Downside: the opposition now knew there were still officers in fighting condition between them and the target. Upside: they wouldn’t be able to do what Mickey would have tried in their place. Fire and move, advancing in bounds with a gun ready to shoot at the slightest movement. Suddenly flushed with adrenaline, he was barely able stop himself from bellowing a challenge into the chemical fog. Knowing that whoever had set up such a well-planned ambush wouldn’t be giving him any clues as to where they were.

‘Contact front!’

And the bang, bang, bang of 9mm from behind him. Wade engaging with his Glock. Presumably at targets that had emerged from the smoke in front of him. A grunt from the other side of the van. A hit? A brutally loud clatter of full automatic answered from behind the shrapnel-peppered van. Two long bursts. With no return fire. Something snapping in Mickey’s head as the implications of that hit him.

He heard the clatter of an empty magazine hitting the pavement. Behind the van. Dangerously close. Backing away from the wreck of SEG One, he pivoted to his left, dropping onto one knee. A militaristic figure stepped out of the van’s cover, slotting a fresh magazine into an assault rifle. Smudged urban camouflage, black belt order and combat boots. An integrated helmet and face mask. Faceless and anonymous. Wearing a webbing harness laden with armour plate. Presumably what had stopped Wade’s pistol fire dead. The olive drab tube of a man portable anti-tank rocket slung over the figure’s back. Presumably to be used on either the Sentinel or the first responders.

Assault rifle’s barrel pointing at the Sentinel, the attacker strode purposefully towards the battered car. Mickey took up the trigger’s slack, tracking the unsuspecting target. Unexpectedly, the assassin suddenly spun towards him. Some battlefield instilled instinct, perhaps. A mix of bloody experience and trained peripheral vision. Reacting to Mickey’s presence with near-divine speed. Swivelling with an almost feline grace. But too slow.

Mickey squeezed off a single shot. Close enough to ignore the gunman’s bulky armoured torso and take the head shot. Spattering the house behind his target with blood. The shooter’s corpse sprawling over the low wall behind him. Mickey held his on-target stance. Ready to put more rounds into the dead or dying gunman. And then he was moving, without really knowing why. Instincts overriding the conscious thought process.

He went for the van’s cover. Dived forwards, knowing he was too slow. A reaction triggered by a fleeting glimpse of movement in the smoke to his right. A fraction of a second too late. A second gunman had simply walked out of the grey veil behind SEG One. Snapped up his rifle and triggered a burst at Mickey. Whose instinctive evasive move saved him from taking the bullets centre mass, but something agonisingly hot plucked at his side.