20-05-2026, 01:45 PM
(CHAPTER CONTD)
THE NEXT MORNING
The noon sun over Nal Air Force Station hit the concrete hard enough to make the entire air base shimmer. Inside the canteen, the usual clatter of steel plates and loud cadet chatter rolled through the room like background fire. A moment later, the door swung open and in walked Kirti and Vishal, fresh off their assignment in Delhi. Cadets straightened instinctively. Even members of the Garuda unit looked up. Dan, Avinash, and Rani were the first to greet them, dragging them into the center of the crowd before either of them could sit down.
"So?" Avinash asked, leaning forward.
"What was so important they sent both of you?"
Kirti shrugged with a grin, trying to sound casual.
"It was just a training exercise. Some…. new and interesting sorties for the upcoming Indian Air Force Day celebrations"
"Interesting?" Vishal snorted.
"That’s one way to put it. The higher-ups were more impressed with her than me"
Kirti immediately flushed and smacked his shoulder.
"Will you stop talking?"
Dan laughed, folding his arms.
"He’s not wrong. For me, you’ve officially overtaken Vishal as the top ace of this base"
Vishal only smiled, taking the blow with theatrical dignity, while Rani’s grin widened at Kirti’s obvious embarrassment. But Kirti wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes had already begun scanning the canteen. The cadets. The officers near the far table. The men stepping out into the heat. Searching. Restless. Dan noticed first. He always did. A slow grin spread over his face.
"Who are you looking for?" he asked, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
"Your boyfriend’s standing right next to you"
He jabbed a thumb toward Vishal. Kirti turned so sharply her chair almost scbangd backward.
"He is not"
Vishal clutched his chest and staggered half a step.
"Ouch" he said, deadpan, earning a ripple of laughter.
But Kirti didn’t laugh. Her eyes were still searching. Dan’s grin faded just enough to sharpen.
"If you're looking for Hemant, then he's not here"
He said. The words landed heavier than they should have. Kirti’s expression dimmed. Dan saw it. For once, he didn’t press.
"He is no longer part of Garuda. That’s why I’m sitting in his position now"
For a moment, even the canteen felt quieter. Then Dan added, almost casually,
"Relax. It’s not what you think. He’s got a bigger job now. They’ve designated him HVI for the base. Hemant isn’t out. He’s become a military asset"
Everyone knew what HVI meant. The short form for High Value Individual. Something shifted inside Kirti. Relief first. Then pride. Quiet, reluctant pride. The kind she didn’t want anyone to see. Before anyone could say another word, a rising commotion spilled in from the airfield. Chairs scbangd. Heads turned. The entire canteen seemed to empty toward the windows. Out on the blazing tarmac, a sleek private Cessna Citation XL rolled to a stop, absurdly elegant against the harsh military backdrop.
![[Image: Gemini-Generated-Image-eb2outeb2outeb2o.png]](https://i.ibb.co/8gPy038F/Gemini-Generated-Image-eb2outeb2outeb2o.png)
"That’s an unusual sight here....what is a civilian aircraft doing in an Air Force tarmac?"
Rani muttered. Her finger pointed toward the tail fin. A strange insignia gleamed there—a Roman sentinel helmet. Dan’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time all afternoon, even he sounded impressed.
"That" he said quietly.
"Is the one and only Sentinel. A UN backed blackops operations unit. Also…..Hemant’s new workplace"
"Really?" Kirti asked amused.
"Indeed...what he did in Kinshasa really impressed them to which he is getting this 'promotion' in disguise of a 'punishment'...."
"Heh...you don't say" Avinash interrupted them as he continued.
"The things I saw he did to those scums....my torture chamber had a live TV feed of the fighting grounds...it was like I was watching someone superhuman....the way he swung that weird weapon!"
The canteen had gone dead silent by the time he appeared.
He stepped onto the tarmac like he owned the sunlight. Blue checkline shirt left open. Black V-neck beneath. Blue jeans. Aviators hiding his eyes. One travel bag slung over his shoulder like the weight of the world didn’t mean much to him anymore. He didn’t look back. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even slow down.
A group of armed men bearing the same sentinel crest emerged from the jet and walked straight toward him. Their boots hit the ground in clean, measured rhythm. The one in front stopped, gave a sharp nod, and said,
"Welcome to Sentinel Sir. Your ride is here"
And every cadet watching understood the unspoken part. This wasn’t transport. This was extraction.
![[Image: pe-Ix-D.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/Kj8CWJm7/pe-Ix-D.jpg)
From behind the glass, Kirti could only stare at Hemant. There had been a time when he stood in this same base with dust on his boots, reckless in his grin, heart stupidly honest enough to hand to her. She had turned it away. She had told herself it was the right thing. Standing there now, watching armed internationals escort him like he belonged to a larger map than any of them could imagine, that certainty didn’t feel so solid anymore. It wasn’t regret exactly. It was heavier than that. A sharp, private ache wrapped in admiration. He looked untouchable now—like the kind of man nations borrowed when something somewhere had gone terribly wrong.
