Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 060

The fourth-floor corridor of Briarcrest Medical Center had gone quiet in the way that only happens after gunfire stops.

Soren was on his knees, chest heaving, both arms locked around the last operative's head. The man had stopped struggling. With a sharp, wrenching motion, Soren twisted hard.

The c***k of vertebrae was loud in the stillness.

He held the position for a moment, making sure, then let the body drop and pushed the dead weight off his legs. Around him, three other operatives were already on the floor, each one down for good. Soren pressed a hand against his ribs and pulled in two slow, deliberate breaths. Something in his chest ached with the particular sharpness of a bruise that hadn't decided yet how serious it wanted to be.

He'd burned through every round in the Glock 17 taking down the first three. The fourth had closed the distance before he could reload, and the pistol had ended up leaving his hand at high velocity aimed at the man's face. It had bought him the half-second he needed to get inside the operative's reach, and after that it had come down to his Police Takedown and Combat Striking skills working in rotation, grinding through three levels of resistance until he found the angle for the final lock.

Honestly, that had been closer than he'd like to admit. These operatives weren't SWAT-caliber in terms of coordinated tactics, but one-on-one, they were genuinely dangerous. Skilled, conditioned, and committed. The man he'd just broken had nearly reversed the choke twice.

He crouched beside the nearest body and worked quickly. A Glock 34 came out of the shoulder holster, heavier and longer than the 17, built for accuracy. He dropped the magazine, checked it: full load. He found two spare magazines in the operative's vest pockets and a Taser on the belt. The Taser went into the back of his waistband, the magazines into his trouser pockets. He stood, stripped off the white doctor's coat he'd been wearing, pressed one sleeve against a smear of blood on the floor to pick up a visible stain, and left it draped across the nearest body.

Then he moved for the stairwell.

He was already gone by the time the rest of the MI6 team converged on the fourth floor. They came in from both ends of the corridor and stopped when they saw the bodies, four of them arranged across the linoleum in the specific geometry of a fight that had moved fast and gone badly for everyone on the losing side.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Eight. That was the total now, counting the ones from the floors below. Eight trained operatives, and the building's cameras were still dark, and the fire alarm was still cycling, and somewhere in this hospital a single man was moving through the corridors and leaving bodies behind him like punctuation marks.

The earpieces crackled with new instructions from command. And then, from the far end of the corridor, came the sound of unhurried footsteps.

The figure who appeared looked like he had dressed for a diplomatic function rather than a tactical operation. The suit was charcoal, well-fitted, not a wrinkle out of place. The man wearing it moved with the particular ease of someone who had never once needed to hurry because things had always resolved themselves in his favor before urgency became necessary. He surveyed the scene on the floor with calm, almost academic interest.

"Leave him to me," Ghost Wolf said. His voice carried no particular emphasis. It was simply a statement of how things were going to be. "Seal every entrance and exit. There's a third party in play, and Nighthawk cannot be taken alive by them. Make sure of it."

A few of the operatives exchanged glances. There was friction in the looks, the quiet resentment of professionals being sidelined by someone who had arrived late and was now giving orders. But the directive from command had been unambiguous. Full cooperation with the operative designated Ghost Wolf.

They left without argument.

Ghost Wolf waited until he was alone, then turned his attention back to the corridor. He walked it slowly, hands clasped behind his back, reading the scene the way another man might read a page of text. Each bullet hole in the plaster was a data point. The positions of the bodies told him sequence and timing. The absence of the Glock 17 told him something about improvisation and desperation and the kind of mind that turns a firearm into a throwing weapon when the math demands it.

He reconstructed it in his head: two down with five shots, one more with four, slide running dry, a thrown pistol, and then bare hands finishing the fourth man with a neck lock. The whole engagement compressed into maybe ninety seconds.

He stopped at the end of the corridor and exhaled slowly through his nose.

"Nighthawk," he said quietly, to no one. A slow smile crossed his face, and behind it was something that looked less like professional respect and more like hunger. "Ten years. And that edge of yours hasn't dulled even slightly."

________________________________________

The sixth floor was empty.

Soren moved through it at a jog, keeping low as he passed each window that faced the street. He didn't know whether MI6 had positioned a sniper on the rooftops opposite, and he had no intention of finding out the hard way. Every time he crossed an exterior-facing pane of glass, he dropped below the sill line and kept moving.

He found the supply room near the end of the east wing, pushed through the door, and threaded between the shelving units toward the rear. The back door was locked, a heavy deadbolt with no key in sight. He positioned himself behind two large equipment crates, settled the Glock 34 in a two-handed grip, and aimed at the entrance.

And then he waited.

His mind ran the post-mortem review automatically, pulling up each engagement from the past hour and turning it over for anything useful. The operatives' patterns, their entry timing, how long they hesitated before committing to a room. He was looking for edges, anything that could push his Marksmanship and CQB performance another increment higher. The full completion of this Career Instance required everything he had, and probably a little more.

The minutes stretched.

He frowned.

By any reasonable estimate, the sweep should have reached this floor already. These teams had been methodical. So why the silence? If they'd pulled back, that wasn't a relief. That was a warning. A deliberate slowdown meant someone had changed the approach, and whoever had changed it was almost certainly more dangerous than the operatives he'd been dealing with.

He tightened his grip on the Glock 34 and kept his eyes on the door.

Two more minutes passed. Then, finally, footsteps in the corridor outside. But only one set. Unhurried, evenly spaced, not bothering to conceal themselves at all.

Soren's frown deepened. One person. After eight dead operatives, someone was walking down this corridor alone and making no effort to move quietly. Either that was extraordinary arrogance, or it was extraordinary ability. Given what he'd seen of MI6's standards tonight, he was fairly confident it wasn't arrogance.

He kept the Glock 34 leveled at the gap between the two crates, sight picture centered on the door frame, and didn't move.

The footsteps stopped just outside.

Silence.

Then a voice came through the door, conversational in tone, as if continuing a discussion that had only been briefly interrupted. "Nighthawk. Do you recognize my voice?"

Soren said nothing.

A pause. The sound of something small being drawn from a pocket, the soft tap of a cigarette being pulled from a pack. A lighter clicked. A long inhale, then a slow exhale, and Soren could almost picture the smoke drifting up along the wall outside.

"You probably don't know this," Ghost Wolf said, "but that operation ten years ago was originally assigned to me. If you hadn't gone to Dax and volunteered for it yourself, I'd be the one standing in that room right now, and you'd be out here asking the questions." He let that sit for a moment. "Makes you think, doesn't it."

Soren listened to the cadence of the voice, the particular way it placed its words. Someone who knew Nighthawk personally. Someone with history.

"So what's the brief?" Soren said. "Take me in, or put me down?"

Ghost Wolf laughed, a short genuine sound. "Kill you, obviously. But first you're going to tell me what happened that day. What could possibly turn a blade that loyal to the Crown and make it cut the hand holding it?"

Soren didn't answer.

Another silence. Then the cigarette hit the floor outside, and when Ghost Wolf spoke again, the easy warmth in his voice had burned away completely. "Fine. I'll get it out of you the old-fashioned way."

The smoke grenade came rolling through the gap at the bottom of the door before Soren had fully processed the motion.

White smoke erupted across the floor and climbed fast, swallowing the shelving units, the crates, the walls, everything. Within seconds the room was a featureless white void. Soren fired twice toward the door on pure instinct, the shots cracking sharp in the enclosed space.

And from somewhere in that smoke, moving without hesitation, came an answering volley, just as fast, just as precise, the muzzle flashes strobing white against white.