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Jacket
or
Hamburger Hill
was perfectly fine. He hadn’t told him, not because he wanted his plan to fail but because he enjoyed hearing him talking that way.
    Spartak turned to the two other men lying flat and silent in the dirt to his left.
‘Rukhatysya,’
he told them, in Ukrainian, meaning, Time to fucking move and earn your supper.
    Like Spartak, the two younger Ukrainians were ex-military turned mercenary. And, like Spartak, their loyalty in the recent political upheavals between Ukraine and Russia was to Russia, the motherland in whose army they had served, and where many of their extended family still lived. But while Spartak was there out of friendship and a shared history with Danny – each of them had saved the other’s life – the others were there for cold cash.
    They were dressed, like Spartak, from head to foot in black Gore-Tex assault gear and radioactivity vests. Both carried AK-9s, fitted with silencers. State-of-the-art retinal-targeting night-sight goggles glinted in the shadows of their hooded, visored caps, revealing patches of sallow, surprisingly boyish freckled cheeks and chins. Neither man spoke as they slithered up from the ground into a crouch.
    ‘Meet Viktor and Vasyl, my cousins from my mother’s side.’ That was how Spartak had introduced the twins to Danny two days before, in the concrete cancer-riddled Ukrainian tower block where Danny had been hiding.
    The names were so ridiculous that Danny knew they had to be bullshit. He guessed the family connection was more than likely the same. Neither of these youthful trained killers bore any familial resemblance to Spartak. For one thing, they were nearer Danny’s height at around six foot. And for another, they were lithe, also like Danny, and built like middleweight boxers, not endowed, like Spartak, with all the suppleness and agility of a rhino.
    But if Spartak vouched for them, that was good enough for Danny. The big guy had never let him down before. Which was why – along with the fact that he was Ukrainian and originally from around here – Danny had brought him to help with this take-down.
    Danny had Spartak to thank for smuggling him across Europe as well. As the British police and intelligence agencies had continued to comb the UK for signs of his presence and monitor all points of exit, Spartak had kitted him out with a fresh Russian ID, an oxygen mask hooked up to a respirator, and a set of green hospital robes. He’d then stuck him on a gurney in the back of a private ambulance that had shipped him across the English Channel, then driven him through Europe.
    The driver and attending medic had been introduced to Danny as ‘a friend of a friend of a friend’, and neither had asked him a single question the whole way there. ‘They’re used to moving things,’ was all Spartak had said, when Danny had asked him who they were.
Things:
bodies, stolen art – he hadn’t cared or probed any further. He’d just been grateful at last to have the help of a friend.
    ‘Now,’
Danny said, in Ukrainian, for the benefit of the twins.
    The four picked themselves up out of the dirt and rose as one, then started running forward, fanning out across the open ground.

CHAPTER 8
    Gore-Tex scratched against thorns. Boots crunched on earth. Danny’s weapon felt light, felt right in his hands. He ignored the fatigue in his limbs. He knew it was only temporary. Only a matter of seconds now before adrenalin kicked in.
    Picking up speed, he snapped his night goggles down over his eyes. Autofocusing, retina-guided and smart-chipped, they fed off light thrown down by the moon and the stars. Danny’s view of the world switched to green and grey, as though he were now under water, a ravenous pike lancing in search of fresh prey.
    He upped his speed again as he zigzagged across the deserted shunting yard towards the abandoned town. His peripheral vision and feet were working in tandem, almost entirely independent of his conscious thoughts,