Chapter 9 – Old Blood

The Săpânța rail yard rotted in silence—broken steel limbs tangled in frostbitten weeds. Fog clung low, thick enough to mask footsteps but thin enough to make shapes lie. Rows of rusted freight cars loomed like corpses on display, stripped for scrap and forgotten by time.

Ghost crouched first, hand brushing over the gravel pile beside an axle corroded to the bone. No words. Just muscle memory and practiced tension. His gloved fingers struck something unnatural—a corner of reinforced polymer.

Soap kept lookout, eyes sweeping the yard through a cracked optic. "Tell me we didn't drag ass through half of Romania for a goddamn squirrel cache."

Ghost pried the panel free. Inside: a seal-stamped pouch. Laswell's personal crest, embossed in matte black wax.

Soap whistled low. "Thought she retired that mark after Doha."

Ghost said nothing. Just peeled open the pouch and dropped its contents onto the cold steel floor of an empty boxcar.

One burner phone. One thumb drive. A tightly folded document: CIA Blackroom Clearance List—current, not archival. Six attached profiles, four redacted beyond names. One circled in red ink: "Operation Scimitar – Mosul."

Soap's jaw flexed. He tapped the file with a knuckle. "Scimitar? Sounds familiar."

Ghost didn't move. Didn't blink.

He stared at the name like it had just crawled out of his own chest.

Soap leaned in. "That's the op where Echo-Four—"

Ghost stood and walked away, boots cracking frost underfoot.

---

The railcar creaked as Ghost slid the decryptor into the burner phone's port. A faint whine rose from the off-grid rig—old Soviet wiring and modern guts strung together with black tape and soldier's spite.

Soap stood watch at the rust-eaten doorway, fingers grazing the trigger of his carbine. "Still time to bail on this rabbit hole."

Ghost didn't answer. The screen pulsed once. Then again. And then Laswell's face bled onto the glass—recorded, low-res, tired.

"This data was scraped from an off-books partition inside CIA's own system," she said. "I didn't authorize it. But someone did."

Soap shifted. "Someone with teeth."

Laswell continued, her voice clipped but tight with weight: "Recon Group Echo. Blackroom-only. No records. No oversight. But they're bleeding into this mess. Spectre's tied in."

Static cut her off. Then: video feed.

Bodycam footage stuttered to life—grainy, infrared burn overlaying jagged outlines of a warzone. Mosul. Dead power lines whipped in the wind. Somewhere off-screen, automatic fire stitched the air.

"Echo-Four, requesting extraction!" The voice cracked with fear and sand.

Another voice followed—low, flat, almost mechanical.

Ghost's voice.

"Order acknowledged. Fall back. Asset expendable."

Soap's head turned slowly. "That was you."

Ghost didn't blink. Just stared as the video looped—dust spiraling, boots running, Echo-Four screaming for air cover that never came.

The feed glitched. The screen went black.

Ghost closed the rig with a snap, as if slamming a coffin shut.

Neither man spoke.

---

The static from the burner hadn't faded before Ghost staggered back against the steel wall of the railcar. His breath hitched—not panic, not fear—something colder. Soap saw the shift. Didn't say a word.

Everything went quiet.

And then—

The crack of rifle fire. A burst of light. Mosul. Three years back. Dust choking the moonlight, black smoke leaking from a shattered hospital shell. Sirens screamed themselves raw, cut off by the stutter of gunfire.

Ghost moved point. His breath rasped beneath the mask. Five shadows followed him, each step sinking into ash and broken tile. Spectre was on his right—Alaric Voss, leaner then, mask streaked with soot and sweat, voice sharp.

"Clear west stairwell. I'll flank left," Voss barked, his eyes too bright.

"Negative," Ghost replied. "We stick together."

Voss grinned under the mesh. "Didn't peg you for sentimental."

A buzz hit Ghost's comms—priority override. One tone, then a cold voice from higher up the chain: "Mission pivot. Secure the package. Echo team compromised. Repeat—Echo team expendable."

Ghost froze mid-stride. His hand hovered over the comm switch. The floor above roared—gunfire, then screaming.

"Riley," Voss snapped. "Orders?"

Ghost's jaw clenched. "Move to objective."

"You heard that, right? That was Echo. That was my team." Voss was already pivoting back. "We don't leave them."

"We've got new orders," Ghost said, tone like steel on bone. "Secure the package. That's it."

"You serious?" Voss stepped in close. "We're not contractors. These are our people."

