Istanbul Ghosts
last update2025-06-09 19:11:48

SHADOW OPS: BLOOD DEBT

Chapter 5: Istanbul Ghosts

Istanbul, Turkey — 0812 Hours

The moment Dmitri Halvorsen saw the woman in the heavy coat, he moved.

Coffee overturned. Chair slammed back. The quiet rooftop café erupted into startled shouts as patrons scattered.

But he didn’t run blindly.

Dmitri had survived two decades of covert hell because he understood one truth:

SIGMA never sends just one.

He dropped down the fire escape behind the café, vaulted over a fruit vendor’s stand, and disappeared into the tight, twisting alleys of Fatih—old city Istanbul. He kept his pace steady, not fast enough to draw attention but quick enough to vanish.

Behind him, footsteps. Two sets.

Trained.

Coordinated.

0815 Hours – The List is Active

Half a world away, Knox sat with Jessa under a canopy of rock, the sun finally creeping into the cave’s outer lip. Reece still hadn’t woken.

Knox checked his GPS.

“The drop in Istanbul—your contact. Who is it?”

“Name’s Halvorsen,” she said. “Russian expat. Ex-GRU turned asset recovery. Deep ties to black-market data networks.”

Knox looked up sharply. “Dmitri?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Better than most,” Knox said. “He saved my ass in Chechnya.”

He looked at the tracker screen. A pulse lit up in the northeast quadrant.

“Someone accessed the dead drop ten minutes ago. But…”

“But?”

“The signal cut out after one ping. That only happens if the receiver gets burned.”

0818 Hours – Market Chase

Dmitri moved through a maze of crowded spice stalls. Tourists. Vendors. The scent of cumin and gunpowder.

He ducked into a clothing kiosk, stripped off his jacket, and emerged wearing a street vendor’s apron and sunglasses. One of the SIGMA agents passed within three feet of him and didn’t see a thing.

The woman, however—the one from the rooftop—she was good.

She stopped twenty meters away. Didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just turned her head slightly.

Their eyes met.

And then she smiled.

Dmitri knew what that meant.

The trap wasn’t to catch him.

It was to follow him.

0820 Hours – Escape and Signal

Dmitri pulled a magnetic chip from his boot—one he’d embedded into the USB copy days ago. He jammed it into a public access terminal and initiated a delayed transfer.

He encrypted the files, broke the packet into microbits, and fired them into the deepnet using a bounce relay off a ghost node in Berlin.

Then he sent one final ping:

“GHOST: They’re coming. You have 24 hours. —HALVORSEN”

He didn’t wait for a reply.

He grabbed a stolen Glock 19 from a drainpipe he’d stashed weeks earlier and headed east—toward the Bosphorus.

If they wanted him, they’d have to drag his body out of the water.

0825 Hours – Cave System, Afghanistan

Knox received the ping.

He read it twice, then looked at Jessa.

“He’s alive. For now.”

She nodded weakly. “We need to get that data out before they erase him.”

Knox stood, jaw clenched. “They’re escalating. And if Halvorsen’s compromised, we’re the only ones left who know the file exists.”

Reece groaned behind them. Conscious now. Groggy. But something different in his eyes.

Not glassy.

Not empty.

Knox knelt beside him. “You with me?”

Reece stared at him, then whispered: “They showed me your execution.”

Knox stiffened. “Whose?”

“Yours,” Reece said, trembling. “They told me you already died. That this was a memory extraction test.”

Jessa’s voice dropped. “Jesus.”

Knox stood slowly.

This wasn’t just a black op.

It was a psychological war—an experiment in digital consciousness, loyalty breaks, and memory weaponization.

They weren’t just killing agents.

They were rewriting them.

0828 Hours – SIGMA’s New Directive

Inside a steel bunker beneath Bagram, Vance watched the Istanbul footage.

Dmitri had gone to ground. As expected.

He pressed a button. A red file loaded onscreen:

PHASE THREE INITIATED

Subject: GABRIEL KNOX

Asset Classification: DELTA PRIME

Status: LURE

He turned to the woman beside him—the same one from Istanbul.

“Send the signal.”

She nodded and transmitted a code.

Thousands of miles away, a signal pulsed.

And inside Reece’s mind, something clicked.

He screamed.

And charged.

0830 Hours – Cave Breakdown

Reece’s eyes were full of terror—not rage. He wasn’t attacking.

He was running.

Knox grabbed him. “What is it?!”

“They’re coming,” Reece sobbed. “Not for me. For you.”

Knox froze.

And then he heard it:

A sound no drone, no jet, no manmade device should make.

A hum.

Low. Mechanical. Like something beneath the earth waking up.

Jessa’s voice cracked.

“They’re sending the next prototype.”

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