The UAZ's tires hiss against ice-slick asphalt as Ghost yanks the wheel, veering off the frostbitten highway and into the tree line. Mud splatters the windshield. Pine branches scrape across the roof like claws.
Ghost cuts the engine near a ridge, the vehicle grinding to a stop half-buried in slush and leaves. The morning's silence is unnatural—dead still, no birdsong, just wind moaning low across the valley.
They dismount quietly. Ghost raises binoculars, lenses catching smoke spiraling above treetops. Down on the road below, the scene sprawls like a war grave.
Three blackened UNIMOGs—cargo beds scorched empty. One escort vehicle flipped onto its roof, wheels still spinning. The wreckage stretches across a quarter mile of cracked pavement and broken frost. Oil and blood mingle into a dark, steaming slurry.
Ghost lowers the binos. "Convoy's gone. No survivors in sight."
Soap checks the mag on his rifle, slaps it back into place. "Then we check the wreckage. Bodies talk."
They move downhill, boots sinking into churned earth, weapons raised. No birds. No movement.
---
Ghost leads, boots crunching over broken glass and frozen gravel as they step onto the ruined service road. The smell hits first—fuel, charred rubber, blood cooked on steel. A murder scene, dressed as a battlefield.
Ash drifts across the bodies like snow. Crows scatter from a shredded personnel carrier as Soap approaches, rifle sweeping low. Four corpses lie sprawled in NATO fatigues, gear stripped, dog tags gone. One private contractor hangs limp in a scorched cab, face fused to the glass.
Ghost kneels beside a corpse near the blast radius, fingers brushing a charred wrist.
"6th SSRG patch," he mutters. "Price's unit."
Soap moves downrange, brushing aside shell casings and bits of melted Kevlar. A glint catches his eye—a chain buried in a pool of coagulated blood. He pulls it free.
Dog tag. "Kelson. Major. Price's second."
He flicks the tag once, as if expecting it to answer. Nothing.
Their eyes meet across the wreckage. No words, just understanding.
Price wasn't here.
Or he was—and someone wanted that erased.
---
Ghost crouches low, eyes narrowing at the pockmarked asphalt. Shell casings catch light in the mud like scattered teeth. He draws a gloved finger across one of the craters.
"Clean grouping. Controlled fire. Not an IED," he says. "This was a funnel kill."
Soap scans the treeline, weapon shouldered. "They pinned them in from high ground. Interlocked arcs."
Ghost rises, moves toward a flipped APC—side torn open, burn patterns curling up its plating. He drags his boot through a pattern of brass. "Barrage started here. Ended there," he points. "Short burst, thirty meters apart. Staggered suppression."
Soap opens a shot-out SUV door. Inside, the comms suite is shattered—ripped wires, scorched glass, housing gutted like an organ harvest.
"They took the brains. Hard drives, GPS stack—scraped clean." He slams the door shut. "Someone wanted this convoy blind before the first shot."
Ghost kneels beside a nearby blast crater, palm pressing into blackened soil. "This wasn't just an ambush."
Soap looks up, jaw tight. "It was a surgical hit. And they knew every inch of this route."
Ghost turns slowly toward the woods. "Which means someone mapped it for them."
Soap mutters, "Price walked into a trap."
Ghost: "No—he was led into one."
---
Ghost trudges through a crater, boot crunching over singed gravel. Something metallic glints beneath scorched dirt. He kneels, brushes it clean—an oblong polymer fragment, cracked along one edge, its surface charred but legible.
"Recon Unit 141," he mutters. "Eyes-5."
Soap peers over his shoulder. "That's ours. Wasn't Eyes-5 grounded after Korat?"
Ghost's silence is answer enough. His thumb traces the burn around the engraved serial. "Command-authorized. Off-the-books deployment. Only Laswell had eyes on it."
Soap's tone sharpens. "Unless someone forged her clearance."
Ghost stands, holding the fragment up to the pale sky. "This drone spotted for the ambush. Logged every heat signature, relayed every step." He pauses. "They used our tech to ghost Price's convoy."
Soap curses under his breath, scanning the treeline as if expecting another betrayal to step out of it. "Feels like we're chasing our own tail."
Ghost: "No. Someone's wearing our skin."
They share a long look—unsaid doubts sharpening into something colder. This wasn't just Spectre cleaning house. It was someone inside Task Force 141.
---
A twig snaps—too clean for wind, too sharp for wildlife. Then—
Crack. A suppressed round slices the silence. Soap's radio antenna shears off, sparks flaring.
"Contact!" Ghost spins. "Ridge—east!"
