Chapter 9 - The Ghost Protocol
The cold night air hit my lungs like ice water as I dropped out of the coal chute into the narrow, trash-strewn alleyway behind the precinct, pulling Caleb down beside me behind a row of industrial green dumpsters.
A second later, Thomas vaulted out of the hatch, landing cat-like on the asphalt with his service weapon drawn, scanning the shadowed rooftops.
"Are you okay, Cale?" I asked, grabbing the boy's shoulders and checking him over in the dim amber glow of a distant streetlamp.
"I'm fine, Chief," Caleb panted, clutching my leather bag containing the magnetic tape to his chest like a shield. "I didn't let go of the archive."
"Good boy," I whispered, pulling out my encrypted burner phone. The precinct's primary communication grid was locked down by the mercenary team inside, but the secure satellite relay built into my command vehicle parked two blocks away was still operational.
"Where to, El?" Thomas asked, keeping watch down the alley as the muffled sound of shouting echoed from inside the basement coal chute. "If Miller locked down the precinct network, every patrol car in the county is going to have orders to bring us in as fugitives within ten minutes."
"Not every car," I said, tapping the screen of my burner phone to initiate a high-level override protocol known only to active commanding officers with thirty years in grade—the Ghost Protocol.
It was a dead-man's switch built into the state police mainframe that bypassed local precinct servers entirely, routing an automated distress beacon directly to the federal attorney general's office and every uncompromised state trooper barracks within a hundred-mile radius.
Beacon transmitting...
Encryption: Level 5 Secure.
Target: Federal Task Force on Municipal Corruption.
"We're not running, Tom," I said, standing up and sliding my pistol back into its holster. "We're going to the county courthouse."
Thomas raised an eyebrow, a grim, humorless smile touching the corner of his mouth. "The courthouse? At three in the morning? Arthur Dubois owns the night judge."
"He owns the night judge," I agreed, checking the magazine of my weapon. "He doesn't own the federal magistrate who signed the original wire-fraud warrants for the Dubois holding group this morning. And with the physical tape we have in this bag, we're going to wake him up."
Before Thomas could reply, the heavy metal door of the alley exit burst open, and three armed operatives in black tactical gear spilled out into the courtyard, their weapon-mounted flashlights sweeping the darkness.
"There! By the dumpsters!" one of them shouted.
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"Move!" Thomas barked, grabbing Caleb by the arm as we sprinted down the narrow, winding backstreets of Brook Haven toward the waiting command vehicle, with the sharp crack of suppressed gunfire snapping against the brick walls behind us.
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