‘You want to go with Fitzy, check?’
Mac gulped, said, ‘Okay.’
Sawtell chuckled. ‘I’m joking, McQueen. You look like a rabbit caught on the road.’
Fitzy now moved with a Maglite. The knowledge that there was a concrete wall between the main tunnel and the blast tunnel had eased the caution and they moved quickly, semi-jogging, assault rifl es stowed in the almost ready position, past the blast doors that seemed to be spaced two hundred feet apart.
The group moved deeper into the hillside, the cold and damp increasing with every step. Mac sniffl ed, noticed others were too. The dribbles of water of fi fteen minutes before were now running streams down the sides of the blast tunnel. It was getting eerie.
Fitzy suddenly stopped, his hand over the light so it cast a faint glow rather than a beam. Human voices were coming from the other side of the nearest blast door. Sounded like Tagalog.
Sawtell pulled Paul to the front and they listened. Paul whispered something in Sawtell’s ear and they listened some more.
Sawtell whispered something to Fitzy, who took off again. The group followed. When they came to the next door, they stopped and listened. Nothing but the sound of water running down the tunnel walls.
Sawtell pulled up Spikey and Fitzy and they did their thing again.
Now Mac could see how deft Spikey was with the auger and understood what the texta was all about. Spikey had marked the thickness on the fi rst drilling, so on the second and subsequent goes he’d know where to drill to very quickly. Instead of taking fi fteen minutes, it would take three.
What you didn’t want in these situations was the auger going too far, and the crushed mortar spilling out onto someone’s lap on the other side.
So Spikey was being thorough. He pulled the auger, gave thumbs-up. Fitzy brought the box with the fi bre optic camera and Spikey turned it on, got a picture. Fitzy fed it through really slow, until Spikey raised his right hand. Then he manipulated the picture again. To, fro, up, down. Sawtell took his turn. Liked what he saw.
Sawtell pointed at the blast door and Spikey stepped up again.
He pulled a mini grease gun from his bag, set to work on the hinges, trying to rub it in with his fi ngers. Then he greased the locking wheel in the centre of the door and pushed that in with his fi ngers too.
Wide adrenaline-pumped eyes peered out of cammed faces.
M4s were ready all around Mac. Fitzy fi ddled with the Ka-bar on his webbing and they all looked at Sawtell, waiting for the go sign.
Spikey stowed the B amp;E gear, wrapping everything in its own piece of thick felt and putting them carefully in the bag. Then he folded the bag on itself, velcroed it.
Spikey stood and Sawtell nodded.
Mac’s breath got shallow and fast. His fi nger rubbed on the safety.
Spikey stepped to the door, held the locking wheel like he was lifting a twenty-fi ve kilo weight onto a bench press. He put pressure on, his muscles fl exing. He put more on but the locking wheel didn’t budge. He put shoulder and bicep into it, trying to be smooth but with power, face grimacing.
Suddenly Mac felt relief fl ow through the soldiers. The locking wheel had turned.
And then Spikey turned to Sawtell.
The wheel had come off in his hands.
CHAPTER 50
They all looked at each other. And then the muffl ed laughter started.
They couldn’t help it, with Spikey standing there holding the wheel in his hands like a fucking river boat captain. Sawtell was laughing so hard from the belly that he had to lean on Spikey for balance.
People spluttered into their hands, laughed through their nostrils, tears pouring down cheeks, chests heaving. Mac could barely control himself.
It sounded like a bunch of kids in a tent after one had farted – though stifl ed as if they didn’t want to alert an adult that they were awake after lights out.
It took fi ve minutes for everyone to get composed. Then Sawtell put his hands on his hips, wondering what to do with the freaking door. He touched it. And it swung open.
Light fl ooded in to reveal peeling white paint on curved concrete walls. Adrenaline started pumping and the M4s came up again. Sawtell motioned Fitzy who did the old back and forth hoo-ha with his head a couple of times before putting his head out into the main tunnel.
He stepped through. Shouldering the M4, he scanned back and forth and beckoned Sawtell out, who stepped over the bulwark into the light.
When they were all in the tunnel, Spikey pulled the blast door shut and extracted some chewy from his mouth, making enough of a seal to stop it swinging back. Then he reached into his kit bag and came out with the texta, leaving a small red cross over the door.
To their right was a section of tunnel partially closed in, like a room of some sort, with the main tunnel going past it. To their left, the tunnel curved round. Truck tyre marks could be seen on the concrete fl oor. The gold – and hopefully the VX – would be stored further in.
Sawtell motioned for the group to split. He wanted Gordie’s men to go back up to the partitioned areas to clean up, and then catch up.
They looked at their G-Shocks. Sawtell made a cutthroat gesture.
The cut and run time was six o’clock, meaning six o’clock back at this door, giving them about forty-fi ve minutes.
Mac wasn’t expecting to wait that long. It was a tunnel. What had to be decided would be decided pretty quickly.
Mac and Paul jogged ahead with Sawtell’s team, breathing increasingly jagged. The tunnel seemed to go deeper on a huge left-hand spiral. You couldn’t see round the corner more than fi fty metres. They stopped after ten minutes in front of a large blast door on their right. It ran on ceiling-mounted rails and wheels and it was pulled back as far as it could go. Fitzy and Jansen stepped up. Heads out, heads back, heads out. They walked in slow, M4s shouldered.
Sawtell and Mac came in second, Mac’s heart pumping big time, sweat running freely under his bullet-proof vest. All Mac could think of was how this environment lent itself to shoot-outs, not arrests.
The room was large – about forty metres deep and twenty wide – and fi lled with pallets stacked with four hundred troy ounce gold bricks. One of the soldiers whistled low from behind Mac.
Sawtell ordered a search for the VX bomb. ‘You see it – don’t touch it. Got that?’ he whispered, and stood back while a posse of Maglites moved through the bullion room, the beams bouncing off gold.
Sawtell radioed Gordie’s team that they’d found a storage room.
He asked them to deal silently with the voices they’d heard.
There was no VX in the room. They kept going, rounded a corner and found a crossroad, both arms of it unlit and tyre tracks down the centre.
Sawtell looked at Paul, then Mac. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Let’s duck in here, wait for this vehicle to go past,’ said Mac.
Sawtell deadpanned him, then he heard it too. It was coming from further in the tunnel and was getting closer.
‘Wanna take it out?’ asked Mac.
Sawtell nodded, said to Jansen, ‘You’re up.’
They ducked onto opposite sides of the crossroads, an alloy suppressor about fourteen inches long in Jansen’s hand. Mac had never seen anything like it. Unlike Mac’s suppressor, Jansen’s went on in two twists.
Jansen wrapped the M4 strap around his left wrist, shouldered the rifl e like it was part of him, brought his eye down to the sights and steadied himself like a rock. Perfect standing marksman pose.
The vehicle noise got louder, travelling at some speed. Mac wondered how fast this Jansen was. He was in a trance. A killer’s trance.
