Chapter 10 – Ghost Protocol

The meatpacking plant reeked of ammonia, rot, and silence.

Concrete sweat clung to the steel beams overhead, dripping onto cracked tile. Hook chains swung slow from the ceiling, some still streaked dark with old blood. The city outside murmured with engine growls and muffled radios, but in here—it was tomb-quiet.

Ghost kicked open the rusted security gate with a boot heel and swept the corners. Clear. No footprints in the dust. No warmth in the air. They hadn't used this place in years.

Soap stepped in behind him, dropped the Faraday bag on a butcher's table with a metallic slap. He unzipped it fast—pulled out satphones, encrypted USB sticks, the remains of Laswell's burner now cracked from impact.

He looked up. "This everything?"

Ghost didn't answer. Just opened his own bag, added an RFID badge, a disassembled optic drone, and a black coin with a Spectre engraving.

Soap raised an eyebrow. "Souvenir?"

"Insurance," Ghost muttered.

Ghost struck a road flare, held it under the pile. The flame caught slow—edges curling, plastic melting into sludge. Sparks snapped up into the metal racks above, briefly lighting the rusted meat hooks like twisted chandeliers.

Smoke filled the chamber, sour and toxic.

Soap pulled his scarf over his mouth. "You think Laswell's already burned us?"

"She doesn't need to," Ghost said, his eyes fixed on the flame. "The system already did."

He stepped to the far wall, grabbed a chunk of charcoal from the furnace pit, and dragged the words across flaked paint:

NO DIGITAL. NO SIGNAL. DEAD DROPS ONLY.

The letters were sharp. Final.

Soap stared at the words. "That it then?"

Ghost nodded once. "Protocol's live. We vanish."

A metal pop echoed from the far hall. Both froze.

But it was nothing—just the old freezer door, warped and settling.

Soap let out a short breath. "Place is a coffin."

"Good," Ghost said. "No one digs up what's already buried."

---

Brăila, Romania – 03:27 hours

The well sat half-swallowed by weeds at the edge of a collapsed vineyard, the kind of place no one visited sober. Ghost stepped through the frostbitten grass, scanned the tree line. No drones. No glass glint. Only the creak of ice under his boots and the quiet exhale of river fog.

He pulled up the old lid—iron ring groaning—then climbed down, boots finding rusted rebar rungs sunk into the stone throat. Twenty feet down, he jammed a crowbar under a false panel wedged into the brickwork. It popped loose with a wet snap.

Inside: plastic-wrapped crates, stamped with faded 141 ink. Still dry.

Ghost ran his gloved hand over the ammo markings. AP rounds. Cold cash sealed in heat bags. Two suppressed ARs and an old field laptop stripped of comms. He slung the rifles, stuffed the rest into a duffel, and climbed out without a word.

He left no prints.

—

Sofia, Bulgaria – 09:12 hours

Soap moved through the alley like smoke—quick, quiet, and just pissed off enough to mean it. He found Crowther's shop under a meat market, the kind of place where every camera wore a plastic bag and every neighbor minded their own dead dog.

The door buzzed once before opening.

Crowther looked up from his bench. Fifty-something, liver-spotted, former SAS turned capitalist rat. He hadn't changed—still wore his shoulder holster like a fashion statement.

"MacTavish," he sneered. "I figured you were rotting in The Hague or some desert pit."

Soap didn't smile. "Disappointed?"

Crowther reached for his sidearm.

Wrong move.

Soap slammed the door shut with his boot, ducked under the draw, and drove an elbow into Crowther's ribs. The pistol clattered. Soap grabbed him by the collar and drove him backward into a steel locker. Hard.

Crowther wheezed, tried to pull a knife. Soap crushed his wrist against the locker seam.

"You know why I'm here?" Soap growled.

"To kill me?" Crowther spat, coughing blood.

"I'm not here for war," Soap said, voice low. "I'm here to vanish."

He released him. Crowther slid down the locker, coughing harder now.