The engines ignited with a deep metallic roar. Heat blasted across the tarmac as the jet began to move. Nobody in the canteen spoke. Not Dan. Not Vishal. Not even the cadets who usually found jokes for everything. They simply watched. Watched as the aircraft gathered speed. Watched as it tore free from the earth.
AUGUST 11th 2004 TIAN SHAN MOUNTAIN RANGES , KAZAKHSTAN
The Tian Shan range swallowed sound.
Blizzard winds tore across the western spine of Kazakhstan, smearing the world into a white void where sky and mountain became the same frozen abyss. Buried into that wilderness sat the airbase—a Russian ghost installation carved into rock and ice, loyal not to Moscow but to General Barkov’s private war machine. Beneath floodlights and drifting snow, Sukhoi fighters crouched like iron predators on the elevated runway. Hidden directly beneath its edge, fingers locked into frozen stone, Hemant codename King—waited.
Above him, the roar of a departing jet ripped across the storm.
King glanced sideways. Will codename Wolf—hung there beside him, half-buried in shadow. Wolf pulled the cigar from his mouth, watched the orange ember fight the wind, then flicked it into the abyss below.
"Show Time!!" he muttered.
That was all either of them needed. Their ice hooks bit deep. They climbed like phantoms, scythes and climbing claws chewing into the mountain face. Snow lashed their Sentinel stealth suits, but the white camouflage turned them into shifting pieces of the storm itself. In less than a minute they were over the lip of the runway, crouched low as two Russian patrolmen emerged through the veil of snow.
Two muffled coughs.
King and Wolf fired at the same instant. Suppressed HK416s spat tiny flashes that vanished in the blizzard. One guard dropped before he even knew he was dying, a clean shot through the eye. The second staggered, blood misting hot and black into the snow, before Wolf’s follow-up round punched through his throat and folded him silently to the ground.
They advanced.
The storm covered everything—footsteps, bodies, muzzle flashes. Patrol after patrol disappeared into the snow. King moved with terrifying economy, every pull of the trigger measured, every burst ending in collapse. Wolf drifted beside him like a hunter born in war, never wasting a bullet. Men died without alarms, without shouts, without even seeing the faces of the ones killing them. At the edge of the runway, their route split. Wolf climbed onto a jagged ridge overlooking the compound.
"Clear that building Mr.King , I'll provide overwatch!"
He whispered over comms. King descended alone toward the first building. He slipped inside.
Warm air hit him, carrying oil, gunmetal, sweat. A corridor opened ahead. Two soldiers died before they could turn. A third stepped out of a side room and caught a glimpse of movement—just enough to tense, not enough to react. King’s suppressed rifle coughed once. The round tore through cheekbone and spine. The man dropped twitching.
Then a fourth guard farther down the hall froze. Too far for the rifle without risking noise. King’s hand moved. The hatchet flew. Its chained blade spun through the dim light and buried itself deep in the man’s neck. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed across the wall in a dark fan. The soldier clawed weakly at the steel as King strode forward, planted a boot against his chest, and yanked the weapon free with a wet ripping snap. He scanned the rooms. Nothing.
"No ACS here" King murmured.
"I see a Hangar far side ahead. Heavy at the front. Dead at the rear. The ACS Module is likely to be there , race you there , Wolf out!"
Wolf’s voice came through the static. King ran. Not openly—he became the storm. The snow-covered stealth suit blurred him into the white chaos as he crossed the open ground at speed. Searchlights swept past and found nothing. Wind hammered his face. The hangar loomed out of the blizzard like a steel fortress.
At the back entrance, Wolf was already waiting.
"Took the scenic route, huh?" He smirked.
Inside, only two guards. One never saw Wolf’s knife until it punched up beneath his jaw. The other turned at the sound and saw King for half a second before the hatchet buried itself in his temple with a hard metallic thunk. Both bodies hit the concrete almost together. The hangar smelled of fuel and scorched metal. A jagged section of the shattered satellite lay on the floor like the carcass of something dragged from orbit.
"I’ll check the wreckage" Wolf said.
"Check the tech room upstairs. Go"
King climbed the steel stairs two at a time. The tech room was empty. Monitors flickered over banks of equipment, cables, and classified telemetry. He moved fast, scanning. Then he saw it. The ACS module. Cold, compact, deadly. Beside it sat a hardened military drive loaded with extracted satellite data. King snatched both, sliding them into his pack. Mission complete. Then the comm hissed.
"King?" Wolf said.
There was something wrong in his voice.
"I've been compromised....keep a low profile!"
