Ghost lies prone, nestled between two cracked gravestones, his breath coiling in the cold morning air. Frost clings to the ground like ash. The chapel below looks like a corpse—limestone ribs, roof caved in, stained-glass windows blacked out with rot and plywood.
He brings up the thermal scope. Inside, heat blooms: three bodies. Movement. One paces—lean, restless, Scottish. Ghost zooms in, jaw tightening beneath the mask.
"Soap..." he mutters. "You idiot. You walked right into it."
He sweeps the perimeter—no sentries posted, but fresh tire tracks lead from the tree line. Not amateurs. Someone's watching the exits.
He marks positions on his HUD, checks the mag on his suppressed SIG, then slips backward, boots silent in the frost.
"Too quiet," he whispers. "This isn't a meet. It's a setup."
---
Ghost moves like vapor through the brush—low, deliberate, eyes never leaving the ruined chapel. Frost-laced thorns tear at his sleeves as he snakes around back. He kneels at the base of a crumbled wall, slips a palm-sized charge from his belt.
He presses it flat against the stone, wires the timer. Sixty seconds.
No alarms. No voices. Just the hiss of wind over tombstones.
He angles around to the front, silent across shattered stone and loose gravel. Pulls his suppressed SIG from the chest rig. Slides behind a twisted iron pillar, just outside the rotting doors.
The charge pops.
Not a boom—just a sharp, surgical crack, like the bones of the chapel itself snapping. Dust lifts from the rafters. A shouted curse echoes inside.
Ghost moves. Two steps, then three—kicks the doors wide.
---
Inside, the chapel stinks of rot and dust. Beams groan overhead. A shaft of light splits the nave, revealing peeling saints and scorched icons.
A shadow moves—fast. Soap steps from behind a cracked column, pistol raised, locked on Ghost.
"Don't move," Soap growls. His voice is cracked from cold, but the grip on the weapon is steady. "You're supposed to be dead."
Ghost stops mid-stride, side profile turned, gun lowered but not holstered. No twitch, no flinch.
"Good to see you too," he mutters.
"I watched the feed. You burned in Qom. No way you crawled out of that."
Ghost tilts his head slightly. "Burned a decoy. You know the game."
A footstep behind Soap. Too soft. Ghost doesn't look—just fires.
One shot. Suppressed. Clean.
The bodyguard behind Soap drops like a rag—forehead gone, brain mist on the wall.
Soap flinches. Spins to check. Then back to Ghost.
"You always were a cold bastard."
Ghost finally raises his weapon, finger off trigger. "And you're still slow on the rear flank."
---
The silence inside the chapel tightens, broken only by the creak of timber above and the scuff of boots on ash.
Soap lowers his pistol an inch—but not his guard. "Where the hell were you after Mosul?" His voice isn't angry. It's raw.
Ghost doesn't blink. "Buried."
Soap scoffs. "Hell of a grave to climb out of."
Ghost steps closer, pulls a folded slip of paper from his vest, tosses it underhand.
Soap catches it. Unfolds.
A kill list. Names typed in clean Cyrillic. His circled in red.
Spectre's list.
Soap studies it a beat too long.
"You come back just to hand me this?" he says. "To what—warn me? Guilt trip me into trust?"
"I came back," Ghost says, "because you were next."
"You think I didn't know someone was hunting us? I watched Gaz take a round in a Budapest stairwell. I've seen the pattern."
Ghost steps into the half-light. His mask is soot-streaked, eyes bloodshot. "Then stop pretending this was about me disappearing."
Soap shoves the paper into a cargo pocket. "You left. No word. No comms. Ghost for real."
"I was clawing out of a body bag while Spectre hunted our squad one by one. Couldn't call."
Soap scoffs again, bitter. "Could've tried."
Outside, a faint engine hums—too distant to be chance.
Ghost hears it. His head tilts. "No more time for this."
Soap glances at the broken stained-glass window. "Spectre?"
Ghost already has his weapon out. "They're early."
---
The low growl of engines cuts through the chapel's dead air.
Ghost goes still. Head cocked. Listening.
Then: tires crunch frost. Headlights slice through fog like blades. Two matte-black SUVs crest the ridgeline and barrel toward the chapel.
Ghost doesn't flinch. "They're early."
Soap slides a fresh mag into his pistol. "You bring friends?"
"Spectre sent them. For both of us."
Doors pop open before the SUVs stop moving. Six men fan out—faces masked, MP5s tight to shoulders, sweeping in fast and quiet like they've done this before.
No flash. No warning. Professionals.
Soap mutters, "I count six."
"Seven," Ghost corrects, tracking a flanker ghosting up the rear path through the scope of a stolen rifle. "One's circling."
"Lovely. Let's say hello."
Ghost and Soap move in tandem, the air between them tense but synced. Ghost starts laying tripwires at the eastern entrance, quick and efficient—plastic clinks, wire stretches taut. Soap takes position near the shattered confessional, scanning for breach angles.
Outside, boots hit stone. No comms chatter. Just silence and intent.
Spectre's men aren't here to extract. They're here to erase.
"Positions," Ghost says, ducking behind a fractured pulpit. "Wait for the breach."
Soap nods, teeth gritted. "Let's make it loud."
---
The first tripwire snaps.
Boom—an entryway explodes in a cone of splinters and steel. The gunman behind it catches the full brunt—his scream barely begins before Ghost's second charge shreds him to vapor.
Then the chapel erupts.
Boots storm the narthex. Shadows flick through smoke and ruin. Ghost vaults over a broken pew and meets the first with a knife under the jaw—slams him into a column and uses the body like a riot shield. Bullets dig into the corpse. Ghost plants a round through the shooter's eye in response.
