Shadow OPS:BLOOD DEBT

Dead Men Don't Radio

SHADOW OPS: BLOOD DEBT

Chapter 2: Dead Men Don’t Radio

Helmand Province – 0510 Hours

The desert erupted around them.

Rounds tore through the sand as Knox and Jessa dove behind a broken stone wall. Dirt spat up in angry plumes, and the drone still circled overhead—low enough now to record their deaths in high-definition.

Knox kept his head down, rifle cradled across his chest. Jessa was bleeding badly. The bullet hadn’t hit an artery, but she was fading—fast.

He stripped off his field scarf and packed it against her wound.

“You with me?” he asked.

Her eyes fluttered. “Hurts like hell. But I’m not dying in this shithole.”

“Good.”

He risked a glance over the wall. Four shooters on the ridge—silhouettes backlit by the rising sun. Not Taliban. Their stance was too clean. Their gear too new. They were professionals.

Black ops.

Vance’s men.

That bastard wasn’t just alive—he had resources. Knox had to assume the entire op was compromised. That meant no air support. No satellite coverage. No rescue.

He was off the grid.

Again.

0515 Hours – Shift in the Sand

He motioned to Jessa. “We’re going to the dry riverbed. East. Two klicks. Can you walk?”

“With help,” she grunted.

Knox helped her to her feet, keeping low, rifle ready. They moved through the skeletal remains of ancient irrigation canals and broken fence posts. Foot by foot.

The shooters hadn’t followed.

That made him more nervous than if they had.

At the edge of the compound’s kill zone, Knox caught it—movement in the sand.

He grabbed Jessa and pulled her down just as a remote claymore blew apart the path ahead. Shrapnel screamed overhead.

He checked her—no hits.

Knox’s hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from something older.

Memory.

FLASHBACK – Ramadi, 2006

He was knee-deep in bodies. An op gone bad. Radio silence. Friendly fire. A misread satellite ping.

Twelve men lost.

They’d called it collateral.

Vance had just said, “Get used to it.”

Knox never had.

Back to Present – 0530 Hours

They found temporary shelter under a collapsed adobe house, its walls baked into brittle slabs. Knox checked the sat phone again. The message was gone. Wiped remotely. But the device still worked.

He dialed a secure frequency.

Static.

Then a click.

“Identify,” said a female voice.

“Ghost Actual. I need extraction. Ward’s alive. I’m burned.”

Another click. Silence.

Then:

“This line is compromised. We have no record of your operation.”

Knox stared at the screen.

“What?” he said, voice flat.

“Officially, Sergeant Gabriel Knox was declared KIA in Ukraine. Two months ago.”

Jessa coughed. “They made you a ghost.”

Knox let the phone fall into the dust.

0545 Hours – Movement

He heard it before he saw it—wheels crunching gravel, muffled by desert heat.

A truck.

Knox peeked through the cracks. Civilian. Dust-covered Toyota. A local behind the wheel. But the man was too calm, too clean.

Then he saw the patch on the driver’s vest: a white skull inside a triangle.

SIGMA UNIT.

Vance’s private death squad.

They were cleaning up the op.

Knox raised his rifle. He could take the shot. End it here. But if he fired, others would come. And they weren’t ready for that—not yet.

Instead, he waited.

Watched.

Followed.

0610 Hours – The Decision

The sun was rising fast. The temperature climbing. Knox knew they had less than an hour before drones resumed overhead sweeps.

They reached a craggy outcrop—a known smugglers’ route that led to an abandoned Soviet watch post. He used it years ago when ops went dark.

Inside, they caught their breath. Jessa leaned back, blood-streaked and exhausted.

Knox leaned against the stone wall, staring at his reflection in a shard of shattered mirror.

He barely recognized himself.

Scars. Eyes too cold for a man under forty. But still breathing.

“Why’d they want you dead?” he asked.

Jessa looked up, jaw tight. “Because I saw something. Something I wasn’t supposed to.”

Knox leaned forward. “What?”

She swallowed. “A black list. Names. High-level. Politicians. CEOs. Agents. All compromised. And one name stood out.”

“Vance.”

She shook her head slowly.

“No. Yours.”