“Should I even ask the name of the target, or is that something I don’t want to know?” the president inquired.
Pepper looked confused and stated, “I don’t see how we could move forward without your approval, concerning this target. There could be some blowback.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the president responded, flipping her bangs out of her face with a toss of her head. “That’s why we want to use Hail instead of our own forces, isn’t it? To avoid blowback?”
Pepper understood the president’s point. It was critical when they discussed removing a major player from the board—especially a terrorist residing in a war-torn country—she had to be aware of the operational details. It was one of those unpleasant, yet necessary parts of running a country. The president was quiet for a moment. She looked pensively at a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the wall. In the
past, Pepper had noticed when she was pondering an issue, she would stare at that painting. He didn’t know if it gave her some sort of inspiration or divine wisdom. Maybe it just provided her a place to look other than out the window or down at the floor.
What would Andrew Jackson do? Pepper thought to himself. He would probably want to turn back the clock to when he was president, to a time when there were no drones or Marshall Hails in the world.
“So, let me summarize our offer to Marshall Hail,” the president said, turning her gaze away from the painting, looking intently at her advisors. “Hail’s mission will be to turn Victor Kornev into a spy for the United States. If he does this to our satisfaction, we provide him with the location of the next terrorist on our list.”
No one spoke, but all the men nodded their heads in agreement.
“OK. Well, please tell me. Who will Hail will be hunting?”
Without hesitation, Pepper responded, “Afua Diambu.”
EAST CHINA SEA—ABOARD THE HAIL NUCLEUS
K ara closed her left eye and focused on the target downrange. She waited until her gun was steady, and then squeezed off a round. The nine-millimeter Glock 48 in her hand jumped, but the kickback from the weapon was negligible. She didn’t see much difference between her old Glock 43 and that of the new model. The CIA had upgraded their Glocks and provided her two of the new Glock 48 guns, including four extra clips.
“Not bad,” Hail yelled.
Both he and Kara were wearing ear protection.
The bullet had put a hole through the right eye of the manlike paper target, fifty meters downrange.
“That’s fifty meters,” Kara yelled back defiantly. “I bet you can’t even hit anywhere on the target at that range.”
She offered her new Glock to Hail and stepped out of the way. Hail set her Glock down on the small gun station in front of him. He then removed a gun from the back waistband of his pants. It was a big heavy model 1911 .45 caliber.
“Where did you get that?” Kara asked, noticing the intricate engraving that ran the entire length of the barrel.
“It was my father’s official sidearm during his time in the military. It was the only thing that he left me in his will. Well, he left me several guns.”
The shooting range was built deep down inside the Hail Nucleus, and it ran parallel to the engine room, the water desalination plant, and the ship’s massive water cooling systems. All those machines made noise, thus it only made sense to build the shooting range where a little extra noise would go unnoticed.
Hail pressed the switch on the pulley system that held the paper target, and ran it ten meters farther downrange. He then racked a round into his 1911 and pointed the gun toward the target. Using his other hand, Hail cradled the 1911 in his palm for a little extra stability before squeezing off a round.
Kara put a small spotter scope up to her eye and looked at the target closely, looking for a new hole. Nothing.
“See, I told you that you couldn’t hit the target.”
Without responding, Hail flipped the switch again, and the target began to move towards them, fluttering as it created its own breeze. When it arrived, Hail turned the switch back into the center position and looked closely at the target.
He reached up and pointed at the hole Kara had made with her nine-millimeter. Just to the right edge of her hole was a little larger hole.
Hail pointed it out to Kara and said, “Yeah, I missed by just a little bit.”
Kara removed her hearing protection, and Hail did the same.
“Damn,” Kara said. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
Hail shrugged, “From all the research you did on me and my family, you know that my father was not only a four-star General, but also the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Well, my father always wanted me to follow in his steps so he encouraged me to join him in target practice. We didn’t do many activities that didn’t involve shooting something—targets, birds, deer. Hell, the only thing I haven’t personally shot is a human.”
“You shot Victor Kornev,” Kara corrected him.
“I think I shot Victor Kornev,” Hail countered.
“No, you shot him. We have recorded audio of Kornev calling for help in Pongch’un-dong after you tried to chase him down with your drone to kill him. In the audio, he indicated that he had been shot.”
“Anybody could have shot him. North Korea is a dangerous place.”
“Yeah, right?” Kara said sarcastically.
Kara changed the subject. “Do you want to shoot my Glock?” Kara asked, stepping in front of Hail and picking up the weapon.
“No, I really suck with those plastic guns. I like the weight of my 1911. I just can’t get use to the plastic fantastic weapons. Call me an old-fashioned guy.”
“How about I just call you old?” Kara said. They both put back on their hearing protection muffs.
At times Hail did feel old, although he was only in his early 40s. His change of perspective changed very little when “hanging out” with someone as beautiful as Kara Ramey who was in her late 20s. There was an undeniable chemistry between them that surpassed their age difference.
