Hail glanced at the monitor connected to the armrest of his chair. A yellow line on a black background sloped from the top of the screen in the left corner, to the bottom of the screen in the right corner. At the top of the yellow line was a kite-looking graphic that represented Blondie. At the bottom of the yellow line was a green horizontal line that represented the landing zone. Blondie was slowly sliding down the yellow line while white digital numbers indicated the drone’s speed, altitude, distance and time to its LZ.
The room was quiet. Each of the pilots had pulled up the same plot that Hail was watching on their own screens. Blondie’s nose camera was turned on and sending back live video and each of the pilots was watching that as well. But there was still not much to see. The warehouse was on the outskirts of Wonsan and with only a limited amount of electricity, North Korea was not a cityscape of dazzling lights.
Knox would typically be announcing distance and altitude, but since everyone was watching the glide slope on their own monitors, he remained silent and kept his eyes on his instruments.
“Communications status?” Hail asked Shana Tran.
“Five by five. We have a really good night out there for flying. No clouds. Great signal,” she said.
The glider was now halfway down the yellow line. The distance showed five miles. The time until landing showed sixteen minutes and five seconds.
Hail heard the thick door to the mission center hinge open and saw Kara enter the room. She was holding her cell phone in one hand and her other hand was free. She walked up and stood next to Hail. This time, Hail couldn’t offer her a chair if he wanted to, because they were all taken. She had told him before that she liked standing, so he thought nothing more of it.
“I see you removed your underwear,” she said softly.
“Yeah, I didn’t want to give these young people the wrong idea,” Hail replied.
“That was some solid thinking,” Kara said. “So what’s going on with Hail Storm,” she asked.
Hail chuckled. For some reason, every time she said Hail Storm he thought it was amusing. It wasn’t that the name was funny; it was the fact that the CIA had to name everything they did. He assumed this was the case because they had so many operations going on at one time, that they had to name them in order to refer to them. But he also assumed that each operation had a budget line associated with it and all the financials were bundled under that name. It also had a little more flair when discussing the mission with congress after it had become declassified. He was certain that they would rather discuss Hail Storm with Congress instead of Operation 19,304.
“We are about to land Blondie next to the warehouse in the LZ we selected on the photographs,” Hail told Kara.
Hail pointed down toward his monitor so Kara could see the progress of the descent.
The legend was pretty easy to follow. Kara saw that the kite-looking graphic was three-fourths down the yellow sloping line and nearing the green bar at the bottom.
Hail then pointed up at the big screen above the controller’s stations.
“That’s the live feed from Blondie’s nose camera.”
Kara had to take a second look at the screen to be sure she was watching at the correct monitor. It appeared to be turned off. The entire screen was black. And then, just when she was going to ask Hail about it, she saw a light below. A second later she saw another light on the ground, far away. It was actually two lights close together. Kara thought it must be a vehicle of some type.
“Not exactly Times Square down there. Is it?” she said.
“Nope,” Hail said. “Good thing we are navigating by GPS or there would be no way to land this thing.”
Kara thought about taking this last moment before the drone landed to tell Hail about Washington’s backup plan. If his operation was called Hail Storm, then Hail Mary would be a good name for the backup mission. Kara knew that North Korea had been steadily building up its anti-aircraft missile installations. They had purchased much of their equipment from Victor Kornev. And in just the past few years, North Korea had also purchased and installed the new Chinese radar that could detect a stealth aircraft, but not clearly enough to give an accurate location to an interception missile. Still, this meant that the North Koreans could scramble their fighters to intercept such an incursion into their country. Kara felt sorry for the poor sucker that had volunteered to fly that mission. She hoped it would be unnecessary.
“Getting close to touchdown,” Knox reported.
Kara watched the live video being sent from the drone and she thought it was useless. A flash of light here, a streak of moonlight there, and that was the best the video had to offer. The pilot they called Knox wasn’t even looking at the video feed. He was watching a bank of virtual gages and holding on to the controls, but he didn’t appear to be actually flying the machine.
“Hundred feet and flaring to fifty knots,” Knox said, but he made no significant action Kara could detect.
Hail saw Kara watching Knox and said, “The drone is flying in auto-pilot. Remember when we were on my jet and I told you that the plane could take off and land itself?”
Kara nodded.
“Well, that’s what Blondie is doing now. The only unknown is how far it will slide when it hits the landing zone. The grass and weeds in the field are wet and slick.”
“Fifty feet,” Knox announced.
“Release the skids,” Hail ordered.
Knox touched the screen and confirmed, “Skids released.”
“What are the skids?” Kara asked.
Hail took a moment before answering.
“They resemble skis and are tucked up inside the drone to prevent drag when it’s flying. When we are getting ready to land, we deploy the skis, or skids as they are called, instead of landing wheels. The skids weigh less than wheels and don’t require the extra weight of breaks. They stop the aircraft by using friction. The skids have short spikes on the back of them. After the drone touches the ground, if we lift the nose of the drone, the skids roll back onto their spikes, which dig into the ground and quickly slow down the aircraft.”
“Neat idea,” Kara said.
“Old Rugmon came up with that one” Hail told her.
“Good old Rugmon,” Kara said dryly.
Now closer to the earth, shapes and forms began to show up on the video as the bright moon illuminated the ground and the landing zone dead ahead. To the right, the warehouse was clearly visible. A bright sodium vapor lamp was mounted to each corner of the building, casting out a wide cone of light that glittered off the newly installed barbwire fence.
The video swayed from side to side a little, but Kara thought it was surprisingly stable considering that no one was flying the drone. Or maybe the opposite was the case. The reason it was so stable was because a computer was flying Blondie and not some nineteen-year-old pilot. In either case, everyone in the room held their breath as the ground, which had looked brown only a second ago, now looked somewhat greenish as the nose of the aircraft skimmed just a foot above it. The video chattered and blinked and jerked as the drone’s skids dug into the soft earth.