Wanted by Emlyn Rees Page B

said.
    Spartak came back first: ‘There’s a fire exit half open on the south side. The windows above it are choked with vines. It looks as good a motherfucking way in as any other.’
    The twins each reported they’d seen no one. Neither suggested a better way in.
    ‘Converge on One,’ Danny ordered.
    He worked his way quickly back into the side-street and looped round to where Spartak lay in the rubble of a collapsed building. The twins were already there, in position ten yards either side.
    Danny had a clear view of the exchange. Twelve blacked-out ground-floor windows, two hogged with ivy and vines. The promised ground-floor fire exit stood dead centre in between, its door hanging twisted off its frame.
    ‘Anyone we knew?’ Spartak asked, referring to the dead man Danny had left behind. No doubt he wanted to know if it had been Glinka or the blonde or the Kid.
    ‘No.’
    Danny slammed in a fresh magazine. He’d already told the others that once they were inside they were to try to avoid headshots and disable the targets instead. Again a command he wouldn’t normally have given, because there were few things more dangerous than a wounded armed man. But again he had no choice.
    He needed to take one of these bastards alive.

CHAPTER 11
    A rumble of distant thunder barrelled across the swirling black sky, flicking a switch in Danny’s mind and bringing a memory of tube waves rolling in and enveloping the bright white sands on the Caribbean island of St Croix where, for the last several years, he had made his home.
    Warmth: a memory of it assailed him. Warmth, and the smell of the sun on his skin, the glint of his board, and the prickling of water droplets drying on his shoulder blades as he stretched his arms wide and dug his nails into the sand.
    Rain pissing down washed the Caribbean vision away, making it fade and disperse, like squid ink in the sea. Danny grimaced, wiping the raindrops from his brow, determined. Once this was over, he’d take Lexie to St Croix. How could he not have done so before? He should have spent all the years that had slid by teaching his daughter to surf, fish and fly kites. How could he not have mended what had been broken between them? And how could she have grown up so fast?
    In the final few seconds of waiting – slowing his breathing, readying himself for what would come next – he felt a burst of hatred for himself, for the selfishness of his grief. He’d wallowed in self-pity when he should have stood tall. For Lexie. No matter how ruined he’d felt inside, he should never have let her move to England to be with her grandmother. He should never have stepped back from being her father as he had.
    Lightning split the sky. He raised his hand and jabbed three fingers forward twice. The twins moved in on his command, a pair of pincers closing in at either side of the fire exit. No wonder Spartak had vouched for them. Danny couldn’t fault their work.
    He moved in too, joining the twin on the left – Viktor, the over-display on Danny’s night goggles told him. No eye contact passed between them. They were focused on what was ahead, on keeping themselves and each other alive. The only acknowledgement the twin made of his presence was to shuffle sideways, so that Danny could be nearest to the building’s looming entrance.
    Danny slid the goggles from his face so that they hung round his neck. He slipped a convex-lensed telescopic mirror from his sleeve and breathed on it, then wiped the condensation off the lens with the dry palm of his hand.
    He edged the mirror forward inch by inch, using it to check through the gap left between the fire-exit door and the wall into which it had once been squarely set. Through a blur of reflected moonlight and raindrops, he saw that the space immediately on the other side of the door was empty. He stared into the darkness beyond, searching for signs of movement, but saw nothing.
    He tilted the mirror down, eyes straining to filter useful