You cannot put a 'wait' in atomic functions -- it's not possible. This is a feature of lavishscript and a design limitation (or feature) of evebot.
The simple answer is to have the atom launch a new script that has the sole purpose of "waiting" and then launching drones (while the calling atom does nothing.) Scripts work like 'threads' in real programming languages, so the concept works. However, I don't think that lavishscript has any sort of blocking variables (ie, "mutex" type variables) to stop the current thread until the new one has finished ..therefore, your original script will continue to go while the new one is "waiting and launching drones", if that makes sense.