My father let out a loud, sharp laugh. “Sit down,” he barked, his voice echoing off the walls. “He needs a soldier, son. Not a secretary. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
The entire room went silent. Some people chuckled nervously. But the Navy Commander didn’t laugh. He walked right past my father and stopped directly in front of me. He looked at the scar on my neck that my father had never asked about.
“Identify,” the Commander said. I looked my father dead in the eye and said two words: “Ghost Thirteen.” The Commander snapped a salute. But my father? He went pale.
His coffee cup slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor. He looked at me with pure terror, because he knew exactly what “Ghost Thirteen” had done in Syria…
…He knew exactly what “Ghost Thirteen” had done in Syria.
The room is still dead silent. I don’t blink. I don’t move. And my father—General Walter Briggs, the Iron Hammer of CENTCOM—takes one cautious step back, as if standing too close to me might detonate something.
The Navy Commander—whose name tag reads S. Myers—nods sharply and says, “We have no time. Come with me.”
I move. Fast. My boots echo across the polished floor as I follow him out. No one dares stop me. Not even my father, who now looks like he’s staring at a ghost—and in a way, he is.
We rush down the corridor and into the secured operations center. Screens light up the walls—satellite imagery, infrared scans, dozens of real-time feeds. A digital clock above the central screen ticks in red: 00:38:07. Whatever is going on, there’s less than 40 minutes on the clock.
“Tell me,” I demand, already pulling on the tactical headset an officer hands me.
“Joint intel intercepted a rogue transmission from an off-grid facility in eastern Libya,” Commander Myers explains, typing rapidly into a touchscreen. “It was brief, encrypted, and piggybacked on an obsolete satellite. But what we did get…” He brings up a grainy black-and-white video feed.
My blood runs cold.
On-screen is a man I thought was dead. A man I personally watched bleed out on the floor of a Damascus safehouse. Codename: Black Lantern. Ex-Russian Spetsnaz turned mercenary for hire. A ghost like me—except without a soul.
“That’s not possible,” I mutter.
“Apparently it is. And he’s not alone. The feed cut out, but not before we caught a glimpse of something else.”
Myers taps the screen again, isolating the final frame. There, behind Black Lantern, is a warhead. Not just any warhead. The kind even the Department of Energy whispers about behind closed doors.
“Prototype,” Myers says grimly. “Stolen from a NATO convoy three weeks ago. Everyone thought it was a disinfo op—until now.”
“What’s the countdown?”
He looks up at the red clock. “That’s how long until the signal disappears from the satellite net. If we lose him, he vanishes.”
“Who’s my team?”
“You’re the team.”
Of course I am.
I nod, stepping into the adjacent prep room. Within seconds, I’m out of the uniform and into Ghost gear—light-reactive armor, matte-black, layered with dampeners. I lock the gloves, shoulder the modular rifle, check the sidearm, and slide my knife into the sheath at the small of my back.
As I step onto the transport pad, Commander Myers looks at me like I’m a legend—because in his world, I am.
“I thought you were dead,” he says.
I smirk. “That’s the idea.”
The world bends in a blink as the tiltrotor lifts off. I strap in, hook into comms, and review the satellite sweep on my wrist HUD. The compound’s remote, barely a dot in the dunes. No roads. No visible heat signatures—until three hours ago.
“Thermals show six guards, two sentries on the roof,” comes the voice of the pilot. “And… something weird.”
My screen shifts. The topographical scan shows a pulse—then another. Not from above, but below. Underground.
“They’re powering something big,” I mutter.
I count the guards, time their pacing. At 00:08:11, I jump.
The wind punches me hard, the sand a blur beneath my boots. I deploy the chute low, almost suicidal, and land in a crouch behind a rusted dune crawler, kicking up a whisper of dust. No one sees. No one hears.
But I do.
Footsteps. Light. A muttered Russian command.
I wait. One… two… then I strike.
The sentry’s down before he breathes. Silent. Clean. I drag him into the shadows and ghost across the compound.
By 00:05:42, I’m at the hatch. Thermal scans were right—beneath me is a massive substructure. I breach the lock and drop silently into the dark.
It’s colder than I expect. The air tastes like rust and oil. I move through the corridor, heart steady, steps calculated. A hum grows louder as I approach a massive chamber.
Then I see it.
The warhead sits in the center, bolted to a launch platform, wires snaking into ancient computer terminals. A man is typing furiously—Black Lantern.
And next to him, strapped to a steel chair, is a woman. Her head hangs low, blood on her temple.
I freeze.
Emily.
The last time I saw her, she was screaming at me to leave Syria, to stop. We ended things the way people like us always do—with silence and scars. I had no idea she was even back in the field.
Now she’s bait.
Lantern looks up.
“I was wondering when they’d send you,” he sneers in accented English. “Ghost Thirteen. The man who dies but never dies.”
I step forward, weapon raised. “Step away. Now.”
He smiles. “You won’t shoot. Not with her there.”
He taps a command key.
The clock on the warhead screen begins to tick: 00:02:00.
“Failsafe initiated,” a mechanical voice says. “Launch sequence engaged.”
I move. Fast.
Lantern reaches for a weapon, but I shoot him in the hand. He screams, dives behind a console. I fire again, pinning him down. Then I sprint to Emily, slicing through her restraints.
Her eyes flutter. “Took you long enough,” she mutters.
“Still mad?”
“Furious.”
She grabs a dropped sidearm and spins, nailing one of Lantern’s henchmen as he storms through the door.
We’re back in sync like no time passed.
I vault over the console, rip out the command core, and yank wires with practiced fury. The countdown stutters.
“Manual override required,” the voice says.
Lantern laughs, bleeding and wild-eyed. “There is no override. If I die, it goes off. If I leave, it goes off. This is checkmate.”
Emily shoots him in the knee. “Try stalemate.”
He screams, topples, and I move in.
“Where’s the override?”
He spits at me.
I grab his shattered hand and twist.
“Okay! Okay! The server core! Behind the wall!”
I shove him down and run. Behind the steel wall is a biometric scanner. I press his hand against it. It clicks.
The room behind it glows with blue light. Server racks hum like beehives.
I find the core. Yank it.
The countdown freezes at 00:00:11.
Then, blessed silence.
Emily exhales. I do too.
We drag Lantern out. He’s sobbing now. No longer a ghost. Just a broken man.
By the time the evac team arrives, the compound is secure. The warhead is dead. And my father is waiting at the LZ.
He looks at me with something almost like awe. Maybe shame.
“You were Ghost Thirteen this whole time,” he says quietly.
I nod.
He clears his throat. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to.”
He nods again. “I was wrong.”
That’s the closest I’ll ever get to an apology. I’ll take it.
Emily smirks beside me, shoulder bruised, eye swollen. “So, General Briggs. Permission for your ‘secretary’ to escort me to medical?”
He stiffens. Then chuckles. “Granted.”
We climb aboard the chopper, the wind kicking up sand around us.
As the base fades behind us, Emily nudges me.
“So,” she says. “What now, Ghost Thirteen?”
I look out over the desert, feeling something rare.
Peace.
“Now,” I say, “I go home.”
And this time, I think I mean it.