Kara found Hail rugged, handsome, confident, but he also had a childish side to him she found endearing. Deep down, she knew that the confidence part of his character was a hoax. Ever since his family had perished in The Five, he felt anything but confident. She had lost her family in the same attack, and Kara understood that feeling and was able to empathize with his plight. After all, how
can you remain confident when everyone you loved had been taken from you? And, you feel powerless—there wasn’t a damn thing you could have done to prevent the tragedy. She had seen that Hail had surround himself by walls that were impenetrable. Kara sensed a hesitancy to invest feelings in someone new. If the relationship didn’t work, would his damaged heart be able to recover?
Kara flipped the switch and ran the target out to seventy-five meters. She brought up her new Glock and prepared to fire.
Hail put on his ear protection.
Kara fired three quick shots.
“Not bad, huh?” she asked Hail.
“I can’t even see that far,” he said.
“Oh, good. Then see if you can beat that.” Kara smiled.
“That’s not fair. If I can’t see the target, how can I hit it?”
“Is that what you are going to yell at a bad guy when he’s running at you with a gun?”
“That’s why I have drones. I never intend to be that close to someone with a gun running either toward or after me.”
Kara took off her hearing protection, and Hail followed suit.
She looked serious.
“Remember I told you at some point you are going to have to put some skin in the game if you want to truly feel like you’re making a difference?”
Hail nodded.
“Well, that might entail you being on the ground, and in the thick of it. You won’t have the luxury of having your drones remotely taking out the bad guys. Some tasks need to be done in person, and that’s when things get dangerous.”
> “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Hail said, replacing his ear muffs.
“Where is that target I’m supposed to shoot, again?” Hail said, waving his gun comically back and forth downrange as if he was a blind man.
A half hour later, Kara Ramey and Marshall Hail had gone through all the ammo they had brought down to the ship’s gun range.
“You should have pulled the trigger on this new Glock just a few times,” Kara told Hail. “After all, how often do you get to shoot a brand-new gun?”
Hail laughed to himself, and said, “More often than you would think.”
Kara looked at him inquisitively and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Put your new plastic gun away, and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Hail and Kara removed the magazines, pulled back their respective slides and visually checked the breaches to ensure the guns were empty. Hail placed his 1911 into a zippered pouch, and Kara stuck her new Glock into a shoulder holster sitting on a bench behind them. Kara threw the strap over her shoulder following Hail as he opened the thick metal door leading to the outer corridor.
Kara followed Hail through a maze of stairs and right-angled turns. They continued to walk through the ship until Marshall stopped in front of the door that had the word ARMORY stenciled in bold black letters on its white painted surface.
Hail flashed his prox card in front of the reader and waited for the door to unlock. Once the bolt had been withdrawn from the inside, Hail opened the door, and the two stepped inside. Dozens of LCD lights snapped on and illuminated a long narrow room.
“Wow!” Kara said. “Every time I think that nothing else on this ship will amaze me, you show me something like this.”
Lining the walls of the room were hundreds of rifles of all types and sizes. One wall appeared to hold nothing but assault rifles. The profile of the M4 Carbine-style DPMS AP4 was easy to spot. Kara thought that at least fifty of those weapons were seated vertically into gun slots cut from wood and then mounted to the iron wall of the ship. Where the M4s stopped, fifty or more Remington R-15 VTR Predator Carbines began, all painted in a jungle matte finish. Farther into the room, Kara recognized more weapons of death, such as the Barrett REC 7, the Wilson Combat UT-15 and the Bushmaster DCM-XR A3.
“Damn!” Kara exclaimed. “You have enough guns to start your own war.”
Hail waved off her comment and said, “This isn’t what I wanted to show you.” He then began walking through the room, heading deeper into the ship’s armory.
As they walked, Kara’s head kept snapping from the left to the right, trying to take it all in. They had now reached what could only be described as the handgun section of the armory. Kara estimated that a thousand handguns had been placed into wooden slots, nothing but their butt ends sticking out. Yet, for every hundred handguns, a solitary gun had been placed above them on a peg; apparently a representation of what guns were stored below. The first handguns they passed were smaller in caliber and size, but the weapons grew larger as they moved deeper into the room. A few pocket-sized guns were .22s. Kara saw a Walther P22, a Smith & Wesson Model 22A, and a Beretta 21A Bobcat. Then the guns jumped from .22 caliber directly to 9mm. Firearms from Glock, Beretta, Sig Sauer, Walther, and Heckler & Koch were represented. Then the calibers went up again to the .45s,
and so on, until they reached the very largest of the large, the Smith and Wesson 500 and the crazy big Desert Eagle .50 caliber semi-automatic. Kara stopped and removed a massive Desert Eagle from its peg above its slotted twins. It was solid chrome and looked comically large in her small hand.
“Do you know how much ammo costs for one of these things?” Kara asked Hail.
Hail laughed and said, “Hell, I don’t even know if I have health insurance, so you’re asking the wrong person. I pay people to worry about all that stuff.”
Kara put the gun back on the peg, and they continued walking.
When the handgun display ended, Hail stopped in front of another iron door. He swiped his badge in front of the scanner, and the door’s lock clanked open. Hail pulled the door open and told Kara, “You’ll like this. It’s pretty cool.”
