by Rob Aspinall
On the one hand, I was on the straight and narrow. Everything going great. Keeping my head down, staying out of trouble and travelling under the radar of Grezda, Rudenko and Interpol.
On the other, I got the impression Collins and his merry band of mercenaries were gonna go through with the job regardless of what I said. Which meant Collins not only losing the ranch, but doing a long stretch, too. I looked up and went from eye to eye. They each held my stare.
"Alright," I said. "What's the take and what's the split?"
11
I walk with Collins, out to the barn. He opens up one of the tall wooden doors and shines a large square torch across the floor. We follow the beam over to the tractor. Collins hands me the torch and climbs up into the cabin. He starts the engine. Diesel fumes kick out of the rattling exhaust. He rolls the tractor forward several feet. Turns off the engine and jumps down. He grabs the torch off me and shines it on the floor.
Collins kicks some loose strands of hay aside. I see there's a trapdoor in the floor. A padlock on the end of a chain around a rusty old iron handle. Collins takes a busy key chain out of a jeans pocket. He singles out a key and removes the padlock and chain. He opens up the trapdoor, steps down into the hole and invites me in.
"Mind how you go, now," he says, as I plant a foot on the top step.
The wooden staircase is steep. Almost vertical. We climb down deeper under the barn, into a basement that smells of dust and soil. I get cobwebs in my hair. Peel it off my head and fight it off my fingers as I hit the basement floor.
Needless to say it's dark. I see the outlines of feed, seed, compost and machinery under dust sheets.
Collins pulls a thin white cord hanging down from the ceiling. A naked light bulb grows in brightness. I blink as my eyes adjust. The basement is a single square room. There's a long decorating table in the middle with a large area map rolled out. As Collins turns off the torch, I move around the table.
"Here it is," Collins said, "Just as you left it."
I run the rule over the plans. We've got sticky notes on the map, lines in red marker pen drawn from one grid to another. And photographs of an armoured truck, taken from an elevated position as it drove along the highway.
There's also notes on location, timing and a shopping list of supplies.
M16 automatic rifles.
Gloves.
Masks.
Heavy-duty canvas holdalls.
Explosives.
Binoculars.
Digital stopwatch.
Black combats, boots and t-shirts.
A reliable getaway car with air con—common colour, common make.
Respray paints and tools.
A second switch car, post-job.
Two sets of bogus plates.
Burner handsets and SIMS.
And finally, bottles of water. Yeah, is was my work alright.
In fact, it triggers more flashbacks to mission prep. Me training the other three guys on how to move. How to shoot. How to communicate without talking.
We knew the route. Knew the time. Knew the spot we'd hit the truck. I'd planned everything out in detail and we even took a trip to the spot we'd launch our assault from.
Back on the ranch, we'd used the tractor as a dummy truck. Their Camry as a dummy getaway car. The Collins boys played the roles of security guards. I timed everything down to the second.
If something wasn't right, a foot, a word, a rifle out of place, I'd correct the error and we'd start over. I pissed everyone off in the process, but by the end of that process, we were a crack unit.
After rehearsing the job one more time around the back of the stables, Janice had come out with a cut-up cherry pie. "Are we ready?" she'd said, as we stopped and each took a slice.
"As we'll ever be," I'd said.
12
I woke up at six-thirty, took a shower and walked to the ranch. The three other men turned up at eight in the car we'd picked out for the job. It was a Chrysler 300, used but with only ten thousand on the clock. It was fast enough, reliable and inconspicuous, with plenty of room for four big guys to get in and out easy.
I'd made Tony, the guy with the slick hair, get it serviced.
"You switch the plates?" I asked, stepping off the porch and circling the car.
"Uh-huh," Tony said.
"Got the gear?" I asked.
Blake, the blonde guy, opened the boot. I checked the contents. We had the rifles, the clothing, the masks, gloves and the holdalls. All as requested.
"Good," I said, checking one of the rifles. "Go in the house and get some breakfast. I'll get things ready."
As the others piled indoors, I prepared the weapons and explosives. When I was done, I closed the boot and joined them in the house. We changed into our matching combats, t-shirts and boots in the living room. We then sat down to breakfast as a crew around the kitchen table.
Janice had put on a full spread. Bacon, eggs, homemade bread and a large pot of strong coffee.
I drank plenty of water and told the other men to do the same. "Gotta stay focused," I said. "You'll dehydrate easy during the job."
They did as they were told. I had 'em well trained. I was quite proud of the lads, to be honest. They were a ragtag bunch when I'd got hold of 'em, but I was confident they were ready.
And that was key.
If you're gonna be part of a successful crew, you can't afford any weak links in the chain. You've all gotta do your job and confidence in your crew is everything. With a stomach full of breakfast, we headed back out, turned the car around and waved to Bill and Janice on the way out.
Hector, half-Mexican, rode shotgun, Blake and Tony in the back.
I'd insisted on doing the driving.
I guess I felt more in control that way.
And besides, I didn't know if any of these guys could handle a car chase.
No, better I take the wheel myself.
Make the moves when I decided.