At that exact moment the hangar doors thundered open. Floodlights exploded inward. Engines roared. Outside, rows of gunmen spread out behind armored vehicles, rifles leveled straight at Wolf in the center of the floor.
"King...go to Plan B" Wolf snapped.
King’s eyes dropped to the backup detonator clipped to his vest. Armed. Blinking. And suddenly he understood. Every step to the hangar, every dead corridor, every shadowed wall—Wolf had seeded the route with C4 satchel charges. King didn’t hesitate. He pressed the detonator. For one frozen heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the mountain erupted.
A chain of coordinated detonations ripped through the base. Fire punched out of buildings. Concrete split apart. Fuel lines became rivers of flame. The blast wave smashed into the hangar as Russian heavy weapons vanished in blooming orange fireballs. Men were hurled screaming through the snow. Sirens shrieked. Searchlights died. The entire airfield descended into chaos.
"Move!" Wolf barked.
![[Image: Sentinel11.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/JDQQT0n/Sentinel11.jpg)
They ran through hell.
Russian soldiers poured through smoke and debris, firing wildly. King and Wolf answered with surgical violence. King’s rifle hammered three men off a stairwell, then he buried his hatchet into another soldier’s collarbone and ripped downward. Wolf stitched a controlled burst across a line of advancing troops, dropping them in the firelight like cut marionettes. They carved a path through bodies, sparks, and shattered steel, never slowing. At the runway edge, they rappelled off the cliffside and hit the snow below running. Snowmobiles were already coming. Headlights slashed through the trees.
King and Wolf split into the woods, using trunks and blizzard cover like living cover. One pursuing rider took a round through the visor and cartwheeled into a drift. Another clipped a buried rock and launched into a pine, breaking in a spray of blood and shattered machine parts. Within seconds, the hunters had become the hunted.
They stole two snowmobiles and gunned the throttles.
Now the chase truly began.
More Russian riders burst from the burning base behind them. Overhead, two Chinook gunships descended through the storm, their mounted weapons lighting the snow with streams of tracer fire. Ice exploded around King and Wolf as they weaved between trees, drifted around boulders, and skimmed over frozen ravines. Wolf keyed his comm.
"Overlord, this is wolf. The heat is too hot , I need you to bring in the rain!!"
"Be advised Wolf , you're still close to the blast radius. This will be a danger close"
Mission command warned instantly. Wolf grinned through the wind.
"Solid copy Overlord...Send it"
Ahead, an ice glacier rose like a wall of glass. King brought his snowmobile alongside Wolf’s.
"Time for shock and awe" Wolf looked over.
Then the sky came apart. MLRS rockets screamed out of the storm. They slammed into the glacier in a rolling barrage of fire, turning the mountain into a collapsing inferno of ice, steel, and pulverized rock. The shockwave swallowed the Russian pursuit whole. Snowmobiles vanished in blossoms of flame. One helicopter caught a direct hit and broke apart in midair. The second clipped the collapsing ice wall and spiraled into the white abyss.
For a moment, everything disappeared inside smoke and fire.
Then, from the burning cloud, King burst out first. His snowmobile tore through the flames like something born of them. Wolf sat on the back, one hand gripping the frame, the other reloading calmly as if the apocalypse behind them were just weather. They reached the plateau. A black Buzzard helicopter hovered there, rotors chopping through the blizzard. Sharon—Phoenix—leaned out from the open side door.
"Get in!"
King drove straight up the loading skid. Wolf jumped first, hauled himself inside, then dragged King in as the snowmobile fell away into the dark. The helicopter banked hard and climbed.
Below them, the base was dying.
The C4 chain had touched fuel reserves, ammunition dumps, missile storage. Secondary explosions rolled across the entire installation. Hangars collapsed inward. Fire spread beneath the storm until the whole hidden airbase burned like a wound carved into the mountain.
Phoenix looked down at the inferno.
"That’s going to be a problem"
King peeled off his frost-covered gloves and stared through the open door.
"Not exactly. On record, that base never existed. This thing will be buried in the history books"
He said quietly. Wolf laughed, pulling off part of his rig.
"We did it. ACS is ours"
King reached into his pack. He held up the ACS module first. Then the hard drive.
"I've plucked some of their data!" he said.
For the first time since the mission, the Wolf gave a genuine smile.
The Buzzard vanished into the storm, carrying them eastward. Behind them, the flames of the secret airbase were slowly swallowed by the blizzard—buried beneath snow, silence, and history that would never admit it happened.
