Alex Knox wasn’t dressed much better than Renner. His tee-shirt had a hand stenciled message on the front that read, “I’m with the stupid guy in the 8K shirt,” and the finger on the hand was pointing at Renner. The antithesis of Renner, Knox was young, nineteen years old and had long clean brown hair. He’d been recruited by Hail because he was the winner of the X-Wing Fantasy Flight Game contest. At nineteen, Knox was one of Hail’s older remote pilots and his skills with remote aircraft were astounding.
Twelve eighty-inch monitors were mounted above the sixteen command stations, creating a perfect circle of displays that looped around the room and touched end to end. The video of the last minutes of Eagles’ flight appeared on big screen number two, directly above both Knox and Renner.
The video was high definition and crystal clear, however the people on the ground were still very small. Even so, Hail could clearly make out a long rifle being delivered into the hands of Kim Yong Chang by one of his servants. It only took about ten seconds for the General to point the gun skyward and to fire two quick shots.
“Damn,” Hail said.
Without looking up from his monitor, Renner reported, “Diagnostics shows that the actuator controlling the right wing is out. Don’t know if is physically gone, wasted or the wiring is damaged.”
“Losing altitude,” Knox reported, talking over Renner. “We need to figure this shit out before Eagles lands in their pool.”
Hail considered his options and none of them were good. The pickup and delivery drone, code name Foghat, was waiting patiently for dust off, four-feet under water in a tributary of the Nam-Gang River. That placed Foghat’s location thirty miles away. Too far away to do them any good right now.
And then, boom-boom, another report from the gun on the ground popped through the speakers and both of the video feeds from the bird’s eyeball cameras went black.
“Oh shit,” yelled Knox. “That was a bad one. I think they just shot Eagles head off.”
Realizing that his mission options were being eliminated by the second, Hail asked, “Can we make it to the river?”
Renner responded by saying, “If you want to make the river, Eagles will have to do a burn cycle to gain some altitude.”
“Can we do a burn with the bird’s head gone?” Hail asked. “Isn’t the intake to the rocket on the front of the drone?”
“I don’t know if the burn will work, but really, what’s the downside to it?” Renner asked rhetorically.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Hail agreed. “Knox, do a burn and see if you can get Eagles out of theater. I’d like to save that drone if at all possible. If it flies, then fly it.”
“Will do,” Knox responded.
Pushing an icon on his control monitor labeled ROCKET IGNITION, Knox waited for something or possibly nothing to happen. With the bird’s cameras out of commission and with no visual reference, Knox was completely reliant on the drone’s avionic gauges and dials that were displayed on his forth monitor. He watched the air-speed indicator rise as the rocket propelled the drone forward.
“Fifteen seconds left on the burn,” reported Renner.
“Yeah, yeah, this looks good,” Knox said in an upbeat tone. He pushed his feet into the control pedals and watched the altimeter gauge climb.
Suddenly and without warning, the avionics display went blank and was replaced with two words.
Signal Lost
“Ah shit, we just lost the uplink to Eagles,” Knox yelled. His tone was pleading as if he expected someone to help him.
To the right of Knox sat Shana Tran, who was in charge of communications. Tran said, in a matter-of-fact yet firm tone, “You’re low and flying between two tall hills. Acquiring a signal in that area and at that low altitude is problematic at best.”
Unlike her two co-workers, Renner and Knox, Shana always dressed nice; typically, a dress of some type that showed off her long legs. She was tall for an Asian woman, but she liked being tall. Tall, smart and sexy. Yeah, that all worked for her just fine.
“Well, excuse the hell out of me and my headless bird,” Knox shot back.
“Stay cool,” Tran told him. “You will be out of the hills in what ― twenty seconds. And you’re still gaining altitude from the burn, so you should reacquire anytime now.”
Five seconds clicked by with nothing on the monitors but a handful of frozen words. The eerie sound of wind flapping through the room was gone as well.
Shana Tran looked confident in her assessment of the communications issue and she was far from panicking. Instead of getting all worked up about it, she inspected her long red fingernail polish to make sure there were no chips. She periodically glanced back at her monitors after each finger. Tran’s MIT degree focused on satellite communications and computer science. When it came to mission planning that involved network, Wi-Fi and satellite communications, Hail trusted her completely.
The avionics display in front of Knox flickered twice and then snapped back on.
“Are we good?” Tran asked everyone in the room, but her question was intended for Knox.
“Yeah, we are good.” Knox said, still shaken by the outage. He was pleased to see that the bird had gained almost five hundred feet and was headed in the direction of the Taedong River.
“No, we’re not,” Renner yelled a moment later. “We’re on fire!”
Down on the ground, Kim Yong Chang grunted the Korean words, “Got it,” as he released the trigger of his hunting rifle.
Both of his girlfriends had yelled, “No, no,” in high-pitched unison. “Don’t shoot the bird,” they had pleaded with Chang. But he had ignored them and shot the bird just the same.
Chang lowered the rifle from his cheek and watched the bird jerk to the left, doing its best to maintain flight while dealing with a fresh gunshot injury.
“It’s OK, look it’s OK,” one of the ladies said. “It’s still flying.”
“Not for long,” Chang stated in a confident tone and put the rifle back up to his eye and took aim using the gun’s iron sites.
“Don’t, don’t,” both women began chanting.
“Shut up,” Chang told them as he squeezed off two more quick rounds.
The gun barked and bucked against Chang’s shoulder as two shells ejected out the side of his weapon. Chang lowered the gun and waited for the effect. He thought he saw the eagle’s head pop off, but as the bird flew away, he decided that it must have been a clump of feathers. After all, no bird could fly without its head. Less than ten seconds later, the tall trees at the edge of Chang’s property obstructed his view and then the bird was gone. He handed the gun back to his waiting servant and noticed tears forming in his girlfriend’s eyes.
“Silly women,” was all he had to say to them.
Kim Yong Chang sat back down at the table, put a cloth napkin back in his lap and began to eat some toast.
“Can the bird be seen by Chang?” Hail asked, his tone measured yet urgent.
Knox responded, “No, we’re already a kilometer off the target.”
Comforted with the news, Hail smiled and said, “Well that’s good. Nothing like shooting an eagle and watching it catch on fire. That’s normal, right? I mean that happens every day, doesn’t it,” he said sarcastically.
“About one kilometer to the river,” Knox announced.
Renner,” Hail asked, “How bad is the fire? Can it fly? Are we going to make it to the water?”