There was another long foreboding silence that fell across the table as if someone had died.
“What do you want to do?” Hail asked the pilot.
“What are my options?” Nolan sounded beaten down, as if the pressure he was under had just crushed him.
Kara Ramey responded. “I think we can either get you assigned to our little black ops project we have here, or we can get you discharged from the Navy. Whether that would be an honorable discharge or not would have to be determined.”
“What about now, like today and tomorrow and next week?” the pilot asked.
Hail responded evenly, “Until we get things sorted out, you can stay on board. We will set you up with a stateroom. I’d like you to teach some of our pilots some of what you know about flying a jet. Mostly attack and tactical instruction.”
“Your pilots? Are those the youngsters that came to pick me up in the ocean?”
“Those are two of them.” Hail said.
“Why kids? I don’t get it.”
“Many of them are like you, like me and like Kara. They lost someone in The Five. Many of my pilots lost their parents in The Five, and I’ve become their legal guardian. Some of my other pilots won online flying contests that my programmers created and hosted. The prize the winners received were high school and college
educations, which they attend aboard my ships. Some of my young adults are from bad neighborhoods and needed to escape so they had a chance to reach their full potential. These kids, as you like to refer to them, can do amazing things with drones. They can fly them sideways, if required. It would be interesting to put them in a simulator next to you, flying an F-35, and see who comes out on top.”
The lieutenant commander thought about it for a moment.
“Well, it certainly sounds better than spending time in the brig at Miramar. OK, you have yourself a speed test dummy. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
The waitress arrived with the food.
“Sure, eat up and we’ll get you situated,” Hail told his new pilot.
Nolan reached over to take a sip of wine.
“Are we still doing the you ask a question then I ask a question? Because I still have a lot of questions.”
Hail shrugged and poked his fork into his food. “I think we can just have a normal conversation. But you don’t want to be asking the CIA anything. They don’t like to talk about their work, as I have found out.”
Hail gave Kara a playful smile and then stuffed a wad of lasagna into his mouth.
“What do you want to ask?” Kara asked with a polite smile.
“I know a little about Hail Industries. Aren’t you a startup nuclear company of some type?”
Hail responded. “We’re more than a startup. We’ve completed the beta tests of our new traveling wave reactors, and now we have many of them up and running in countries without any other options for power.”
Nolan said, “You know, I thought I’d heard something about your reactor being outfitted on some older aircraft carriers.”
“Yes, we have been contacted by the U.S. Armed Forces to talk about putting a reactor on one of their old Nimitz aircraft carriers.”
“Has it been tested on other ships?” Nolan asked.
“It’s running everything on this ship right now,” Hail told him. “And we have twice the potential energy output as even the latest ship or subs in the American fleet.”
“Wow,” Nolan responded. “I had no idea. So, in laymen terms, how does your reactor work? What’s so special about it?”
“Oh, no! Don’t ask him that,” Kara complained.
Hail had just stuffed another forkful of food in his mouth, so Renner fielded the question.
“The traveling wave reactor starts with an initial reaction of a small amount of refined uranium. Then, inside the fuel bundle, it begins to burn its way through depleted uranium, which is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment stage. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the United States alone created enough depleted uranium to power the world for more than a thousand years. And the spent fuel from the Hail reactor is very low-level stuff. It can be disposed of without any residual problems.”
“What makes the reactor so special? Is it safe?”
Kara jumped in, “Don’t ask him that. It’s like starting someone in on talking about their beloved pet. He will never shut up once he gets started talking about his reactors.”
Hail was done chewing.
Ignoring Kara, he responded, “It is physically impossible for our reactor to melt down.”
“Here we go,” Kara said, exasperated, putting her hands over her ears.
Hail continued. “It runs at atmospheric pressure, so there is no chance of the reactor blowing its top off. It also uses liquid sodium as a coolant, so there is no need for massive amounts of water to cool the reactor. It could be in the middle of a desert.”
“Isn’t salt corrosive?” asked Nolan. “I know it screws up just about everything on a ship.”
“Good question, and yes, it is,” Renner said. “But all the pipes around the reactor are lined with a special blend of ceramic we invented which is impervious to salt.”
“Please continue,” Nolan said, getting a kick out of watching Kara squirm.
“No!” Kara pleaded.
“And the wave reactor burns very slowly,” Hail said, smirking at Kara, who made a face as if she were going to be sick.
“Just like a wave washing over the sand, the nuclear reaction slowly burns through the depleted uranium. There are no control rods to drop in or out of water tanks. Once lit, our fuel cells can burn for ten years and power an entire city. It’s pennies for power. It will change the world.”
“Wow,” Nolan replied. “That is cool.”
“That’s boring,” Kara corrected. “I beg of you, please no more talk about nuclear reactors. I’ve only been on this ship for a month, and I’ve heard as much
as I ever want to know about power and uranium and plutonium. And let’s not forget the favorite topic of discussion - depleted uranium.”
“I know in the military they use depleted uranium on tanks as armor plating and on the end of armor-piercing projectiles,” Nolan said.
Renner added, “It’s also used in radiation therapy and in industrial radiography equipment.”
