Chapter 14 - The voice on the guard frequency
Amanda screamed from the top of the ladder.
"Daniel! Evelyn! Someone's outside! They locked the exterior bar!"
Daniel scrambled up the ladder two rungs at a time, throwing his weight against the oak planks and reaching the floor just as the power generators in the far corner of the hangar sputtered to life with a deafening diesel chug. Halogen floodlights high up on the steel trusses flickered, buzz-hummed, and bathed the entire hangar in blinding, yellowish glare.
Evelyn climbed up right behind him, clutching the yellowed journal and the black metallic sphere against her chest.
Across the cavernous floor, standing near the master breaker panel, were three men in sterile gray tactical uniforms, completely devoid of insignia or name tags. Between them stood a man Evelyn knew well: Colonel Hayes, General Davis’s chief of staff, holding a suppressed sidearm at his side.
"You should have taken the Norfolk assignment, Captain Vance," Hayes said calmly, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls. "A nice, quiet post on the Atlantic coast. New command, hero of the family, medals polished. Why do you stubborn pilots always go looking for the wreckage?"
Evelyn stepped forward, positioning herself between Hayes and her sister. "Jonathan Davis authorized my mother's intercept corridor. He wasn't her protector. He was her handler."
Hayes smiled thinly, shaking his head. "Jonathan was a young brigadier back then, Evelyn. He did what the Pentagon told him to do. Your mother flew into Soviet airspace during an unsanctioned electronic sweep. When she realized the telemetry she was gathering wasn't monitoring foreign radar, but rather domestic defense communications, she tried to turn back."
"And Richard?" Amanda shouted, her voice trembling with fury. "Our father sold her out?"
"Your father was a supplier," Hayes said, taking three slow steps forward, his boots clicking with terrifying rhythm. "He manufactured the telemetry pods. When your mother threatened to go to the Senate Select Committee, Richard realized his entire empire would be dismantled before it even began. So Richard made a deal. He altered her navigation beacons. Davis approved the flight plan. They both got rich. They both became kings. And Clara Vance took a dive into the Yukon mountains."
"You're lying," Daniel growled, shifting his grip on the crowbar. "Davis stood on that tarmac today and handed Evelyn her mother's wings!"
"Because Davis thought Richard took the last telemetry sphere to his grave," Hayes replied, pointing the barrel of his weapon directly at the black metallic ball in Evelyn's arms. "He wanted to close the book. He wanted Evelyn to be a pretty little poster child for military resilience, so no one would ever dig into the budget black hole of Project NightHawk. But then old Marcus got sentimental. And now, Captain, you have the actual black box."
"You'll have to shoot us to get it," Evelyn said, her voice dropping into a deadly, steady register that pilots use right before a crash.
"Captain," Hayes sighed, "do you really think an airfield out here in the middle of nowhere has cell service? Nobody knows you're here. Nobody is looking for you. Put the sphere down, and I'll make sure Amanda and Daniel get out of this county alive."
May you like
Evelyn didn't blink. She reached into her flight suit pocket, pulling out her tactical radio, which was already switched to the international emergency guard frequency—a frequency monitored by every military aircraft and civil radar tower within two hundred miles.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," Evelyn spoke into the mic, her thumb holding the transmit switch down with rock-solid force. "This is Captain Evelyn Vance, callsign Valkyrie. I am under hostile armed fire at decommissioned facility Blackwood Ridge. Colonel Hayes of the Joint Chiefs is on site, committing treason against the United States."
