PART 1

The sound of a knife slicing through heavy-duty nylon is distinct. It’s a dry, tearing zip that you never forget. But hearing it over the deafening roar of a Blackhawk rotor at 8,000 feet? That’s not a sound. That’s a death sentence.

I had exactly three seconds to process it.

One second to see the Crew Chief’s blade sever the safety strap tethering me to the floor. Two seconds to look up and see the five Delta Force operators—men I called brothers—staring at me with cold, dead eyes. Three seconds to feel two sets of hands shove me violently into the freezing Afghan night.

No parachute. No static line. Just gravity and the biting cold of the Hindu Kush mountains waiting to swallow me whole.

As I tumbled backward into the void, I saw Master Sergeant Blake Harmon standing in the open bay door. His night-vision goggles gave him the look of a glowing green demon. He didn’t look remorseful. He looked like he was taking out the trash.

The wind roared in my ears, tearing at my uniform. I was falling at terminal velocity—about 120 miles per hour.

Most people in this situation would scream. Most would flail. Most would die of a heart attack before they even hit the ground.

But I wasn’t most people. My name is Staff Sergeant Alexandra Morgan, and I was raised by the 75th Ranger Regiment. I was a former national wingsuit champion before I ever put on a uniform.

Harmon thought he was throwing a helpless girl out of a helicopter to cover up his smuggling ring. He didn’t realize he was just dropping me into my element.

“Control the fall,” the voice of my mentor, Wild Bill West Morland, screamed in my head. “It’s not the speed that kills you, Morgan. It’s the sudden stop.”

I forced my body into a track, spreading my arms and legs to create as much surface area as possible. I wasn’t wearing a wingsuit, but my modified tactical jacket had extra fabric. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to turn a plummet into a glide.

I saw the terrain rushing up to meet me through my own NVGs, which were miraculously still strapped to my helmet. Sharp peaks. Rocky crags. Death, death, and more death.

But to the east… a dark patch. A dense forest canopy on a steep, snow-covered slope.

It was a billion-to-one shot. If I hit the rocks, I was pink mist. If I missed the trees, I broke every bone in my body.

I tucked my limbs, diving toward the canopy like a missile, then flared out at the last second.

CRACK.

The first branch snapped against my ribs like a baseball bat. SNAP. My left collarbone shattered. THUD. I pinballed through the ancient pines, the branches whipping and tearing at me, slowing me down from 120 mph to something survivable.

Then came the ground.

I hit the steep, snowy slope at an angle, sliding rather than splatting. I tumbled for what felt like an eternity, a chaotic blur of ice, snow, and agony, until I slammed into a rock and the world went black.

Part 2: The Ghost of the Hindu Kush

CHAPTER 1: THE GRAVEYARD OF SNOW

The silence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

After the chaotic, mechanical roar of the Blackhawk’s rotors and the violent tearing of wind that had battered my eardrums for sixty seconds of freefall, the world had suddenly stopped. There was no sound. No wind. No engine. Just a ringing in my ears that sounded like a flatline on a heart monitor.

I was lying on my back, half-buried in a snowdrift at a forty-five-degree angle on the side of a mountain that wasn’t on most maps. The cold was instantaneous. It wasn’t the gradual chill of a winter day; it was a violent, invasive freeze that bit through the tears in my uniform and sought out the warmth of my blood like a predator seeking prey.

I did not try to move. Not yet. West Morland’s voice was a loop in my head, a recording from a classroom at Fort Benning ten years ago, playing over and over. “Assess before you act, Morgan. Shock is a liar. It will tell you that you are fine right before you bleed out, or it will tell you that you are dead when you just need to stand up.”

I started the inventory, starting from the extremities and working my way in.

I wiggled my toes inside my combat boots. The left foot responded with a dull throb. The right foot sent a sharp, electric jolt of agony shooting up my shin. High ankle sprain, possibly a hairline fracture in the tibia. But I could feel them. That meant my spine was intact. I was not paralyzed.

