Three men in North Korean uniforms came into view. Each soldier held a thick piece of chain in their hands and were busily connecting the links to the missile section on the trailer.
“Right there, stop.” Hail said. “I see one more missile stage on the ground, right there at the bottom left of the frame.”
The group looked where Hail was pointing.
“So that means that one more stage has yet to arrive,” Kara said.
“Would that last piece do them any good if all these stages were already blown up?” Hail asked.
“No,” Kara said, “Unless they want to make it into a big hot tub or something.”
The truck’s suspension groaned and rocked to one side as the crane hefted the metallic cylinder off the trailer and slung it out to the left. The camera tilted slightly as the load was being lowered to the ground.
“Now’s the time to get flying,” Gage reminded Hail. “Everyone’s eyes are on the cargo.”
Hail sat up a little straighter in his chair.
“Unlock Black Eyed Peas and fly it up in the rafters,” Hail told Knox.
“Roger that,” Knox said, reaching over and bringing up a screen that read INTERLOCK ON.
Knox moved the graphic slider to the OFF position and said, “Black Eyed Peas is loose and we are spinning up in three, two, one.”
The view from the drone’s camera rose as the matte black drone lifted off from the center of the yellow ring, leaving the outer ring, the outer drone still stuck to the top of the truck.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Kara said. “I thought the drone was called ELO?”
Hail shook his head.
Without taking his eyes off the big screen, he explained, “We actually landed two drones on the Huan Yue. The outer drone, the drone that looked like a round yellow reflector light, is called ELO. It’s a communications drone. It has a camera for navigation but it doesn’t support audio. That would be too much combined weight. Inside the ring called ELO is another drone called Black Eyed Peas. The inner drone is the surveillance drone. It supports both video and audio and is used exclusively for observation. The outer drone functions as the satellite uplink drone.”
“I don’t get it,” Kara said. “Why do we need two drones?”
“Look at the video,” Hail said, pointing up at the big screen. “Right now, those big warehouse doors are open and we can communicate pretty well with the drones via satellite. But when those doors close, we need to switch Black Eyed Peas’ communications from satellite to Wi-Fi communications. Even inside the warehouse with the doors closed, Black Eyed Peas will be able to pick up the Wi-Fi signal being sent from ELO. So when the truck leaves the warehouse, we’ll fly ELO off the top of the truck and land it on top of the warehouse. Once it’s up there, it will receive a strong satellite signal. It will then convert those signals to Wi-Fi and network in with BEP.”
“BEEP?” Kara asked.
“Black Eyed Peas,” Hail told her.
“Of course. What was I thinking?”
Hail watched the ceiling of the warehouse get closer and closer. He could make out a bird’s nest of some type about three feet away that was resting on the steel girder they had selected.
“You guys really have all this stuff figured out,” Kara said, without a trace of sarcasm in her tone.
“I’d like to think so,” Hail said. “We put a lot of time and money and into these designs.”
Knox hovered BEP over the beam and turned the drone on its axis 180 degrees so it was pointing toward the front of the warehouse. Shooting down at a forty-five-degree angle, the video provided a clear view of the front of the truck. Lying on each side of the truck were the stored missile sections. Behind the truck, the warehouse doors were open and beyond that was pitch darkness. The crew in the mission center could all clearly see the yellow light ring called ELO that was still sitting in on truck’s roof, lost in an array of other yellow lights and red reflectors that peppered the vehicle.
“What do you think about setting BEP down here?” Knox asked Hail.
“That bird’s nest is pretty close and there appears to be a bird in it. What do you think, Pierce? Is that thing a woodpecker or something? Is it going to mess with us?”
Knox brought the camera around and zoomed it in on the bird. The medium sized bird had a narrow black head with white stripes running down its side. It had a black sharp beak and Hail guessed it could probably do some damage to the drone if it hammered its little feathery face on it.
Pierce Mercier looked closely at the bird and said, “It’s a Korean Magpie or Oriental Magpie or Pica Sericea, known as the kkachi in Korean. It is a smaller bird with a…”
“We don’t need an ornithology lesson right now, Pierce. Is it going to peck on us or isn’t it?”
“No,” Mercier said, sounding disappointed that he couldn’t provide a full report.
“Set BEP down,” Hail said, “and be sure to touch down on the edge of the beam so we can point the camera down and see the floor.”
The camera swayed from side to side for a moment. A second later the video stream became fixed and focused as if the camera had been set on a tripod.
“We’re down,” Knox reported.
“What’s our power reserve?” Hail asked.
Knox looked up the information.
“We have about forty percent battery left on BEP.”
“So taking into account the energy used to communicate with the Wi-Fi, that would give us about four hours of video streaming,” Hail estimated.
Knox flipped to another screen.
“Three hours and thirty-seven minutes,” Knox corrected.
“And if we need to move to another location, then how much flight time does that give us?”
“About six minutes, give or take,” Knox said.
“What do the comms looked like, Shana?” Hail asked Tran, their communications expert.
“Wi-Fi signal is strong between the drones, but the satellite signal to ELO is degraded because it is semi-indoors. But that’s to be expected.”
“How much flight time do we have left on ELO?” Hail asked Renner.
Renner checked and said, “We have about four minutes of flight time. But what concerns me more is that we only have about two hours of power to facilitate the communications between the satellite and BEP. When ELO’s reserves are gone, then both drones will go black. We won’t be able to communicate with either of them.”
Hail told Knox, “Record a video for me. I want a quick 360-degree pan of the entire warehouse and then put BEP to sleep. Copy that recording to my NAS so I can look at it later.”
“Will do,” Knox said.
Hail told his crew, “Let’s focus on getting ELO out of the warehouse and up onto the roof. And then I want to put that kid to bed as well and save its power.”
Renner said, pointing at the big screen, “Looks like the Koreans are done with the lift. They’re removing the chains from the crane. I hope they aren’t going to leave the truck there overnight.”
“We’ll see in a minute,” Hail said.
A minute came and went. And then another. And then another.
“What are they waiting for?” Kara asked.
“I don’t know. I’m sure the truck driver can hardly wait to get home to his starving family,” Hail said.
Kara did not look amused.
Renner looked amused.
Knox looked amused.
So Hail was happy with his joke.
The truck driver, a small man with a dirty baseball cap, was standing patiently by the door to his truck. He smoked nervously and kept looking down at the ground.
A minute later, the Minister of State Security for North Korea, Kim Won Dong walked over and handed the man what looked like money. The man bowed several times and then climbed up into his truck.