Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 047

A few minutes earlier.

"A sniper?"

Duke Calloway's first instinct, hearing the word, was that Panther had been compromised somehow. He dismissed the thought almost immediately.

The guard who had come stumbling back through the casino doors was still catching his breath, his face pale and slick with sweat. "It's real, sir. There's a sniper out there. We've already lost several men. The ones still outside can't move, and anyone who tries to pull them back gets pinned down."

Duke stood very still and let his mind work.

Based on the Harborview Hotel parking lot footage, he'd estimated Mark Dalton's group at a minimum of three shooters. Panther had reported only two entering the underground garage. That left one unaccounted for. One who hadn't gone inside. One who was now somewhere in the dark above street level, working through Duke's men with a rifle.

He pulled out his phone and called Mark directly. No text, no coded message. Just a call.

It rang out. No answer.

"Of course," Duke said quietly.

Whatever arrangement had existed between them was finished. Mark's team had served their purpose, or tried to, and now they were a loose end. A dangerous one. The kind that had to be resolved before morning.

Tonight, they all had to die.

Then a burst of gunfire cracked from somewhere above, filtering down through the ceiling of the casino floor, and the sound of it changed everything in the room. The assembled guards weren't slow. They understood what a firefight on the upper floors of this building meant on a night like this, and the color drained from more than a few faces.

Duke didn't waste time. He drew his pistol, held it at his side, and raised his voice over the rising murmur. "Everyone, move to the armory now. Full kit. We're going to the penthouse. Protect the Young Master."

The response was immediate. "Yes, sir!"

While the guards streamed toward the armory, Duke stepped to one side and typed a fast message to Panther: Find the sniper in the dark. Take him out.

The reply came back in seconds: Understood.

________________________________________

Panther had actually spotted Mark's position the moment the first shot broke from the rooftop across the street. The angle had been the problem. Two floors of elevation difference between his own position and Mark's perch had made a clean shot impossible, and since Duke hadn't given the order, Panther had been content to watch and wait.

Now he had his order.

He packed his kit in under a minute, slung the bag over one shoulder, pulled his baseball cap low, and went down the stairs at a jog, slipping out into the street and moving toward the building where Mark was positioned.

________________________________________

On the rooftop across from the Crownline Royal Hotel, Mark was on one knee behind the parapet, the AR-15 carbine braced against the ledge, working through controlled bursts. He'd dropped several of the guards who had spilled out through the hotel's main entrance, and the rest had pulled back inside, unwilling to step into his field of fire. It had bought Hank and Evan the window they needed to get the Audi A6 out of the kill zone.

He keyed his earpiece. "This is Old Mark. Hank and Evan are clear. Do you need me to hold position and keep providing cover?"

He waited. No response.

He tried again. Still nothing.

"Are you busy up there...?" He frowned, then Evan's voice came through, slightly clipped. "Soren and Cody just went dark. Could be a signal issue, not sure."

"Dark?" Mark turned it over for a second. "Can you bring the drone over here? I need to relocate. I've been firing from the same spot for too long. My position is probably burned."

He wasn't a trained sniper, but he understood the basic principle well enough. One position, too many shots, and whoever was looking would start triangulating. The Crownline Royal Hotel had multiple exits on multiple sides. He couldn't rule out someone looping around to come at him from a different angle. If he got bottled up inside this building, there was no good ending to that scenario.

"Drone battery is almost gone," Evan said, "but I can squeeze out maybe two more minutes."

Whatever friction existed between Evan and Mark on a normal day, this wasn't a normal day. The drone cleared the roofline and began a circuit of the building, sweeping the surrounding approaches.

One floor below, tucked under the shadow of a narrow overhang at street level, Panther stood with his bag at his feet and watched the drone pass overhead at a distance. He didn't move. He waited until the sound of its rotors had faded, then straightened up and walked briskly into the building's lobby.

Up on the roof, Evan's voice returned. "Nothing on approach for now. Can't promise it stays that way. I'm at the limit up here."

"Copy. Thanks." Mark was already moving. He broke down the AR-15 carbine and packed it into the rifle bag with practiced efficiency, then drew the Glock 17 from the back of his waistband, checked the chamber, and headed for the rooftop access door at a quick walk.

________________________________________

Back in the penthouse suite, the bedroom had gone quiet.

Soren lowered the Remington M1100 and Cody reached over and stopped the recording on his phone. When Cody flicked back to the main screen, he paused.

"No signal at all up here," he said, holding the phone up. "I think they installed a signal jammer somewhere in this suite."

Soren checked his own phone. Zero bars. That explained why neither of them had heard anything from Evan or Hank since they'd breached the fire door. The jammer's range was probably limited to the penthouse floor, but it had kept them completely blind to whatever was happening outside.

"The range on that thing won't cover the whole building," Soren said, slinging the Remington M1100 across his back and switching back to the MCX Rattler. He dropped the half-spent magazine, pocketed it, and seated a fresh one. "We move now."

They came out of the suite in a two-man stack, moving left and right down the corridor, weapons up, checking angles as they went. The floor was still. The bodies in the hallway hadn't moved.

Soren already knew who had been pulling the strings behind tonight's operation. He'd known for a while, if he was being honest with himself. And he had a reasonable idea of where that person would be right now.

Duke Calloway.

________________________________________

In the underground parking garage, Duke led a six-man security team down through the fire stairs at a fast walk. Every man in the group was wearing a ballistic vest and carrying a sidearm. Two of them had Uzi submachine guns slung across their chests.

Duke had watched enough of the Harborview Hotel footage to know that Mark's group wasn't composed of amateurs. He wouldn't have trusted them to go up against four professional bodyguards if he'd had any doubt about their capability. That meant the two men currently somewhere above him in this building were not to be underestimated, regardless of the odds. Most of the casino's security staff were rough around the edges, but a fair number had military backgrounds. Six against two, with proper equipment, should be manageable.

They reached the private elevator entrance at the far end of the garage. Duke was moving quickly, his mind already on the floors above, and he reached out and pressed the call button without breaking stride.

The elevator indicator showed it was already sitting at the basement level.

One of the guards swept his flashlight along the door frame out of habit, and the beam caught something that didn't belong. A length of cord, running from the top of the door frame to something taped just above it. A round, dark object with a curved metal lever pressed flat against its body.

The guard's voice came out sharp and loud. "Grenade! Get back!"

He didn't wait. He grabbed Duke by the collar and threw him backward, putting his own body between Duke and the door.

The elevator chimed.

The doors slid open. The cord pulled taut, and the pin snapped free. The safety lever flipped off and the fragmentation grenade dropped from the frame and hit the concrete floor with a hollow metallic clatter.

The explosion tore through the garage in a single violent instant. Fire and pressure and a storm of metal fragments swept outward in every direction, punching through car doors and shattering windows across a radius of more than sixty feet. The guard who had covered Duke took the full force of it and didn't move again.

Car alarms erupted across the entire garage, a dozen overlapping wails filling the enclosed space. The emergency lighting strobed and flickered, casting the smoke-filled air in alternating pulses of amber and shadow, the whole underground level transformed into something that looked less like a parking garage and more like the aftermath of a battlefield.