I moved up. My hips. The core. Then I tried to take a deep breath.

The world exploded into white stars behind my eyelids. The pain in my chest was not a dull ache; it was a jagged, hot knife twisting with every micro-expansion of my lungs. Ribs. Three, maybe four. Definitely broken. I coughed, a wet, hacking spasm that racked my entire body, and I tasted the metallic tang of copper in my mouth. Blood. I had likely punctured a lung or bitten through my tongue during the impact.

I tried to lift my left arm. It flopped uselessly at my side, sending a sickening, grinding sensation through my shoulder that made me gag. The collarbone was snapped. I could feel the bone tenting against the skin, threatening to puncture through the dermis. A compound fracture waiting to happen.

I lay there for what felt like an hour, staring up at the gaps in the pine trees where I had crashed through. But my watch, cracked but still functioning, said it had only been four minutes since I left the helicopter. Four minutes since Master Sergeant Blake Harmon looked me in the eye and murdered me.

Get up, Morgan.

The voice in my head was not West Morland’s anymore. It was my own. It was the voice of the little girl who had lost her father in Panama. It was the voice of the woman who had fought her way into the 75th Ranger Regiment when everyone said she belonged behind a desk.

I rolled onto my right side, using my good arm to claw at the snow. I vomited—mostly bile and shock—but it cleared my head. I dragged myself to a sitting position against the base of a pine tree that was thick enough to stop a truck.

I checked my gear. My rifle was gone, ripped from its sling during the tumble through the canopy. My primary radio was smashed, a useless brick of plastic and wire hanging from my vest. My helmet was cracked down the center, the night vision goggles sheared off during the descent.

But I was alive.

I reached inside my plate carrier, my fingers numb and clumsy, searching for the small, hard rectangle Rivera, my tech specialist, had slipped me just hours before the flight. The backup analog transmitter.

It was still there.

I pulled it out, shielding it with my body as if it were a fragile bird. The small green LED pulsed in the darkness. Recording saved.

That little light was the only reason I was going to stand up. It contained everything. Harmon’s voice before the push. The sound of the harness cutting. The conspiracy. The betrayal. If I died here, the truth died with me. Harmon would get a medal for my “tragic accident,” and General Crawford would continue smuggling Soviet-era weapons to our enemies.

I could not let that happen. Rage is a powerful fuel. It burns cleaner than gasoline and hotter than adrenaline. I used it to force myself to my feet. The scream that tore from my throat was primal, animalistic, but the howling wind swallowed it before it could travel far.

I was standing. Swaying like a drunk, but standing.

I looked up at the ridgeline. The sound of the Blackhawk rotors had faded, but I knew Harmon. He was thorough. He was a professional. He would not just assume the fall killed me. He would want visual confirmation. He would want to collect my dog tags and take a picture of my broken body to send to Crawford.

They would be circling back. And they would not be coming alone. They would bring trackers.

I had to move. Downhill was the path of least resistance, but it was also where they would look first. Bodies roll downhill. Survivors climb. But climbing was physically impossible in my condition. I needed cover. I needed a heat mask to hide from thermal optics.

I checked my compass. The needle spun lazily before settling North. The nearest friendly outpost was forty miles south—an impossibility. But five miles east, nestled in a valley that the military maps usually ignored, was the village of Kamdesh. I knew the elder there, a man named Kareem. We had shared tea. I had helped treat his granddaughter’s infection when our medic was feeling generous.

It was a sanctuary. Or a trap. In Afghanistan, the difference often depended on who was paying the bills that week. But it was my only play.

CHAPTER 2: THE LONG CRAWL

I made it three hundred yards before I heard them.

The distinct thwup-thwup-thwup of the Blackhawk returning. It was flying low, conducting a grid search pattern. I knew exactly what they were doing; I had done it myself a dozen times. They were running thermal optics, looking for a heat signature against the cold mountain background.

