kinetic energy was so immense that it looked like a magic act had been performed. One second the Whaler was there, and a tenth of a second later it was gone. The boat had been turned into a fiberglass dust cloud that hovered for a moment before breaking up and dissipating as the ocean breeze returned.

  Inside the security center, Hail grabbed onto the back of Dallas and Taylor’s high-back chairs, riding it out as the ship rolled back and forth, trying to find its equilibrium.

  “Holy smokes!” Alba yelled. She set the popcorn on the floor next to her, stood and started clapping. “Damn, that was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.”

  Hail looked up at the monitor above him. There wasn’t much to see. The small wooden boat had stopped, and it was picking up the pirates who had abandoned their vaporized craft. They all looked shaken. The Indonesians looked like they could hardly wait to put some distance between them and the cargo ship from outer space. Hail thought they might even consider retiring from this line of work.

  Hail smiled and instructed Dallas to secure the railgun.

  “Let’s get the drones back on board,” he told his pilots.

  Hail took a moment and mulled over the events, thinking that he may have missed something.

  “Does anyone need me for anything else?” Hail asked his crew.

  “No, we’re good, Skipper,” Dallas responded. “We’ll let you know if there is more fun to be had. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Hail said.

  Smiling, Hail turned and walked to the door.

  Once in the hallway, the walk to his stateroom seemed longer than it had thirty minutes ago. His stomach growled. His eyes were tired and his back hurt. But, it had been years since he was in this good of a mood.

  Nizhny Novgorod, Russia—Volna Hotel

  W

  hereas Karen Wesley, the Director of Analysis for the CIA, attributed her climb in the agency to her ordinary looks, Kara Ramey knew her climb was for the exact opposite reason. She was supposed to be noticed.

  She was just like all other CIA operatives, except for her undeniable beauty. She, too, had trained at Camp Peary, also known as “The Farm,” and Kara graduated at the top of her class in physical conditioning and vehicle handling. She excelled in firearms, surveillance, interrogation and could dispatch her male counterparts in hand-to-hand combat. She could outshoot and outdrive them, but none of that mattered. Sure, all that talent was useful to a CIA agent; but in reality, it was seldom used, except for maybe in the movies. If it ever got down to the hand-to-hand stuff, there was a greater chance of some other actor taking a gun and blowing her head off while she was grappling.

  The CIA found intrinsic value in Kara’s inherent good looks, and that’s what had brought her to the bar in the Volna Hotel. The city of Nizhny Novgorod was the fourth largest city in Russia. Located about four hundred kilometers east of Moscow, it was the administrative center of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The Volna Hotel was a continental four-star establishment with modern accoutrements and amenities.

  Shoulders back, chest out and sitting perfectly straight, she poised on her bar stool sitting at the bar of the Volna Hotel. Men who saw her were supposed to think, “Wow, what a great looking woman!” Kara’s primary role in the CIA was to draw attention to herself. Her secondary role was to use that attention to extract data and get men to reveal to her their clandestine secrets.

  It was summer in Russia. The temperature outside at cocktail hour was in the 70s. If it had been winter, Kara would have had to rethink her outfit. But it was warm with the pink one-piece skin-tight dress hugging her generous curves in the way that all men who looked at her would love to hug them. She wasn’t alone at the bar and her curves were certainly being admired by her new date. The man had recently excused himself to take a phone call out of earshot. That was disappointing.

  Her CIA intelligence team had been searching for her new admirer for quite some time. He was a man known as the Russian Liquidator. Victor Kornev was a hard man to find. He was always on the move, constantly changing identities and always brokering arms deals. After more than a year of looking, the CIA’s analysts had finally found him. Kara was immediately activated and sent in as a deep cover agent to find out what intel she could dig up.

  Beauty wasn’t all it took to burrow into the hearts and minds of bad men who were suspicious by nature. It also took a great deal of acting. Dumb and beautiful were disarming traits that went together like ice cream and chocolate. Beauty was the attraction and dumb implied no agenda. She was just a pretty girl out having fun, looking for a rich guy that liked to also have fun. Kara had done her best to ditz it up to the point where the Russian would let his guard down. But so far, no luck. Maybe she had overdone it, but she sensed that wasn’t the case. After all, Victor Kornev had not become the world’s largest arms dealer by blabbing critical business snippets to a spoiled rich international floozy he had just met.