Across the aisle, Soap's rifle barks in three-round bursts. "Left side—flash out!"
He chucks a flashbang over a collapsed organ. It pops—white light, deafening crack. Two silhouettes stagger out, disoriented. Soap drops one with a clean shot to the sternum. The second flails. Ghost puts him down with two suppressed rounds to the spine.
The chapel's sacred silence dies under the roar of suppressed gunfire and shouted callouts. Pews splinter. Icons fall. Dust and blood hang thick in the air.
"West door's open!" Soap calls.
"Not for long."
Ghost plants a bounce grenade at the threshold and draws back. As two more Spectre operators breach—boom. The mine erupts waist-high, lifts them off the ground, and sprays bone across the walls.
The gunfire thins. One last man tries to crawl behind the altar. Ghost stalks him, kicks the weapon from his hand, and buries a boot in his throat.
Silence again—but now it's different. Charged. Flickering.
Soap reloads. "We done?"
Ghost listens. Watches. Then nods. "For now."
---
Glass shatters.
A molotov arcs in from the dark—its trail a wicked smear of orange—and bursts against the altar with a hungry roar. Fire licks up the velvet cloth, then explodes into the rafters like it's been waiting.
"Shit!" Soap shields his face from the blast heat. Embers rain down like tracer rounds.
The chapel groans above them. Old timber cracks. The crucifix buckles forward with a long, tortured creak.
Ghost doesn't flinch. "We're leaving. Now."
Soap jerks his head toward the door. "What about them?" Two Spectre gunmen scramble behind an overturned confessional, one trying to drag the other.
Ghost's rifle lifts. One shot—clean. The dragger drops. Another—through the wood. The second slumps, smoke rising from the wound like incense.
"Handled," Ghost mutters.
The fire climbs faster now. Pew by pew, wall to wall. A stained-glass saint ignites from the eyes down, color melting into fire. Smoke pours from the rafters, curling like claws.
A support beam groans. Snaps.
Ghost grabs Soap's shoulder. "Vestry. Move."
They duck under the collapsing arch, boots pounding over cracked flagstone as the inferno chases them. The air is choking now—smoke thick and gritty. They kick through the side door just as the ceiling gives way behind them.
---
The vestry door crashes open under Ghost's shoulder. Smoke billows past them into the cold morning air. Behind them, fire chews through timber beams with a predator's hunger.
"Go!" Ghost shoves Soap ahead.
They hit the chapel yard running—gravel crunching beneath boots slick with blood and soot. Tombstones blur past. Ash floats like black snow.
A section of the chapel roof caves in with a deafening crack. Stone gargoyles topple, one smashing into a nearby grave, splitting the slab like paper. The blast wave knocks Ghost sideways; he rolls, comes up coughing smoke, pistol raised.
Soap doesn't look back. "We're burning daylight."
More like burning everything.
Gunfire snaps from the tree line—last stragglers, Spectre cleanup crew. Suppressed rounds whistle past them. Ghost yanks a smoke grenade from his vest, pops it mid-run. White fog explodes outward, veiling the headstones.
They zigzag through the graveyard—silent markers, broken angels, charred names. The whole hillside stinks of history being erased.
A final roar splits the morning.
They both spin as the chapel detonates from within. Fire belches through the stained-glass eyes of saints, walls bow outward, and the whole structure collapses in on itself—centuries of stone and sanctity folding into flame.
Ghost doesn't flinch. "No evidence. No trail."
Soap breathes heavy. "Hell of a funeral."
---
The UAZ groans as Ghost tears open the rusted driver-side door. A bullet hole scars the windshield, webbed with cracks.
He slides under the dash, fingers moving fast, wire to wire. The engine sputters, coughs, then snarls awake like something feral.
Soap slings his pack into the backseat, sweat streaking soot down his temple. He eyes the treeline. "You think they're done chasing?"
Ghost doesn't answer. Just slams the jeep into gear and punches the gas.
Tires churn frozen mud. The vehicle fishtails before biting in and tearing down a slope of churned earth and broken tombstones. The chapel blaze behind them lights the morning like an airstrike. Smoke columns follow them through skeletal trees.
Inside the jeep, it's silent but for the rattle of gear and the thrum of an engine that shouldn't still be running.
Soap breaks it first. "You had this planned?"
"Nothing about this was planned."
"So we're improvising."
Ghost glances at him. "We're surviving."
They bounce over a ridge. The forest gets denser. Ghost scans the dash—no GPS, no map. Just instinct and old scars.
Soap checks his rifle. Chambered, loaded, scratched all to hell. "Zvolen's south?"
"Price's last ping came from there," Ghost says. "Convoy moved out two days ago. Then nothing."
Soap leans forward, eyes narrowing. "You think he's dead?"
Ghost doesn't look at him. "I think we'll know soon."
Branches whip the windshield. A crow bolts across the road, startled into flight.
The UAZ doesn't slow.
---
The UAZ growls through a narrow trail carved by ice and tank treads, its tires spitting gravel. Soap rides shotgun, rifle across his lap, eyes scanning every shadow between the trees.
Ghost tunes the shortwave radio, fingers flicking knobs with surgical speed. Static fills the cabin. Then—
"...Convoy... ambushed... multiple casualties... Price missing..."
The voice is fragmented, warped by distance and interference, but the words punch like gunfire.
Soap stiffens. "Say that again."
More static. Nothing follows.
Soap exhales hard through his nose, anger simmering behind his eyes. "We're already too late."
Ghost doesn't flinch. "Not if we find who hit them."