I dove—or rather, collapsed—under the overhang of a granite shelf that jutted out from the mountainside. I pressed my body into the frozen mud, trying to become part of the mountain. Thermal cameras look for heat contrast. The snow helped; it lowered my surface temperature. But if I was out in the open, even my breath would glow like a flare on their screens.

The helicopter roared overhead, the downdraft kicking up a blizzard of loose snow that coated me. I held my breath, ignoring the screaming protest of my broken ribs. The searchlight swept the trees in front of me, turning the night into a blinding white day for a split second, then moved on.

They were scanning. They hadn’t spotted me yet. But they would drop a ground team soon.

As the sound of the rotors drifted west, I forced myself up again. I needed to mask my trail. I found a stream, a ribbon of black water cutting through the ice. It would be freezing—hypothermia was a real and immediate risk—but water leaves no footprints and hides scent from dogs.

I slid into the water.

The cold was a physical blow, punching the remaining air out of my lungs. My boots filled instantly. My legs went numb within seconds. I waded downstream for a mile, slipping on slick rocks, catching myself with my good arm, gritting my teeth so hard I thought my molars would crack.

Every step was a negotiation with my body. Just one more step. Then you can rest. Just one more.

I climbed out on a rocky bank where the wind had scoured the snow away, leaving no prints. I was shivering violently now, the uncontrollable shaking that precedes total collapse. My vision was tunneling, the edges of my world turning grey. I started hallucinating.

I saw my father standing by a tree, smoking a cigarette, looking just like he did in the photo I kept in my wallet.

I saw West Morland checking his watch, shaking his head at my pace. “Pick it up, Ranger. Deadlines don’t care about your feelings.”

“I’m moving, Bill,” I whispered to the empty air. “I’m moving.”

The sun was beginning to bleed over the horizon, painting the snow in shades of violent pink and orange, when I saw the smoke rising from the chimneys of Kamdesh. It looked like heaven. It looked like hope.

I stumbled down the final slope, no longer caring about noise discipline. I reached the perimeter of the village, a low stone wall meant to keep goats in and wolves out. I tried to vault it, but my legs finally staged a mutiny. I hit the wall and crumbled, falling face-first into the dirt.

The last thing I saw was a pair of worn leather sandals walking toward me, and the barrel of an AK-47 leveling at my face.

CHAPTER 3: SURGERY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA

“American?”

The voice was wary, hard as the stones around us.

I rolled over, gasping for air. “Kareem… tell Kareem… the Phoenix is broken.”

The man lowered the rifle. He shouted something in Pashto. Moments later, hands were grabbing me. Not rough, but urgent. They dragged me out of the open, through a maze of narrow alleyways, and into a low-ceilinged stone house that smelled of burning wood and cardamom.

Kareem was there. He looked older than I remembered, his beard more white than grey, his face a map of deep lines etched by years of war. He looked at my uniform, torn and bloodied, and then at my face.

“Allah protect us,” he whispered. “Sergeant Morgan. You look like you fell from the moon.”

“Helicopter,” I rasped, clutching my side. “My own people… pushed me.”

Kareem didn’t question it. In these mountains, betrayal was as common as the wind. He barked orders to his wife and eldest son. They cleared the main table, sweeping away flatbread and tea cups.

“We have no morphine,” Kareem said, cutting away my tactical vest with a sharp knife. “We have tea. We have honey. And we have a piece of leather for you to bite.”

“Do it,” I said. “Just do it fast.”

The next hour was a blur of agony that I wish I could forget, but I know I never will. Kareem’s wife, a woman with hands like iron, set my collarbone. There was no anesthetic. Just the sickening sound of bone grinding on bone and my own strangled scream muffled by the leather strap between my teeth.

They bound my ribs tight with strips of cloth soaked in a poultice that smelled of herbs and earth. They cleaned the cuts on my face with stinging alcohol. They wrapped my knee.