  Kara took a compact from her purse, put it in front of her face and took a snapshot of a queer little smile she flashed in the mirror. The picture had been sent to her controllers who understood the code. If they received the queer little smile, “the smirk”, where one side of Kara’s mouth turned up while the other side remained normal,
Kara was OK. If she didn’t check in regularly every hour, or if she sent any photo other than that strange smile, her handlers knew she was in trouble, and they needed to call in the cavalry.

  Kara took a moment to touch up her makeup, which didn’t require much. Adjusting beauty was like trying to determine how shiny the Ferrari had to be. It was subjective. Some men liked makeup, even on a fashion model. Others found it more attractive for the beautiful to just be themselves, au natural. Kara still didn’t have a read on what the Russian liked, so she didn’t overdo it. She just applied some clear gloss on her thick lips. Her red hair was natural with a slight curl. It puffed out around her shoulders and framed her elegant face. Her cheekbones were prominent, and Kara wasn’t all that happy about that. She shared the same cheekbones and beautiful ivory thin skin as her mother. It was a great look when you were young, but it didn’t last.

  Kara had noticed a startling change in her mother’s face when her mom had reached her forties. As the natural elasticity decreased, those prominent cheekbones looked more like a skeleton holding up pasty chicken-looking skin. Not attractive in the least. Thin, loose skin on sharp bones just didn’t work. But she never told her mom that. What was the point? Her mom was a beautiful person on the inside, so who cared about the outside? Kara was in her late twenties, so she had some mileage left before they stuck her behind a desk and life became boring. But she would be long gone from the agency before that ever happened.

  The Volna Hotel’s bar was a tight little place. Situated just off the lobby, it was dark, wooden and had only a handful of tables that had been pressed into all the accessible crevasses of the room. Kara was sitting at the bar, more or less on display, perched on a bar stool, using her best posture. And the good posture thing wasn’t feeling all that good. She wanted to rest her elbows on the bar and slouch. But what refined woman would do such a thing? She wanted to kick off the six-inch pink stilettos, grab a bag of popcorn and a beer, and stay in bed for a few days. She would argue the point with anyone that told her this pretty girl stuff was an easy job.

  Kara glanced around the bar and saw her assignment in the lobby still talking on his phone. Kornev looked back in her direction and waved, which was a positive acknowledgment, indicating he wanted her to wait for him to wrap up his call. But then who wouldn’t? Kara had never met a man that wanted her to leave, which was both a blessing and a curse. Her looks had opened many doors, but now, as she watched this Russian scumbag negotiate a meeting with a North Korean scumbag, she understood just how many doors her looks had closed.

  Kara’s father was an international banker, and she was a rich spoiled socialite that fluttered along beside her father wherever his business journeys took him. Of course, all of that was a lie. That was the life of Tonya Merkalov, her fictitious cover. But her papers, passport, visa and her background cover story were in place and even searchable on Google. Tonya had a Facebook page that showed all the wonderful places she had been and all the wonderful people she had hobnobbed with. Photos of dozens of dresses, scores of fake parties, fancy cars, stunning people, amazing nightclubs and exotic beaches. All had been photographed and photoshopped in a single day. Some of it was shot in front of a green screen and the people and places had been added into the background, while other photos were of real Kara with real people in real places. The CIA had the staff to turn a no one into a someone in a matter of twenty-four hours. They worked with Google to directly seed its powerful search engine with all sorts of links that pointed to Tonya’s past, her fake dad’s history, her fake mom’s social events, but nothing about fake brothers and sisters. Why create more work for the agency than what was absolutely required? No, Tonya was an only and beautiful child. Only a spoiled child wouldn’t think anything more of taking a lover for a night than taking a cold remedy.

  Kara saw her new acquaintance click off his phone and begin walking toward her. Tonya sat up rail straight and rolled her shoulders back and pressed her chest out. “This beautiful stuff is for the birds,” she thought as she held out her hand like a princess, waiting for it to be kissed by her returning Russian target.

  “Я надеюсь, что я не оставлю вас слишком долго?” Kornev said, taking her hand into his, softly touching his lips to her skin.

  “Мне было интересно, если вы когда-либо собирались вернуться,” Tonya responded, flashing what looked like an annoyed smile.

  Victor looked at the empty drink in front of Tonya. Starting from the glass sitting on its moist napkin, Kornev’s eyes moved up her lithe frame. His gaze slowed to a crawl when he reached her full breasts. Hesitating for a moment, his eyes began moving up to her perfect white neck, then to her strong chin. Finally, his eyes came to rest at her striking green eyes.

