Chapter 12 - Island of GhostsThe sunrise over Midway Atoll was a stark, brutal slash of orange across a violet sky.
The Gulfstream’s main gear hit the cracked, weed-strewn concrete of the abandoned airfield with a harsh rumble. Seagulls exploded into the air by the thousands as Marcus brought the aircraft to a stop near the rusted frames of World War II-era hangars.
The engines sputtered and died—out of fuel down to the last gallon.
We stepped out into the humid, salty air. The island felt completely isolated from the rest of the human race, a place where time had stopped fifty years ago. But for us, it was the only safe sanctuary left on Earth.
“We have about six hours before satellite imaging spots this plane sitting on the runway,” Daniel said, setting his laptop on the wing of a rusted maintenance truck inside a half-collapsed hangar. “We need to broadcast the decrypted file before Vance realizes we survived the dive.”
“We can’t just upload this to the internet, Daniel,” I warned him, leaning against the truck’s fender. “The moment this hits public servers, the Pentagon’s Cyber Command will flag it as classified tactical data and wipe it within minutes. The news outlets won't touch it without verification from a flag officer.”
“Which brings us back to General Cole,” Daniel said.
May you like
“How do we contact Cole without Vance intercepting the transmission?” Marcus asked, opening the Gulfstream’s maintenance kit to check our gear.
“We use an old shortwave military radio,” I said, pointing to a rusted radio tower standing near the far end of the airfield. “High-frequency radio waves bounce off the ionosphere. No satellites, no digital routing, no central servers for Cyber Command to flag. Just raw analog signal across the Pacific.”
Related Stories