Kara stepped up and over the bulkhead separating the rooms, and Hail flipped on the lights.
The wood that had been cut and slotted for the weapons in the outer room was relatively inexpensive compared to what she was looking at now. The wooden walls of the inner room were cut from mahogany. They had been stained dark brown and gleamed from several layers of clear varnish. The gun displays had been laid out by someone who had experience with such designs. Hundreds of unique guns had been mounted on the dazzling wood.
“This was my father’s gun collection,” Hail told Kara.
“Holy moly,” came out of Kara’s mouth, but she wasn’t even aware she had said anything. Her eyes were darting all around the room, looking at the weapons like they were candy and she had a sweet tooth.
The guns to her left were very old: flintlock rifles and matchlock rifles. Each rifle was mounted on the wall with a small wooden bracket that appeared to be custom-made to fit each rifle’s contours. A small engraved plaque was screwed into the wood under each rifle.
Kara stopped and read one of the plaques. “Janissary Corp of the Ottoman Army matchlock musket. 1440AD”
Hail told her, “That is the oldest known matchlock musket in the world. My father was very proud of that weapon.” Hail’s tone sounded somewhat depressed, as if talking about his father brought up some painful memories. On several occasions, Hail had shared with her he and his father did not get along. His father had wanted a son to follow in his footsteps and become a military man. Hail had opted to go to MIT instead. Oh, and he had also won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
That achievement still had not impressed his father. Hence, the taciturn distance between the two had continued.
Kara said, “I had no idea that guns were invented that long ago.”
Kara then read the plaque under a matchlock musket below the 1440AD model. “The lord of the Japanese island, Tanegashima Tokitaka (1528–1579). Musket 1 of 2.”
It meant nothing to her and Hail didn’t expound, so Kara kept walking down the row, reading to herself. The matchlock rifles mutated into flintlock rifles, which ran the gambit of early European models to those used in the American Civil War. Many models of the “Pennsylvania Rifle" or "Kentucky Rifle” were represented. Some were restored, but many others were left rusty and weathered perched on their shiny wooden brackets. Like the outer room of the armory, after the muskets and rifles ended, the handguns began. But this display of handguns was so much more interesting than the slew of modern guns in the other room. Many of these unique handguns were matching sets.
Hail stopped in front of an old black handgun that had been given a little larger space on the wall than the other handguns. Hail took the gun off the wall and handed it to Kara.
Hail placed his hand over the little plaque, where the gun had hung, and asked Kara. “Any guesses about this gun?”
Kara played around with the revolver a little, popping open its chamber and spinning it around. She made a perplexed face and said, “I give up.”
Hail smiled and told her, “This is Jack Ruby’s Colt Cobra Revolver used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The CIA agent was taken aback before she looked at the gun with renewed interest. “Man, how did your father ever get his hands on this?”
Hail shrugged and said, “I have no idea. It wasn’t as though he was rich, but he was powerful. We never discussed how he went about acquiring all these guns. As you know, my father and I were not very close. After he passed away, it was a complete shock this collection was the only thing he left me in his will.”
“Well, it’s a wonderful gun collection.”
“Yeah, but I was never allowed to touch any of these guns when I was growing up. I wasn’t even allowed to go into the room where he had them on display.”
Kara handed the gun back to Hail and said, �
�Considering the rarity of these guns, I’m sure he was very protective.”
Hail dropped the gun on the metal floor, watching it bounce only to come to a rest on its side. He bent down to pick it up. He then hung the gun back on its mount.
He said a little angrily, “But they are just guns. It’s not like if you drop them, they’ll break. He was simply a selfish man. And, to tell you the truth, I truly believe that he loved these guns more than he loved me and probably more than my mom.”
Kara walked a few steps down the row and stopped in front of two matching .38 Specials with pearl handgrips. Intricate engravings had been cut into the entire length of both barrels.
“Your mom died when you were young, didn’t she?” Kara asked.
“Yeah,” Hail confirmed. “She was struck by lightning when we were stationed in Guam.”
“That is so bizarre,” Kara commented sorrowfully. “I mean, you hear about people getting hit by lightning, but you never really think about it or actually know anyone it happened to. I have my own thoughts about getting hit by lightning—”
Kara stopped short of finishing her sentence.
Hail said, “What were you going to say?”
“Nothing,” Kara responded, sounding anxious to change the subject.
“No, really. Tell me,” Hail pleaded.
“I don’t want to. You will think I’m talking about your mom, and I’m not.”
Hail coaxed, “Please tell me. I promise I won’t judge you.”
Kara reluctantly said, “OK, but I don’t want you to be pissed, because I’m sure your mother was a wonderful person.”
Kara hesitated for a moment, and then added, “I always thought when someone got hit by lighting, it was God’s finger coming down and poking someone. You know, like we’re tiny ants, and God is just shushing us. Just to screw with us ants.”
Kara looked at Marshall for his reaction.
Hail shrugged and flattened his lips. “I kind of think the same thing,” Hail confessed. “But then, who is responsible when you win a million-dollar lottery? Is that God as well?”
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