“Stop, stop—I can’t take it,” Kara protested.
Kara snatched a fork off the table and brought it up under her throat. “I’ll do it, I promise. If just one of you says another single nuclear word the rest of the dinner, I’ll drive this fork all the way into my jugular vein. I’ll end it all.”
The three men looked blankly at Kara. All four tines of the silver fork were making tiny pink indentions in her beautiful white neck.
Hail smiled at her and said, “Atom.”
Q STREET APARTMENT COMPLEX—WASHINGTON, D.C.
T wo large boxes were sitting in Trevor Rodgers’ living room. It had been a pain picking them up at his local UPS store and transporting them over to his apartment. Being the director of the FBI came with a slew of security entanglements.
After Rodgers had stood in line to sign for the UPS boxes, his security detail insisted on searching the boxes before they would allow them in the car. It had taken him a good three minutes of quarreling to convince them that the boxes had been sent from a close friend who would not send him a bomb or a big dose of anthrax.
Begrudgingly, his detail finally allowed him to place the boxes in his car. The insistence on searching the boxes was repeated after they had arrived at the director’s apartment. Past FBI directors had lived in a private residence, but Rodgers hated the drive and wanted to live closer to work That was a special concern because the entire apartment building is owned by the FBI, thus other FBI employees had apartments within the same building. If something in Rodgers’ special boxes went BOOM, he would be responsible for terminating not just his own life, but ending the lives of other FBI employees. Again, he went on the defensive, assuring th
em Marshall Hail would not send him a bomb. Unlike his normal cooperativeness with his detail, he requested they “chill out”. Then he requested they carry the boxes to his top-floor apartment. His security detail was not happy with the director’s shirking the safety precautions and lack of respect.
Now, as Rodgers sat on his couch staring at the boxes, he was a little unnerved at the thought of opening them. After all, his friend had recently demonstrated the capability of killing one of the top North Korean leaders using a drone smaller than what could fit in these two boxes. Hell, these boxes could hold hundreds of drones that size. But Trevor and Marshall had been lifelong friends, living next door to one another most of their young lives.
As the two boys were growing up, their fathers had been stationed in the same countries: Guam, Berlin, Japan, in so many places with languages neither boy had understood. But Marshall Hail and Trevor Rodgers had always been thankful that they had each other during that time. Their friendship was a lifeline that led them through a world of boys and girls that looked, acted, and spoke differently than they did. It made them feel as if they were abnormal. Each time their fathers received orders to be stationed in yet another country, Trevor’s first question had always been, “Is Marshall moving there, too?” Thankfully, each time the answer had been yes. It hadn’t occurred to Trevor that maybe their fathers had somehow coordinated their moves understanding that separating their sons and having them fend for themselves in a strange country could almost be construed as punitive. Marshall was the only constant Trevor remembered from his childhood.
Earlier that day, Marshall had e-mailed Trevor to ask him if he could pick up two boxes at the UPS store near him. But he had never expected the packages to be so large. One of the boxes was tall enough to hold an umbrella stand. The other was relatively flat and square—like a pizza-sized box about four pizzas thick. The e-mail Marshall had written instructed him to open the flat square box first, and then to sit back and wait. Wait for what? Hail hadn’t told him that part which was typical for his friend, Marshall. Creating drama was Marshall’s specialty.
Rodgers used a kitchen knife to cut the thick stranded packaging tape that sealed the middle flaps of the box. He then opened the loose flaps and bent them back so they were out of the way. He could already guess with a high degree of certainty what was in the box, so he sat back on the couch and waited for the box on his coffee table to do something.
It took maybe three full minutes before he heard the whirl of small propeller blades emanating from inside the box. Then he watched as a pizza-sized black and white drone lifted slowly out of the box. It was only when the small aircraft spoke to him that Rodgers became surprised.
“Move the box out of the way,” the drone said.
Trevor recognized Marshall Hail’s voice.
Rodgers extended his leg to kick the box off the table.
The small drone then landed softly on its belly in the middle of the table. It wobbled on the table as its propellers decelerated.
“Can you please turn over the drone and screw in the LCD pole?” the disembodied voice asked him.
Rodgers realized that the pole Hail was referring to was probably still in the other box. He got up to retrieve the box from the floor and looked inside. Sure enough, taped to the bottom of the box was a metal pole about 1.5 feet long by 0.5 inches wide. The FBI director ripped the pole from the box removing excess tape still stuck to it. The drone was lighter than Rodgers expected. He turned it over on the coffee table and found a hole in the middle of it. He checked the pole for the threaded end and screwed it in tightly.
Almost immediately, Rodgers heard the hum of a small electric stepper motor. In a very precise manner, the end of the pole separated into three small tripod legs. The motor sound died away, and the drone sat on its back, dead and completely silent.
“Cool,” the voice said. “Now, please turn the drone over and place it on its legs.”
Rodgers leaned forward and did as instructed, and then he returned to the couch.
There was another hum of an electric motor and the pole began to separate. One side of the pole pivoted on an axis nearer to the top until it created a metal cross. Then a flexible LED screen began to lower, unraveling slowly like a curtain being dropped from a tiny stage. When the screen had almost reached the drone’s tripod legs, it came to a halt and lit up.
