Operation Hail Storm

by Brett Arquette

  And lastly, the little program that had installed itself on Kornev’s phone would silently record every phone call he made. Each time Kornev plugged it in for a charge or the phone discovered an accessible Wi-Fi signal, all recorded calls would be transferred to the CIA.

  Kara looked at Kornev for a moment, wondering how best to break his heart. She wanted to repay Kornev with just a fraction of the hurt that he dished out to the rest of the world. His occupation was to provide very dangerous weapons to those who wanted to use them to create terror around the world. And Kornev couldn’t care less. It was all about money. It was all about compensation for devastation. What happened after that was none of his concern. Even if it meant providing surface-to-air missiles that could take down a commercial aircraft that had women and children aboard.

  Kara looked admiringly at the man with disgust in her heart. She hoped her smile was convincing. She surmised that Kornev didn’t see the person behind the smile that was thinking how exposed his neck was at that moment.

  She thought, “Where is a steak knife when you need one?’

  How long ago had Kornev asked her if she was hungry? And how long had she been simply staring at him with that dumb smile on her face, fantasizing about killing him?

  “Not right now,” she said, her smile fading into a dainty frown. “I’ve got a little bellyache,” she added. “Maybe too many fruity drinks.” She held her stomach to emphasize her words.

  Kornev looked at her, and she could see something other than hunger far back in his eyes. The look didn’t bother her much. She had seen it hundreds of times. It was the look of longing. The look of a man who had found a lovely gold watch, then just hours later, he had lost it. But Kornev’s look wasn’t of gold, diamonds or even money. It was the look of lust. He wanted to have sex. No doubt about it.

  But the bellyache excuse worked well in situations such as this. He would have to be an ogre to force sex on someone who was sick to their stomach. Kara sensed that Kornev was a lot of nasty things, but a sex ogre was not among them. And if he was, then a swat from the heel of her shoe would shut him down pretty fast.

  “Maybe you will feel better in the morning,” he said.

  Kara replied, “I’m sure I will.” But in actuality, she was thinking, I will be out of Nizhny before you even wake up.

  Kara stood from the couch and held out her hand, allowing Kornev to take it in his and kiss the back of her knuckles. It was a European thing and took some getting used to.

  He tried to move in closer and kiss her on the mouth, but Kara was prepared with a little burp that stopped him in his tracks.

  She put her hand up to her mouth and said, “Excuse me,” with a diminutive look and an embarrassed smile.

  Kara walked over to the door and waited.

  Like a perfect gentleman, Kornev opened the door for her, and she walked into the hallway.

  He said something to her in Korean.

  Kara guessed it was a salutation of some sort, and she smiled politely.

  She took a chance and responded with the phrase, “Go screw yourself,” in her best Mulluk-Mulluk. She turned and walked away. Since she didn’t hear anything other than Kornev’s door closing, she assumed that he didn’t know Mulluk-Mulluk.

  Celebes Sea—Aboard the Hail Nucleus

  T

  here was no difference in time zones between that of North Korea and the current position of the Hail Nucleus. North Korea was in the forty-degree latitude range, and it was south at seven degrees, but their longitudes were roughly the same. The distance between the two points was 4,115 kilometers, but the satellites that sent the signals from the Hail Nucleus to the drones surrounding the Korean’s house didn’t care about all that. It could have been floating in North Korea’s Taedong River or even Kim Yong Chang’s swimming pool, and it would have made no difference. A signal was a signal, no matter how far away. As long as it was five by five.

  The Hail Nucleus’ mission crew had reassembled in the mission center. Gage Renner and Pierce Mercier were acting as the real-time data analysts for the mission. They were also convenient as a second set of hands, if needed. Both analysts could assist in switching displays, looking up flight data, verifying coordinates and other tasks that didn’t directly involve flying a drone. Both men were seated at the analysts’ stations on the second tier behind the pilots.

  Shana Tran was manning the communications console. Her job was straightforward. Make sure the drones all received a clear signal from the Chinese satellite. Unlike the other pilots that seemed wound up, Tran looked cool and almost a little bored. She would have liked to have redone her fingernails before the mission, but she had overslept.

  While Tran was sleeping, Tanner Grant had flown Foghat back to the Hail Laser, where its crew had already begun the refueling process. For now, Grant was an observer, but he would soon be back online and responsible for returning Foghat to theater to retrieve the drones.

  Alex Knox was responsible for the actions of the micro-drone known as Aerosmith. The drone was currently sitting high up in the red pine tree that looked down on the Korean compound below. Alex understood that he had the toughest part of the mission, but he had practiced it, not only in the simulator, but also in a special room that was set up for just that purpose. A section of a pine tree had been hauled aboard the Hail Nucleus and erected in the special room. Knox had then practiced flying in and out between its branches. He was comfortable with his part of the operation and confident he could pull it off.

