The bar smelled of spilled whiskey and stale beer, neon lights flickering across the scuffed wooden floor. Lieutenant Marcus Hayes had no intention of being here — until he noticed the men in fatigues at the back table, talking too loudly, too recklessly. One of them recognized his name. “Hayes? Thought you were de@d in Kandahar.” Marcus didn’t flinch. He stepped forward, the crowd parting instinctively. Words were exchanged. A shove. Then fists. Marcus, trained in hand-to-hand combat, moved with lethal precision. Chairs flew, glasses shattered, and the hum of the jukebox became a background throb to chaos. Within seconds, the three largest men were on the floor, gasping, the bartender frozen mid-pour.

The tension crackled like live wires. People whispered, phones raised. And just as Marcus caught his breath, he realized one of the men wasn’t struggling — he was smirking. That smirk turned into a nod. The twist? The “drunk soldiers” were undercover CIA operatives testing loyalty, and Marcus had unknowingly passed the ultimate field test. In the shadows of the bar, hidden cameras had recorded every move — and tomorrow, Marcus would be summoned to a mission that would change everything.

***************

The bar stank of cheap whiskey, stale beer, and the sour sweat of men who had nothing left to lose. Neon buzzed and flickered over scarred tabletops, painting everything the color of old blood. Lieutenant Marcus Hayes hadn’t come here to drink. He had come to disappear. Three months after the official report declared him “killed in action” in Kandahar, disappearing was the only skill the Army never taught him.

He nursed a flat ginger ale at the far end of the counter, cap pulled low, watching the room through the mirror behind the bottles. Then he saw them: four men in mismatched civilian clothes that didn’t quite hide the military haircuts, the way they sat with their backs to walls, the way their eyes never stopped moving. Fatigues under denim jackets, dog tags tucked inside T-shirts. They were loud on purpose. Too loud.

One of them, a thick-necked sergeant with a fresh scar across his eyebrow, leaned over the table and bellowed, “Hayes? Marcus fucking Hayes? The ghost of Kandahar? Thought the Taliban turned you into red mist, brother!”

The bar went quiet the way a battlefield does right before the first shot. Marcus didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to. He felt every stare land on his back like crosshairs.

Scarface stood, knocking over a chair. “No, seriously. They sent us your damn finger in a box. Least that’s what the briefing said.” His friends laughed, ugly and staged. “Come on, hero. Show us the face that survived the unsurvivable.”

Marcus set the glass down gently. The bartender, an ex-Marine with one milky eye, slid further down the rail, already knowing what kind of night this was about to become.

Marcus walked toward them. The crowd parted like they could smell cordite on him. He stopped three feet from the table.

“You want an autograph?” he asked, voice low.

Scarface grinned. “I want to see if dead men bleed.”

He swung first. A heavy, telegraphed right hook that any first-week recruit could have ducked. Marcus slipped inside it, drove an elbow into the man’s solar plexus, felt the air leave in a whoosh. Before the body hit the floor, the second operative was already moving, chair raised like a riot shield. Marcus caught the legs, twisted, used the man’s own momentum to slam him face-first into the jukebox. Glass exploded. Johnny Cash skipped, then died.

The third came from behind, arm looping for a choke. Marcus dropped his weight, flipped the bastard over his shoulder, heard the satisfying crack of a knee hitting hardwood. The fourth hesitated half a second too long. That was enough. Marcus’s fist found the soft spot under the jaw, lifted the man clean off his feet, deposited him in a heap of broken glass and spilled beer.

Thirty seconds. Maybe less.

The bar was silent except for the wet sound of grown men trying to remember how lungs worked.

Marcus straightened, rolled his shoulders, and reached for the pack of smokes he hadn’t touched in six months. That’s when he noticed Scarface wasn’t groaning with the others. He was propped on one elbow, wiping blood from his lip, grinning like a man who just won the lottery.

“Jesus, Hayes,” he wheezed. “You still hit like a fucking sledgehammer.”

Marcus froze. Something cold crawled up his spine.

Scarface reached into his jacket, slow, deliberate, and pulled out a black CIA badge. The other three were sitting up now, rubbing jaws, laughing quietly like kids caught pulling a prank.

“Relax, Lieutenant,” Scarface said. “You just passed the final exam. With flying colors.”

Marcus looked around. Every phone that had been filming now pointedly faced down. The bartender poured four whiskeys he hadn’t been asked for and slid them across. In the mirror, Marcus caught movement in the far corner booth: a woman in a leather jacket lowering a camera the size of a cigarette pack. Red light still blinking.

Scarface stood, offered his hand. “Name’s Delgado. You just put me, Kowalski, Park, and goddamn Ramirez on the floor in front of twenty witnesses and didn’t even draw blood we didn’t deserve. Langley’s gonna cream their pants when they see the footage.”

Marcus didn’t take the hand. “You staged a bar fight to test if I still have it?”

“Bar fight?” Delgado laughed. “Brother, we staged your resurrection. Official story stays you’re dead. Unofficial story? We just pulled the best ghost operator in the Special Activities Division out of the grave.”

He finally took the offered hand. Delgado’s grip was iron.

“Tomorrow, 0400,” Delgado said, pressing a black keycard into Marcus’s palm. “Private airstrip outside Manassas. Bring nothing. Not even questions. You’re going dark. Real dark.”

Marcus stared at the card. No markings. Just a magnetic strip and the faint smell of gun oil.

“What’s the mission?” he asked.

Delgado’s smile vanished. “Ever hear of Operation Nightshade?”

Marcus felt the floor tilt. Nightshade wasn’t a mission. It was a ghost story whispered in the SCIFs at MacDill, a black program so deeply buried that even most three-letter agencies pretended it didn’t exist. They said it wasn’t about killing terrorists anymore. It was about killing the future.

Delgado leaned in until Marcus could smell blood and wintergreen dip. “Two weeks ago, someone started activating sleeper assets inside the continental United States. Not foreign. Ours. Good men and women who think they’re still loyal. They’re not. Tomorrow, you help us burn the network to the ground before it burns the country. And Hayes?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The man at the very top of the list? He signs your old paychecks. He cried at your memorial.”

Marcus looked at the four men he’d just destroyed in a bar fight. They were already standing, slapping his back like old friends, buying rounds for the house, turning the whole thing into legend before last call.

He slipped the keycard into his pocket.

Outside, the neon sign buzzed and died, plunging the street into darkness. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed and faded. Marcus lit the cigarette he swore he’d never smoke again, inhaled the burn, and watched the cherry glow like a tiny, furious sun.

Tomorrow, the dead man would go back to war.

This time, the enemy wore the same flag.