“Are you there, Kara?” Pepper asked.
“Yeah, I’m here. The only thing I have to report is that Hail is a pompous power hungry ass,” but she didn’t say that.
She simply said, “Nothing else to report.”
Pepper asked, “Can you hold for a minute?”
Before Kara could say, “Sure,” she was already listening to elevator music.
Her confrontation with Marshall Hail had upset her more than she had anticipated. And that was a strange emotion because she was the amazing Kara Ramey, master manipulator of all things created male. But there was something about Marshall Hail that was different than the other men she had mastered and she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was rich, but most of her assignments had been wealthy. Poor men didn’t have much power and therefore were inconsequential when it came to big world stuff. Most rich men were powerful. Either that or they had inherited their wealth, which made them rich and powerful and lazy. Hail was not bad looking, but he was no twenty-nine-year-old male model, so that wasn’t it. Hail was indeed powerful. In order to build up his business, he had effectuated a great many dominant and influential actions to get where he had ended up. But that in itself didn’t carry any great weight with Kara.
She thought about it and decided the trait in Marshall Hail that attracted her was his love for his deceased family and his crew ― his friends. It had been so long since she had witnessed a man who could show unabated love for someone that she doubted if a man like that still existed in the world. She knew her father had loved her, but she had yet to witness that emotion first hand in another man. Hail loved people. But the dark side of the man also hated people. It was a tarnished spot on a silver soul. Kara knew why that dull spot was ensconced in the man, because she had the exact same tarnished areas that could no longer reflect light. Her dark spots devoured evil; actually wanting to touch evil before killing it. It was ugly. It was not her choice and therefore inescapable. And she could see her reflection each time she peered deeply into Hail’s eyes. She was right there on the surface. Right next to him. They were so different and still just the same.
“We’re back, Kara,” Pepper said. Kara brushed her red hair away from her face and put the phone closer to her ear. The ship must have changed direction. The spot between the containers she had chosen to escape the wind was no longer working.
She said, “I’m here,” as she walked deeper into the maze of containment vessels.
Pepper’s said, “After discussing the situation, our question is, do you have any idea of how Hail is going to destroy the missiles?”
“None,” Kara said honestly. “But I guess I will know that answer after the meeting I am missing right now.”
“Do you need anything from us?” Pepper asked.
“Yes I do. Hail asked me to request satellite photos of the warehouse. We need them quickly. If you can get them at first light and then email them to myself and Hail, we can then use them to determine the LZ for the final approach on the target.”
“Understood,” Pepper said. “Are you OK?”
“Affirmative.”
“Alright, then. Text the warehouse coordinates and we will get busy. Good luck,” Pepper told her.
Kara clicked off and pulled up a text message that she had already composed which contained the warehouse coordinates.
She clicked SEND and watched the message hourglass for a moment as it disappeared and flew through the air on its way to Pepper. She put her phone back in her pocket and walked back to the ship’s railing.
The night was beautiful, just the way God had made it. Kara let out a breath and then breathed in the ocean’s scent. Somewhere in the dark she heard the distant chatter of porpoises as they played and socialized. At least something was happy on this sultry night. She took in another deep breath and held it like it was her last. She then let it out slowly, releasing all her frustrations out into the nothingness that laid before her for hundreds of miles.
Hail heard the door to the conference room open and from the corner of his eye he saw Kara walk into the meeting.
Renner was talking.
“So the only thing we have left to figure out is how to get into the warehouse.”
Kara walked up to the conference table and nudged in next to Hail. Almost everyone was standing in close and studying still photos of the inside of the warehouse that had apparently been snipped from the video that BEP had taken hours ago.
“Hi Kara,” Renner said.
Hail said nothing. He continued to study the photos, paying no attention to the CIA woman.
“Hi Gage. Hi Marshall,” she said purposely.
Hail turned to look at her briefly and said, “Oh, Hi,” and turned back to the photos.
Lifting her mouth up towards Hail’s ear, speaking with just enough volume for only Hail to hear, she asked, “Are you still grumpy?”
Hail continued to ignore her.
Two white coats were again present at the meeting; Eric Rugmon their drone designer and Terry Garber, Hail’s lab manager. Pierce Mercier stood quietly, patiently, knowing that his value to the meeting involved weather and nature and therefore, at this moment, he was simply a spectator. Shana Tran was the only person sitting down. She wasn’t looking at the photos. She was looking at her long red fingernails. Kara was sure that if Shana had a nail file on her, she would have been perfecting her pretty nails right there in front of everyone.
“Does anyone have any ideas on how to access the warehouse?” Hail asked his team.
“I think in order to frame that answer, we need to define some operational parameters,” Renner suggested.
“I would agree with that,” Hail said. “I think the first parameter is silence. However we intend to breach the warehouse, it has to be silent. We can’t alert the guards and have them run in and start blasting away with their guns.”
“Agreed,” Renner said.
Renner asked Kara, “Are we getting those overhead shots of the warehouse from your agency in the morning?”
“Yes we are,” Kara said. “They will be emailed to me and to Marshall as soon as they are acquired.”
Hail said, “To move forward with our planning, we have to assume that there is a spot we can touch down within two hundred yards, or else our math won’t work.”
“I agree,” Renner said. “So now our two mission parameters are two hundred yards out and we must stay silent.”
“Is that all?” Hail asked.
Pierce Mercier offered, “Another parameter is WHEN ― you need a date and time when you plan to breach the warehouse. I need to know so I can check the weather and visibility and other factors.”
Shana Tran looked over the top of her extended fingernails and added, “All those weather factors can affect the satellite transmission and communications, so they are important to me as well.”
Hail summarized the input of the others.
“Alright, well the date and time will be determined by other factors as well. The first one that comes to mind is the time it will take to fabricate the drone that will breach the warehouse. As you all know, we currently don’t have anything like that in our inventory. We could always blow a hole in the side of the building, but that’s not quiet. So the first thing we need to figure out is how to get into the warehouse?”
There was a lull in the meeting while everyone considered the problem.
Renner broke the silence by saying, “I don’t see any way that we can open the doors, so our only other option is to cut a hole in the building.”