Their threat class was Alpha, meaning there was an unlikely chance of counterattack, but not impossible.
Scar slid the decoy disk between his gloved fingers.
“Scar, you got a three-minute blackout window to get inside and up to the third floor,” Roz informed him. “From there, the guards are on a two-minute rotation.”
Scar shut the small case. “Plenty of time.”
Roz opened his mouth as though he wanted to tell him not to get cocky, but he’d seen him steal before.
He stood behind Gage, close enough to feel his heat.
“You ready, Saint?” he asked.
Gage turned his head slightly. “I’ll keep you safe, don’t worry.”
“I won’t.”
Behind him, the field team’s voices sounded in his earpiece.
“Field to Command,” the lead said. “Confirm green on feeds and mainframe control.”
A few seconds passed.
“You’re green,” Command replied. “Reading you loud and clear.”
Roz nodded at Scar and Gage. “You’re green.”
Scar waited for their field snipers to take out the guards at the back entrance. When their bodies dropped, he and Gage slipped inside and cut straight for the stairwell.
He stayed tight on Gage’s heels, mouth near his ear, guiding him to the third floor exactly how they’d trained for weeks.
“Two steps…one eighty curve right, stairs in three, rails left, ten up…landing, ninety-degree right.”
Gage shifted on his whispers with the stealth of a panther, silent and precise.
At the final landing, he pressed his forehead to Gage’s for a split second, then vanished to into position.
He kept his head down as he walked toward a tired-looking hotel maid stocking her housekeeping cart, spotting the keycard clipped to the pocket of her smock.
Scar increased his pace as she bent to add some linen to the middle shelf. He brushed past her, barely grazing her right arm.
With two fingers, he pinched the keycard clip and slid it free.
“Oh, sorry,” he muttered, never breaking stride.
Scar didn’t stop or look back as he stuffed the keycard into his pocket.
“You’ve got forty-five seconds to clear,” Roz said in his ear.
Scar listened at the target’s door.
Six men inside: a traitor, a thug, and four guards. One American, polished and selling secrets, the other Spanish, celebrating and trading violence.
He waited for the laughs to crest, to cover the sound of him inserting the card in the door scanner and ducking inside five seconds before the guards turned the corner.
Scar checked the outer room before he walked around the wall divider.
Six heads turned his way with confusion in their eyes, then shock, but it was too late as he pulled his suppressed dart pistol.