Both drop behind the carcass of a scorched APC. Bullets chew into the metal like a steel-toothed saw. Ghost slings his M4, pops the case latch on the AX-50 stored under a melted seatback.
Soap reloads, shouting over the pings of incoming fire. "They're still scrubbing the site!"
Ghost breathes out slow, leans his cheek to the stock. He scans the ridgeline—frosted branches, a ripple of brush—there. A shimmer breaks the pattern. Camouflage mesh fluttering ever so slightly.
He dials wind. Time slows. Boom.
The .50-cal round punches through the Spectre sniper's collarbone. The body flops forward, rifle tumbling from limp hands.
Soap spits into the mud. "One-man cleanup crew. No support. Bastard wasn't expecting a welcome."
Ghost doesn't lower the rifle. "That shot was for silence, not score. He was watching. Waiting to see if anyone came sniffing."
Soap eyes the treeline. "And if we hadn't?"
Ghost finally lowers the scope. "Then they'd wipe the tape. Burn the trail. Leave nothing but ash."
They move—fast now—toward the sniper's perch.
---
The ridge is cold. Quiet again. A faint drag mark catches Soap's eye—bloody smears disappearing into the underbrush, away from the sniper's nest.
He taps Ghost's shoulder. "We've got one who crawled."
They follow the trail—guns up, steps light. Thirty meters in, the forest coughs up another corpse.
Male. Mid-thirties. Tactical fatigues scorched at the seams. Skull tattoo inked beneath the jaw, half-hidden by dried blood. No insignia, no ID. But the Spectre logo is etched into the carbon-fiber armor plate, matte against the blood.
Ghost kneels. "Not local militia. Not mercs. One of theirs."
Soap starts checking gear, fingers working through burnt nylon and melted plastic. "Vest's custom. No serial. But this—"
He yanks a half-melted black box from the chest rig. Wires spider out to a charred drone controller bolted to the operator's belt.
Ghost frowns. "Hardwired flight control?"
Soap: "Failsafe. This guy was running it manual—direct relay. No satellite hop."
Ghost pries open the casing. Inside, the drive is scorched but intact, a heat-shielded cube marked in hexcode. "Data's fried," he mutters. "But if this was Eyes-5's ground tether, the bird's still airborne. Might've dumped telemetry before the link cut."
Soap squints at the treetops, jaw tight. "If that drone's still flying…"
Ghost stands. "Then it's still recording."
They lock eyes. Both already moving.
---
Smoke curls from the blackened convoy as dusk creeps across the treetops—long shadows stretching through burned steel.
Soap pulls the shortwave from his vest, thumbs the dial. Static. Then—a ripple of garbled comms breaks through.
"…EYES-5… tracking priority ghost… protocol echo-red… no survivors…"
Ghost's head jerks toward the sound. Voice is scrambled, but the phrasing is clear. Classified. Familiar.
He steps back, jaw clenched. "They were tracking me. Not the convoy. Me."
Soap glances up. "Say again?"
Ghost doesn't blink. "Echo-red's a kill flag for high-value targets. Top-tier. Means someone in command tagged me hostile."
Soap frowns, face hardening. "Only three people knew where Price was moving. You, me… and Laswell."
Ghost: "And she's been dark since Dnipro."
A beat of silence. Wind whispers over the corpses and twisted metal. Neither man speaks.
Soap breaks it: "You thinking leak or ghost protocol?"
Ghost stares out across the treeline, voice flat. "Doesn't matter. Same end."
Soap: "So what's next?"
Ghost turns, already moving toward the wrecked SUV. "We find the drone. If Eyes-5 was airborne when this went down, it saw everything."
Soap: "Then we find the black box. Pull the last thread."
Ghost: "And if the thread leads back to her?"
He doesn't wait for an answer. Just keeps walking.
---
Ghost crouches over the rusted dashboard of a NATO Humvee, fingers tapping the cracked screen of a signal interceptor. The device pings—once, twice—then locks.
He straightens. "We've got it. Drone's last ping—northwest. Old Soviet comms array. Abandoned."
Soap slings his rifle, eyes narrowing. "Remote as hell. Perfect spot to bury secrets."
Ghost nods. "Or dig them up."
A wind picks up, scattering ash and soot across the dead road. The forest groans in the distance.
Soap thumbs a fresh mag into his rifle. "If Spectre's still running cleanup, we won't be alone."
Ghost: "Then we don't track it. We hunt it."
He locks eyes with Soap, voice flat. "No more waiting. We move now."
A mangled drone limps through turbulent clouds. One wing shredded, tail smoking.
Below, snow-capped hills stretch toward a rusted antenna array, half-swallowed by pine.
The Eyes-5 drone spirals. Crashes behind the ridge.