So I drove us out onto the highway, where the road rose and wound its way through a rocky range of nearby hills the colour of rust. I steered the Chrysler off the highway and up a dirt road. I turned the car around one-eighty and we looked out over the highway below.
It was a spot we'd already scouted. Halfway between Rattlesnake and Mitchum. You could see the highway for a mile in both directions.
After the job, we had two options for the car. Respray and re-plate. Or have it turned to a cube by Tony's cousin, a scrap dealer ten miles out of town.
The respray and re-plate was the preferred choice. That way we didn't have to involve anyone else. But I liked to have options in case something unexpected happened.
And something unexpected always happened.
It was that kinda world.
I turned off the engine. We all got out of the car and I opened the boot. We were already wearing the gloves. Now we needed the masks and rifles. We put on our masks and pulled the end strings tight. Wrestling masks were the ideal choice. Easy to buy, easy to dispose of, lightweight and colour-coded, too, so we could instantly tell who was who. While the others loaded the rifles, I opened a metal case, internally padded. I took the IED I'd made from the case, wrapped in a black plastic bag. I jogged down the dirt lane onto the highway. I turned left and ran along the rock wall. I opened the package up and double-checked everything was okay.
It was—the wires plugged in to the plastic explosive, the cheap mobile handset taped tight to the package with plenty of battery. I closed the bag and set it down easy in the middle of the road. I walked up the lane. The road a little steeper than I'd counted on. Hard on the thighs and lungs.
By the time I returned to the car, the rest of the guys were back inside. Rifles in hands. Empty holdalls on the laps of Blake and Hector.
And we waited.
I could tell the guys were nervous.
Me too.
You weren't human if you didn't feel something.
And I felt the old buzz coming back.
Ther
e was nothing that made you feel more alive than this kind of work.
I tried not to enjoy it, but part of me couldn't help it.
Hector jigged his right leg up and down.
"We're well prepared," I said. "Follow the drill, it'll all go smooth."
"Hey man, I'm cool," said Hector, lying through his teeth.
"Well I'm just saying. If anyone needs to piss or puke, now's the time."
I looked around the car. No pissers. No pukers.
"I think we're on," Hector said, looking to his right through a set of binoculars.
He handed them over. I took a look and saw the armoured truck rounding a bend. Less than a mile out. A box on wheels with full armour plating. It closed in on the blue X we'd spray-painted on the rock wall by the side of the road.
I remember we’d tested it the day before at the speed a truck like that drove. We'd timed the whole thing. We knew exactly how long it took to get from the blue X to the spot where we waited.
I handed the binoculars back to Hector. "Tell me when they hit the marker," I said, finger ready to push a button on my stopwatch.
"Now," he said.
I pushed the button and picked up a cheap burner phone off the central console. I toggled through to the only number in the contacts. My right thumb hovered over the green call button. I watched the stopwatch as it counted up through the seconds.
When we hit thirty, it would be time.
Hector slid the binoculars on the dash. No need for them anymore. The truck was close. Cruising our way at forty mph. It passed by below us. The stopwatch hit thirty.
I pushed the call button.
At first there was nothing.
Then a giant boom that rattled the floor, panels and windows of the car. A huge cloud of debris and asphalt shot into the air as the package detonated. The truck slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. It disappeared into the cloud.
I reversed the car away from the spot. I turned the wheel hard to the left and reversed down the dirt lane. We bumped out onto the highway behind the truck, debris still raining down to our right.
I hit the brakes. "Go, go, go!" I said.
We all broke out of the car, eyes behind rifle sights. As the cloud began to thin I could see the rear wheels of the armoured truck up off the ground by a few feet. The front end had taken a nosedive where the road had caved in.
The IED had worked a charm. Now all we had to do was finish the job.
Blake was armed with a small plastic explosive. He threw it at the rear door. It stuck. We took cover around the side of the truck and the rear door blew.
I nodded to Hector. He spun away and trained his rifle on the driver-side door of the truck. He gave me the thumbs up.
That meant the driver was alive. It also meant he'd have pushed the panic button, made the call, raised the alarm.
I checked my watch as I moved to the rear of the truck. Blake opened out the rear door, charred like an overdone steak. I detached a stun grenade from my belt and tossed it in. We turned away. I heard the thing blow. I raised a leg and boosted myself up onto the rear of the truck.
The guard in the back was young, with dark hair and olive skin. He was coughing, disoriented. Smoke invading the rear of the truck. I grabbed him by the collar and pushed him out of the back. Blake and Tony caught him. Tony led the guy around the side while Blake joined me in the rear of the truck. He tossed me a holdall, taking a bag of his own off his shoulder.
I looked around the truck. We had a big pallet of cash. Two big blocks of hundreds shrink-wrapped and ready for fast transfer from truck to bank vault. That also made it easy for us. Me and Blake got either end of a block. We turned it on its narrower side. Held either end of the first holdall and slid the bag over the top. We tipped the block back over into the bag and zipped it up. I slid the bag out onto the road.
We did the same again. Slick as a greased eel. I zipped up the second holdall and pushed it out. Blake jumped down, picked up one of the bags and climbed in the back of the car with it.
I followed him out, stepped around the side of the truck and found Tony shouting at the guard we'd found in the back.
