Wanted by Emlyn Rees Page A

By the time Danny’s team had reached the location where the girl had been held, she was dead. Dead and used.
    ‘Don’t,’ he ordered Spartak now, remembering again what Spartak had done to that girl’s kidnappers when they’d eventually tracked them down. ‘Stop. We need him alive.’
    Spartak spoke through gritted, gold-capped teeth. ‘He’s Spetsnaz.’
    ‘What?’ Danny stared at the guy shaking in their hands, at his baby-smooth white skin, his thin neck and wrists, and the fingers that looked about as strong as a spider’s legs, as if they’d done nothing more strenuous than type.
    ‘No,’ Spartak growled, ‘not him.
Him.
’
    Danny twisted his head towards the glass wall, as he followed Spartak’s furious stare. The bigger man was looking past him into the room on the other side of the glass.
    And that was when he finally noticed what Spartak had already seen. There, directly behind Danny, stood the bleeding, infected prisoner. Even through the mess of his flaking, disintegrating skin the tattoo on his right forearm, which he’d pressed up against the glass, was visible. And unmistakable. It was of a fist and a star. And it was identical to the one Spartak had on his own arm, the tip of which was showing even now where his sleeve had been pulled upwards during his struggle with the researcher.
    The tattoo was Spetsnaz.
    Which meant the prisoner was Russian Special Forces.

CHAPTER 16
    Spartak tightened his grip around the man’s throat. The researcher’s face darkened in a rush of blood. His eyeballs started to bulge.
    ‘No,’ Danny said.
    Spartak’s expression stayed hard as concrete. His neck tendons flexed.
    ‘Let him go,’ Danny ordered, trying to twist Spartak’s hands away from around the terrified man’s throat, ramming his face up towards Spartak’s and staring into the bigger man’s eyes. ‘Let him fucking go. He might know how we can help them.’
    Spartak’s face grew so red it looked like it would burst. But then he blinked. His fist slackened. He lowered the choking researcher so that his feet were once more touching the ground. But he didn’t let go of his throat. Flecks of spittle hung from the man’s lips and his eyes streamed tears.
    Danny glanced back through the smeared glass at the infected soldier. A sudden brightness had filled his eyes. A keenness. He was staring at the tip of Spartak’s tattoo, which was now plainly in sight: he knew Spartak was his brother-in-arms.
    But something else was growing in the prisoner’s eyes too. Hatred and hunger. A thirst for revenge, which made Danny glad the screen was there. And thankful it was soundproof. Because if the prisoner were to say what was clearly now on his mind, Spartak would obey him. He’d kill the scientist. He’d snap his neck on the spot.
    Spetsnaz were every bit as lethal and elite as the British SAS or the US Navy Seals. And even though Spartak Sidarov had left their ranks more than ten years ago to become freelance, he’d still owe a debt of loyalty to the other man. In circumstances such as this, for him he’d willingly kill.
    The researcher hung trembling off Spartak’s outstretched arm.
    ‘Put him down,’ Danny said.
    Finally Spartak obeyed. He let the scientist go and stepped back.
    The man slumped against the glass divide, massaging his throat and gasping for air.
    ‘Listen to me,’ Danny said, stepping towards him and pressing his AK-9 against his chest. ‘My friend here wants you dead. And not only dead, he wants you screaming in pain as you die. Your only chance of getting out of this is to give me exactly what I want.’
    ‘Anything.’ The scientist sounded as if his windpipe had cracked.
    ‘When did they leave? The others who were here?’ Danny said, gripping a handful of his hair and twisting it so that it nearly ripped out. ‘Answer me. Now.’
    ‘Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon.’
    Danny gritted his teeth, furious to have missed them by so little. In England, had the dying