Dade's words pulled every eye to the screen.
For three days, he and Kate had been running on fumes, tunneling into foreign data stores. Once Cole confirmed the black-site's satellite uplink, he'd ordered a dedicated surveillance stack for The Round Table—a private grid they codenamed Horus Net. With commercial birds and whatever public feeds they could plausibly hijack, it was starting to look like a real, stitched-together watchtower.
A true global system needs years of data to learn from. They couldn't rip every classified feed without lighting up warning boards, so they built what they could and hardened it. Imperfect, but operational.
"Target: Adolf," Dade said. "Moroccan resident. Seventy-three. Prominent businessman. No children. Mobility impairment."
Cole frowned. "That's all?"
"That's all anyone's allowed to see," Dade said. "His prior records are scrubbed—like his old identity was canceled. Thirty years ago he 'reappears' in Morocco and starts stacking capital."
Ross leaned in. "Can you pull a photo?"
"Working it." Keys rattled. A grainy image resolved on-screen.
Cole went still. He knew that face. "It's him.
"You know him?" Ross asked.
"German Army, late-war Africa," Cole said. "When their units withdrew, command ordered two hundred forty tons of gold sealed in a hidden Saharan cache. The officer in charge—Hans—poisoned the eighteen soldiers who knew the location. One of them fought back. Hans shattered his legs; the soldier killed him and disappeared. That survivor is Adolf."
Now Adolf wanted a team to lead him back into the desert to reclaim the hoard.
"We take the job," Cole said, flat.
He didn't need to crunch it out loud, but Dade did anyway. "At current prices, two hundred forty tons is about $14.5 billion."
Ross swore. "And he offered thirty million for the team. Bastard."
"Exactly," Cole said. "He's underpaying by design. The fixer who hires the 'other guy' for this kind of haul usually pays one percent of the take—2.4 tons. Thirty million is an insult."
Yin Yang's eyes lit with pure arithmetic. The others didn't bother hiding it.
"Slow down," Cole said. "We still need Adolf. He knows where the cache sits and how not to die getting in. The desert is a maze, and the site's rigged. Without him, we're blind—and even if we find it, we still need the key."
He didn't add the personal part out loud. In another life, the assassin who defined his discipline on screen was Jason Bourne — precise, silent, and methodical. That was the move here.
"Tomorrow is Christmas Day," Cole said. "Christmas—you and Yin Yang are with me to Morocco at first light. If Brassel confirms tonight, Ross, stage the handoff."
"Understood," Yin Yang said.
Cole was headed to Morocco to negotiate terms with Adolf — and to make sure those terms stayed on his own timetable.
Truthfully, he intended to end the old man once the gold was secured, but the system wouldn't allow that kind of move.
Killing a client would stain The Round Table's reputation, and after that no one would ever hire them again.
This job wasn't just about the payout.
Cole wanted to see what kind of reward the system would deliver for a score like this — and how far it would let him push before the next line was drawn.
"No problem," he said quietly.