Ghost turned away. Didn't look back. "We've got our job."

Behind them, through dust and firelight, someone shouted over comms—"We're still in here!"—then silence. The feed cut.

End of line.

Back in the present, Ghost's gloved hand flexed once—tight, then still. Soap watched, eyes narrowed.

Whatever Ghost had buried in Mosul… it was clawing its way back.

---

The burner snapped in Ghost's hands like dry bone. Plastic shards scattered onto the gravel between his boots.

Soap didn't blink. "You left him."

Ghost's gaze didn't rise. He stared at the pieces, jaw working beneath the mask like he was chewing glass. "I followed orders."

"Yeah?" Soap's voice cut sharp. "So did the Nazis."

The words hung between them, louder than the wind whistling through the hollow train yard.

A long pause. No flinch. No outburst. Ghost just stood there, shoulders squared, still as a gravestone.

Soap looked away first, dragging a hand down his face. His fingers came back black with soot and oil from the decryption rig. He wiped it on his tac vest, then turned back.

"You ever think maybe they were wrong?" he asked, lower now, like he didn't trust the air.

Ghost's eyes flicked up—no fire in them, just something quieter. Regret? Guilt? Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe just a man counting ghosts.

"They didn't ask us to think," Ghost said. "They asked us to end it."

Soap didn't answer. He stepped past, gravel crunching under his boots, and leaned against a rusted railcar. The cold bit through his gear. He welcomed it.

A freight horn echoed far off in the valley, deep and distant. Wind threaded through the ruins like a warning.

Neither of them moved.

---

Ghost's spine stiffened. He didn't blink. "Sniper. High angle. South tower."

Soap didn't ask questions. He ducked left as Ghost shoved him behind a rust-ripped railcar. The crack of suppressed fire punched into metal, peeling a chunk off the corner where his head had been.

Three silhouettes peeled from the mist—low, fast, trained. Spectre's style. One on the left flank, two slicing in wide from the right, rifles tucked tight, boots silent against gravel.

"They're close," Soap muttered, loading a spike into the launcher rig welded from train scrap and det cord. "Too close."

Ghost yanked a flashbang from his rig. One beat. Two. He lobbed it through the busted slats of a nearby boxcar and charged with it—no hesitation, no cover.

The grenade popped.

Inside, light flared. Screams.

Steel groaned as Ghost slammed through, boots hammering the deck. An enemy rose to meet him—too late. Ghost buried a knife into his throat and rode him down.

Outside, Soap rolled from cover, pivoted, and fired. The spike launcher cracked like a nail gun. Steel shaft screamed through the air and nailed the flanking operative to a crate—shoulder pinched in place, blood spooling.

The last Spectre moved too slow. Soap spun, rifle raised—but didn't fire.

The operative dropped his weapon.

"Still cleaning up Mosul's mess," the man rasped, eyes locked on Ghost's.

He smirked—and bit something between his molars.

Ghost lunged, but the body was already twitching, poison chewing through his system.

Dead before he hit the dirt.

Soap looked at Ghost. "This was no ambush. They were sent."

Ghost nodded once, breath low and steady. "And they knew exactly where to find us."

---

Soap crouched over the body, yanked the rigged tac vest aside, and froze.

"Ghost," he muttered, fingers brushing the tarnished metal tag beneath the collar.

Ghost stepped closer, one hand on the rifle, the other pulling the corpse's chin up to confirm.

Embossed letters caught the dim light: H. MALIK.

Soap blinked hard. "That's not possible."

Ghost's tone landed cold. "He died in Mosul."

Soap shook his head, mouth tight. "KIA. I remember. We saw the damn drone footage."

"Then someone lied."

They both stared at the dog tag like it might change shape. It didn't.

Soap fished through the inside pocket, found a folded slip of plastic-wrapped photo stock. Old. Burn-scarred edges. He peeled it open.

A scorched building in frame. Charred walls. A blast shadow. He knew that safehouse—Mosul again.

On the back, thick ink, scrawled sharp:

They buried us alive.

Ghost took it, scanned it fast. No comment.

Soap flipped through the rest of Laswell's packet. Offshore transfer logs, barely scrubbed—Cayman to Cyprus, Cyprus to a Romanian cut-out, then Odessa. Name attached: Vanguard Solutions. Front company. CIA fingerprints faint, but there.

"Follow the money," Soap said, jaw flexing. "That's what they always say."

