Weston asked, “What do we feel is an appropriate amount of time to wait for Hail to complete this mission?”
Pepper spoke up.
“I would be surprised if he doesn’t take action tonight, North Korean time,” Pepper added.
“I agree,” General Ford said. “Hail has to understand, the same as we do, that all the parts can be moved at any time. If I were in his shoes, I would hit the warehouse tonight as well.”
“So we’ve decided that our cutoff time is tonight?” the President confirmed.
Everyone in the room nodded their heads, except for Trevor Rogers, but no one noticed.
“So our Plan B is sometime before sunrise?” the President confirmed.
“I think around four in the morning would be the latest we would want to strike,” the General suggested. “It would give us time to get out of the theater before the sun comes up and paints our jet in the sky.”
“What assets do we have in that area?” the President asked.
“Off the top of my head, I know that the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is approaching our Fleet Activities Chinhae Navy Base in Busan, South Korea.”
“Is the Gerald R. Ford equipped with predator drones?” Spearman asked.
“No,” the General responded, the sound of disappointment in his tone. He understood that sending a drone in to do the dirty work would be much better than sending in a manned aircraft. Less down side all the way across the board.
“But I am confident that our new F-35 Lightning II can do the job just fine,” the General said.
The General was referring to the new Lockheed Martin F-35, an all-weather stealth multirole fighter. It was the fifth generation combat aircraft and designed to perform ground attacks. The 100-million-dollar fighter was the best of the best and the General had complete confidence in its abilities.
“What is the flight time to the target?” Spearman asked.
“Well, I’m sure we don’t want to fly directly over the DMZ border for this sortie. It would be much better to make a big looping flight path over the Sea of Japan and then come in low, avoiding ground radar,” the General explained.
No one in the room could fault the General’s logic.
Continuing the General said, “But hell, at 1300 miles per hour, it’s like taking a stroll around the block to an F-35. Time is not a real issue. From take-off to target we are talking maybe fifteen minutes.”
The General paused to see if anyone had anything to add.
After another moment the President asked, “Does anyone else have anything to add?”
The man from the FBI spoke up.
“What if Hail is successful in blowing up the warehouse. How will we know?” Rogers asked.
Pepper fielded the question.
“We are watching the warehouse closely with one of our satellites. Of course, it can’t see the building in the dark, but it will detect a flash if the building blows up. Also, I’m sure that my agent Ramey will notify me of the strike.”
“Unless anyone has anything else, then that sounds like the plan,” the President said. “I would like us all to be in the situation room tonight to observe the operation.”
The General said, “Excuse me, Madam President, but there is a thirteen-and-a-half-hour difference between Washington and North Korea. Four o’clock in the morning would be our 2:30 in the afternoon tomorrow.”
“I will see you then,” President Joanna Weston told the men. “But right now I have a lunch meeting with the President of Nauru.”
There was silence for a moment and then Trevor Rogers asked, “Where is Nauru?”
“It is more like what is Nauru?” Eric Spearman asked. And then answering his own question he added, “It happens to be the smallest country in the world.”
“Third smallest,” the President corrected, already getting up from her chair and heading for the door.
“And they get a lunch with the President of the United States?” Rogers asked to no one in particular.
The President had exited the room so the General answered.
“You never know when you’ll need a military base on a tiny island in Micronesia, and if all it cost you is a lunch with the POTUS, then that sounds like a good deal to me.”
Sea of Japan ― on the cargo ship Hail Nucleus
During the entire time Kara had spent in high school and then college, every time she had sat in front of a complicated math problem of any type, she had always thought to herself, “When in my life will I ever need this shit?” And up to this point, she had never run into a situation that required complicated math. Her phone had a calculator and her CIA job didn’t require trigonometry or calculus or any of that geek mathematics. And technically, right at that moment she still didn’t need those skills either, because everyone around her appeared to be a math genius. She was good at languages, but when it came to paying attention in algebra or calculus, it was always easier to find a smart guy to help her out.
From the moment she had pulled up a chair at the big conference table and begun to look at the warehouse aerial photos, the meeting had turned into math. The topic of math initially reared its ugly head when there was a need to know how far the mother drone would be away from her baby drones, and then how far the baby drones would have to fly to get to the warehouse. Kara thought that was complicated enough, but the math that followed those issues was dizzying.
Renner, Hail and Mercier were crunching numbers based on power consumption versus flight time versus battery weight versus total payload. The lab coats, Garber and Rugmon, where working on weight distribution and oxy-fuel cutting calculations, using acetylene or methylacetylene or propylene. Their math tinkered around with the oxy/fuel ratios for maximum tip temperatures versus weight factors. Garber and Rugmon looked absolutely electrified as their calculators spit out numbers related to pre-heat flame temperatures which effected the oxygen stream throughput which was related to the torch and cutting nozzle diameter, which also varied the numbers involving cutting speed versus the material being cut.
Each group was jotting on pads, writing on tablets, entering data into spreadsheets and then changing numbers when the ones they tried didn’t work.
Kara couldn’t feel more out of place if she had walked into an insurance seminar.
Then the graphs started. These were shown on the big screens in the conference room so everyone could look them over and comment on how they were too flat or dipped too quickly or spiked where it shouldn’t be spikey. Then the math would start in again, making the dips less dippy and spikes less spikey.
By the time the meeting had concluded, Kara didn’t have a clue what had transpired.
“If everyone is happy with all of this, then I think we’re a go,” Hail said, smiling a tired yet accomplished smile.
Kara felt foolish simply being in the meeting and decided that anything she had to add would be met with either distain or indifference. So she said nothing.
Hail’s phone when off. He took it out of his pocket and noted it was his old friend Trevor Rogers from the FBI giving him a call.
“I’ll be back in a second,” Hail told the group. He stepped out of the room and into the hallway and answered his phone.
“Hey Trev, what’s up?”
“Nothing good,” was the answer.
“How so?” Hail asked.
“I just wanted to give you a heads up that I just got out of a meeting with all the people that were in the meeting when you came out here.”
It was apparent that Trevor was being careful not to use names.
“OK,” Hail said to let Trevor know he understood.
“They are planning an entire backup mission, just in case you can’t get the job done.”