When it was over, I was soaked in sweat, trembling uncontrollably, but the sharp, jagged edges of the pain had been dulled to a constant, throbbing roar.

“You need to sleep,” Kareem said, wiping blood from his hands with a rag.

“No,” I tried to sit up, but he pushed me back gently. “Radio. I need… to make a call.”

“Your radio is broken,” he pointed to the smashed unit on the floor.

“Not that one.” I pointed to my vest, which lay in a pile in the corner. “The backup. Inside the lining. It’s weak… needs line of sight… high ground.”

Kareem nodded, understanding immediately. “My son, Tariq, will take it to the ridge. What is the message?”

I closed my eyes, focusing on the codes West Morland had forced me to memorize until I could recite them in my sleep.

“Frequency 14.22. Message: Phoenix Down. Broken Arrow. Coordinates… here. Tell them… tell them the package is damaged but the data is safe.”

Kareem repeated it back to me. “Sleep now. You are safe here.”

I wanted to believe him. But as I drifted into the darkness of exhaustion, I knew better. Nowhere was safe. Harmon was out there. And he was hunting.

CHAPTER 4: THE WOLF AT THE DOOR

I woke up to the sound of screaming.

Not human screaming. Goats. The panicked, frantic bleating of animals that smell a predator.

I jerked upright, ignoring the protest of my ribs. The light in the room had changed. It was late afternoon. The shadows were long. I had been out for six hours.

Kareem rushed into the room, his face pale beneath his dark complexion. “They are here.”

“Who?” I swung my legs off the cot.

“Americans. Black helicopters. And… him.”

“Who is him?”

“Nazir Khan.”

My blood ran cold. Khan wasn’t just a tracker; he was a legend in the worst possible way. He had worked for the Taliban, then the warlords, and now, apparently, for Delta Force’s rogue element. He was a sadist who knew these mountains better than the goats did. If Khan was tracking me, my time was measured in minutes.

“How close?”

“They are at the valley entrance. Khan found blood by the stream. He is tracking you to the village.”

The room spun, but I forced it to stabilize through sheer will. “I have to leave. If they find me here, they will burn this village to the ground. They will kill your family.”

“You cannot walk,” Kareem argued, grabbing my shoulder. “And they have the valley surrounded.”

“Did Tariq send the message?”

“Yes. Hours ago. There was a response. A code.”

“What was it?”

“Hold Fast. The Storm is Coming.”

West Morland. He was coming. But “The Storm” meant a heavy assault force. That took time to assemble and transport. Time I didn’t have.

“Give me my weapon,” I said.

“You have no rifle,” Kareem reminded me.

“Then give me yours.”

Kareem hesitated, looking at his old AK-47 hanging on the wall. He took it down. The wood was worn smooth by decades of handling, the metal pitted, but the action was clean and oiled. He handed it to me along with two spare magazines.

“Get your family into the cellar,” I ordered, checking the chamber. “Hide the radio. If they ask, you haven’t seen me. I’m going to draw them away.”

“You will die,” Kareem said simply.

“I’m already dead, Kareem. That’s my advantage.”

I slipped out the back door of the house. The sun was setting, casting long, jagged shadows across the village. I could see them now—five figures moving tactically through the lower terraces. Delta operators. They moved with a fluidity that was terrifying to watch. Leading them was a man in local garb, crouched low, examining the dirt. Khan.

I couldn’t fight five Delta operators and a master tracker. Not in a stand-up fight. I had to be smarter. I had to be a ghost.

I moved to the upper ruins of the village—an old Soviet-era outpost that overlooked the main square. It offered high ground and cover. I positioned myself behind a crumbling wall, resting the heavy AK on the stone to steady my shaking aim.

I waited.

Khan stopped in the square. He pointed toward Kareem’s house. He knew.

