Ghost Directive

Chapter 5: The Woman in the SUV

The woman’s name was Lira.

Not her real one, but the name Specter knew her by—and the name she used when people needed to disappear without a ripple. She was an asset handler, a cleaner, a trigger for the parts of an operation that couldn’t be written down.

And right now, Damien Voss was her problem.

She watched him leave the command center, pace fast and shoulders tight, the way he walked when he smelled blood in the water.

She started the engine.

---

Voss didn’t go for a car.

He walked.

He knew better than to make himself a moving target behind glass and steel. The snow had stopped, the air was sharp and cold. He ducked through side streets, past shuttered boutiques and security barricades.

He needed to think.

He needed to move.

Specter had the device. That wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. If Specter had retrieved it himself, that meant he was accelerating the timeline. Which meant the play wasn’t just a clean hit. It was theater.

Whatever was in that case—it wasn’t a simple bomb.

He turned a corner.

Stopped.

He felt it. The old reflex. The hairs on the back of his neck. A ghost breath against the wind.

He wasn’t alone.

---

From the rooftop above, Lira tracked him through a suppressed scope. Not a sniper rifle—too loud. Just a tranquilizer dart. A one-shot tool designed to take him down silently.

Voss moved like a ghost, but not quite silent enough.

She had the shot.

She held her breath.

But then, Voss stopped—just before the alley.

He looked up.

Straight at her.

She fired.

He dove.

The dart missed, slammed into brick.

Voss vanished down a stairwell.

“Shit,” she hissed.

---

In the basement of an abandoned bakery, Voss crouched low, pulled his backup phone, and dialed Malik.

“Someone’s tracking me. Tall female, short red jacket, rooftop shooter. She’s not with Specter.”

“You sure?”

“No,” he said. “Which means it’s worse. She's third-party. And she wants me gone.”

“You want backup?”

“No,” Voss said. “I want answers. And I want her alive.”

---

Elsewhere, Specter peeled off his fake uniform and tossed it into a dumpster near the river. The case was already transferred—now resting inside an unmarked van two blocks from the Grand Bellevue Hotel.

He didn’t need to stay near the target.

He was the weapon.

Everything else was choreography.

He sat on a bench, fed a piece of stale bread to a passing bird, and watched a convoy of security trucks rumble past toward the summit compound.

They were fortifying the wrong side of the city.

Perfect.

---

Back at NATO command, Malik stared at a new incoming feed.

The satellite tagged a heat signature on the summit’s rooftop—someone had placed an optical grid under the HVAC unit.

Specter’s mark.

She zoomed in.

The grid wasn’t active yet—but when it was, it would turn the roof into a sniper’s paradise.

She grabbed her radio.

“Voss, come in.”

Static.

Then: “Heard. Go.”

“He’s laying down optics. I think he’s not planning to shoot through the summit. He’s planning to light it up from above.”

Voss paused.

“No… that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“He’s not watching the target. He’s watching who responds. This whole thing might be a test. A screen.”

“A screen for what?”

Voss answered without hesitation.

“A second hit.”

Inside the van, the black case sat quietly.

A countdown appeared on a hidden LED:
00:44:36

Beneath the foam lining, under the false bottom, lay a second device—smaller, sleeker.

It wasn’t a bomb.

It was a transmitter.

Its signal blinked once, then again—locking onto a secure NATO frequency.

And sending out everything Specter had seen.

Live.

Encrypted.

And already spreading.