Chapter 17 - The Broadcast
Olivia let out a blood-curdling scream and tried to run toward her falling father.
I caught her around the waist, pulling her behind a massive stack of steel shipping crates just as bullets shredded the wall above our heads.
"He's gone, Olivia!" I yelled over the deafening gunfire.
"If we don't move right now, his sacrifice means nothing!"
Tears poured down Olivia's face, but the raw survival instinct finally took over.
She nodded rapidly, wiping the blood and dust from her cheeks.
I looked up and saw a metal spiral staircase leading to the old flight control tower suspended above the hangar floor.
"Up there," I whispered, pointing to the stairs.
We sprinted across the open walkway and scrambled up the metal steps, the bullets clanging against the steel treads beneath our feet.
We reached the observation room and slammed the reinforced metal door shut, throwing the heavy deadbolt into place.
Below us, David pounded on the bottom of the staircase, screaming obscenities and reloading his weapon.
I looked around the control room and spotted the master communications terminal glowing with emergency power.
"Olivia, can you work this console?" I asked urgently.
"My dad was a police detective, Marcus," Olivia said, her hands flying across the keyboard.
"He taught me how emergency radio uplinks work when I was twelve."
She flipped three heavy toggle switches, and the commercial broadcast system hummed to life.
"Patch it into every emergency channel in the county," I ordered, leaning over the microphone.
I held up Lauren's burner phone and connected the audio output directly to the broadcast console.
"This is Marcus Walker," my voice boomed across every police frequency, emergency band, and state patrol radio within a fifty-mile radius.
"I am broadcasting from the abandoned hangar at Miller's Airfield."
"I am currently being hunted by David Walker and a syndicate of private military contractors."
I pressed play on the burner phone, broadcasting David's recorded confession from the cabin directly into the open airwaves.
"The money, the corruption, the fabricated murder—it is all on this frequency," I spoke clearly into the mic.
"If you want the real masterminds of the city's largest fraud ring, send every unit you have."
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Through the panoramic glass of the control tower, I saw David stop at the base of the stairs.
He looked up at the loudspeakers echoing his own voice across the hangar, his face draining of all color.