  Once again, his brain confirmed her undeniable beauty. But creatures this beautiful didn’t appear out of the blue. He couldn’t say that it never happened, after all, he was an attractive man, dressed nicely and exuded wealth and prosperity. All those traits tended to attract single pretty women as well as high-class prostitutes. It was more of a timing thing, and for some reason that bothered him. Typically, someone this beautiful wasn’t inexplicably this available. Just sitting there alone and sipping on a drink with no suitors in the immediate area. There were a few single men checking her out, but she was alone. At least for now. He had emerged from his work and wanted a drink, and there she was.

  Kornev thought about the chain of events. He realized he had been the one who had approached her, not the other way around. He had ordered his drink and then a minute later had made an excuse to exchange conversation with the beautiful woman sitting alone at the bar. He assumed that any of the other men in the bar, or possibly even men walking through the lobby, would have approached her eventually if he hadn’t introduced himself first. Based on that fact, Victor began to think that he was being overly paranoid. But then paranoia had kept him alive. It had been his friend for the last decade. And what works, works. What doesn’t work, makes you dead.

  They had drunk and chitchatted, and she had told him her name was Tonya Merkalov. She was the daughter of an international banker and traveled around with her father because he went to so many wonderful places. Was it a lie? Probably. Everyone lied. It was a worldwide epidemic. No one wanted to be who they actually were. What fun was that? But Victor didn’t care if she was lying. What he really cared about was why she was lying. It was apparent she carried no hidden weapons under her thin and tight dress, so his paranoia relaxed. Paranoia told him there were no threats in the immediate area. So, that left Tonya to simply be a beautiful woman who was alone and available. Did she work for the American CIA or possibly the Israeli Mossad? Could be, but if any complications arose from his meeting Ms. Universe, he would take care of it the way he always took care of such matters. A double tap to the head, and he would be gone like a ghost.

  Tonya smiled at the Russian, knowing this was all a game. All acting. And there was no award based on her performance. No Oscar or Emmy. If she was perfect, executed her role marvelously, then the payoff would be information that the CIA could use to save millions of people’s lives and she would enjoy more tomorrows. If she was having a bad day, and her acting wasn’t on point, then her award would not be a Golden Globe, but more likely in the shape of a lead bullet. It would be presented to her while she was asleep via a handgun with a silencer with a double tap to the head. A high-class whore wrapped up in bloody silk sheets and found by the morning hotel staff. The Nizhny Novgorod police would chalk it up to another woman who played too close to the fire and got burned. Things were dangerous in the reformed USSR. Her fictitious father and mother would probably not make a big stink about it; therefore, the police would not work themselves to death figuring out the who and the why.

  But Kara had no intention of ending up a silk mummy. This wasn’t her first rodeo. Victor Kornev was a dangerous man, but he was just a man. And men were her specialty. They always
had been. For as long as she could recall, boys were just big, hairy goofballs that melted in her hands. Life was simple when you were beautiful because men were simple. Since men ran most of the world, the logic was easy. If you owned the men, you owned the world.

  Kornev released her hand and said, “Я извиняюсь, но мой бизнес очень требовательны. Я надеюсь, вы понимаете.” Kara quickly translated the Russian in her mind, which translated to, “I’m sorry, but my business is very demanding. I hope you understand.”

  She calculated her response and said in Russian, “I don’t like business. I like to have fun. So, are you all about business, or do you like to have fun too?”

  Tonya’s Russian was satisfactory. There were inflections of German, English and even a little Australian in her pronunciations of the hard-edged language. Kara was a language major in college. She had a knack for it but didn’t know why. Neither her real mother or father spoke any language other than English. However, her father was proud that he spoke a little Pig Latin. Some people were great at math; it just clicked for them, and the same could be said for Kara when it came to languages. By the time she had left college and had joined the CIA, she could speak more than six languages conversationally and understand many others, which made her even more desirable as a spy.

  Kornev switched to French and asked, “Que pensez-vous de venir jusqu'à ma chambre pour un peu de champagne. Peut-être peut regarder un film à la télévision.” It was an invitation to go to his room to watch a movie. Of course, he didn’t intend to turn on the TV.

  “Yeah right,” Kara thought to herself. An invitation to go up to your room to watch a movie and drink some champagne. The French language was a nice change from the stilted Russian. French had a mellifluous and wonderful softness that few other languages possessed. French had lyrical phrasing and a sophisticated elegance, but still, Kornev was saying basically the same thing in any language.