Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 043

Everyone gathered around the couch except Wilson, who had been left to one side. Soren, Mark, Evan, Cody, and Hank sat in a loose circle, the stone and its message on the table between them. Mark dialed the number.

It picked up on the second ring.

"Mark Dalton." The voice on the other end was flat and synthetic, run through some kind of electronic distortion. "What you've been doing has been exposed. If you want to live, do exactly what I tell you."

Mark glanced across at Soren. Soren gave a small nod.

"Who are you?" Mark said.

"That doesn't matter. All you need to know is that I want the same thing you do. I want to stay alive."

A picture message arrived while the voice was still speaking. Mark opened it and felt his jaw tighten. It was a complete layout of the Crownline Royal Hotel, detailed and current. He had managed to get hold of the original architectural drawings for the hotel some time ago through a contact, but original blueprints were never the whole story. Renovations happened, walls moved, corridors were rerouted. The finished building always diverged from the plans in ways that mattered.

This was not the original blueprint. This was the hotel as it actually existed, down to the last corridor. It showed the location of Julian's private elevator, a dedicated line that bypassed the main lobby entirely. It showed the floor and room number of Julian's suite. And in the margin beside the suite, written in small, precise characters, was the access code to the hidden safe room inside.

"You want us to kill Julian Voss," Mark said. It wasn't quite a question.

"Yes." The voice didn't hesitate. "You need to eliminate Julian Voss before two o'clock in the morning."

Mark looked at Soren again. Soren hadn't moved, hadn't reacted. Mark pressed on. "You expect us to walk into Julian's stronghold and kill him on your word alone? What if this is a setup? What if you're luring us straight into a trap?"

"If I wanted you dead," the voice said, "what landed in your courtyard just now would have been a bomb, not a stone."

Mark opened his mouth. Soren cut across him, his tone unhurried. "The Crownline Royal Hotel has a large security presence. What's your plan for dealing with them?"

The voice laid it out without preamble. At 1:15 in the morning, the hotel would undergo a scheduled power maintenance window lasting between thirty and fifty minutes. During that window, every surveillance camera inside and outside the building would go dark. At 1:20, the security team at the parking lot entrance would rotate shifts. The voice would arrange a distraction to pull the incoming guards away briefly, creating an opening to enter the building undetected. Julian's private elevator ran on a separate external circuit and would remain operational through the outage. They could take it directly to the penthouse floor without passing through any common areas. On that floor, four bodyguards were posted, all former military, all carrying sidearms. The voice had no way to remove them. That problem belonged to Soren's team. If the situation turned loud, Julian would likely retreat into the safe room, but the safe room used a mechanical combination lock, and the code was already marked on the layout. At that point, they could open the door and finish it.

"We're on the same side," the voice added. "You don't want to spend the rest of your lives running from a madman's hired guns. Neither do I."

Soren let a beat pass. "And our exit?"

"The same private elevator. Very few people in that building know it exists. I can guarantee that nothing leaks while you're inside. Once the job is done, you leave however you choose."

A short silence followed. The voice read something in it, because the next words came out faster, with a trace of urgency pushing through the distortion. "You're running out of time. You need to move now. Wait past two o'clock and you'll be welcoming thirty armed men through your front door instead."

"Understood," Soren said, and ended the call.

He stood up from the couch in one smooth motion and looked around the room. "Gear up. We're moving."

Mark hesitated. "Are we really going in there to kill this man? Because I can't shake the feeling that whoever that was, they're using us."

Soren's eyes were calm. "You heard what they said. Julian Voss doesn't stop until we're dead. That's not going to change." He paused, and something cold settled briefly behind his gaze. "Besides, the person who needs to die tonight isn't only Julian."

________________________________________

Soren wasn't particularly interested in whether the caller could be trusted.

The way he saw it, whoever was on that phone had their own reasons, and those reasons had nothing to do with goodwill. They wanted Julian dead and didn't want to be the ones to do it. That was the entire transaction. Simple enough.

But that logic cut both ways. Anyone willing to use someone else's blade to do their killing would, as a matter of course, dispose of the blade once the job was finished. A person who knew the complete internal layout of the Crownline Royal Hotel was not a minor figure. A person who knew the combination to Julian Voss's private safe room was someone with real reach inside that organization.

Soren filed that away and kept moving.

________________________________________

By just past one in the morning, they had driven to a street a short distance from the Crownline Royal Hotel and killed the engine.

Evan fed the drone up through the sunroof. It climbed fast, circled the hotel in a wide arc, and came back with a clean picture. Evan studied the feed, then looked at Soren. "Confirmed. No ambush. The perimeter is clear."

Soren had already pulled on his balaclava and tactical helmet. He pressed his wireless earpiece into place. "Old Mark, what's your status?"

Roughly a hundred and fifty meters away, on the rooftop of a building directly across from the Crownline Royal Hotel, Mark was still catching his breath from the stairs. He set the rifle bag down, unzipped it, and assembled the AR-15 carbine, settling it on the roof ledge with the muzzle trained on the hotel facade across the street.

"In position," he said into his earpiece. "Clear line of sight."

"Copy. Once we move, Evan will push the drone feed to your phone. You and he are on overwatch. Identify your targets before you fire — no loose shots."

"Understood."

Soren checked his own loadout. The MCX Rattler was on his chest rig, chambered and ready. He slung the Remington M1100 across his back on its rifle sling, then retrieved the night vision goggles from the bag and mounted them to his helmet. He glanced at Cody.

"Once we're inside, stay on my six. Keep your light off unless I say otherwise."

Cody gave a single firm nod, his expression steady.

Soren checked his watch. Almost time. He turned to Hank, who was in the passenger seat with Evan beside him.

"Hank, you and Evan hold position here. Don't bring the car closer until I call for it. If something goes wrong on your end, you pull out — don't wait for us."

"We'll be here," Hank said quietly.

Across the street, the hotel lights went out.

Every window went dark at once, the lobby, the upper floors, the exterior fixtures along the entrance canopy, all of it dropping into blackness in a single breath. The street felt immediately quieter, as though the darkness itself had weight.

Soren pulled the night vision goggles down over his eyes. The world bloomed green.

"Move out."