“This is overwhelming,” she finally said. “Does anyone on the outside know that most of your crew consists of The Five family sufferers?”
“I don’t know,” Hail said. “And I don’t know if anyone on the outside really cares. All of these wonderful people are here for one of three reasons. One, they want to be part of the solution. Two, everyone they loved is dead. Three, there is no one left who cares about them. Well, I care about all of them. I don’t want The Five to dictate the way their lives will turn out. I want them to all go on and have a good life. If they want to learn a skill and work for me, then I’ll train them to do so.”
Kara pushed away her soup and set her elbows on the table. She looked directly into Hail’s blue eyes. He returned the stare.
Hail could tell that she had a thousand more questions. She had CIA questions. She had crew questions. She had numbers questions. She had more ship questions. She had technology questions. And all of those questions were swimming around in her head, each one competing in her brain to be asked.
Before she had a chance to ask any of them, Hail said, “If we are done eating, we really need to get over to our mission planning room and get the ball rolling. I’m not sure what we have in the form of interdiction equipment, and we don’t have much time to build it.”
Kara took all of her questions and quickly filed them all away; making a note to ask them when there was more time.
“I need to get cleaned up,” she said.
“No you don’t,” Hail said firmly. “You smell just fine.”
Kara was shocked and laughed.
Then Hail added, “And you look really good in that cat woman body sock thing as well. I think this should be your new look.”
Kara smiled demurely and replied. “I know I look good in it, but the reason you really like me in this skin tight get-up is because you can tell I don’t have any hidden wires or recorders or cameras or communication devices on me.”
Damn, Hail thought. She read my mind.
Hail said nothing. Instead, he stood and walked around the table and pulled Kara’s chair out for her.
“No desert?” Kara asked, facetiously.
“Later,” Hail said. “First work and then the cat gets a treat.”
“Where to?” Kara asked.
“One deck up. I’ve got everyone waiting for us in the conference room.”
“Lead the way,” Kara said, looking for her purse and then realizing she had absolutely nothing. It struck her for the first time that she was literally at the mercy of Marshall Hail. She didn’t like that feeling one bit. But in her line of work, she was constantly putting herself and her safety on the line. At least Hail and his clan were supposed to be the good guys. But that so called fact would still have to be verified.
The conference room was situated one deck up and almost directly above the grouping of restaurants, so Kara and Hail didn’t have to walk any great distance.
Kara walked into a stark conference room occupied by three men and two women. Instead of a conference table, there was a long stainless steel table, shaped like a banana that sat in the middle of the room. Lines of monitors and screens and keyboards and mice and speakers and styluses littered the polished metal surface. Kara could tell that this meeting was going to be very different than any other mission planning session she had experienced.
On three of the four walls that didn’t have a tinted porthole, were flat screen displays taking up the bulk of the horizontal revenue. The floor was made of well-worn metal that had been marred countless times by the wheels of dozens of light weight chairs that were scattered haphazardly around the room.
Hail grabbed two of the nearest chairs and slid them toward the group of people waiting for them around the table.
Hail pushed a chair under Kara and turned his chair around backwards and sat cowboy style.
“What’s first?” Hail asked.
“How about some introductions, Marshall?” Shana Tran suggested.
Marshall looked embarrassed.
“Of course, I’m sorry,” he responded. “Everyone, this is Kara Ramey from the CIA. She is going to be our liaison for any intelligence we obtain from her agency.”
Everyone said hello in one fashion or another.
“How about we just go around the room quickly and you all can introduce yourself and tell Kara what you do.”
Since Shana Tran had spoken up earlier, Hail gestured toward Shana to begin.
“Hi Kara. I’m Shana Tran, Mission Communication Analyst.”
“I love your outfit,” Kara said.
“Well thank you. I designed and made it myself.”
“You’re kidding me. I wish I could do stuff like that. A dress seems like it would be so hard to make.”
“Well, it’s not that hard. I mean it took me awhile to…”
“OK, OK,” Hail interrupted. “We’ll have time for the fashion segment of this meeting later. Let’s continue.”
The person to the right of Tran spoke up.
“My name is Gage Renner. I am a Mission Analyst and specialize in remote design and aeronautics. We already met on the plane. Well, we didn’t meet on the plane. You were on the plane and I was here, but we talked…”
“We understand,” Hail told his tongue tied buddy.
The next person said in a lyrical French accent, “Nice to meet you, Ms. Ramey. My name is Pierce Mercier. I am a scholar and have a background in oceanography, meteorology, plants, animals, basically boring stuff compared to what these guys know.”
“Oh, not at all,” Kara said. “I think all of those things are very interesting. I take it that you speak French?” Kara asked.
Mercier replied, “Oui. Parlez-vous Français ainsi.”
Kara responded with, “Je fais ainsi. Il est très agréable de vous rencontrer.”
Mercier smiled. “Vous aussi.”
Hail waited patiently until the exchange was over, hoping he didn’t have to cut that off as well.
The French eventually stopped and the next person in line introduced themselves.
“My name is Eric Rugmon. I manage the production and customization of mission devices and control systems.”
Kara noticed that Eric Rugmon appeared to be all business. To Kara, the man looked like a Minion from the Despicable Me movie. He didn’t smile or give a hint of wanting to be Kara’s buddy. That was OK. She never had a problem making friends, especially male friends. Rugmon wore a white lab coat, but he was not the only person in the room wearing a lab coat.
The next person to introduce herself was a woman and she was wearing a lab coat as well. She looked bookish and quiet and Kara thought for a moment that she and Mr. Rugmon might have a thing going on. They were both cut from the same cloth. At least their lab coats were.
“My name is Terry Garber. I am in charge of the laboratory, laboratory production, new product research and product adaptation.”
Kara wanted to ask her what all that meant, but with Terry Garber being the last person in line, Hail was already taking back control of the meeting.
“OK, with that out of the way, what is our first move?”
Renner said, “We need to know exactly what we are dealing with. What’s the scope of this mission?”
Hail looked at Kara as if to say, you’re up.
Kara scanned the faces that were looking at her.
She cleared her throat and said, “We are currently tracking a Chinese fishing trawler called the Huan Yue that is steaming through the Sea of Okhotsk and it’s headed toward North Korea.”
“Can we bring that map up on screen one?” Hail requested.
Renner did some computer magic and a large map of the North Pacific Ocean popped up on the screen.
“The Sea of Okhotsk is right here under Russia” Renner said, pointing to the spot with his cursor. “We are talking about a thousand miles from North Korea, depending on the current position of the trawler.”