  Junior pilot Oliver Fox was manning the controls of the drone called Styx. It was the main eyes-on drone responsible for streaming the main camera angles to the mission center. The vantage point Styx had atop the power pole, less than twenty meters from the compound, could not be improved upon. If Styx became inoperable, then Aerosmith could also be used as the spotter drone, but its camera angle could be compromised. Even now, when the wind blew, the video being sent from Aerosmith was periodically being blocked by tree branches and pine boughs as they fluttered in front of its camera lens.

  Junior pilot, Paige Grayson, was operating the drone known as Stones. Like its name, Stones was a stone. It sat on the ground near the manmade brook and did nothing. It saw nothing. Its sole purpose was to provide backup to Aerosmith in case that drone had a technical problem, and it could not complete its mission.

  The other seats in the mission control center were occupied by more junior pilots. Some were in training and others were ready to take on missions. Hail thought it was important all the Hail Nucleus’ mission pilots were in attendance. He wanted them to see and feel and experience what a mission was all about. Even though most of the pilots had firsthand experiences with death, it was important that they really understood the finality of taking someone’s life. He wanted to watch his junior pilots’ reactions as their target fell. Hail had to know if there were any weak links in the chain and if his crew was sincere and dedicated.

  The youngest member of his crew was sixteen, but Hail knew that children as young as seven years old had served in the Revolutionary War. As many as twenty-percent of the Civil War soldiers were younger than eighteen. Of the more than 58,100 Americans who died in Vietnam, 11,465 of those listed as KIA were less than twenty years old. Hail understood young people had been fighting and dying for what is now the United States since the first colonists came over from England. Hail didn’t have a problem with that; if his young staff wanted to fight, at least he knew they would be safe on his ship.

  Hail sat in his big command chair. Everything was in place. Thousands upon thousands of hours of intelligence gathering, development, design, construction and planning had all come down to this. Ten minutes from now, this mission would be over. Hail didn’t know how long all of the future missions would take to complete, but he really didn’t care. After the success of each mission, there would be one less terrorist in the world, and that was just fine with him. A world with no terrorists sounded like a pretty good place to live.

 
; The video feed from Styx was being sent to the large screen above Knox. It was more or less in the center of the room with Tran’s station to the right and Grant’s, Fox’s and Grayson’s stations to the left. That left five stations to Tran’s right that were being occupied by junior pilots and four more stations to Grayson’s left that sat four more junior pilots.

  Hail watched the feed from Styx for a moment. The video being sent from the drone on the pole was a wide-angle shot of the backyard of Kim’s compound. At the bottom of the frame, the pool had been bisected. Only half of the pool could be seen. That left room at the top of the frame that showed the patio and the porch.

  One of Kim’s servants was outdoors setting the breakfast table. Neither of Kim’s girlfriends or Kim had exited the house this morning. Up to this point, the video that Eagles had recorded coincided with Kim’s normal morning schedule. If yesterday’s schedule matched today’s schedule, then Kim would emerge from the back-sliding doors in about five minutes. His girlfriends would drift out of the home whenever they wanted. In the three days that Eagles had shot video, the girls had never emerged from the house before him. That was an important timing element for this mission. He was always the first one out, first to sit down at the table and first to start eating.

  Typically, Hail would ask for a weather briefing from Mercier, but Hail could tell from Styx’s HD video feed that it was a beautiful morning in Kangdong. The sun was shining brightly, and in the background the trees and bushes showed little signs of wind. The sensitive microphone on Styx picked up birds chirping, dishes at Kim’s table being set and somewhere in the distance a dog barking.

  “Is everyone good to go?” Hail asked his crew.

  “Yes, sir,” was heard all around.

  “OK,” Hail said in an uplifting tone, “Here goes nothing.”

  “What’s the status of B-52s?” he asked.

  Knox flipped through a few screens, read some data and said, “The B-52s is ready to strike.”

  Hail nodded his head.

  “Please open the hatch on Aerosmith,” Hail ordered.

  Knox pressed an icon labeled HATCH RELEASE and announced, “Hatch is open.”

  “OK. Launch the B-52s,” Hail told him.

  “Lifting off now,” Knox reported.

  From the top of the micro-drone called Aerosmith, a pico-drone code-named B-52s emerged.

  The pico-hub was twelve millimeters long, or roughly half an inch. It was oblong in shape and seven millimeters wide. Two tiny rotors spun ferociously at its sides and made a sound like a bee. The craft even looked like a bee, hence its name B-52s. The tiny drone was light blue and off white. If it were viewed from the ground, the light blue would blend with the sky, and if it was viewed against the pool bricks, then the white would help to mask its appearance.

  “Communications?” Hail asked.

  Shana Tran checked the signals and responded, “We are five by five.”

  “Bring up the feed from B-52s on large screen number one,” Hail instructed.

  Renner touched a few icons on his monitor and a bouncy video appeared above them.

  “Wow,” Hail exclaimed. “Having a little trouble there, Alex?” Hail asked.

  “Man, this bee drone is a bitch to fly. It’s too small to hold any auto-correcting electronics, and even the slightest wind wants to blow it away.”

  “And—” Hail asked.

  “And there is no problem flying this little thing,” Knox told him. “It just takes a lot more flying skill than the other drones.”

  “Good man,” Hail told him.