SENTINEL EUROPE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS , HEREFORD
By the time Hemant Kumar reached SENTINEL HQ in Hereford, the cold from Kazakhstan had long left his skin, but not his thoughts. The hard drive recovered from the Tian Shan operation sat open across a bank of monitors in the intelligence wing, its contents unfolding line by line in pale blue light. Hemant stood alone, sleeves rolled, eyes fixed on maps and encrypted manifests. At first it looked like noise—shipping codes, false invoices, satellite timestamps—but the deeper he went, the clearer the pattern became. He found smuggling corridors running through Oman and Turkmenistan, routes carefully masked through commercial freight lanes. Hidden among them were stash houses, offshore fronts, and transit hubs tied to AZRAEL. Narcotics. Human trafficking. Weapons components. But one route caught his attention more than the rest. It didn’t match the Indian networks he had spent months dismantling. This one was newer. Cleaner. Built for something bigger.
Hemant called Will down to the analysis floor.
Wolf leaned over the terminal, studying the route overlays in silence while Hemant broke down the data. Cargo moved from the Gulf, crossed inland through Turkmenistan, then vanished into dead zones near the Russian sphere of influence. It was too deliberate to be coincidence. Hemant pointed at a cluster of movement markers and spoke quietly.
"I just found the smuggling route from the land among the north countries..their destination is Shanghai , China....to be handed over to the Triads..they are using hidden cave systems and the terrain as cover in their smuggling routes....which would also explain me finding them in Ladakh since India-Pakistan has still unexplored hidden cave systems in their border mountains..but that is not the concering part....I found a notable name who is associated with AZRAEL in Russia!"
Wolf’s face hardened as he listened. Then he reached over, dragged another file onto the main display, and gave Hemant the missing piece.
"Barkov......General Barkov!"
The name hung in the room like smoke.
Will explained that the data recovered from the Russian base confirmed what SENTINEL had only suspected before. General Barkov wasn’t merely associating AZRAEL—he was doing business with them. In exchange for weapons sourced through black-market channels and other illicit networks, Barkov had been providing protected movement corridors, safe storage, and operational cover inside Russian-controlled territory. Suddenly the mountain base made a lot more sense. It had never just been about the ACS module. Barkov was using the chaos of civil conflict to build a private ecosystem of war, and AZRAEL had become part of the machinery.
Before either of them could say more, the doors slid open and Sharon—Phoenix—walked in carrying a tablet under one arm.
"You’re both going to want to see this" she said.
With a flick of her fingers, a fresh set of files appeared across the screens. Financial transfers. Shipping registries. Corporate fronts. She had been tracing a separate line out of Russia and had landed on something bigger. The trail connected Barkov to the Tarasov Crime Family, one of the most powerful names in the Russian underworld. But it didn’t stop there. Phoenix zoomed in on a cluster of encrypted transactions and shipping manifests moving east.
"Tarasov’s negotiating with a faction of the Chinese Triads, and the location they've chose is not exactly remote"
She said. The location flashed on the screen. Macau. A luxury resort district. High money. High secrecy. A perfect place for empires to shake hands without ever admitting they met.
Will folded his arms and looked from Sharon to Hemant.
"Is Tarasov part of AZRAEL?" Hemant asked.
"Not just part , they are the Founders. Specifically the main head Evan Tarasov , who started that crime family which evolved into the Syndicate that is today. He is long dead though. Killed in 1988 by a US funded hitjob with no records!"
"And let me guess , he built his empire by taking advantage of the collapse of the USSR"
"Precisely, and if Tarasov and the Triads are building a pipeline for AZRAEL, we need eyes inside before they lock it down"
He tapped the display, enlarging the date of the meeting.
"This isn’t a smash-and-grab. The meetup is being planned in a month so we must build some short term influence and gain some intel on the ground"
Then he looked directly at Hemant.
"You’re going undercover. And you won’t be alone"
"I am already working on it Will. I've learned about AZRAEL tie up to the Triads through my own investigation regarding the supply chain from India to Nepal on my first day in SENTINEL. Those girls we liberated months ago , they were meant to reach Shanghai. I've build some ground level contacts within the Triads. People who have our best interests. Fed them our intel for their benefit in return for a favor for us in the future. Turns out not all the Triads are on board with AZRAEL!"
"Now that's my man Mr.King. Always planning ahead. But its time you get some backup"
Hemant already knew who was coming before Wolf said the name.
"Jinx will join you!"
For a moment, Hemant said nothing. He stared at the glowing map of Macau while the implications settled into place. He has been studying the Triad's operations for weeks , interacting with someone who wants to bring change in the ranks. Now with the right angle and planning , he feels this will solve a lot of troubles in that country. But the rules are different , this isn't a battlefield , there is no tactical approach or heavy gun battles. No rifles in a blizzard. No shadows to disappear into. Just silk suits, false names, smiling predators, and one wrong move away from a knife in the dark. For Hemant this was different , but one thing he was known for , always prepared. A new kind of adventure excited him but at the same time alerted him. This was the edge. And more importantly , his glorious purpose. And he was now ready to step into a different kind of warfare. One that is close to the notorious underworlds and espionage. Somewhere inside Macau, AZRAEL was preparing to expand its empire. And now, for the first time in months, Hemant felt it—that quiet certainty in his chest. He wasn’t chasing ghosts anymore.
