On screen one was the close up of the guard still leaning on the building, which was being sent from the monopod camera on Blondie.
And on large screen number two were fresh images from inside the warehouse. BEP was alive and streaming.
“Let’s get the show on the road,” Hail said.
He told Kara, “Excuse me.”
Kara stepped away from his chair. From under the armrests of his chair, Hail slid two flight hand controllers into place. He locked them into an upright position on top of each armrest. He then reached down on the side of his chair and flipped a latch that released a platform that contained foot pedals that protracted under his feet. In less than ten seconds, Hail had converted his big chair into a flight control station.
Kara looked impressed, but she said nothing.
Hail adjusted each of his small monitors as a motorcyclist would adjust rear-view mirrors for a better view. He then skimmed his finger across the small screen to his right, again and again until he found the page he wanted.
“I’m going to take Guns N’ Roses out for a little look around,” he told the crew.
Renner started to say something, stopped and decided to let it ride. He knew that Hail was just as qualified to fly the drones as any of his other pilots, but this “look around”, as Hail referred to it, had not been planned. One of the other pilots was supposed to fly that combat drone.
Hail set his feet on the pedals and wrapped his large hands around each of the flight controllers. He took in a breath and squeezed the throttle trigger on the right controller.
A large flat pizza sized section of Blondie’s backend lifted out of its sealed compartment. The composite plastic lid rose into the air. The round disc had four large propeller cutouts. Four powerful electric motors spun four propellers at 1200 revolutions per minute, two spinning clockwise and the other two spinning counterclockwise to offset the torque or the turning force. Just under the lid, two cameras were mounted one inch apart from one another. One was a day/night vision camera, and the other was a targeting camera specifically calibrated for the gun located directly beneath the cameras.
Renner activated the camera on the drone called Guns N’ Roses. An obscured view of tall grass appeared on the night vision camera on big screen number three.
As the drone continued to rise out of Blondie, a nasty black 9-millimeter M4 mini-gun was exposed to the North Korean air. Due to its thick sound suppressor that was mounted to its stubby barrel, the gun looked more substantial than it really was. Still, Hail and the designers of the drone knew that the weapon was all business. In full auto mode, the little gun could fire thirty-two rounds in less than three seconds. With a hundred and twenty-eight rounds on board in a condensed drum, the compact drone would be something that none of the North Koreans would want to mess with. Under the machine gun, three thick legs sprang out at 120-degree angles, creating a tripod base for the drone to rest upon when it returned to earth.
Hail gently nudged the drone up into the air and hovered about ten feet above Blondie to have a look around. Nothing had changed. There was no additional activity near or around the warehouse. Hail squeezed the throttle and bent the right controller forward. The drone responded by gaining altitude and moving forward toward the twelve-foot barbed wire fence. Two hundred feet before reaching the wire, Hail veered Guns N’ Roses sharply to the left and began a long arc around the property. He tilted the angle of the drone backward slightly to bring it to a hover. He was now positioned about a hundred feet from the fence in back of the warehouse. Hail scanned the backside of the property for guards or dogs or any other living thing that could send an alert. Seeing nothing, he slowly nudged the drone forward and over the top of the razor wire. The drone approached the wall of the back of the building, still hovering just under the roof line. From there, Hail rotated the drone left toward the side of the building they had not investigated. Hail allowed the drone to peek around the corner. Nothing. No guards. No dogs. No threats of any type. He then spun the drone 180 degrees and flew it to the other corner of the back of the warehouse. He tilted the control stick to the right and the drone looked down that side of the building. One sleeping guard. No dogs. No real threats of any type.
“We’re clear,” Hail told his crew. Then he added, “I need to set this thing down to save power.”
Hail tilted the aircraft backward, and the drone began drifting back away from the light and back toward the inner perimeter of the fence. He brought it down slowly and directed it toward the corner of the fence. From that vantage point, the drone had a good view of both the backside of the building as well as the entire side of the structure the guard was leaning on. Gently and silently, Hail brought the drone down onto its tripod base and then released the throttle. The video image stabilized and Hail relaxed.
