Pepper stood up and walked toward the waiting room, known as the outer office. Pepper opened the door and said something to someone on the other side. A minute later a woman walked in.
The first thing that went through Hail’s mind when he saw the woman was this was the CIAs secret weapon.
She was so beautiful that everyone in the room looked downright ugly in comparison.
Hail tried not to look at her, or more to the point leer at her, but it was a difficult task at best.
She reminded him of a movie star he had seen in an old movie. Nicole Kidman popped into his mind, but this lady was like the porn-star version of Nicole Kidman. She was tall, she had curves that went on for miles and she moved like a panther. She was wearing some sort of full black body stocking outfit. Over the stocking she wore a short straight black skirt that hugged her frame. Over the upper part the stocking, she wore a tight black vest that did little to obscure her ample breasts. The body stocking must have been put on by unzipping it from the front and then stepping into it, because a good four inches of the zipper remained unzipped showing off the woman’s cleavage. Her red hair and brilliant white skin looked amazing against all of the black. But Hail guessed she already knew that.
The woman walked up to Hail and hung out her hand.
Hail took it and shook it gently.
She allowed it to be shaken.
“Are you Pepper’s man that the General said was going to update me,” He asked playfully.
“Yes I am,” the woman said confidently. “My name is Kara Ramey and I catch bad guys.”
“My name is Marshall Hail and I kill bad guys.”
Kara shook Hail’s hand harder and said, “It sounds like we’ll make a good team.”
Hail didn’t know what she meant by that. Hail already had a team and he wasn’t looking for any new players.
She let go of his hand and smiled at him. Something was going through her mind. Her eyes were piercing. They were set a perfect distance apart, bright green; a vivid shade of green he couldn’t believe was real. He thought about accidently poking her in the eye to see if she was wearing contacts, but he couldn’t think of a way to nonchalantly pull that off.
Nothing about this woman added up. Not her timely introduction to the meeting; or her looks; or her implied notion of being on his team. This woman, this vogue model was a setup of some type and Hail knew he had to stay on his toes. It was so damn difficult to register this face, this body, this female package with a hardcore CIA agent. Hail half expected a camera man to jump out from a closet and tell him he was being punked.
“Sit down everyone,” the President requested.
Kara made a little scooting gesture with her hand toward Pepper, who then moved to the center of the couch. This allowed Kara to sit on the end of the couch, closest to Hail’s chair.
Kara was holding a rolled up photograph in her right hand. She handed it to Hail.
Hail unrolled the paper and looked at it.
“This man’s name is Victor Kornev. Have you ever heard of him?” she asked.
Hail looked at the color eight by ten photograph. He shook his head and began to hand it back to the CIA woman.
“I didn’t think so,” she said. “What if I told you that he supplied the terrorist with the missile that killed your family?”
Hail pulled back the photograph and unrolled it and looked at it again, this time much more intently.
“Are you sure about this?” Hail asked.
“We can’t be a hundred percent certain,” Kara said, “but is ninety-five percent close enough for you?”
“I would kill this guy at fifty-one percent,” Hail said in a dead serious tone. “How do you know?” he asked.
“How did you kill Chang?” Kara responded.
Hail remained silent. He continued to stare at the photograph as if he could kill the guy with pure mind control. He was starting to understand how this new game was going to be played. You don’t get something for nothing; his Dad had always told him. Currently, this was the most profound advice his Dad had ever given him, other than to change his underwear every day.
Realizing that this line of conversation was not working out well, Hail decided to change tactics and take the high ground.
“The General mentioned that you had a problem with ― what is it? Pieces and parts. What’s that all about?”
Pepper jumped in before Kara could answer.
“It’s about working together as a team to prevent the United States from becoming nuclear target practice. That’s what it’s about.”
“Seems a little melodramatic,” Hail stated. Hail took out his phone and snapped a photo of the photograph before rolling it up and handing back to Kara.
“It may be a little on the melodramatic side of things,” the General said, “but there is some bite in that dog. The gist of it is that Kara created a communications link that allows us to see everything that goes across Kornev’s cell phone. Kornev had completed a deal with Kim Yong Chang, before you killed Chang, to deliver several ICBMs to North Korea.”
The General paused for effect.
Hail looked passive and hard to read.
The General continued.
“Well, Marshall, those missiles are already on their way to North Korea. And short of carpet bombing the entire country, we only have one way to stop the North Koreans from obtaining the missiles.”
“And how is that, General?” Hail asked.
“You,” Kara answered.
Hail thought about it for a second and said, “I would rather kill Kornev.”
“You say that, Mr. Hail ― I’m sorry, Marshall,” the President corrected herself. “But you don’t believe that. We are talking about a radical country that already possess nukes. Obtaining ICBMs provides them with the means to fire them at the United States. No matter what your convictions happen to be at this point in time, I can’t believe that your sensibilities are that skewed.”
Hail didn’t like any of this one little bit. This was exactly why he avoided alliances and strived to be completely self-sufficient. When you worked with the government, it was inevitable that you would get sucked into their shit. And Hail didn’t need their shit. He had a big o’l pile of his own shit he had to take care of.
Hail let out a soft groan and rolled his eyes.
“What’s the deal with these missile parts?” he asked, not really wanting to know. Maybe he could figure out a deal killer if they describe the situation.
Kara answered, “Kornev was able to dig up retired replacement parts for the Russian R-29RMU Sineva. This is one of the ten longest range ICBMs in the world. Its range is 11, 547 kilometers. The distance between North Korea and the United States is 10,337 kilometers. Are you starting to see a connection?”
Hail shook his head penitently, regretting he had ever made this trip to Washington.
Kara continued.
“Kornev’s real expertise is not weapons, per se. His real talent is the delivery of weapons. From the intelligence we’ve gathered, Kornev is shipping hundreds of pieces of the missiles separately, using dozens of planes, boats, ships, fishing vessels, luxury vessels and submarines. It’s brilliant because there isn’t one shipment that is a deal killer. Even if we were to stop a dozen shipments, enough parts would still get through to build at least a few missiles.”
“OK, well, right there you said it,” Hail responded. “There is not really anything you can do or I can do. I certainly can’t stop all the shipments.”
“You are missing the point,” Kara said. “We don’t need to stop all the parts from getting into North Korea. All we need to know is where the parts are going.”
Hail started to see the logic.
“So all the parts are going to end up in the same place,” Hail said, thinking aloud.