He was finally getting close.
(TO BE CONTD)
The noon sun over Nal Air Force Station hit the concrete hard enough to make the entire air base shimmer. Inside the canteen, the usual clatter of steel plates and loud cadet chatter rolled through the room like background fire. A moment later, the door swung open and in walked Kirti and Vishal, fresh off their assignment in Delhi. Cadets straightened instinctively. Even members of the Garuda unit looked up. Dan, Avinash, and Rani were the first to greet them, dragging them into the center of the crowd before either of them could sit down.
"So?" Avinash asked, leaning forward.
"What was so important they sent both of you?"
Kirti shrugged with a grin, trying to sound casual.
"It was just a training exercise. Some…. new and interesting sorties for the upcoming Indian Air Force Day celebrations"
"Interesting?" Vishal snorted.
"That’s one way to put it. The higher-ups were more impressed with her than me"
Kirti immediately flushed and smacked his shoulder.
"Will you stop talking?"
Dan laughed, folding his arms.
"He’s not wrong. For me, you’ve officially overtaken Vishal as the top ace of this base"
Vishal only smiled, taking the blow with theatrical dignity, while Rani’s grin widened at Kirti’s obvious embarrassment. But Kirti wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes had already begun scanning the canteen. The cadets. The officers near the far table. The men stepping out into the heat. Searching. Restless. Dan noticed first. He always did. A slow grin spread over his face.
"Who are you looking for?" he asked, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
"Your boyfriend’s standing right next to you"
He jabbed a thumb toward Vishal. Kirti turned so sharply her chair almost scbangd backward.
"He is not"
Vishal clutched his chest and staggered half a step.
"Ouch" he said, deadpan, earning a ripple of laughter.
But Kirti didn’t laugh. Her eyes were still searching. Dan’s grin faded just enough to sharpen.
"If you're looking for Hemant, then he's not here"
He said. The words landed heavier than they should have. Kirti’s expression dimmed. Dan saw it. For once, he didn’t press.
"He is no longer part of Garuda. That’s why I’m sitting in his position now"
For a moment, even the canteen felt quieter. Then Dan added, almost casually,
"Relax. It’s not what you think. He’s got a bigger job now. They’ve designated him HVI for the base. Hemant isn’t out. He’s become a military asset"
Everyone knew what HVI meant. The short form for High Value Individual. Something shifted inside Kirti. Relief first. Then pride. Quiet, reluctant pride. The kind she didn’t want anyone to see. Before anyone could say another word, a rising commotion spilled in from the airfield. Chairs scbangd. Heads turned. The entire canteen seemed to empty toward the windows. Out on the blazing tarmac, a sleek private Cessna Citation XL rolled to a stop, absurdly elegant against the harsh military backdrop.
"That’s an unusual sight here....what is a civilian aircraft doing in an Air Force tarmac?"
Rani muttered. Her finger pointed toward the tail fin. A strange insignia gleamed there—a Roman sentinel helmet. Dan’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time all afternoon, even he sounded impressed.
"That" he said quietly.
"Is the one and only Sentinel. A UN backed blackops operations unit. Also…..Hemant’s new workplace"
"Really?" Kirti asked amused.
"Indeed...what he did in Kinshasa really impressed them to which he is getting this 'promotion' in disguise of a 'punishment'...."
"Heh...you don't say" Avinash interrupted them as he continued.
"The things I saw he did to those scums....my torture chamber had a live TV feed of the fighting grounds...it was like I was watching someone superhuman....the way he swung that weird weapon!"
The canteen had gone dead silent by the time he appeared.
He stepped onto the tarmac like he owned the sunlight. Blue checkline shirt left open. Black V-neck beneath. Blue jeans. Aviators hiding his eyes. One travel bag slung over his shoulder like the weight of the world didn’t mean much to him anymore. He didn’t look back. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even slow down.
A group of armed men bearing the same sentinel crest emerged from the jet and walked straight toward him. Their boots hit the ground in clean, measured rhythm. The one in front stopped, gave a sharp nod, and said,
"Welcome to Sentinel Sir. Your ride is here"
And every cadet watching understood the unspoken part. This wasn’t transport. This was extraction.
From behind the glass, Kirti could only stare at Hemant. There had been a time when he stood in this same base with dust on his boots, reckless in his grin, heart stupidly honest enough to hand to her. She had turned it away. She had told herself it was the right thing. Standing there now, watching armed internationals escort him like he belonged to a larger map than any of them could imagine, that certainty didn’t feel so solid anymore. It wasn’t regret exactly. It was heavier than that. A sharp, private ache wrapped in admiration. He looked untouchable now—like the kind of man nations borrowed when something somewhere had gone terribly wrong.
