The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,10

along the coast, avoiding towns and villages, covering twenty or thirty miles a day over chevron bluffs and shingle beaches, watching the gulls whirling in the breeze, the sun strobing through shot-holed cumulus onto a sheet-metal sea, getting strong again, daring to think about the future. Evenings he pushed makeshift weights, did sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups till his muscles screamed. He practised in the shed with the silenced Glock. He read, hours by the fire, the rain washing the hours and nights away.

But that was finished. And as he ran through the night, he recalled his final words to Crowbar. ‘Two days,’ he’d said. ‘If you don’t show, I’m gone.’

Two days. A lifetime.

He’d done as Crowbar had asked. He’d gone back to the cottage, only to be met by these assassins. And now he was running for his life, half-blind through the gorse. It was raining hard, thick drops that crashed through the hedgerows and streamed from his eyes. Up ahead, a beam of light flashed across the cloud and was gone. The road was close.

He came to a gap in the hedgerow, pushed through and stepped onto a narrow lane, the tarmac sunk deep into the ground, a grassedged rut in the landscape. He stopped and peered through the rain, looking west, but there was only the dark, water-slicked road. He turned east and started walking. He’d covered fifty metres when he saw the outline of a car tucked into a pullout on the laneside. It was facing away from him, a large saloon, wide tyres. A BMW. Clay exhaled, relief surging through him. He took the keys from his pocket and started towards the car. Plans started forming in his head, destinations, routes. He’d head south to the coast. Find a boat. Try for the continent by sea.

He was within touching distance of the car when a light flared inside the passenger compartment. Clay froze. Then the sound of a window motor, the flick of a red cigarette end. One man, alone in the driver’s seat, waiting.

4

The Chasm between Now and Then

Clay stood next to the car, the ruts in the road streaming black water, the driving rain heavy in his eyes. Three miles behind him was the cottage on the cliff, which Crowbar had used as a safe house for the last five years of his tenure as chief European operative for the old DCC – South African Military Intelligence’s secret Directorate of Covert Collection. And a metre away, miles from the nearest village or farm, sat this black 500 series BMW with its lone occupant.

Clay pulled the G21 from his waistband, held it close, checked the magazine. The ember of the driver’s cigarette end glowed red inside the car then died. Clay approached at a walk, the Glock pointed to the ground. He didn’t rush. The rain was coming harder now. He could hear the drumming of the raindrops on the car’s roof, see the back of the driver’s head, the green light of the dashboard clock. He tapped on the driver’s side window with his stump.

The driver jumped, whipping his head towards the sound. Through the rain-washed glass, Clay could see the man’s face, the eyes bulging white with surprise, the two-day stubble on his chin, mouth open in a curse. Clay signalled that he should lower the window. The man composed himself, moved his right hand to the control panel and lowered the glass about an inch. A bloom of cigarette smoke wafted out and dissolved in the rain.

Clay leaned towards the gap in the window. ‘Lost, mate?’

The man shrugged, tried an ugly smile and leaned forward. There was a black handgun on the seat next to him.

In that instant, the outline of the Heckler and Koch handgun clearly imprinted on Clay’s retina, the rain running cold down the back of his neck, the Glock’s trigger safety coming off, a .45 slug sitting dry in its chamber, the firing pin millimetres away, Clay wished that the man was lost, that he’d simply pulled to the side of the road in his expensive car, wipers going, interior lights on, a roadmap spread over his knees, fingers tracing the web of narrow, hedgerowed ruts, that he was late getting home perhaps, was visiting a friend, a mistress even, anything but this. But there was no map. The interior of the car was dark. He wasn’t lost.

They looked at each other, a blink. It took only a fraction of a second. The man knew Clay had seen the