Chapter 10
The distress beacon broadcasted across every police scanner, amateur radio band, and digital billboard within a fifty-mile radius, bypassing the cartel’s cellular jammers through a localized mesh network.
Viktor raised his rifle, aiming directly at the top of the concrete barrier where Thomas and his family were hiding.
“End of the line, Thomas,” Viktor sneered, squeezing his finger against the trigger.
WHAM.
A blinding wall of golden light washed over the overpass as three heavy-duty Mercy General ambulance choppers dropped out of the cloud cover, their massive rotor blades beating the freezing air into a furious hurricane. High-intensity searchlights locked directly onto Viktor and his tactical squad, blinding them instantly.
From behind the choppers, a convoy of state police tactical units roared onto the scene, their sirens screaming a triumphant chorus that drowned out the gunfire.
“Federal Marshal! Drop your weapons! You are interfering with a multi-jurisdictional rescue operation!” boomed a voice over the chopper’s public address system.
Viktor cursed furiously, shielding his eyes against the blinding searchlights as his men scrambled backward toward their vehicles.
“Fall back! Fall back now!” Viktor shouted, diving into the nearest black SUV just as state police cruisers rammed the cartel vehicles off the asphalt.
Marcus stood up from behind the barrier, dropping his laptop onto the gravel as he waved frantically at the descending rescue chopper.
“Over here! We need immediate medical evacuation for a pediatric patient!” Marcus yelled over the deafening roar of the rotor wash.
Clara and Thomas lifted Lily’s medical cot together, pushing it toward the open bay doors of the landing helicopter. Leo clutched his father’s jacket tail tightly, his big hazel eyes wide with awe as the medics rushed out to take over Lily’s care.
As the chopper lifted off the tarmac, carrying the children safely toward a secure underground medical facility, Thomas looked down at his brother with profound relief.
“You actually pulled it off, Marcus. You broke their comms blockade.”
Marcus wiped a smudge of soot from his forehead, looking out the chopper window at the flashing lights fading below them.
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“That was just the warm-up, brother,” Marcus said grimly. “The entire nation saw what happened tonight. The livestream archive was downloaded by over twenty million users before the jammers hit. The world is watching us now, and they aren't going to look away.”
Back on the ground, amidst the smoking wreckage of the blockade, the federal marshal walked over to a secure terminal in his command van, pulling up a decrypted file from Viktor’s abandoned laptop—and his face turned completely white.
