Tabitha Parker was the first to respond. Her black hair was tied into a tight bun on top of her head, and she looked excited.
“Well, this might sound kind of crazy, but if you guys could pull up the image we labeled turtle1.jpg, we would like to show you something.” Parker had lived most of her life in the UK and had a pleasant English accent.
Renner searched their NAS for the file Parker referenced. He clicked on it and a sharp image of the beach in front of the Diambu compound appeared on the screen. It was an aerial shot looking directly down on the long wide strip of white sand that led from the water up to where a layer of green foliage began.
Renner, Hail and Nolan studied the screen intently. On their video conference monitors, Captain Nichols, Parker and Lang watched Hail Nucleus’ crew intently, apparently waiting for them to discover something that Hail Proton’s crew had already found in the image.
After about a minute, Hail stated, with a degree of frustration, “I don’t see anything. How about you, Gage?”
Renner commented, “Nothing but sand and the narrow sandy trail that leads up to the house.”
Nolan remained quiet, so Hail assumed that nothing jumped out at him either.
“OK,” Hail said to the crew on board the Hail Proton. “We give up. What do you have?”
Lang smiled and said, “Do you see the marks in the sand that lead up from the water?”
Hail looked closely at the image and said, “Yeah, I think so. Are you talking about these narrow prints that look like they were made by some type of animal?”
“Yes,” Parker said eagerly. “They were made by turtles. It’s mating season for turtles. Each night they emerge from the water. They make their way up to the deep sand to lay their eggs and bury them. If you look closely, you can see dozens of turtles in the sand near the compound. They are a natural occurrence, and nobody pays attention to them.”
Hail and Renner were starting to get the picture, but Nolan was still confused.
Nolan asked, “What do the turtles have to do with killing Diambu?”
On the other end of the video connection, Lang said, “This.”
Lying on the table was what appeared to be a turtle. It was the size of a dinner plate, patterned in dark hues simulating a turtle shell.
“Very nice,” Hail commented.
“Cool,” Renner said.
Nolan shook his head, but he said nothing.
Lang held up the turtle, lifting it a few inches off the table. As he talked, he began to turn the turtle one way and then the other.
Lang explained, “Total weight with the C-4 explosive and ball bearings is less than five pounds. Battery life, including the crawl out of the ocean, is about twenty-four hours. It has both a communication chip and a camera located where the turtle’s head would pop out.”
Parker stated, “It’s fully submersible. We installed tracks underneath the shell, so it will have no problem transitioning from the ocean to the hard sand, and then to the thick and softer sand up near the compound.”
“It can’t leave tank tracks on the sand,” Hail said, finding the first issue with the turtle drone.
Lang fielded Hail’s concern and said, “Check this out.” He turned the turtle over so its bottom tracks faced the camera. Hail Nucleus’ crew leaned in closer to their monitor to get a better look.
Lang explained, “The turtle has tracks, but we welded these claws to the tracks every two inches. When the turtle travels across the sand, instead of leaving tank tracks, it will leave little turtle scrapings that look just like all the other turtle tracks coming out of the water.”
“Ingenious,” Hail told the lab staff aboard the Hail Proton. “You guys thought of everything. How big of a bang will it make?”
Since Parker oversaw the explosives, she fielded the question.
“You mentioned that there were a lot of land mines protecting the property. The explosion will be about the same yield as your typical land mine, but this explosion will travel out, rather than up. The ball bearings will hit anything within twenty yards with a lethal effect.”
Nolan couldn’t keep quiet any longer. He asked, “What? So, I guess I’m not really following? How is this turtle thing going to work?”
Renner responded.
“We will use one of the Hail Proton’s long-range drones to do a night drop of Turtles into the water near Snake Island’s shoreline.”
Renner asked the lab staff, “I’m assuming this has a communication tether float, right?”
“Right,” Parker and Lang said in unison.
Renner continued, “When the turtle is dropped into the water, a tiny communication wire is reeled out. On the end of the wire is a tiny float. The wire
is an antenna, so we can communicate with the drone while it’s submerged. Before the sun rises, we will take control of the turtle and drive it out of the water, up to the compound. We then park it next to the trail and wait for Diambu to come out for his morning swim. When he passes the turtle, we press the button, both Turtles and Diambu will go BOOM. End of story.”
Nolan understood the plan, but he still thought it was audacious. It was the antithesis of everything he had trained for, which was blowing stuff up from the sky.
Marshall took over to further refine Renner’s explanation.
“The tracks of the drone have been modified to look like those made by the real reptiles. So, in the morning, when the guards are walking the perimeter of the compound, they won’t see anything out of the normal. They’ll just see the same turtle tracks they do every morning.”
“I get it,” Nolan said. “It’s just so— so—”
“So crazy?” Hail offered.
“It’s not crazy,” Nolan said, “I just can’t think of the word.”
“Radical?” Renner suggested.
“Yeah, I can go with radical,” Nolan said.
Hail asked Parker, Lang and their captain, Mitch, “Do you have a code name for the drone?”
Captain Nichols answered, “It’s not very imaginative, but we named it The Turtles after a 1965 rock band.”
“You know, I probably could have guessed that,” Hail laughed. “Turtles it is.”
Hail looked over the drone as Lang continued to rotate it, exposing every angle of the machine on the off-chance any of Hail Nucleus’ crew saw something they wanted to discuss.
Hail said, “I guess all we have to do is determine a time when you guys want to drop it in theater.”
Captain Nichols suggested, “Is tomorrow night good for you guys? If you don’t have any issues with it, my team will drop the drone and get it into position. Then we will turn over the operation to your crew and let you push the button.”
Hail contemplated for a moment and said, “Yeah, that works for me.”
Hail added, “I’d like someone to check the weather to make sure that it won’t be raining on the morning of the mission. I’m sure Diambu won’t be swimming if it’s storming outside.”
Renner said, “I’ll have Pierce check the weather and provide us a report.”
The room on the Hail Proton and inside the Gulfstream fell silent while Hail ran through his mental checklist.
Believing he had covered everything, Hail finally said, “Well, OK. Let’s shoot for a drop at 3:30 a.m., Nigerian time. Thank you, Tabitha, John and Mitch. You really did a fantastic job. We will be back in touch with you at the time of the mission.”
Hail clicked off the video connection, smiled and he gave Nolan and Renner two thumbs-up.