“Good job,” Renner told him.
“Now it’s your turn,” Hail told Renner.
“I’m on it,” Renner said.
Mimicking the motions Hail had performed only moments ago, Renner lifted an identical drone out of the back of Blondie. Its name was Sex Pistols, and its job was to land on the opposite corner of the warehouse property. With both combat drones situated in those positions, three sides of the warehouse could be covered with only two drones.
With Gun N’ Roses having already performed the recon and silently standing guard, Renner didn’t have to worry about being spotted. Therefore, he took a more direct approach by gaining altitude and flying directly over the fence and then over the top of the warehouse at two hundred feet in the dark sky. If five fully awake guards were doing nothing but watching the sky, they might have been able to detect something flutter in front of the bright moon, but that wasn’t currently the case down below. Renner flew over the top of the warehouse and quickly brought the drone down in the other back corner, inside the barbed wire fence.
“Good job,” Hail said, returning the compliment.
“Nothing to it,” Renner said.
“So much for the known. Now for the unknown,” Hail announced.
“Knox, let’s get Men at Work busy,” Hail ordered.
“Roger that,” Knox said.
The young pilot wasted no time lifting the third full-sized mini-drone out of the back of Blondie. Rugmon had taken the same combat drone that Renner and Hail had flown and had replaced the ammunition drum with a small acetylene and oxygen tank. The M4 mini-gun had been replaced by remote operated control valves and a 3-axis arm that held a cutting torch. The weight was approximately the same as the combat drones, but as Knox flew Men at Work toward the fence, he realized that the balance was off. The drone wanted to go to the right. Instead of correcting the problem by adjusting the speed of each propeller, Knox opted to let the drone lean in that direction and feathered the propellers so the drone was flying sideways. By flying sideways, he was using less power than if he was overcoming the balance issue with engine power alone. This peculiar flight position meant that Men at Work’s camera was leaning at an angle as well. Hail tilted his head slightly to compensate as he looked at the video on big screen number three. The fence appeared in the periphery of the lens and then quickly passed underneath the drone. The roofline of the warehouse appeared next, and Knox slowed the drone into a hover. Only then, when he needed to see precisely where he was going to land, did he adjust each of the propeller speeds for balanced flight. Now positioned a foot from the back wall of the warehouse, Knox scanned the ground below for the best place to touch down.
“Are we still all clear?” Knox asked both Hail and Renner.
“We are clear,” Hail answered for the both of them.
Knox hovered the drone next to the back wall of the building and eased off the trigger, slowing the motors and causing the drone to slowly sink toward the ground.
“Keep it tight against the wall,” Hail instructed.
“No problem,” Knox said making small adjustments as he lined up his landing spot. The crew was watching Men at Work’s primary camera, which w
as now pointing directly into the steel wall of the warehouse. Knox had switched to the drone’s vertical landing camera that was mounted between the aircraft’s tripod legs. The camera pointed straight down and reminded Knox of those old clips he had seen when they had landed on the moon. And sure enough, a foot off the ground he was able to say a few of those words he had seen in the clip.
“Picking up dust,” Knox said as dirt flew in all directions. “Two more feet down. Position looks good.”
The view from the main camera had not changed. The side of the warehouse was no more than nine inches from the lens. If it wasn’t for the bright moon reflecting off the tin-like surface, it would be a black wall and invisible.
“Tranquility base here,” Knox said. “Houston, the Eagle has landed.”
“Nice,” Hail told his pilot.
A smattering of applause and “Atta-boys” rose up from the crew waiting for their turn.
Hail checked the time again. Now it was 3:31a.m.
“Man, you have to get this thing cutting fast,” he told Knox, who had already begun unhinging the long arm that held the cutting torch.