Soap stepped past, pulled open the locker's steel face. Inside: suppressed SMGs, burner IDs, microstacked cash in rubber-sealed bricks.

He grabbed what they needed, zipped the gear into a black duffel.

At the door, he glanced back. "Sell this story to anyone, I come back for your kneecaps."

Then he was gone.

Ghost waited two alleys down. Soap dropped the duffel into the trunk, wiped sweat from his jaw.

Ghost looked him over. "Clean?"

Soap nodded once. "Clean enough to disappear."

The car peeled off toward the border. Tires silent. Eyes forward.

---

Abandoned rail depot, Hungary–Slovakian border

The table was a rusted sheet of aluminum propped on ammo crates, pitted with knife gouges and chemical burns. Ghost laid the map flat—an oil-splotched surveyor's chart from the '90s. The edges curled. The ink bled from age and blood both.

No phones. No tablets. Just paper, grease pencil, and memory.

He circled three points: Satu Mare, Košice, Komárno.

"Commercial lanes are suicide. Too many eyes, too many scanners. Airports, rail—off the table."

Soap leaned in, eyes scanning the route lines Ghost carved with surgical calm. "So what's left? Smugglers?"

Ghost nodded once. "Old ones. Pre-Schengen. Oil runners used 'em back when gas was liquid gold and Serbia was on fire. No sensors. No drones. Just wet roads and dead radios."

He pointed to a winding stretch through the Slovak forests. "This vein cuts through forgotten customs posts. Half the checkpoints are manned by ghosts and drunks."

Soap exhaled through his teeth. "Even if that works, it's three days of woods, border dogs, and locals with twitchy triggers."

"That's why we disappear first," Ghost said. "We don't go dark. We go buried."

Soap looked up. "You think Spectre won't expect this?"

Ghost didn't blink. "He'll expect we go dark. He won't expect how deep."

He folded the map, slid it into a waterproof satchel, then tossed it onto the duffel with the burner passports and sealed cash.

Soap rubbed the back of his neck, muscles taut. "So we're ghosts now. No lines, no country."

"We never had one," Ghost muttered.

They packed up without speaking. Every item accounted for. Every trail scorched.

The depot lights flickered once—then went black. Time to vanish.

---

Vienna, Austria – 03:17 AM – Rooftop adjacent to Josefstadt District

The skyline pulsed in sodium orange, quiet and surgical. Ghost crouched low behind a corroded HVAC unit, his body still, rifle tucked beneath his coat like an afterthought. Binoculars pressed against the bone of his brow. He didn't blink.

Down across the street, a five-story townhouse sat half-lit. Curtains drawn tight. Window glass blackened from the inside. The CIA had no presence there. Never did. But it looked like one of their safehouses—camera blind spot over the front door, false flag on the mailbox, cheap Balkan sedan out front with expired diplomat plates. All bait. All poison.

Soap crouched beside him, chewing tension. "You sure that'll draw him?"

Ghost adjusted focus. "They want me? I just made myself loud enough to hear."

Earlier that night, he'd walked into a metro station two blocks away. Let himself be seen. Same coat. Same gait. A tilted surveillance mirror caught his masked reflection. Grainy footage already scraped and uploaded through an old FSB darknet node. Spectre's eyes would've caught it before midnight.

Now it was patience. Now it was blood math.

Four hours in, the building's front door creaked open. A man in a dark coat approached—no hesitation, no scan, no pause. Professional posture. Gloved hands. He didn't knock.

Ghost's voice barely rose above his breath. "Mark."

Soap kept eyes on the target. "Could be courier."

"Could be corpse."

The moment the man's hand gripped the door latch, the townhouse folded inward—steel shattering glass, white light swallowing everything in an instant. The blast punched through the alley like a warhead. Shards rained down. Flames licked skyward. The sedan flipped once, landed on its roof.

Soap flinched. Ghost didn't move.

Dust drifted over the rooftop.