The engines ignited with a deep metallic roar. Heat blasted across the tarmac as the jet began to move. Nobody in the canteen spoke. Not Dan. Not Vishal. Not even the cadets who usually found jokes for everything. They simply watched. Watched as the aircraft gathered speed. Watched as it tore free from the earth.
AUGUST 11th 2004 TIAN SHAN MOUNTAIN RANGES , KAZAKHSTAN
The Tian Shan range swallowed sound.
Blizzard winds tore across the western spine of Kazakhstan, smearing the world into a white void where sky and mountain became the same frozen abyss. Buried into that wilderness sat the airbase—a Russian ghost installation carved into rock and ice, loyal not to Moscow but to General Barkov’s private war machine. Beneath floodlights and drifting snow, Sukhoi fighters crouched like iron predators on the elevated runway. Hidden directly beneath its edge, fingers locked into frozen stone, Hemant codename King—waited.
Above him, the roar of a departing jet ripped across the storm.
King glanced sideways. Will codename Wolf—hung there beside him, half-buried in shadow. Wolf pulled the cigar from his mouth, watched the orange ember fight the wind, then flicked it into the abyss below.
"Show Time!!" he muttered.
That was all either of them needed. Their ice hooks bit deep. They climbed like phantoms, scythes and climbing claws chewing into the mountain face. Snow lashed their Sentinel stealth suits, but the white camouflage turned them into shifting pieces of the storm itself. In less than a minute they were over the lip of the runway, crouched low as two Russian patrolmen emerged through the veil of snow.
Two muffled coughs.
King and Wolf fired at the same instant. Suppressed HK416s spat tiny flashes that vanished in the blizzard. One guard dropped before he even knew he was dying, a clean shot through the eye. The second staggered, blood misting hot and black into the snow, before Wolf’s follow-up round punched through his throat and folded him silently to the ground.
They advanced.
The storm covered everything—footsteps, bodies, muzzle flashes. Patrol after patrol disappeared into the snow. King moved with terrifying economy, every pull of the trigger measured, every burst ending in collapse. Wolf drifted beside him like a hunter born in war, never wasting a bullet. Men died without alarms, without shouts, without even seeing the faces of the ones killing them. At the edge of the runway, their route split. Wolf climbed onto a jagged ridge overlooking the compound.
"Clear that building Mr.King , I'll provide overwatch!"
He whispered over comms. King descended alone toward the first building. He slipped inside.
Warm air hit him, carrying oil, gunmetal, sweat. A corridor opened ahead. Two soldiers died before they could turn. A third stepped out of a side room and caught a glimpse of movement—just enough to tense, not enough to react. King’s suppressed rifle coughed once. The round tore through cheekbone and spine. The man dropped twitching.
Then a fourth guard farther down the hall froze. Too far for the rifle without risking noise. King’s hand moved. The hatchet flew. Its chained blade spun through the dim light and buried itself deep in the man’s neck. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed across the wall in a dark fan. The soldier clawed weakly at the steel as King strode forward, planted a boot against his chest, and yanked the weapon free with a wet ripping snap. He scanned the rooms. Nothing.
"No ACS here" King murmured.
"I see a Hangar far side ahead. Heavy at the front. Dead at the rear. The ACS Module is likely to be there , race you there , Wolf out!"
Wolf’s voice came through the static. King ran. Not openly—he became the storm. The snow-covered stealth suit blurred him into the white chaos as he crossed the open ground at speed. Searchlights swept past and found nothing. Wind hammered his face. The hangar loomed out of the blizzard like a steel fortress.
At the back entrance, Wolf was already waiting.
"Took the scenic route, huh?" He smirked.
Inside, only two guards. One never saw Wolf’s knife until it punched up beneath his jaw. The other turned at the sound and saw King for half a second before the hatchet buried itself in his temple with a hard metallic thunk. Both bodies hit the concrete almost together. The hangar smelled of fuel and scorched metal. A jagged section of the shattered satellite lay on the floor like the carcass of something dragged from orbit.
"I’ll check the wreckage" Wolf said.
"Check the tech room upstairs. Go"
King climbed the steel stairs two at a time. The tech room was empty. Monitors flickered over banks of equipment, cables, and classified telemetry. He moved fast, scanning. Then he saw it. The ACS module. Cold, compact, deadly. Beside it sat a hardened military drive loaded with extracted satellite data. King snatched both, sliding them into his pack. Mission complete. Then the comm hissed.
"King?" Wolf said.
There was something wrong in his voice.
"I've been compromised....keep a low profile!"
At that exact moment the hangar doors thundered open. Floodlights exploded inward. Engines roared. Outside, rows of gunmen spread out behind armored vehicles, rifles leveled straight at Wolf in the center of the floor.