Harmon’s voice boomed through a megaphone. “Morgan! We know you’re in there. Come out, and we’ll make it quick. Don’t make us hurt these people.”

He was bluffing about making it quick. He wasn’t bluffing about hurting the people.

I lined up my sights. Not on Harmon—he was behind cover. On the engine block of their transport vehicle, a technical truck parked at the gate.

Breathe. Focus. Squeeze.

BANG.

The shot echoed like thunder in the valley. The 7.62mm round slammed into the truck’s radiator, exploding in a cloud of steam and fluid.

Chaos erupted. The Delta team scattered for cover with practiced speed. Khan dove behind a water trough.

“Contact front!” someone screamed.

I shifted positions immediately. Shoot and move. Never stay still. I dragged myself twenty yards to the right, to a different gap in the wall.

“I’m not in the house, Blake!” I screamed, my voice raw and scraping against my throat. “I’m right here! Come and get me!”

Suppressive fire chewed up the wall where I had just been. Stone chips rained down on me like hail. They were pinned down, but they were professionals. They would flank me. Two left, two right, one up the middle. Standard maneuver.

I checked the magazine. Twenty rounds left.

I needed to buy time. I needed a miracle.

CHAPTER 5: THE STORM ARRIVES

The firefight lasted for twenty minutes, but it felt like twenty years.

I was running on fumes. Every time I fired, my ribs felt like they were separating. I had taken a grazing shot to my thigh—a flesh wound, but it bled freely, soaking my trousers.

They had me cornered. I was backed into the corner of the ruins, with a sheer drop behind me and five killers closing in.

“End of the line, Alex!” Harmon shouted. He was close now. I could hear his boots crunching on the gravel. “You put up a hell of a fight. I’ll give you that.”

I dropped the empty AK. It clattered on the stones. I pulled my combat knife. It was a pathetic gesture, really. Bringing a knife to a gunfight against Delta Force. But I wasn’t going to die on my knees. I stood up, leaning against the wall for support.

“Come on then,” I whispered.

Harmon stepped around the corner, his rifle raised. He smiled, that same arrogant, dead-eyed smile he had in the helicopter.

“Goodbye, Morgan.”

He started to squeeze the trigger.

And then the sky tore open.

BRRRRRRRRRRRT.

The sound of an A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8 Avenger cannon is a sound you feel in your teeth before you hear it. It is the sound of the apocalypse. A line of 30mm explosive rounds shredded the ground ten feet behind Harmon, creating a wall of dirt, fire, and noise.

Harmon threw himself flat, covering his head.

I looked up. Two A-10s were banking hard over the valley, their wings dipping in a salute. The distinct silhouette of the “Tank Killer” was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Then came the ground assault.

From the ridgeline behind the village, a convoy of three unmarked Land Rovers roared down the slope, bouncing over rocks, their headlights blinding.

The lead vehicle skidded to a halt in the square. The doors flew open.

Six men got out. They weren’t wearing standard Army fatigues. They were wearing mixed tactical gear, flannel shirts, and baseball caps. They moved with the heavy, deliberate confidence of men who had been killing since before I was born.

West Morland walked to the front. He was holding a grenade launcher.

“Harmon!” Bill bellowed, his voice echoing off the mountains. “You drop that weapon, or I will turn you into a biology experiment!”

Harmon looked at the A-10s circling above. He looked at West Morland’s team. He looked at me.

He knew the math. The math didn’t work for him anymore.

But Harmon was a gambler. He raised his rifle toward me again, desperation in his eyes. He figured if he took me out, the evidence died with me.

THUMP.

West Morland fired the grenade launcher. Not a high-explosive round—a flashbang. It detonated five feet from Harmon, blinding him and knocking him backward.

The “Old Men” moved in. They secured the Delta team with zip-ties before they could blink. Nazir Khan tried to run, scuttling like a crab toward the treeline, but a sniper round from the ridge took out his kneecap. He went down screaming.