In order to pack the complicated arm into the drone, Rugmon had designed it to fold over on itself; much like a wrist, elbow and shoulder could move on a human. Unlike a human, all three of these joints could fold up to a very flat five-degree angle. Knox had to unfold each joint, each section of the arm, one section at a time. The crew watched the arm come into view on Men at Work’s main camera. At first, only the brass looking torch could be seen. Then as the next section unfolded, the arm extended closer to the wall. And when Knox had fully extended the arm, he had to point the camera up at a higher angle in order to see the entire cutting arm in a single shot.
Knox wiggled the arm around and then pointed the torch down at the camera and waved it at the crew.
“Hello, down there,” he clowned.
“We see it can wave,” Hail commented. “The question is, can it cut?”
“Let’s find out,” Knox said.
“I’ll operate the gas, and you do the cutting,” Renner told Knox.
“Wait a second,” Hail said. “Let’s check the inside of the warehouse before we get started.”
Hail took over BEP’s camera and zoomed in toward the office window. Behind the glass, he saw Trang sleeping and that was all. He assumed that there was probably a guard stationed outside the front door of the warehouse and at least one more at the front gate. But right now, no active guards were in sight. Hail didn’t find this level of security unreasonable, considering that the entire country was under guard. It wasn’t as if they had a huge immigration problem with unknown people clamoring to get into North Korea. A few guards were more than enough to guard a place that the North Koreans would assume was safe to begin with.
“All is quiet,” Hail reported. “Start cutting,” he told Knox.
Knox twisted the torch back toward the sheet metal and told Renner, “Light it up.”
Renner turned on the gas nozzles and pressed an icon that was labeled IGNITOR.
Mounted under the tip of the torch, a small jagged wheel began to spin under a spring-loaded flint. A flash of sparks caused the video image to grey out momentarily as a long orange flame grabbed on the end of the torch. The video image now turned white as the camera tried to compensate its exposure going from moon dark to sun bright. Renner adjusted the gas mixture until he produced a long blue flame. Renner then messed around with different camera filters, until he found one that allowed enough light into the lens to see the metal, yet it shielded enough light to prevent the video from blooming out.
“OK, you are good to cut,” Renner told Knox.
Using his control sticks to remotely operate the arm, Knox slowly pressed both controllers forward and the torch moved toward the sheet metal. This wasn’t a new experience for Alex Knox. Over the last few days, he had used a test control station in the lab, as well as the same exact drone, to cut a two by two-foot hole in a similar piece of galvanized steel. The first hole he cut in the lab looked like a dinosaur had ripped into the metal with its teeth, and he had run out of gas before completing the ragged mess. But as Knox got more time at the controls, his next attempt looked like a lawnmower had gnawed on the steel. On his next attempt, the hole looked like a large rock had been shot through the metal, and the subsequent trial looked like a blob of searing plasma had melted the metal. Finally, on his fifth attempt, Knox had cut out a relatively square and precise opening. At least it was good enough to fly a drone through.
Knox manipulated the robotic arm and pressed the torch up against the metal. The flame flattened and hissed in protest. The torch began to cut. From his practice sessions, Knox knew that he had to move quickly. Rugmon had built the tanks to hold a specific amount of gas; just enough to complete the hole with about one minute of burn time left in reserve. This left just one minute of leeway in case Knox screwed up the cut. If indeed the cut was incomplete the only choice Hail’s team would have would be to shoot out the remaining bits of metal. And if it came down to that, they might as well just go through the front door with guns blazing.
Knox began the cut high and to the left, reaching up and out as far as the drone’s arm would extend. He then began cutting in a downward direction, slowly, watching the metal separate under the flame.
Through the lens of Guns N’ Roses, Hail monitored the sleeping guard. So far, so good. The North Korean had made no movements.
Renner watched the other side of the warehouse from the camera on Sex Pistols.
Both men also watched the screen above them that showed video from inside the warehouse. No activity. Trang was still sleeping soundly in his chair. If there were any guards in the warehouse or outside of the office door, they could not be seen from BEP’s current camera angle.
