“How much flight time do we have left on Led Zeppelin?” Hail asked Knox.
Knox looked over some battery data and responded, “About five minutes depending on how fast we ascend. If we climb slowly, maybe another minute.”
“That should work. Right, Renner?” Hail asked his analyst.
“It should,” Renner responded, having already done the math hours earlier. “I’m just concerned about the humidity.”
“Clarify?” Hail asked.
“The thicker the air, the harder the rotors have to beat to put air through the aircraft. Harder means more power and that means it will consume the battery faster. I still think we’re going to be OK.”
“Shana, how are the comms?” Hail asked his communications specialist.
The attractive young lady checked the strength of the satellite feed and replied, “We are looking good. We are five by four and the atmospheric disturbances are minimal.”
Believing he had covered all the bases, Hail announced, “OK, then let’s do this thing. Blow the balloons on Zeppelin.”
Knox pressed an icon labeled TETHER LAUNCH.
Hidden behind the mounds of Flying Dragon bushes, a hatch in the middle of Led Zeppelin opened and a helium balloon began to slowly fill. After thirty seconds, the black balloon had filled to the size of a watermelon. Three plastic fingers no larger than toothpicks retracted and let the balloon rise into the sky. A few seconds later, a second balloon began to fill on top of the drone. Another thirty seconds and the second balloon was released into the sky.
“Balloons are away,” Knox reported.
“What height did we agree on?” Hail asked Renner.
“Hundred feet should be good,” Renner responded confidently.
“You heard him, Knox,” Hail said. “Spool the line out to a hundred feet.”
“Will do,” Knox said, watching a red digital meter on his monitor count upward from five.
On top of Led Zeppelin, a monofilament line unreeled and the dark balloons disappeared into the night. Each of the balloons were connected to one another by the same line, creating a triangle of heavy-duty line that would soon be floating a hundred feet over the top of Zeppelin.
The mission room was quiet. Everyone was doing their job and it didn’t require a lot of chatter.
Knox watched the meter as it finally reached a hundred and he pressed the icon STOP on the reel control.
“Tethers are in place,” Knox reported.
“We all understand that we only get one shot at this. Right?” Hail warned his crew.
The question didn’t require an answer.
Hail told Grant, “As we discussed during the mission plan, we need to bring in Foghat as slow as possible. We can’t break the line or Zeppelin is screwed.”
“Understood,” Grant said.
“Beginning the pass,” Grant announced, disconnecting Foghat’s auto-pilot and taking manual control of the drone. “We’re one mile out and will be on target in two minutes.”
“Let’s spin up Zeppelin,” Hail told Knox.
“Rotors are tuning,” Knox replied, pressing his index fingers into the triggers of each control stick.
“Coming up,” Knox added.
Hail and the rest of his team watched the green and fuzzy video on the large screen as Led Zeppelin cleared its hide and began to climb into the thick Korean night.
“Half a mile out,” Grant reported.
“Hundred feet and climbing,” Knox added.
In Hail’s mind, he began calculating the speed of the drone, the distance to intercept and the climb rate of Zeppelin.
“What’s your altitude, Grant?” Hail inquired.
“I’m at nine hundred feet and descending,” Foghat’s pilot responded.
Hail looked down at his right monitor and pulled up Foghat’s video control panel. He touched his finger to the screen. The video feed being sent from the nose camera of Foghat popped up on the large screen above the crew to Hail’s left.
“I’m at three hundred feet and climbing,” Knox said. “Man, this thing is climbing like a pig,” he added, looking concerned. “You were right about the humidity, Renner.”
Hail spun his chair around toward his flight analyst, Gage Renner.
“How much flight time does Knox have left, Gage?” Hail asked.
Renner glanced over Zeppelin’s flight data, energy reserves, power on the rotors and he looked troubled.
Almost imperceptibly, Renner shook his head just once and then looked up and Hail and shook it again.
“Not looking good. Maybe thirty seconds of spin time left.”
“I’m at four hundred feet,” Knox stated.
“Level it off,” Hail ordered. “Grant, you have to get in there fast. Zeppelin is going to drop in about twenty seconds.”
“Roger that,” Grant said, pushing both controllers forward, putting Foghat into a controlled dive.
“I have a visual on the diodes and I am plotting an intercept,” he added.
On the big screen, two white dots glowed brightly on the dark green screen. They were separated by several meters and appeared to be hovering in the darkness. Each of the balloons had tiny infrared diodes affixed at their bases. The light spectrum from the diodes could only be seen by the night vision camera on Foghat. If not for these points of reference, Led Zeppelin and its snatch rig would be invisible to the approaching drone. The pickup procedure was nothing new. As Renner had explained during the mission planning session, the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS) was developed by the inventor Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s. But it had never been used on a drone before. Making it even more complicated was the fact that it had never been used on a drone to retrieve another drone.
Grant’s task was to drop the hook from under Foghat and then fly Foghat between the balloons. The hook would catch the line suspended between the balloons that were tied to the hovering Zeppelin below. Once the snatch had taken place, then Zeppelin would be reeled up to Foghat’s belly and secured for the flight home.
“This is going to be tight,” Grant warned. “Keep it still, Alex,” he told his fellow pilot.
“You have about ten seconds of still left and then you will have to scoop this thing off the ground,” Knox shot back.
“Almost there,” Grant said in a strained tone. He began feverishly working the control sticks, first one way and then the other; making tiny adjustments as he zeroed in on the blinking lights.
“Beginning to lose power,” Knox called out. “Starting to descend.”
“Hold it steady, just another few seconds,” Grant pleaded.
“Hook deployed,” Grant announced, “and passing in three, two, one…”
Everyone in the room, including Tanner Grant, held their breath.
The video being sent from Led Zeppelin was still for an instant and then it went haywire. The video turned into a pixelated green hue of static, but still presented a sense of motion.
“Got it!” Grant yelled. “Switching to the belly camera.”
“Out of power and shutting down,” Knox said. “I hope you have me Tanner or Led Zeppelin will be a bucket of bolts in a few seconds.”
“I got you, man,” Grant assured him. “Look.”
With Knox’s control panel now dark, he looked up at the big screen above him and saw Led Zeppelin being reeled in from below Foghat.
“Yeah, hell yeah!” Knox yelled, jumping to his feet and clapping his hands together. He then shook both of his fists in the air in victory. “Yeah, we good, we good, we got it going on!”
Hail watched Knox do some sort of circular happy dance in the confines of his control station. Knox smiled and shook his hips and worked his arms.
Hail couldn’t help but laugh at the young man. It was as if he had caught a touchdown pass in the Super bowl.