Wanted by Emlyn Rees

transmogrified and was now a spider sensing a twitch at its web or a wolf picking up the scent of freshly spilled blood . . .
    He moved swiftly to the edge of the car park, keeping low, edging along a row of corroded cars. Peering through the lashing rain as it rattled like hail across the car roofs, he scoped the surrounding buildings again. Moving forward, he felt the ground shifting beneath his feet, growing softer, turning from concrete into dirt and mud.
    He slowed, no longer just worrying about threats from above and around but searching warily beneath him. As he kept edging forward, his eyes sifted through the green darkness for telltale signs of surveillance and IEDs: trip-wires, plastics and recently dug patches in the ground.
    He hoped to hell he’d find none. Not because he couldn’t circumnavigate them but because failing to have laid out perimeter defences would indicate that Glinka wasn’t expecting unwanted visitors. Which would mean that, even if he’d guessed Danny and Lexie had escaped being executed in England, he didn’t think Danny had the knowledge, means or determination to come hunting for him here.
    ‘Always credit your enemy with greater intelligence than yourself.’ One of Danny’s father’s favourite sayings. One that would cost Glinka his liberty and even his life, if it turned out he’d ignored it now.
    ‘Tut,’
Danny hissed into his mike. He was now in position less than twenty metres from the exchange.
    Then he froze.
    Something wasn’t right. Something in his field of vision. At first he couldn’t see what it was. His goggles revealed no thermal traces, nothing living, as he slowly scoped the buildings and surrounding cars, hunting for glimmers of red.
    Yet something had snagged his attention.
    Just in time, he saw what it was. A sliver of vehicle ten metres to his right up ahead. Something about its shape was all wrong. He edged closer, widening the angle between himself and it as he did so. There, he saw confirmation of what his peripheral vision had flagged up.
    The vehicle’s black paintwork was rust-free and glinted slick as spilt oil in the moonlight. He recognized the model as well. A Honda SUV. A shape not even dreamed of when Chernobyl had gone up and the people who’d lived there had fled.
    A click. A hum. Light blazed down.

CHAPTER 10
    Danny shut his eyes just before his goggles massively magnified the intensity of the sodium searchlight on the Honda’s roof. He crash-rolled left, between two hulks of cars, then flattened, tearing the goggles from his eyes, blinking in frustration as retinal flashes flickered over his vision.
    The world swung back into focus as the first boot thumped down out of the Honda. The remote possibility that some civilian might be there on legitimate business vanished, as whoever it was took off right, racing away from the Honda towards the row of decrepit vehicles beyond.
    He swung his AK-9 round and snapped off a shot. But his vision wasn’t up to it. He missed.
    The weapon’s sound suppressor kept the noise down to a
phut.
The round, though, pinged off the hubcap of the van the Honda guy had just darted behind and echoed into the night.
    He rolled left again, then spidered, crawled, crouched and finally ran. He had to get away from the last position he’d been in. Flank the guy quick and he’d still be in with a chance.
    He moved just in time. A drumming sound, louder, harder than the rain. A skittering of metal on metal. Rounds fired from another silenced weapon ripped into the car he had been hiding behind, sparking off its metal and thumping into the dirt all around it.
    A high cyclic rate. An assault rifle, Danny guessed. If he’d stayed where he was, he would have been ripped in two.
    He dropped low and rolled – once, twice – in rapid succession across the gap between the rows of cars. Thank God for the wind and the rain, and that whoever he was up against had a silencer fitted too. Whoever was inside that telephone