Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 044

At exactly 1:20 in the morning, the entrance to the underground parking garage of the Crownline Royal Hotel was lit by nothing more than a small handheld lantern inside the guard booth.

The security guard on post stifled a yawn, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He muttered under his breath, "Should be about time, right?" He wasn't wearing a watch, but the hotel's scheduled power maintenance was supposed to line up with the end of his shift. It had to be close.

He was still thinking about it when another guard came jogging toward him from across the lot, slightly out of breath.

"You're slow," the first guard said flatly. "Don't you know that every minute you're late, the universe takes a little something back from you?"

"Sorry, sorry." The newcomer pressed a hand to his stomach with an embarrassed grimace. "Something I ate didn't agree with me."

"Just don't let it hit you mid-shift."

He wasn't interested in the explanation. He pulled off his cap, already mentally clocked out.

Then he heard something. A sound he couldn't quite place, coming from somewhere in the darkness beyond the booth. He turned his head, but there was nothing to see, just solid black.

"Anyone there?" His hand started moving toward the pistol at his hip.

It never arrived.

Thwip.

His skull came apart like something dropped from a height, a single violent bloom of bone and blood and grey matter, and he dropped straight back without a sound.

The second guard hadn't even processed what he was seeing when three more suppressed shots punched through the dark.

Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.

He was on the ground before the echo faded.

From beneath a tree a short distance away, a figure emerged from the darkness. Soren Ashcroft moved without hurry, night vision goggles casting the world in green, the suppressor on his MCX Rattler trailing a faint thread of smoke. He crossed to the second guard, confirmed he was still breathing, and put a single round through his head. Then he turned and signaled behind him with a wave.

Cody came out at a run. Neither of them spoke. Soren took up a covering position, muzzle sweeping the surrounding lot, while Cody grabbed both bodies by the collars and dragged them behind the guard booth. He found a sheet of black plastic tarp nearby and pulled it over them.

The parking garage's emergency lighting was on, but only barely. A few fixtures had kicked in at the corners and near the stairwell doors, casting just enough amber glow to see shapes. Most of the interior remained in deep shadow. Anyone moving through without a flashlight would be little more than a silhouette.

Soren and Cody entered the garage in a two-man stack, moving left and right of the entry lane, weapons raised, footsteps quiet on the concrete.

________________________________________

On the fourth floor, in an office adjacent to the casino, Duke Calloway sat at a desk with a poker chip turning slowly between his fingers. A phone lay face-up on the table in front of him. He was waiting.

The screen lit up. A message.

Only spotted two of them. They moved into the parking garage early. Just killed the two guards at the entrance.

Duke's brow drew together.

Two. Where was the third? This wasn't what had been agreed. They were supposed to slip in quietly through the side entrance when the guard rotation created an opening, not walk up to the front and start putting bodies on the ground two minutes ahead of schedule.

He typed back: Keep watching. Once they complete the objective, move.

Understood.

He switched screens and sent another message, this one to Mark: You're moving too fast. Killing people now risks tipping them off before you reach the target.

The reply came back almost immediately: Our bad. You'll figure it out, right?

Duke's fist came down on the desk hard enough to rattle the phone. He sat there for a moment, jaw tight, breathing through his nose. He wanted to type something considerably less professional in response, but he needed these people to finish the job first. He forced himself to write: Fine. Minor issue. Just move faster and don't kill anyone else between here and the target. I can only cover so much.

He didn't wait to see if Mark replied. He switched screens again and sent a building-wide message to the security supervisor on duty: All security teams currently inside the hotel — report to the fourth floor immediately. I need to address the staff.

Yes, sir.

________________________________________

Mark set his phone down and keyed his earpiece. "This is Old Mark. That contact just messaged me. He's got eyes on Soren and Cody — says he watched them take out the two guards at the entrance. There was about a two-minute gap between his observation and the message."

In the car drifting slowly along the far side of the street, Hank heard this and his expression shifted. "He has someone watching the hotel in person?"

The surveillance cameras were all offline. The power cut had seen to that. Even if the caller had managed to hide secondary equipment somewhere, the two-minute delay didn't fit remote monitoring. Someone was physically out there, watching the hotel with their own eyes and reporting back in real time.

Which meant there was a watcher somewhere nearby that none of them had accounted for.

"I'll find them," Evan said, eyes already on the drone controller in his lap. He brought the drone up and began a slow sweep of the rooftops surrounding the hotel. The logic was straightforward: Soren was too sharp to be tailed without noticing it. The only way someone could have eyes on the hotel without being detected was if they were already stationary, positioned inside a building, looking out. And the highest vantage point was always the most obvious choice.

He started with the rooftops.

________________________________________

At the far end of the parking garage, Soren and Cody had located the private elevator entrance marked on the layout. It sat recessed into the concrete wall behind a plain door with no signage, exactly where the map said it would be.

Cody gave a nod and stepped back, raising his weapon toward the far end of the garage, covering the approach while Soren worked.

Soren unclipped a fragmentation grenade from his tactical vest. He took two lengths of cord and a roll of tape from his kit and set to work. One cord he tied to the grenade's pin. The other he ran to the top edge of the elevator door frame, threading it through the gap and securing it with tape so that the tension was live the moment the door moved. He fixed the grenade itself to the wall above the frame, safety lever pressed flat, and ran a final check on the rigging.

The principle was simple. The moment someone opened that elevator door from the inside, the cord would yank the pin free. The safety lever would fly off. Two, maybe three seconds later, the grenade would detonate directly above whoever had stepped out. Most people, caught off guard in an enclosed space, wouldn't make it clear of the blast radius in that window.

It wasn't elegant, but it didn't need to be.

He tapped Cody on the shoulder once. Task complete. Then he pointed toward the fire stairs at the far end of the garage.

Cody nodded and moved out at a quick walk, Soren falling in behind him, scanning the space through his night vision goggles as they went. Something nagged at him. A parking garage this size should have had at least one roving patrol, a guard making rounds, a flashlight beam cutting through the dark somewhere. There was nothing. The place was empty in a way that felt deliberate.

He touched his earpiece. "Evan, I need you to locate the security teams inside the building. Track any flashlight activity you can see from above and tell me where they're concentrating."

"Copy."

By the time the transmission ended, Soren and Cody had reached the fire door at the base of the stairwell. They took up positions on either side of the frame, backs flat to the wall.

Soren tilted his head toward the door and listened. Footsteps, somewhere above, ascending or descending a floor or two up. Distant enough not to be an immediate threat, but present.

He looked across at Cody and communicated without words. He angled his muzzle downward, then relaxed the last two fingers of his left hand on the handguard, then raised the barrel slightly again.

Stack up. Pull the door. I go high.

Cody understood. He tilted his own muzzle toward the ceiling, laid his free hand on the door handle, and began counting down in his head.

Three.

Two.

One.