OPERATION SILENT RAVEN
The Call-In
The rain started falling in sheets just after 0200.
Captain Eli Voss crouched beneath the overhang of a half-collapsed petrol station, gloved hands wrapped tight around the grip of his suppressed rifle.
"Echo One, status green. Ready to breach."
Static cracked in his comms.
"Copy that. Execute on your go."
This was the fifth op in two weeks. No time for rest, only mission cycles and dark coffee. The objective: secure a high-value target embedded within a hostile village in the Kandari Crescent.
Intel had flagged a compound on the far eastern edge—tall walls, satellite uplinks, and movement patterns that didn’t match any local farmer or shepherd. Raven Intel called it “The Nest.”
Infiltration
Voss motioned forward. His team—Reed, Nova, Juno, and Kell—fanned out into the rain. No light. No chatter. Just shapes and breath and boots on mud.
The ridge above the village was slick, crumbling underfoot, but it gave them what they needed: eyes on the target. Night vision bathed the compound in ghost green.
Three guards. Two on patrol. One watching a door.
Nova checked her suppressor. “I’ve got the lookout,” she whispered.
Voss gave the hand signal.
Three.
Two.
One.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Three guards down in under ten seconds.
“Clear,” Nova muttered.
They advanced. Fence cut. No alarms. Not yet.
Breach
At the rear of the compound, Kell slid a charge into place—tiny, focused, surgical.
PFTSH!
The door gave way with no more noise than a heavy sigh. They moved inside, rifles raised, sweeping the hallway.
The building was all concrete and humidity. Old maps on the wall. A desk with documents still damp from the leaking roof. One room lit by a single bulb—glowing like a challenge.
“Room left,” whispered Reed. “Heat signature, prone.”
They stacked. Juno kicked. Voss entered first.
The man on the floor blinked. Hands up.
“ID confirmed,” Voss said. “Target acquired.”
But something felt wrong. Too easy. Too quiet.
Then—static burst in his comms.
“Echo One, you've got multiple heat sigs moving on your six. Reinforcements inbound. Ten... maybe twelve.”
Extraction Under Fire
Voss grabbed the target and pulled him to his feet. “Package in hand,” he barked. “Prepare to exfil.”
They bolted for the back exit—but the hillside was crawling with movement. Flashlights. Footsteps. Voices shouting in clipped, aggressive dialect.
Pop-pop-pop.
Suppressors hissed. Reed went down to a ricochet that clipped his thigh. Juno dragged him back with one hand, laying down fire with the other.
They took cover behind a rock outcrop near the fence. Voss keyed his mic:
“Command, this is Echo One. Immediate extract required. LZ Bravo. We're boxed in.”
A moment of static.
“Chopper inbound, ETA seven minutes. Hold your ground.”
“Seven minutes is a long time,” muttered Kell, reloading behind a rusted drum. “You got a plan?”
“Yeah,” Voss said. “We fight.”
Raven Soars
The next six minutes were the longest of Voss’s life.
Muzzle flashes cut the rain. Every move was a calculation. Every shadow a possible threat.
Nova ran dry and switched to sidearm, covering Juno as she packed Reed’s wound. The target—shaking, confused—was pressed against the mud, hands still zip-tied.
At 03:19, rotor blades thundered overhead. The Raven-4 Blackhawk lit up the ridge with its spotlight.
“Move!” Voss ordered.
They dashed, covering each other in bounds, every heartbeat pounding like a war drum. Ropes dropped. Nova went first with the target. Then Reed. Then Kell.
Voss was last. He took one final look at the compound below—silent again, full of smoke and ghosts—and then grabbed the rope.
As they lifted into the sky, soaked and spent, no one said a word.
But everyone knew.
They’d survived.
OPERATION SILENT RAVEN – ACT II: THE AFTERMATH
The Debrief
The hangar buzzed under floodlights and silence.
Rain still drummed on the roof as Voss stepped off the bird, boots dragging through the puddles on the floor. Reed was on a stretcher, face pale but stable. Nova stayed by him. Kell and Juno disappeared into the shadows, helmets off, eyes hollow.
Voss handed off the target—still zip-tied—to a pair of silent analysts in gray coats.
No thank-you. No nod. Just a clipboard and a signature.
"Next time, they send us in blind again," Nova muttered, "I’m not coming back.”
Voss didn’t answer. He just stared at the whiteboard on the wall. The one with the names.
Three crossed out.
One circled.
No details.
Only codename: KITE.
Questions in the Dark
Back in the ops room, Voss sat under flickering fluorescents, arms crossed, a half-finished after-action report in front of him. Intel had confirmed the target—an ex-field engineer turned ghost asset. One of theirs. Thought dead. Not anymore.
His orders had been simple: retrieve. Not interrogate. Not question.
But something had gnawed at him since the mission.
Why was the target waiting?
Juno entered quietly and shut the door.
“You saw it too, right?” she said. “He wasn’t scared. He was placed.”
Voss nodded. “We were bait. Distraction for something bigger.”
Outside, alarms blipped once, distant and quick.
Something else had gone dark. Somewhere else.
Missing Pieces
Two days later, Voss reviewed the helmet cam footage. Nova’s overlay. Reed’s final shots. Static. Infrared.
And then he saw it—frame by frame. A silhouette on the opposite ridge. Not local militia. Not backup. Not theirs.
Gear too clean.
Patch blurred.
Watching. Recording.
Not engaging.
“Third party,” Voss whispered. “This wasn’t just recon. This was a trade.”
He keyed a secure channel. “Command, I need clearance to access KITE’s archive.”
“Denied,” came the response, crisp and immediate. “All Raven operations on hold. Stand by.”
The Vault
Voss didn’t wait for clearance. He still had a login that hadn’t been wiped. Buried inside the RavenNet archive was a classified folder marked “OP-WRAITH.” Inside were only timestamps, satellite images, and one heavily redacted file.
Line 1:
Subject: KITE [status: asset return successful]
Line 2:
Phase Two authorized. Echo team considered expendable in event of compromise.
He sat back slowly. Every breath came colder than the last.
His team hadn’t just walked into a trap.
They’d been sent into one.
The Quiet Before
That night, Voss stood on the edge of the compound’s outer perimeter wall. Cigarette lit, smoke curling like mist around his fingers. Below him, hangars buzzed with quiet preparation. Men sharpening knives. Choppers being fueled.
But Raven wasn’t deploying again. Not yet. Not until someone answered for what happened.
Nova joined him. No words. Just stood there.
“Still think it was just a retrieval?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I think we brought something back we weren’t meant to. And someone’s about to clean it up.”
Voss nodded. One hand on the wall. One on the grip of his sidearm.
“Then let’s be ready.”