  The crew watched the video as a clump of pine boughs drifted to the left of the screen and then disappeared from sight behind the drone.

  “This is the hairy part,” Knox told them. “If I just touch one of these itty-bitty rotors to a single pine needle, then this thing is toast.”

  Ahead were more bunches of pine needles. To the tiny drone, they were massive obstacles that had to be negotiated and avoided.

  The video wasn’t smooth or stable. The little drone seemed to jump and drift as Knox did his best to make his way out of the tree.

  “Almost there,” Knox announced as he jammed his feet deep into his foot pedals.

  Hail could see bright sunlight ahead, and only a few of the green shafts of sharp needles were still in their way.

  Knox bent both of his control sticks to the right, and the video rocked and tilted violently to the right before Knox corrected by angling both sticks back to the left.

  Hail was getting dizzy watching the feed. He wondered if the others were as well.

  “Clear,” Knox said, and the pico-drone entered open sky for the first time in its short life.

  Each of the B-52s’ prototypes were so small and delicate that after two flights, they were completely worn out. The heat created from the intense load on their rotors burned through their bearings like they were made of butter instead of metal. This was the first flight for this particular unit, so the entire crew had high hopes and kept their fingers crossed for luck.

  A round of applause erupted and then quickly died away as B-52s darted out into the open.

  “What’s the status of the target?” Hail asked.

  Oliver Fox put four fingers on his screen and pinched them together, zooming Styx’s camera in closer to the breakfast table.

  “At this exact moment, we are all clear,” Fox reported. “The table is set and no one is sitting at it. Drinks have been poured. No one is in the backyard.”

  “Great,” Hail said. “Proceed with the bombing run,” he told Knox.

  Renner said, “Good, because we are running out of flight time. B-52s has used up 65% of its battery.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” Hail told Knox.

  “Right, Skipper,” Knox replied, pushing both of his flight sticks forward.

  The edge of the green grass disappeared from view. Now all that was in front of them was a pool, the bricks that surrounded the pool and further ahead the outdoor table.

  “Commencing the bomb run,” Knox announced.

  Knox was making less flight corrections as he had been while escaping from the tree, but the video was shakier than it had been with the micro-drone, Aerosmith. Knox understood that the tiny flying drone wasn’t very stable, but then it was only designed to last five minutes.

  Unknown to Hail and his crew, their tiny drone B-52s was being observed.

  From far up in a tree and on the other side of the pool; a pair of eyes watched the bee fly toward the table. A mind plotted an intercept course and an action was taken.

  From the view atop the power pole, the camera on Styx recorded a colorful bird flying into the frame and plucking B-52s right out of the sky.

  “What the hell?!” Knox yelled.

  B-52s’ camera was still in operation. It was transmitting video of the ground below; however, the ground was going by sideways.

  “What’s going on?” Hail yelled.

  Fox had seen the whole thing happen in real-time on Styx’s main monitor.

  He told Hail, “A bird got B-52s.”

  “You have to be kidding me?” Hail groaned.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got it recorded. Check it out.”

  On Hail’s right was the live video still being transmitted from B-52s that was tracking a crazy path over ground, and then a moment later all he could see was sun and sky. On the left large overhead monitor, Fox began playing the video of the bird strike. It happened just as Fox had said. In the time it took fifteen video frames to click past, a bird could be seen snatching the tiny dot out of the sky and then disappearing to the right.

  “What the hell—” Hail said, totally exasperated.

  “Told you it was a bird,” Fox said.

  “It was a Summer Tanager, to be exact,” Pierce Mercier piped in. Then like analysts do, Mercier went into a big long explanation. “There are not many birds that eat bees, but the Summer Tanager happens to be one of them. They also eat wasps, hornets, and dragonfl
ies. The birds are mostly found in Africa, Asia, southern Europe and Australia. Their main habitat is—”

  “That’s enough,” Hail interrupted.

  Video was still being streamed from the captured B-52s. Hail turned his head sideways to reference what he was seeing. It appeared that the bird had the tiny drone in its mouth and was flying back to the tree from which it had come. With his head still sideways, Hail recognized the pool and the courtyard twenty feet below. Then the screen went crazy with motion. B-52s took three jarring hits that scrambled the video, and then a fixed image appeared on the screen. The drone’s camera was now focused on several thick blades of grass.

  “Looks like the Summer Tanagers do not like B-52s. The bird dropped it,” Mercier said.

  “Perfect,” Hail snarled, infuriated.

  There was silence in the room as the crew regrouped.

  Then the timeline kicked in.

  Renner informed everyone, “We have probably less than three minutes to complete the bombing run before Kim walks out that door and sits down.”

  Hail asked, “Is there any way to get B-52s off the deck?”

  Renner answered, “It doesn’t matter. It’s already exhausted more than 80% of its battery. Even if it could fly, it may not even make it to the target.”

  Knox added, “And there is no way to spin up when the drone is lying on its side. Those are external propellers, and one of them is pinned to the ground.”

  “All right, quickly,” Hail told the crew. “Let’s go with Plan B.”