Soap exhaled. "That your insurance policy?"

Ghost finally lowered the binocs. "That's my eulogy."

Neither spoke as the fire devoured the trap.

Ghost slid the binocs into his coat. "Let Spectre bury that body. He'll think he won."

Soap scanned the flames, jaw tight. "He won't buy that for long."

"He doesn't need to. He just needs to think I'm dead long enough to follow the wrong trail."

The false trail burned. The real ghosts moved east.

---

Belgrade – 02:11 AM – Ruins of an abandoned theater

The wind cut through the broken rafters, dragging smoke and dust through the shell of the bombed-out auditorium. Ghost stepped through shattered pews with the silence of a shadow. No light. No echo. Just weightless footsteps on history's bones.

Soap crouched near a crumbled brick column, hand deep in the mortar seam. He pulled out a plastic capsule—wrapped tight in waxed canvas, sealed with a twist of copper wire.

Inside: one folded paper, one 2GB flash drive with no markings, one key stamped CFR.

Ghost watched from the aisle, arms crossed. "That's number nine."

Soap nodded. "Belgrade, done. Kraków's still holding?"

"Bench drop checked out. Coded clean. Key was picked up two hours late, but not tampered."

Soap tucked the capsule back, resealed the seam, and brushed his gloved hand over the wall—nothing visible, nothing distinct. "You really trust this system?"

Ghost's voice dropped, graveled. "I don't trust systems. I trust silence."

They moved quickly—no chatter, no trail. Just whispers of old Soviet tradecraft refitted with digital misdirection. No servers. No texts. No footprints.

Next: Romania.

A monastery ruin outside Sighișoara, overrun by vines and moss. Ghost scaled the drainpipe, slid a blade under a rusted sleeve. Out came a roll of cash, serials stripped. Taped inside was a square of paper soaked in iodine—handwritten code block, shortwave burst frequency, two Latin words: Oculus Extinctus.

Soap eyed the message. "You sure we're not becoming the villain here?"

Ghost lit the paper. Flames curled the Latin words into black ash.

"Villain's just the guy who lost the vote," Ghost muttered. "And right now, we're the ones not running for office."

They disappeared into the misted treeline, another city behind them, another message buried in brick and rot.

---

Kraków – Park bench, 3rd District. 04:46 AM. Snow mixed with ash in the air.

Ghost stepped through the frost-bitten shadows, his boots whispering over the gravel path. Trees stood like silent witnesses, branches skeletal against the morning gray. Soap flanked him, eyes sweeping intersections, jacket zipped high, collar stiff with frozen sweat.

They reached the hollowed bench. No one around. No footsteps in the snow. Ghost lifted the wooden seat, fingers quick.

A capsule sat inside.

Wrong color.

Wrong texture.

Wrong handwriting.

Ghost slit it open. A tarot card unfolded first—The Tower. Smoke-blackened edges, damp with something that smelled like gasoline.

Inside: a note scrawled in thick block letters.

"You think darkness hides you. It only makes your shadow longer."

Soap froze. "That ours?"

Ghost didn't answer. Just stared at the card like it had spoken aloud. He struck a match against the bench, held the flame under the message until it curled and blackened. The paper shriveled without a sound.

"Spectre," Soap said finally. "How deep?"

Ghost crushed the last ember with his boot. "This was dropped less than twelve hours ago. Right location. Right timing. Not our ink. Not our hand."

"So we're already compromised."

Ghost's voice came flat. "No. We're already watched."

They didn't linger.

They didn't talk.

Just vanished down the footpath, the city still asleep, their trail already scorched behind them.

---

Novi Sad, Serbia – Flooded tram depot turned neutral zone. 22:13 local.

The wind cut through the depot's rusted frame like a scalpel. Mold slicked the concrete. Pigeons roosted overhead, restless. Ghost knelt beside a collapsed control box, his gloves tracing the underside where a plastic envelope had been taped, exact coordinates embedded in the old gridwork.