"King...go to Plan B" Wolf snapped.
King’s eyes dropped to the backup detonator clipped to his vest. Armed. Blinking. And suddenly he understood. Every step to the hangar, every dead corridor, every shadowed wall—Wolf had seeded the route with C4 satchel charges. King didn’t hesitate. He pressed the detonator. For one frozen heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the mountain erupted.
A chain of coordinated detonations ripped through the base. Fire punched out of buildings. Concrete split apart. Fuel lines became rivers of flame. The blast wave smashed into the hangar as Russian heavy weapons vanished in blooming orange fireballs. Men were hurled screaming through the snow. Sirens shrieked. Searchlights died. The entire airfield descended into chaos.
"Move!" Wolf barked.
They ran through hell.
Russian soldiers poured through smoke and debris, firing wildly. King and Wolf answered with surgical violence. King’s rifle hammered three men off a stairwell, then he buried his hatchet into another soldier’s collarbone and ripped downward. Wolf stitched a controlled burst across a line of advancing troops, dropping them in the firelight like cut marionettes. They carved a path through bodies, sparks, and shattered steel, never slowing. At the runway edge, they rappelled off the cliffside and hit the snow below running. Snowmobiles were already coming. Headlights slashed through the trees.
King and Wolf split into the woods, using trunks and blizzard cover like living cover. One pursuing rider took a round through the visor and cartwheeled into a drift. Another clipped a buried rock and launched into a pine, breaking in a spray of blood and shattered machine parts. Within seconds, the hunters had become the hunted.
They stole two snowmobiles and gunned the throttles.
Now the chase truly began.
More Russian riders burst from the burning base behind them. Overhead, two Chinook gunships descended through the storm, their mounted weapons lighting the snow with streams of tracer fire. Ice exploded around King and Wolf as they weaved between trees, drifted around boulders, and skimmed over frozen ravines. Wolf keyed his comm.
"Overlord, this is wolf. The heat is too hot , I need you to bring in the rain!!"
"Be advised Wolf , you're still close to the blast radius. This will be a danger close"
Mission command warned instantly. Wolf grinned through the wind.
"Solid copy Overlord...Send it"
Ahead, an ice glacier rose like a wall of glass. King brought his snowmobile alongside Wolf’s.
"Time for shock and awe" Wolf looked over.
Then the sky came apart. MLRS rockets screamed out of the storm. They slammed into the glacier in a rolling barrage of fire, turning the mountain into a collapsing inferno of ice, steel, and pulverized rock. The shockwave swallowed the Russian pursuit whole. Snowmobiles vanished in blossoms of flame. One helicopter caught a direct hit and broke apart in midair. The second clipped the collapsing ice wall and spiraled into the white abyss.
For a moment, everything disappeared inside smoke and fire.
Then, from the burning cloud, King burst out first. His snowmobile tore through the flames like something born of them. Wolf sat on the back, one hand gripping the frame, the other reloading calmly as if the apocalypse behind them were just weather. They reached the plateau. A black Buzzard helicopter hovered there, rotors chopping through the blizzard. Sharon—Phoenix—leaned out from the open side door.
"Get in!"
King drove straight up the loading skid. Wolf jumped first, hauled himself inside, then dragged King in as the snowmobile fell away into the dark. The helicopter banked hard and climbed.
Below them, the base was dying.
The C4 chain had touched fuel reserves, ammunition dumps, missile storage. Secondary explosions rolled across the entire installation. Hangars collapsed inward. Fire spread beneath the storm until the whole hidden airbase burned like a wound carved into the mountain.
Phoenix looked down at the inferno.
"That’s going to be a problem"
King peeled off his frost-covered gloves and stared through the open door.
"Not exactly. On record, that base never existed. This thing will be buried in the history books"
He said quietly. Wolf laughed, pulling off part of his rig.
"We did it. ACS is ours"
King reached into his pack. He held up the ACS module first. Then the hard drive.
"I've plucked some of their data!" he said.
For the first time since the mission, the Wolf gave a genuine smile.
The Buzzard vanished into the storm, carrying them eastward. Behind them, the flames of the secret airbase were slowly swallowed by the blizzard—buried beneath snow, silence, and history that would never admit it happened.
SENTINEL EUROPE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS , HEREFORD
By the time Hemant Kumar reached SENTINEL HQ in Hereford, the cold from Kazakhstan had long left his skin, but not his thoughts. The hard drive recovered from the Tian Shan operation sat open across a bank of monitors in the intelligence wing, its contents unfolding line by line in pale blue light. Hemant stood alone, sleeves rolled, eyes fixed on maps and encrypted manifests. At first it looked like noise—shipping codes, false invoices, satellite timestamps—but the deeper he went, the clearer the pattern became. He found smuggling corridors running through Oman and Turkmenistan, routes carefully masked through commercial freight lanes. Hidden among them were stash houses, offshore fronts, and transit hubs tied to AZRAEL. Narcotics. Human trafficking. Weapons components. But one route caught his attention more than the rest. It didn’t match the Indian networks he had spent months dismantling. This one was newer. Cleaner. Built for something bigger.
