Page 117 of Dirty Game

War.

It’s raining by the time we reach the compound.

The kind of rain that sheets the world in gray and makes every surface shine like wet steel.

Our convoy ghosts up the access road, no lights, engines idling soft as a prayer.

Five cars in the main group, two more flanking from the side streets.

Cyrus runs the op from the back seat of the lead SUV, headset jammed in one ear, tablet in his lap.

He reads the feeds with the same detachment he’d use for a chessboard or a murder scene.

“We’re a go,” he says, not raising his voice. “Three guards on the north wall, two more at the loading bay. None on the roof. That’s your breach, Korrin.”

Korrin grins, already loading shells into a short-barreled Remington. “Roof’s good. Let’s go, King.”

I pull my mask up, check the suppressor on my Glock, and step into the wet night.

The world is nothing but footsteps and heartbeats.

Cyrus’s timing is exact.

At the second he calls, the alarms on the west perimeter flare to life—our decoys in position, torching a couple of stolen vans to smoke out the front guards.

The Russians rush for the source, guns waving, just as Korrin and I climb the roof access. We move like we’ve done this a thousand times. Because we have.

We drop in through a vent shaft, landing behind a mesh screen. The smell is chemicals and rot and something else—old, metallic, hungry.

Korrin knifes the first guard without a sound.

I shoot the second in the face.

The third tries to run, but Korrin puts a boot in his knee and drags him back, snapping the neck in a single twist.

We’re in.

The main floor is a maze of conveyor belts and rusted vats.

Shadows shift and vanish under the flicker of emergency lights. There’s no sound but distant alarms and the static of Cyrus’s voice in my ear.

“East corridor, then down. They’ve moved her below ground.”

“Copy,” I whisper.

We slip down the stairs.

The halls are lined with steel doors, some welded shut, others left gaping, all stained and ugly.

I count bodies as we move—two, three, four—each dispatched quickly and quietly.

Blood pools at our heels, but we keep moving.

The lower levels are colder. The air tastes like freezer burn, like death on ice.

At the first landing, we take fire… two men with automatics, crouched behind an overturned pallet.

The bullets snap the cinder block over my head. Korrin pops up, lets off a blast, and one of the Russians crumples.