CHAPTER 37 – GHOSTS REASSEMBLE
Bucharest's military tarmac simmered under floodlights. Midnight wind carved through the open airfield, snapping tarps, biting skin. Frost laced the edge of the C-130's cargo ramp like dried blood veins.
Ethan stepped up first—bootprints sinking into steel. A strip of duct tape hugged his forearm, the constellation sketched in Sharpie half-smudged from sweat. Ritual. Anchor. He didn't look at it. He didn't need to.
Laswell stood near the nose, eyes shielded behind tinted lenses, voice clipped in Ghost's earpiece.
> "Berlin rail is sealed in seventy-one hours. If Gravehound's there, he's not just guarding the freight—he's curating it."
Ghost joined her, silent, scanning the dark perimeter. The wind caught his hood. He didn't flinch.
> Ghost: "That Archive... it a decoy?"
> Laswell: "If it is, it's a damn convincing one. NATO sigs, secure codes. Valk's buried this deep."
Ethan leaned back against the inner bulkhead, flipped Lara's journal open with one hand. The page crackled as it bent—old ink, a rough sketch: a dog tag etched with Velez's badge number, slashed through by the Valk sigil. Crossed out once. Then circled again, like she changed her mind. Or knew she didn't have time.
He stared at it for a long second, jaw flexing.
> Ethan: "What kind of architect builds with ghosts?"
Ghost didn't turn, just replied low, steady:
> "One who buries them in blueprints."
The engines roared to life—low, teeth-rattling growl. Laswell didn't wait for the ramp to close.
> "Price is wheels-up from Cyprus. Don't expect clean orders."
Ethan let the journal snap shut.
> "Never do."
The ramp sealed. Light cut to red. The C-130 rolled forward into cold black sky, leaving Bucharest—and whatever was waiting in Berlin—in its vapor trail.
---
RAF Forward Ops wasn't built for comfort. Wind bullied the canvas hangars, sand crept into cracks, and the place smelled of jet fuel and burned time. Floodlights painted the tarmac in harsh white geometry. Silence clung to the corners.
The transport hissed to a halt. The hatch dropped with a hydraulic groan.
John Price stepped out, his MTP jacket stained with old grit and new blood. He moved like a man stitched together by routine and pain—every step heavy, calculated, like he didn't trust the ground to stay still.
Inside the briefing tent, the air was cooler, stale with caffeine and cold fury.
Laswell didn't waste a second.
> "Voss was a puppet. Valk pulled the strings."
She slid a burner tablet across the table—photos, encrypted logs, three names grayed out under the header: Volkner Asset Tree – Redacted. Price didn't read. He dropped a folder instead. Manila. Thick. Marked with grease and rage.
> Price: "We pulled a weed. Turns out we missed the roots."
Ghost leaned forward, fingers steepled, unreadable.
Ethan didn't sit. He stood near the corner, posture sharp, scanning the table like it owed him something. His eyes caught on a scuffed recorder.
Laswell tapped play.
A dead man's voice—ragged, static-strangled.
> "The Gravehound hunts stars now."
The air snapped tight. Ethan's shoulder twitched before he caught himself. Not enough for civilians to notice. Ghost noticed.
Price clocked it too. He spoke low, like the words might trigger landmines.
> "You knew Valk before Ghost. Tell us."
Ethan didn't blink.
> "No. I knew what he did."
His tone was flat. Like a case file. Like a trigger pull.
> "To my partner. To me. Valk framed a cop. Built a case out of lies. That was just his warmup."
Laswell watched him the way a sniper watches a storm roll in. No questions. Not yet.
Ghost's jaw shifted, but he said nothing. Just kept Ethan in frame.
The silence held. Not awkward—deadly. Like the air before breaching a door you know is wired wrong.
Price finally exhaled, slow.
> "Then we take the root. Burn it out."
Ethan didn't answer. He just looked down at the folder.
And smiled. Not pleasant.
Predatory.
---
RAF Cyprus, deep inside the Forward Command Bunker. The lights didn't hum—they glared. Cold fluorescents buzzed over scarred concrete and war-torn maps. The room smelled like scorched plastic and recycled adrenaline.
The ops table groaned under weight—burnt schematics, crumpled sat-prints, half-charred files scavenged from black sites. Every inch of surface told a story. Most ended in silence.
Ethan paced like a storm in a bottle. One boot always a half-step from bolting. His eyes didn't rest—they carved through the chaos. Threads. Patterns. Ghosts in data form.
Laswell connected dots like she'd bled over them.
> "Confirmed visual on Dahl outside Kaliningrad—he's alive. Valk kept him off-grid. Kept him useful."
She didn't pause. The next slide hit like a shovel.
> "UN aid fronts. Dummy corps with legit seals. Valk's money ran through at least six of them. Humanitarian on paper—experiments underneath."
Price leaned in. One finger tapped a grainy photo of a mass grave perimeter. Blue tarps. Burned IDs.
> "Lab rats."
> "Victims," Laswell corrected, flat.
Then came the kicker.
> "Our Vine contact in Algiers went dark yesterday. He was tracking trauma-settlement payouts—quiet cash trails tied to Valk's field tests."
Ethan stopped moving.
His hand landed on a name scrawled in permanent marker. Nadia Vetrova.
The room shifted. Quiet didn't mean calm—it meant the fuse had hit the powder.
> Ethan: "She's in this."
Ghost turned slightly, watching him over his mask.