Ghost nodded once, voice low. "And it leads straight to the grave they crawled out of."

Soap looked down at Malik's stiffening body. "He didn't come back alone."

"No," Ghost muttered, glancing to the treeline, "Echo-Four's still moving. And he's not working for us."

A silence settled. Not empty—watchful.

Somewhere behind the rusting cars, a crow shrieked once. Then nothing.

Ghost slipped the photo into his vest. "This wasn't a hit. It was a message."

Soap didn't reply. He just tightened his grip on the launcher and looked toward Odessa.

---

Soap leaned against the railcar, blood streaking down one sleeve, not his. He peeled his gloves off, breathing hard, eyes scanning the treeline like it might whisper the next move.

"How many more you think are out there?" he asked, voice rough.

Ghost didn't answer right away. He stood near the wreckage, staring at the dead Spectre agent like the corpse might sit up and explain itself. The dog tag still clinked softly in his hand. H. Malik. Three years dead. Walking again.

"Doesn't matter," Ghost said finally. "They'll keep coming."

Soap pushed off the railcar. "Then what? We just wait for the next ambush? Wait for Laswell to send more half-redacted corpses to our doorstep?"

Ghost turned. "We stop waiting."

"Meaning?"

He stepped closer. Low voice. No echo in it. "We go off-book."

Soap blinked. "We're already off-book."

Ghost shook his head. "Not enough. Too many eyes. Too many wires feeding the wrong people."

He opened his satchel, pulled out the blackroom packet—files, photos, pay stubs—and held them in his gloved fist.

"Ghost Protocol," he said.

Soap frowned. "That a plan or just a name you like?"

"No signals. No comms. No trackers. We go dark. Total severance. Dead drops only. Hand-to-hand chain. No more Laswell. No NATO. No bloody backups."

Soap let that hang in the cold air for a beat. "That's not a war plan. That's suicide."

Ghost met his eyes. "So was Scimitar. But someone made it out."

Soap crossed his arms. "And if we vanish completely, what's to stop them from rewriting the rest of this story? You ready to throw out every ally we've got?"

Ghost didn't blink. "I'm ready to stop being their weapon."

Soap studied him—longer than he should've. Then he spat, wiped his mouth.

"You're starting to sound like Voss."

Ghost's jaw moved once. "That's what scares me."

A silence crawled up between them. Cold. Honest.

Then Soap exhaled. "Alright. Say it again."

Ghost reached into the satchel, pulled a flare and snapped it to life—red bleeding across the fog. The wind caught the edge of a file, fluttering it like a dying flag.

He threw it into the dirt.

"Ghost Protocol," he said again.

This time, Soap didn't argue.

---

The mountain swallowed them.

No roads. No trails. Just rock, mist, and the echo of boots crunching frostbitten gravel. The fire behind them—small, controlled, deliberate—ate through classified ink with slow hunger. Paper blackened, curled, then disappeared into orange ash.

Ghost didn't look back. He adjusted the weight of his pack and kept walking.

Soap followed in silence, scanning the ridgeline, nerves wired tight. The air up here bit harder, thinner. Trees thinned out into jagged shale. Far below, the rail yard dissolved into fog and memory.

Soap finally spoke. "You ever get used to it? Burning the last bridge?"

Ghost's reply came without pause. "Only if you're stupid."

Ahead, the slope narrowed—just a goat track now, winding toward a rusted comms tower split by lightning years ago. Ghost ducked beneath its twisted frame and set down the last of the packet—Laswell's sealed files. The ones they didn't decrypt. The ones they didn't trust.

He struck a match. Let it burn to his glove before he dropped it onto the pile.

Soap watched the flames claw up the documents, fingers of light reaching like they wanted to crawl back into someone's secrets.

Behind them, across the ridge, movement flickered.

Not natural.

Not animal.

A silhouette—low-slung, static-drenched—hugged the shadow line of a broken outcrop. No sound. No breath. Just the whine of a recording module and the faint green blink of a live feed link. Spectre's new eyes. Watching. Feeding.

The figure didn't move, just watched the men disappear into the pass.

The signal fed into a low-orbit satellite bounce. Encryption live. Proxy routes rotating. Feed stable.

Somewhere, on a cold screen behind a locked door, a terminal received the final frames of two ghosts disappearing into exile.

The words pulsed onscreen in fractured red text:

GHOST PROTOCOL INITIATED

CONNECTION SECURED

OPERATION RESURGENCE – PHASE II