Marshall Hail’s face appeared on the screen. Rodgers had seen his friend weeks before in Washington. Even so, Trevor was still shocked to see how much his friend had aged in the past two years.
“Oh, that feels better,” Hail said. “It was getting a little tight in there,” he joked.
“A little claustrophobic?” Rodgers replied with a laugh.
“You try being stuck in a box for a week being shipped from Indonesia.”
Rodgers smiled at the live stream of his friend on the screen.
“Question,” Rodgers asked, holding up his hand.
“Yes, the young man in the front row,” Hail said, pointing at Rodgers.
“How did you know I opened the box? I mean, you couldn’t have been waiting in front of your computer the entire time this was being shipped to me.”
“Good question,” Hail responded, nodding his head. “There is a sensor on the drone that detects light. As soon as the box was opened, the sensor fired off a salvo piece of code that sent a text to my phone indicating it had been opened. Once I got the text, I went down to our mission center and connected to the drone.”
“Very interesting,” Rodgers commented.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Then Rodgers asked, “So how have you been, Marshall?”
“Pretty good. That last mission gave me a reason to keep getting up in the morning. I think that I can finally—” Hail’s words trailed off.
Rodgers thought his friend looked a little sad, as if his mind had been hijacked by memories.
Then Hail continued, “I can finally make a difference.”
“A difference to who?” Trevor asked his friend.
Hail looked confused for a moment. He looked down at something offscreen; or maybe nothing at all.
Then he said, “A difference in my life. I couldn’t go on the way I was going on, which was business as usual. Life without my family was not a life worth living. I had to make a change.”
“And you think killing everyone on the FBI’s Top Ten List is a change for the better?” Rodgers asked, cutting Hail to the quick.
“It’s your list, Trevor. I didn’t make it. And it exists for a reason. So why can’t I be that reason?”
Rodgers sensed that he was getting nowhere with his pig-headed friend. Over the years, he had shared many of the same types of conversations with Marshall that went one of two ways. It either went Marshall’s way, or it went in circles until Marshall got his way. He was just one of those people who refused to lose. If Hail had been a serial killer, then there would be a bunch of people who were going to be in a world of hurt. But he wasn’t. He had just made it his life’s mission to kill everyone on the FBI’s Top Ten Terrorists list. Then it occurred to Rodgers that there was very little difference between a serial killer and Hail’s new life’s mission. The main difference was he simply killed people who deserved killing.
Hail asked, “I’ll give you $50 if you can guess what’s in the other box.”
Rodgers replied, “I hope it’s a present for me for picking up these boxes. You have no idea how badly the FBI agents wanted to open and check them out.”
Hail smiled, “OK, then. It’s a present for you. Please open it and check it out.”
Rodgers mumbled to himself, “Yeah, right. You were always known for your enthusiasm in gifting.” He let the room absorb the sarcastic remark.
The FBI director picked up the knife from the table, stood, and slid the knife across the top of the narrow box.
Hail couldn’t see what was going on, and asked, “Are you opening the end that says OPEN THIS END?”
Ro
dgers double-checked and told Hail, “Yes, but I did have a 50/50 chance.”
Hail instructed, “You need to open the flaps all the way, and then pick up the entire box and turn it over on the end you just opened.”
Rodgers followed his friend’s instructions, carefully positioning the tall box on its opened end. He held onto it for a second to make sure the tall box didn’t fall over.
“OK, now gently remove the box,” Hail told him. “Slide it up slowly.”
Rodgers held the sides of the box and began to lift.
The first thing Rodgers saw was a pair of clawed feet which looked like they had been made by a craftsman with experience making suits of armor. Each claw was
one piece of metal overlaid by another, narrowing more at the tips. The dull metal tips of each claw looked very sharp.
As Rodgers lifted the box higher, just above the claws, overlapping rows of fine feathers came into view. The feathers nearest the bare claws were wispy. The fluff was affixed to thin steel legs also constructed from small metal plates that overlapped one another.
More of the box was removed, and more feathers appeared. The shape of Hail’s present got wider as the box continued to rise. The color of the feathers began to change. First, there were light gray feathers on the legs. And now, a dark gray tail with coarse feathers could be seen. Before Rodgers removed the entire box, it was apparent that Marshall Hail had sent him a stuffed bird of some type. Carefully removing the remainder of the box, Rodgers saw dark gray wings, and once he was finished opening the box, the entire three-foot bird was standing on his living room coffee table. The bird was as wide as a two-liter soda bottle.
Rodgers set the box on the floor and allowed it to fall on its side.
It was a falcon—at least that’s what Rodgers thought it looked like. The bird had intense eye openings that didn’t really look like eyes. They had the appearance of lenses from two different cameras. The downward hooked beak was wide open. It made the predatory bird appear angry, like a stuffed and mounted mountain lion that, prior to being shot, had been in the process of leaping toward a rabbit. The entire bird was dark gray, apart from its willowy dirty mustard colored breast feathers.
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