Soap kept watch by the shattered windows, eyes adjusting between shadow and sodium light.

Ghost slid the envelope free. Thick paper. Serbian. Handwritten Cyrillic.

He unfolded it beneath a busted overhead lamp. Four lines. Clean strokes. Ink smudged by old fingers.

> "One survived. They cut out his tongue. He's in Prague."

A location followed: Zbraslavské Sanatorium, Praha. Decommissioned 2001.

No signature. Just the alias—"Vera Pashin."

Soap leaned in, reading over Ghost's shoulder. "You think it's legit?"

Ghost circled the word "tongue" with his finger. "No one knew about the survivor. Not unless they were in the room."

Soap let out a low breath, adjusting the sling on his shoulder. "We go to Prague?"

Ghost didn't answer at first. He flicked open a lighter and ran the flame beneath the edge of the note. A faint second message appeared—thermal ink, barely there:

> "Zelená jehličí. Black masks. Guarded still."

Soap raised a brow. "Zelená what?"

"Green needles," Ghost muttered. "Czech term for covert state contractors. Black ops."

"Still active?"

Ghost stood. His voice came cold. "We don't walk into Prague looking like us."

Soap nodded once. "So we burn our faces first."

Ghost's silence said enough.

They left the depot without turning back—just two shadows bleeding into a city that had already forgotten their names.

---

Slovak–Czech border. 04:19. Humanitarian corridor disguised as relief aid convoy.

The truck's suspension groaned over potholes like bones grinding in a bad joint. The air inside stank of diesel, wet wool, and metal. No windows in the back—just aluminum walls and crates marked Medicinska Pomoc. Fake relief gear stacked to the roof. Real enough to pass a cursory check. Fake enough to hide what mattered.

Ghost sat cross-legged on a medical stretcher, mask tucked in a satchel, skin streaked with burnt cork, iodine, and ink. His eyes stayed locked on the crate across from him. Not for security—he'd wedged a fragment of broken mirror there. A sliver of warning.

Soap sat near the door latch, shifting under his smuggled medic coat, Balkan refugee ID sewn into the inner seam. He pulled it out once, checked the name again. "Dr. Nenad Božić." The photo didn't look like him. That was the point.

He glanced at Ghost. "You ever fake a war wound to get through a checkpoint?"

Ghost didn't look up. "I make better ones than I fake."

Soap rubbed a hand over his face. The buzz cut itched under the knit cap. "We're walking into a dead asylum to find a man with no tongue, guarded by ex-black ops. This whole thing's sideways."

Ghost finally met his eyes in the mirror shard. "Everything's sideways when you dig deep enough."

The truck jerked. Outside, tires splashed through shallow mud. Voices barked in Czech—border control.

Soap's hand slid to his boot. A scalpel blade taped to the arch.

Ghost didn't move. Just blinked. Slowly.

The rear doors banged open. Cold fog spilled in, followed by a border agent in a reflective vest. Flashlight sweeping. He spoke fast Czech, impatient.

The driver—a paid smuggler with a volunteer badge—rattled off rehearsed lines about medical supplies, Red Cross, time-sensitive transport. Papers passed. Checked. Cleared.

The agent's flashlight hovered on Ghost's face for a beat too long.

Soap leaned forward. "Burn victim," he said, accent thick. "Od Niš. We treat him in Prague. Facial trauma."

The guard nodded once. Hesitated.

Then moved on.

Doors slammed shut. Locked.

The truck rolled forward.

Fog thickened outside like old smoke. Trees blurred into ghosts. No border lights. No traffic. Just silence now.

Soap breathed again. "You think Spectre's in Prague?"

Ghost's voice was quiet. Measured. "He was there before we even knew to look."

Soap stared out the cracks in the doors. The road ahead looked like the end of something.

"What's in Prague?" he asked.

Ghost stared back into the mirror shard. His voice came low. Flat. "Old sins. And one man left to scream without a tongue."