Knox finished his first vertical cut, a gash in the steel about twenty-four inches long. Molten red metal dripped from the cuts and onto the ground in front of the drone.
“Eighty percent gas left,” Renner told Knox.
“Rugmon didn’t leave much to play around with,” Knox complained, concentrating on the new direction of the cut.
“Sorry, I know you wanted to sign your work when you were done, but we don’t have either the gas or the time,” Hail quipped.
“The guard is waking up,” Kara warned Hail.
Hail checked the video feed. Sure enough, the guard had pulled himself off the wall and was standing up groggily, rubbing his eyes.
“Should I stop cutting?” Knox asked.
“No, not yet,” Hail told him. “We’ll keep an eye on the guard to watch what he does.”
The horizontal cut that Knox was making was almost done, and he prepared to start moving the torch upwards.
The guard looked to his right for a moment and then to his left toward the back of the warehouse. Hail watched him closely from Guns N’ Roses’ camera. For a moment it looked as if the guard had made up his mind to walk toward the front of the building, but then, almost as an afterthought, the soldier made a slow turn toward the back of the property and began a slow plod in that direction.
“No,” Hail said. “Don’t do it.”
“Should I stop cutting?” Knox asked.
“Wait one,” Hail told him.
An icon on Hail’s screen read GUN CAM and Hail pressed it, and the video was swapped out with a high-res image that had a gunsight painted in the middle. Hail reacquired the guard who was still walking toward the rear of the warehouse. Hail zoomed in and placed the M4’s virtual crosshairs on the man’s forehead.
“Don’t do it, dude,” Hail said, and he meant it.
It would be bad. Hail really didn’t want to kill this guy if he didn’t have to. The man was nothing more than a cog in the evil North Korean machine. The soldier was doing what he did so he could eat. Shooting the man this early in the mission was a problem as well. The drone’s gun was relatively quiet, but it wasn’t the whisper that movie producers want you to think. A
silenced gun made noise, maybe enough noise to be heard by the guard in the front of the warehouse, or the guard positioned at the gate. And even if he had to put this guy down and no one heard the shot, the other guards might come looking for him. And when they found him, all hell would break loose.
A hundred feet from the rear of the building, Hail told Knox, “Stop cutting and stay silent.”
Renner pressed an icon and extinguished the torch. The metal glowed red in the dark night. It was bright enough Hail thought it might be detectable from the guard glancing around the back of the building, but it was what it was.
The soldier stopped walking for a moment and shook a cigarette out of a pack he pulled from his pants pocket. He lit the cigarette and sucked in some smoke. The tip glowed red and illuminated the man’s face. He was young. Maybe in his early twenties. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in days.
Hail kept the gunsight fixed on the red tip of the soldier’s cigarette. A triple tap from the mini-gun and it didn’t matter if it impacted the guard’s forehead or his throat. It would still be instant lights-out for the guy. But the bright red dot in the darkness was a great target.
“Go back,” Hail willed the guard. “Go back and visit your buddies up front.”
But the guard didn’t go back. Instead, he proceeded to walk the remaining distance down the side of the warehouse toward the back corner.
Hail felt his finger tighten on the trigger of his control stick. With his drone positioned in the corner of the property, and the guard just arriving at the corner of the warehouse, this was as close as the soldier would be to Hail and the best time to take a shot. Hail pressed an icon and switched the gun from auto into manual mode. “Maybe just one quick round would do the trick and minimize the noise,” Hail thought.
The guard stopped at the corner. Instead of walking around to the backside of the warehouse, the soldier simply poked his head around the corner of the warehouse and took a quick look. By now, the glowing cutting marks had cooled and were no longer a red flag waving in the darkness. The guard must have been satisfied that no trespassers were on the property because he turned back toward the front of the warehouse and began the long walk.
Operation Hail Storm Page 38