“What?” Hail asked.
“That’s right. At zero-four-hundred hours, your time, they are going to swat the fly if it hasn’t already flashed on the satellite.”
Trevor was being cryptic in his verbiage, but Hail understood exactly what he was saying.
“You have to be shitting me?” Hail said.
Trevor said nothing.
“Are they going to use a drone?” Hail asked.
“Nope. The don’t have any in the area. They are using the real deal. One butt in one seat.”
“Holy shit,” Hail said. “Do they have any idea how hot the air space will be once we take out the target? Every North Korean asleep at his radar station is going wake up and start scanning the air like their life depended on it. Anything larger than a bird is going to get a Chinese made Flying Crossbow missile enema.”
“I know,” Trevor said. “But you know how it is. I’m just the FBI to these people. What does the FBI know about bombing sorties and such?”
Hail was mad.
“You know Trev, that’s why I didn’t want to get involved with the government. It would be one thing if we coordinated the strike, but doing two separate missions and one of them is secret; that’s got cluster fuck written all over it.”
“I agree, but I’m just the messenger.”
“Do they know you called me?” Hail asked. “Was this supposed to be a secret backup plan?”
Rogers said, “I made of point of not asking during the meeting. Therefore, if in the future they ask me if I told you about it, I can say, oh, my bad, I didn’t know we were keeping this a secret.”
Hail calmed down a bit and said, “Well, you know I appreciate the call.”
“It was the most I can do,” Trevor said. “You take care of yourself and I’ll talk to you on the other side.”
“You do the same and thanks again.”
Hail clicked off his phone and stood in the hallway for a moment, considering this new information.
The first thing he needed to decide was should he share this information with his team. If his guys completed the mission before four in the morning, then they could be clear of the country and it wouldn’t even be an issue. But if his team was running late, then why even bother with the mission. Hail would lose a lot of gear if they had everything in place, only to have a jet turn it all into rubble before they could hit the switch.
And if Hail decided to tell his crew about the backup plan, would it be in his best interest to tell the CIA woman as well? But then, maybe she already knew. Maybe it was even her idea. There was no way to know unless he asked her, and asking her would be telling her. And what would happen if she knew that Hail knew this backup plan was in place. Would the White House advance their timeline?
Hail tried to remember if Kara had been in the room when they had been discussing timelines. Off the top of his head, he didn’t recall her being there during that time. She had been late to the meeting that day and that’s when they had decided on the time. Hadn’t she?
Then he started to get mad again and on the surface he didn’t know why. After all, his high-level partners in the USA were just backing him up. Just being good allies. But there was more than just that. To Hail, this was his deal. His mission. He had planned it. He had designed new drones for the task and had everything ready to go.
Then he realized the ugly fact that his anger was based on pride. And the strange thing was, Hail was good with that. He had immense pride in his crew, as well as his ship and his company and everything that he had built. If he hadn’t been wired that way, then none of this would have ever happened. He would have simply done his 9 to 5 job and then gone home to sit on the couch and watch Baywatch reruns while eating Cheetos.
He thought about it some more and tried to run through some scenarios in his mind. Hail stood there in the hall for about five minutes tossing it around. In the end, he decided that he would tell his crew about the backup mission, but he would not tell Kara. There was no point to it. Kara would be nothing more than a spectator in the mission room when the operation went down, and her knowledge would have no impact on the outcome. His crew, however, it was important for them to know that there may be friendly aircraft in the operational theater. If planes came too close to the Hail Nucleus for comfort, then his team had to be choosey about which ones they shot down.
Hail pressed a contact on his phone and listened for Renner to answer.
“Yeah,” Renner said.
“I need you to leave the meeting and walk with me over to ship security. We have some new developments we need to discuss.”
“Now?” Renner asked.
“Now,” Hail told him.
Wonsan, North Korea ― Warehouse
The official name of the vehicle was the UAZ-469, but it was essentially an open-air jeep with a canvas top. Manufactured in Ulyanovsk, Russia, the North Korean’s used it as an off-road light utility military vehicle, but Victor Kornev was trying to use it as a bed. He was exhausted and needed some sleep. The cramped office in the warehouse didn’t have any place to lie down, but that didn’t seem to bother the Minister, Kim Won Dong. His highness had fallen asleep easily in his hard wooden chair; his head flopped over on his shoulder, massive snores escaping from his gaping drooling mouth.
Kornev had watched the ugly little man for a while, until he knew he couldn’t spend another minute in the same room or he would have to take out his well-oiled Glock and first put a hole through Dong’s head and then his own. But instead of that detrimental action, he had decided to leave the office that smelled of stale Snakehead fish stew and fermented cabbage and see if the vehicle he had arrived in could offer a place to recline in comfort.
Now that he was in the UAZ, he discovered that the front seats did not recline and the back seats were actually three poorly padded seats that were welded together to make one. As he lay there, he could feel each of the bars between the seats pushing up into his back. He sat up and glanced forward at the vehicle’s dash board. The ignition key was right there sticking out of the ignition. One turn of that key and only a twenty-minute drive and he could be lying in a hot and smelly bed at the Dongmyong Hotel. If he was lucky, it could be a good electricity day and he could take a hot shower.
Victor grunted as he tried to work his phone out of his shorts’ pocket. He put it up to his face, checked for a signal, saw three bars and tried to call the truck driver again. The call went to a voicemail. Kornev cursed and checked the time. One in the morning. The truck carrying the missile part was more than eighteen hours overdue. Victor wanted to reach through the phone and grab the truck driver and choke the shit out of him. He was up for choking the shit out of anyone right now.
Sweat dripped from the tip of Kornev’s nose and onto his phone, as he sat there in the back of the UAZ, miserable with no place to go. No place to sleep. No place to eat. Even the water was highly questionable. The unreasonable part of his brain told him that it wasn’t worth it. It told him that he already had enough money and that the bag of diamonds he would get for this gig was just a bag of rocks. But the other part of his mind, the part that had taken him from a common Russian thug and had moved him up the ladder to wealth and respect, that part of his brain told him that he would sit there no matter how long it took. That sensible part of his brain knew he would sit there in the heat, in the car, in the office, hell, he would sit in a pig pen of shit if it meant getting paid. Each contract for arms could be his last. He just hoped this one wasn’t. He would prefer to go out on a high note, if possible.
So with that decision made, he put his phone back in his pocket, laid down in the back seat, felt the bars dig into his ribs, cussed again and drifted off into a painful and unrewarding slumber.