> Laswell: "Signal specialist. Former KGB disinfo. She didn't just study minds—she rewired them. Built the psych profiles Valk turned into ghosts with triggers."
> Ghost: "And now?"
> Laswell: "Now she sells answers by the kilo. Moscow wants her dead. Berlin wants her found. Valk just wants her quiet."
Ethan stared at the name like it owed him a debt. His voice came low.
> "I want her talking."
No one argued.
Because when Ethan said it like that—like a sniper marking wind speed—you knew someone was already dead.
---
The hangar stank of fuel and sweat. Big-bellied birds slept on cracked tarmac, their wings twitching in the night wind. Inside, under sodium lights, the squad scattered—too quiet for comfort, too wired to sit.
Soap MacTavish arrived like a thrown wrench—energy sharp, voice sharper.
> "Heard our sniper's been doodling stars again," he called, tossing his ruck down with a slap. "What is it now, Drake? Orion guide your trigger finger?"
Ethan didn't look up. Just kept scratching graphite across his notebook, lines arcing into something jagged and mean.
> "Nah," he muttered. "Helps me see where the fire spreads."
Soap's grin cracked wider. He leaned in, pushing the edge.
> "Right. And I use bagpipes for recon."
Ethan's eyes flicked up, cold steel behind the blue. "That explains your aim."
The room tightened.
Price cut through the tension like a blade through rope. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
> "This isn't therapy. It's war. We stop Valk before he makes ghosts of us all."
Ethan closed the notebook. Didn't stand. Didn't blink.
> "Too late for that, mate."
Something unspoken twisted between them—burned names, missions that went sideways, dead teammates turned intel tags.
Ghost moved in, not fast, just final. His presence muted everything else.
> "Keep the heat on Valk, not each other," he said, voice even but anchored. "We've already buried too many."
No one replied. They didn't need to.
Ethan slipped the pencil behind his ear. Soap leaned back, jaw tight.
---
The hangar's war table was a battlefield of its own—frayed maps, scuffed drives, and dossiers ringed with cold coffee stains. Overhead, the sodium lights buzzed like gnats in a trench. Laswell stood at the edge, sleeves rolled, voice sharp as a scalpel.
> "Vetrova's signal hit once—Kasbah District, Algiers. That Vine asset trailing her? Gone. Found his burner gutted, data scrubbed."
She tossed a printed satellite still across the table. A cluster of rooftops, tangled alleys like a nervous system—hard to breathe just looking at it.
> "Valk didn't just bury him. He erased the man."
Ghost leaned in, eyes narrowing at a circled building.
> "What was he chasing?"
> "Files," Laswell said. "Off-the-books settlements. Death payouts tied to Valk's human trials. Names, ranks—Ghost program candidates, maybe even scrapped prototypes."
Silence thickened.
Soap whistled low. "Bloody hell. He's not cleaning house. He's prepping a new one."
Price's boot hit the floor hard as he stepped in. The growl in his tone didn't ask for permission.
> "We go in clean. No flags, no callsigns. Just ghosts."
Eyes flicked to Ethan.
He didn't blink. Didn't smirk. Just nodded once, voice low, steady as a trigger pull.
> "Then I'll bring the dark."
He peeled away from the table without ceremony, his shadow stretching long across the war map as he disappeared into the hangar's gloom—like a bullet already fired.
---
Marseille Blacksite
The steel vault door hissed as it sealed behind him, trapping the cold like a kept secret.
Inside, fluorescence flickered over stacked crates stamped in worn military stencil. The Enforcer moved slow—methodical, not cautious. He knew this room. Built it, maybe. Or buried enough bodies to call it his.
He stopped at a box half-shoved behind a hydraulic rig. PROTOTYPE – STAR burned black across its rusted face.
A box meant to be forgotten.
The crowbar sang against the latch. Metal groaned open.
Inside, layers of gear wrapped in plastifoil. Old Ghost insignia. A cracked helmet visor, spiderwebbed from impact. A bloodstained kneepad. Things built for war, discarded after darker trials.
He reached deeper.
Pulled out a small canvas bag. Civilian, cheap. Personal.
He unzipped it slow.
A photograph—creased, water-damaged, but intact. A boy, maybe ten. Ethan Drake. Standing next to a patrol cruiser in Queens. Big grin, badge pinned to his shirt like it meant something. Red ink circled his face, tight and deliberate.
The Enforcer stared.
Long.
Then: a whisper. Measured. Like reciting a creed.
> "He remembers. That's enough."
The photo went back in the bag. Reverently. Like relics for a coming war.
He turned, keyed the uplink. A green light pulsed on the monitor. Coordinates locked—Algiers.
The Enforcer didn't smile.
But something colder than joy flickered across his face.
He shut the lid and left the vault without looking back.
---
A surge of bodies flowed through Algiers like floodwater through broken stone. Sirens ricocheted off weathered brick. Vendors barked under canopies patched with old flags. Burned edges. Faded borders.
satellite footage blurred with drone thermal—no clarity, just movement.
Then—
A hand broke frame. Slender. Pale. Knuckles bruised, cigarette burn near the wrist. The Soviet lighter glinted once in the sun before vanishing into the fountain's murky surface with a plunk.
Ripples. Then stillness.
> NADIA "They built us in shadows. Now they'll burn in them."
Her voice didn't tremble. It cut.
Static flooded the screen. Then black.
---
[This is Extra chapter]