THE HEART OF DANGER by Gerald Seymour

was right to jeer back that no way was she going to live
    for
    three years carrying him, paying all the bills, and she hadn't passed
    an exam since school and Wayne who managed the estate agent's drove
    a
    fifth-hand Porsche and had never passed an exam in his life .. . Maybe
    .. . The baby should have helped, but it hadn't. The baby, Tom,
    should
    have bonded them. The baby had cut out her money ... It was Penn's
    belief that a husband should provide. A father should go to work,
    a
    mother should stay home with a baby. Old-fashioned Penn, boring
    Penn,
    and he'd said that no way was she going back to work with a minder
    to
    watch his baby .. . She'd told him, full of tears, that she hadn't
    listened to him, had gone back with the pram to the estate agent's,
    made it as far as the plate-glass window with the bright photographs
    of
    properties, and seen Wayne bending over the new girl, and a hand on
    the
    shoulder of the new girl's blouse, and she'd turned around and pushed
    the pram back to the maisonette. And the day after that he had gone
    to
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    those he thought he believed in, on the high floors of Gower Street,
    and requested the chance to work on General Intelligence Group ..
    . and
    been betrayed. He lay in the bed. From the street below he sensed
    the
    burgeoning quiet of the night of a foreign city .. . but it had been
    Dome's place and Dome's war. The ant column had found his hand, a
    barrier, and busily crossed it. He could feel their unstoppable
    progress, and he did not dare to move his hand to shake them off.
    He
    felt as if he was dead .. . Ham didn't reckon he could have run another
    yard, crawled another foot, climbed another inch. The tree line had
    been the first target and the rock escarpment had been the second,
    and
    the final aim had been to reach, running, crawling, climbing, the
    summit of the escarpment. He felt as if he was dead ... he would
    have
    been dead if they had had a good dog, or if they had had organization
    and discipline. He could see them from where he lay. They were
    below,
    quartering the field that was beyond the escarpment, down from the
    tree
    line of spring-green birches. Ham could hear their shouts and the
    whistle blasts, but they had no dogs. It was because of the wounded
    that they had broken off the pace of the search. It was the wounded
    that had saved him and the three others who had stampeded with him
    away
    from the ambush. The light caught the grass of the field, and the
    sun
    feathered down through the upper trees and dappled onto the summit
    of
    the rock escarpment. They had been hit at first light when the grey
    smear was settling on the fields and the trees. They had been caught,
    bunched and too close, on a track that, if the intelligence had been
    accurate, would have brought them to the rear side of the artillery
    position. If the ambush had been done properly, as an ambush was
    taught at Aldershot or out on the ranges above Brecon, then there
    would
    have been no survivors, but the ambush had been crap and there hadn't
    been fire control, and they had made it out and running. All of them
    running, and hearing the shouting and the chaotic chase behind them,
    and they had hit the open ground of the field without warning. Shit,
    bloody bad luck, the open field. It was there that the two of them
    had
    been shot. And he had run, too fucking right, and the others who
    hadn't been shot had run. Looking down, through the thin early
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    foliage, Ham saw the line that advanced, crouching then scurrying,
    towards the two wounded men. The ants came on across his hand, and
    he
    would not move his hand and he would not twist his head. He whispered
    from the side of his mouth, as if he thought he hazarded his hiding
    place should his lips move. "Move once, you bastards, move once at all, and I'll break your goddamn necks." He could hear the three
    of
    them behind him, all trying to suppress the panting, all sobered by
    the
    ambush and by the charge out and by the climb onto