West Morland walked up to me. He holstered his weapon and knelt down. He looked at my bloodied uniform, my broken arm, my pale face.

“I told you,” he said softly, putting a hand on my good shoulder. “Rangers lead the way.”

I tried to smile, but the adrenaline crash hit me like a freight train. My legs gave out. “You’re late, Bill.”

“Traffic was a bitch,” he grinned. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

CHAPTER 6: WATCHING MY OWN FUNERAL

The extraction wasn’t the end. It was just the intermission.

We were flown to Rammstein Air Base in Germany. I spent three days in the ICU, hooked up to machines that beeped every time I thought about moving.

On the fourth day, Colonel Harrington from the Pentagon sat by my bed. He looked tired.

“We have the recording,” Harrington said quietly. “It’s damning. We have the analog tape. But Crawford… he’s insulated. If we release this now, he’ll spin it. He’ll say the recording is faked using AI. He’ll say you’re a traitor who compromised the mission and is trying to save face. He has the media contacts. He has the narrative.”

“So what do we do?” I asked, my voice slurring from the morphine. “We let him walk?”

“We need him to confess,” West Morland said from the seat opposite me, peeling an orange. “Not Harmon. He’s a soldier; he’ll follow orders even to prison. We need Crawford. Or at least, his right-hand man, Colonel Foster.”

“How?”

“By giving them what they want,” Harrington said. “They want you dead.”

“I thought I already was.”

“We need to make it official. Public.”

Two days later, the US Army issued a press release. Staff Sergeant Alexandra Morgan had been found. Her remains, that is. Recovered from a ravine in the Hindu Kush. Tragic training accident involving equipment failure.

There was a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. I watched it on a secure feed from a safe house in the Black Forest of Germany.

It is a strange thing to watch your own funeral. I saw the flag draped over the empty coffin. I saw my uncle, weeping. I saw men from my unit saluting. It hollows you out. It takes away your name, your history, your identity.

But it was necessary. Because as long as Alex Morgan was dead, the ghost could go to work.

CHAPTER 7: THE KILL BOX

Three weeks later.

My recovery was brutal. Physical therapy that felt like torture. I had to learn to walk without limping, to shoot with my off-hand while my shoulder healed. But I pushed through. I had to.

We leaked intel. A whisper on the dark web. A rumor that the “body” found wasn’t Morgan. That there was a witness living in a secluded hunting cabin in the Black Forest, someone who had seen the fall. Someone with evidence.

We knew Crawford was paranoid. He wouldn’t trust a team this time. He would send his fixer. Colonel Foster. The man who cleaned up the messes.

And Harmon? We got word he had been bailed out quietly, his arrest kept off the books by Crawford’s influence. He was looking for redemption. He wanted to be the one to pull the trigger and prove his loyalty.

The trap was a hunting cabin, deep in the woods. Isolated. Perfect for a murder.

We rigged it. Cameras hidden in the rafters. Microphones in the lamps. Pressure plates under the floorboards. West Morland’s team was buried in the woods outside, wearing ghillie suits, invisible.

I sat in the main room. I wore a sling, and I applied makeup to make my bruises look fresh, to make me look weak and broken.

I waited.

The rain hammered against the roof. The wind howled through the trees.

At 0200 hours, the lock on the front door clicked.

I didn’t reach for a gun. I just sat there, staring at the fire.

The door opened. Harmon entered first, suppressed pistol raised. He looked thinner, meaner. Foster followed, looking bored, checking his phone as if this were a routine errand.

“Cozy,” Harmon sneered. He saw me. “Hello, Alex. You look like shit.”

“You look like a traitor, Blake,” I said calmly, not turning my head.

“Watch your mouth,” he stepped closer. “You caused us a lot of trouble. Do you know how much paperwork a fake funeral creates?”

“Is that why you’re here? To complain about bureaucracy?”