"Get down on your fucking knees, you motherfucker."
The guard couldn't hear right, couldn't think right--senses scrambled by the stun grenade. Meanwhile, Tony was going nuts under the pressure. He raised his rifle as if ready to shoot. I got there in the nick of time. I pushed the rifle away and he shot into the air.
I kicked the empty shells away, into the hole. I wanted to shout at the bastard. Call him a dumb shit and give him a slap. He wasn't meant to talk. And he sure as bollocks wasn't meant to shoot.
But I bit my tongue and dragged him away, pointing at the car. He took off, heaving up the second holdall and sliding in the back next to Blake.
I checked my watch again and gave Hector the thumbs up. He followed me out of there. We jumped into the front of the car. All four doors slammed shut, rifles on laps and my foot on the accelerator. The rear wheels spinning over exploded rock.
I punched it up the dirt lane off the highway, up the rise and away. The road was a mile long and came to a fork at the end.
"What the fuck was that?" I yelled over my shoulder at Tony.
"The guard wouldn't get the fuck down," he said.
"Stun grenade, numb-nuts. He couldn't hear you."
"Calm down, man," Blake said. "No one got hurt and we got the money."
"How much was in there?" Hector said.
"I reckon four or five mill,” Blake said.
"Fuck yeah!" Tony said.
I took a hard left onto another country road. I followed the road another couple of miles until it dropped down and led us back onto the highway, heading for Rattlesnake.
I'd told the rest of the crew to leave their masks on in case we got involved in a battle on the way back. It had its risks, but better than anyone getting a look at our faces.
"Five million bucks. Split four ways that's a million-five each," said Tony.
"No it's not you dumb shit," Blake said. "It's a million two-fifty."
"Either way, I'm going to Vegas, baby!" Hector said.
I brought the car down to a reasonable speed. "What do you mean, split four ways?" I said. "We're paying Collins the two mill. You each get your two-hundred cut. Whatever's left goes back to the bank."
I looked around the car. The other three glanced at each other. I pulled to the side of the road and stopped the car.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tony said. "Get us out of here."
"Not until you tell me what's going on."
"More than a million each, buddy," Blake said. "Come on, we can all retire on that kinda money."
"First off I'm doing this pro bono," I say. "Second, we're working for Collins."
"Collins was never part of the plan," Hector said. "We used him for information. Times. Delivery amounts. All that shit."
"Screw Collins, man," Blake said. "You wanna work for milk and cherry pie or you wanna be rich?"
"Yeah, quit stalling and get us back on the fuckin' road," Tony said, getting edgier by the second.
"Not gonna happen," I said. "Not until we agree the terms."
"Fine," Blake said. "We'll discuss it when we ditch the car."
"I dunno, Blake," Hector said, narrowing his eyes at me from the passenger seat. "Maybe we should discuss it right here."
I glanced around the car, looking each one in the eye. Their rifles were on their laps. Hands creeping closer to the triggers. Mine rested on the central console by my side.
I turned to watch the road, left hand on the wheel, right hand on my lap, engine running. "So this is how it is, is it?"
"This is how it is," Blake said.
13
I stepped hard on the gas, taking the rest of the crew by surprise. Hector tried to get off a shot. I pushed the rifle away and he fired at the roof. He was carrying blank rounds, but at point-blank range, an otherwise harmless bullet could still kill or maim a gu
y.
I swerved left and right. None of us wearing seat belts. All of us thrown around.
I glanced over a shoulder. Blake got his balance in the back behind the passenger seat. He took a shot. It hit the headrest of my seat, A hole in the material but nothing more.
Blake looked at his gun. "Fucking blanks? He gave us fucking blanks!"
“Course I did, morons. You think I'm gonna trust you with automatic rifles?”
Hector, in the front passenger seat, reached for my gun. The only one loaded with real bullets. I wrestled him for it with my right hand and steered the car with my left.
There's no way I was letting Hector get the gun, but in the meantime, I had Tony throwing punches at me from behind.
I worked the wheel left and right. Threw him off. But Tony came back at me. Hands over my eyes. Blake joining in the struggle too, reaching into the front of the car and wrestling me for the wheel.
We veered left across the road, smacked and scraped hard against a rock wall. It soon fell away and we headed at speed onto a straight stretch of highway towards town. Hector pulled the wheel to the right. We slid across the highway, into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.
I pulled the wheel harder to the right and the Chrysler flew off the side of the road. It bumped up and down heavy over the dirt landscape. The nose of the car ploughed through a line of cactus plants.
Tony lurched over the top of my headrest and whacked his head on the roof. He lost his grip on my face but grabbed hold of my throat.
All this time, Hector kept fighting me for control of the rifle. He had his finger on the trigger. I aimed the gun towards the roof. The rifle sprayed holes in the metal.
One must have ricocheted, because Blake took a hit in the shoulder and fell back into the rear seat.
With control of the wheel, I steered the car out of a patch of bushes. But Hector had both hands on the rifle. And Tony, both hands on my throat, squeezing the living daylights out of me.
It was clear I had to do something.
If a bullet didn't kill me, Tony's thumbs on my windpipe would.