Hemant called Will down to the analysis floor.
Wolf leaned over the terminal, studying the route overlays in silence while Hemant broke down the data. Cargo moved from the Gulf, crossed inland through Turkmenistan, then vanished into dead zones near the Russian sphere of influence. It was too deliberate to be coincidence. Hemant pointed at a cluster of movement markers and spoke quietly.
"I just found the smuggling route from the land among the north countries..their destination is Shanghai , China....to be handed over to the Triads..they are using hidden cave systems and the terrain as cover in their smuggling routes....which would also explain me finding them in Ladakh since India-Pakistan has still unexplored hidden cave systems in their border mountains..but that is not the concering part....I found a notable name who is associated with AZRAEL in Russia!"
Wolf’s face hardened as he listened. Then he reached over, dragged another file onto the main display, and gave Hemant the missing piece.
"Barkov......General Barkov!"
The name hung in the room like smoke.
Will explained that the data recovered from the Russian base confirmed what SENTINEL had only suspected before. General Barkov wasn’t merely associating AZRAEL—he was doing business with them. In exchange for weapons sourced through black-market channels and other illicit networks, Barkov had been providing protected movement corridors, safe storage, and operational cover inside Russian-controlled territory. Suddenly the mountain base made a lot more sense. It had never just been about the ACS module. Barkov was using the chaos of civil conflict to build a private ecosystem of war, and AZRAEL had become part of the machinery.
Before either of them could say more, the doors slid open and Sharon—Phoenix—walked in carrying a tablet under one arm.
"You’re both going to want to see this" she said.
With a flick of her fingers, a fresh set of files appeared across the screens. Financial transfers. Shipping registries. Corporate fronts. She had been tracing a separate line out of Russia and had landed on something bigger. The trail connected Barkov to the Tarasov Crime Family, one of the most powerful names in the Russian underworld. But it didn’t stop there. Phoenix zoomed in on a cluster of encrypted transactions and shipping manifests moving east.
"Tarasov’s negotiating with a faction of the Chinese Triads, and the location they've chose is not exactly remote"
She said. The location flashed on the screen. Macau. A luxury resort district. High money. High secrecy. A perfect place for empires to shake hands without ever admitting they met.
Will folded his arms and looked from Sharon to Hemant.
"Is Tarasov part of AZRAEL?" Hemant asked.
"Not just part , they are the Founders. Specifically the main head Evan Tarasov , who started that crime family which evolved into the Syndicate that is today. He is long dead though. Killed in 1988 by a US funded hitjob with no records!"
"And let me guess , he built his empire by taking advantage of the collapse of the USSR"
"Precisely, and if Tarasov and the Triads are building a pipeline for AZRAEL, we need eyes inside before they lock it down"
He tapped the display, enlarging the date of the meeting.
"This isn’t a smash-and-grab. The meetup is being planned in a month so we must build some short term influence and gain some intel on the ground"
Then he looked directly at Hemant.
"You’re going undercover. And you won’t be alone"
"I am already working on it Will. I've learned about AZRAEL tie up to the Triads through my own investigation regarding the supply chain from India to Nepal on my first day in SENTINEL. Those girls we liberated months ago , they were meant to reach Shanghai. I've build some ground level contacts within the Triads. People who have our best interests. Fed them our intel for their benefit in return for a favor for us in the future. Turns out not all the Triads are on board with AZRAEL!"
"Now that's my man Mr.King. Always planning ahead. But its time you get some backup"
Hemant already knew who was coming before Wolf said the name.
"Jinx will join you!"
For a moment, Hemant said nothing. He stared at the glowing map of Macau while the implications settled into place. He has been studying the Triad's operations for weeks , interacting with someone who wants to bring change in the ranks. Now with the right angle and planning , he feels this will solve a lot of troubles in that country. But the rules are different , this isn't a battlefield , there is no tactical approach or heavy gun battles. No rifles in a blizzard. No shadows to disappear into. Just silk suits, false names, smiling predators, and one wrong move away from a knife in the dark. For Hemant this was different , but one thing he was known for , always prepared. A new kind of adventure excited him but at the same time alerted him. This was the edge. And more importantly , his glorious purpose. And he was now ready to step into a different kind of warfare. One that is close to the notorious underworlds and espionage. Somewhere inside Macau, AZRAEL was preparing to expand its empire. And now, for the first time in months, Hemant felt it—that quiet certainty in his chest. He wasn’t chasing ghosts anymore.
He was finally getting close.
(TO BE CONTD)
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