“We’re here to finish it,” Foster said, stepping into the light. He smoothed his suit jacket. “And to get the copies. We know you made copies of the recording.”

“I did,” I lied. “They’re in a safety deposit box in Zurich. If I don’t check in every 24 hours, they go to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC.”

Foster laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “A dead man’s switch. Cliché. But we can override that. Once you tell us the account numbers.”

“I won’t.”

Harmon walked around the chair and pressed the cold steel of his suppressor against my forehead. “Everyone talks, Alex. Pain is a universal language. I’ll start with your good knee.”

“Did General Crawford tell you to say that? or did you come up with it yourself?”

“This isn’t about Crawford,” Foster snapped, losing his cool. “This is about the future of American warfare. Controlled conflicts. Sustainable profit. We are building a machine that ensures stability through managed chaos. You’re just a speed bump in history.”

“There it is,” I whispered.

“What?” Foster frowned.

“The confession.”

I looked directly into the camera hidden in the glass eye of the deer head mounted on the wall. “Did you get that, Bill?”

Harmon’s eyes widened. He realized, too late, that he wasn’t the hunter. He was the bait.

“Now!” West Morland’s voice boomed over a hidden speaker.

The windows imploded.

Not from bullets, but from flashbangs rigged on the sills. The room turned into a white-hot supernova of sound and light.

Harmon fired blindly, the bullet taking a chunk out of the floorboards. I dropped to the floor, sweeping his legs with my good leg. He went down hard.

Foster tried to run for the door, but it kicked open. A massive figure stood there—Rivera, holding a riot shield. He clotheslined Foster, sending him flying back across the room into the fireplace.

West Morland and his team swarmed in from the basement and the attic. It was over in ten seconds.

Harmon lay on the floor, zip-tied, bleeding from the nose. He looked up at me, blinking through the daze.

“You’re dead,” he spat. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

I stood over him. I leaned down close, so he could see the life in my eyes.

“I am dead, Blake. I’m a ghost. And ghosts are the only thing you can’t kill.”

CHAPTER 8: THE PHOENIX

The evidence was released the next morning. Not just to the JAG, but to the world. We livestreamed the confession. The video of the cabin. The audio of the helicopter. The financial records linking Crawford to the arms dealing.

It was the biggest military scandal in two decades. General Crawford was arrested at his desk in the Pentagon. Foster turned state’s witness to save his own skin. Harmon is currently serving life without parole in Leavenworth.

As for me?

I stayed dead.

Staff Sergeant Alexander Morgan is a hero buried in Arlington. People leave flowers on her grave. They tell stories about her bravery.

But the woman who climbed out of that grave? She has work to do.

I sat in a cafe in Paris, watching the rain wash the streets clean. West Morland slid a folder across the table. It was thin. No markings. No official seals.

“New mission?” I asked.

“Something different,” Bill said. “Off the books. Totally deniable. We answer only to the Constitution. No generals. No politics. Just the job.”

“Who’s the target?”

“A human trafficking ring operating out of Eastern Europe. Protected by diplomats. The law can’t touch them.”

I opened the folder. Photos. Maps. Intel. It was the kind of mess only a ghost could clean up.

“When do we leave?”

“Plane’s waiting.”

I took a sip of my coffee. My ribs still ached when it rained. My shoulder clicked when I moved it certain ways. I would carry the scars of that fall forever. Every step was a reminder of the gravity that tried to kill me.

But I wasn’t falling anymore. I had learned that hitting the bottom isn’t the end. It’s just the foundation for the ascent.

I stood up, pulling my jacket collar tight against the chill. I looked at my reflection in the window. The hair was different, the clothes were civilian, but the eyes were the same.

“Rangers lead the way,” I said.

Bill smiled, a rare expression that reached his eyes. “Damn right they do.”

We walked out into the rain, disappearing into the crowd, two ghosts on a mission to haunt the wicked.

[END OF STORY]