The wind shear eight thousand feet above the Bosphorus Strait was a freezing, lethal force. The Bosphorus Strait is the waterway that desperate the European side of Instanbul from the Asian side of Instanbul. Below, the ancient, sprawling city of Istanbul—a labyrinth of lights where Europe met Asia—looked deceptively peaceful. The drop ship carrying The Veils was a shadow, its open hatch vomiting a violent, pressurized rush of arctic air.
"This is the point of no return," Samuel Blake's voice was clipped, echoing through the team's sealed helmets. "We have an estimated nine minutes before their high command concludes the summit and ratifies the consolidation treaty. If we don't capture them, we fail. Green light."
The team executed the HALO (High-Altitude, Low-Opening) jump. They fell in absolute silence, five streamlined masses of composite armor and nylon, plummeting toward the dark earth. The freefall was a terrifying rush, a dizzying vertical dance where even a misplaced breath could mean death.
Kai was the first to separate, deploying his chute at a higher altitude to glide toward an elevated surveillance perch. The other four—Kyros, Asher, Amanda, and Michael—held their nerve, waiting until the last possible second. They pulled their ripcords just above the craggy, windswept cliff face that dropped away into the dark waters of the Strait. The sudden, agonizing deceleration nearly tore their arms from their sockets.
They landed with military precision on the treacherous cliff-side terrace directly behind the target: a massive, centuries-old Ottoman mansion now hardened into an unbreachable fortress.
"Network breach initiated," Kyros confirmed, already at the building's primary junction box. His nimble fingers worked at the security casing, attaching a hair-thin fiber optic cable. "I have a seven-minute window before the system identifies and purges my intrusion. Make it count."
As Kyros secured the digital front, Asher and Amanda moved to the roof above the main summit hall. The ceiling was protected by high-grade thermal shielding designed to defeat satellite surveillance.
"We can't cut this silently without wasting critical minutes," Asher stated, checking the structural integrity of the massive central skylight.
"Then we don't," Amanda decided, her hand reaching for a specialized breaching tool. She attached a shaped, high-intensity sonic charge directly to the center of the reinforced glass. "The target is below. Time is the only currency we have left."
She triggered the charge. It detonated with a focused, localized concussion that instantly pulverized the glass and steel frame into fine dust without collapsing the rest of the roof. They dropped through the newly created aperture, landing on a network of ceiling beams above the main chamber just as the mansion's alarms began to roar.
The grand hall below was a spectacle of power and opulence. It was a summit, all right, but one of crime: dozens of faces representing every major global syndicate—from heavily guarded Russian delegates to severe, suited Asian syndicate heads—were gathered around a colossal mahogany table. At the center sat three figures, the suspected Cartel leadership.
"Move on the high table! Secure the principals!" Michael commanded, taking up a defensive position at the entry point of the hall.
Asher and Amanda dropped into the room, their suppressed weapons opening fire instantly. The criminal bodyguards, slow to react to the surprise air assault, scrambled for cover behind banquet tables and antique columns. The air filled with the deafening sound of gunfire and the splintering of expensive furniture.
Amanda moved with lethal grace, her mind singularly focused. She suppressed three security details in a brutal, efficient exchange of fire, closing in on the three figures at the head of the table. She had to take them alive.
She slammed the heel of her boot onto the table and leveled her weapon. The three men, impeccably dressed, flinched but did not cower.
"Extraction complete. Stand down," Amanda ordered, pulling high-tension restraints from her tac-vest.
But as she reached for the first man, Kyros's voice, raw with panic, sliced through her comms. "It's a kill zone! They're decoys, Amanda! The target is not there!"
The three men at the table smiled—a cold, unsettling look of triumph. They weren't the Cartel leaders; they were expendable, high-value duplicates used as bait. They triggered small, integrated canisters concealed beneath the table. The air instantly filled with thick, corrosive smoke that stung the eyes and choked the lungs.
The real Cartel leadership—the true high table—had never been in Istanbul.
"Tactical retreat! Extraction compromised! Get out, now!" Samuel yelled, trying to fight his way through the suffocating fog and the chaos of the now-fleeing syndicate delegates.
The Veils reversed direction, fighting their way back out through the service tunnels toward the only route left: the sheer cliff edge. The mansion's dedicated inner security force—a formidable team of trained mercenaries—was now closing in fast, herding them toward the drop.
They burst onto the exterior cliff-side balcony, scrambling for their emergency ascent ropes. They were surrounded, their escape blocked by dozens of Cartel reinforcements who opened fire, pinning them to the very edge of the precipice.
Just as the mercenary commander gave the order to execute, Amanda saw it. Etched subtly into the granite railing of the balcony, barely visible beneath a patch of soot, was a crude but unmistakable mark: a small wolf's head.
It was the same personal signature left on the windowsill in Berlin—the warning of a man who was always one step ahead.
"Alex was here!" Amanda yelled, a terrifying realization washing over her. "He knew it was a trap. He was signaling us."
But where had the true leaders gone?
Kyros, fighting through the final defensive layers of the Cartel's network, shouted in pure disbelief, "I have the trace! Alex left a routing file disguised as a system log! They are not consolidating in Istanbul—they only sent the proxies here to bait us into their trap."
Asher deployed a last-ditch smoke grenade, buying them a precious second of cover. Amanda and Michael swiftly took out all the reinforcements and the mercenary commander. Asher said in a sharp voice "The actual summit, Kyros! Where are they?"
Kyros ripped the final data block: "It's a massive, unregistered cargo vessel moving at maximum speed in the Black Sea! That's where the real leadership is meeting, and they are preparing to finalize the unification at sea!"
The Veils, battered and enraged, scrambled onto their ascent ropes just as more cartel reinforcements stormed the balcony. They abandoned their equipment, ascending into the freezing Turkish night. The Istanbul mission was a tactical disaster, yet Alex Radekov had once again, salvaged a strategic victory by giving them the precise location of the true, final target.