Live Fire (46 page)

Mickey’s mobile rang. ‘Yeah, Chopper, how’s it going?’ His face creased into a broad smile. ‘Excellent, mate. See you there, yeah?’ He put the phone away. ‘They’re in London now, on the way to the warehouse. Your mate Sergei came through with flying colours.’

‘He’s not my mate, Mickey,’ said Shepherd. ‘When do I get to check the gear? I hope he doesn’t try to shaft us with dummies.’

‘Why would he do that?’ said Mickey. ‘If he wanted to rip us off, he could have just taken our money and run.’

‘Fair point. But I’ll need to check them before we get into position. We’ll look pretty silly if I pull the trigger and nothing happens.’

‘We’re meeting them at the warehouse,’ said Mickey.

‘And when do we do the job?’

‘Dawn,’ said Mickey. ‘First thing tomorrow. Forty-eight hours from now we’ll be back in Pattaya.’ He beat his hands on the steering-wheel. ‘I love this job,’ he said.

‘It’s not so much a job as a vocation,’ said Shepherd. ‘Do you want me to share the driving?’

‘I’m okay. Give Mark a call and tell him to stop at the next service station. I could do with a coffee and we’ve got to change the plates.’

Shepherd took out his mobile. He weighed it in the palm of his hand, knowing it was relaying their position to Charlotte Button and her SOCA team. He phoned Mark and passed on Mickey’s instructions.

Ten miles down the road, they pulled into the service-station car park and stopped in a far corner. Mark and Wilson pulled up behind them.

Mickey took two sets of UK plates from under his seat and climbed out. He gave one set to his brother and the two men quickly took off the Irish plates and replaced them with British ones, then all four went inside. Mickey, Mark and Wilson sat down at a table while Shepherd went over to the Costa Coffee counter. ‘Hey, Ricky, bring some sandwiches, yeah?’ called Mark.

‘What did your last slave die of?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Self-abuse,’ said Mark. ‘He was a right wanker.’ He sniggered at his own joke.

Shepherd paid for the coffees and a selection of sandwiches and carried them to the table. ‘I still can’t get my head around the fact that we’re on our way to rob a place we’ve never seen,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Normally I’d spend weeks or months casing a joint.’

‘The Professor does all that for us,’ said Mickey, reaching for a sandwich. ‘That’s what we pay him for.’

‘And you trust him? What if he decided to set you up?’

‘He gets ten per cent of the take,’ said Mickey. ‘He makes his money when we make ours. There’s no benefit to him in stitching us up.’

‘Who else does he work for?’ He sipped his coffee.

‘He never says. He doesn’t say a dicky-bird unless it’s need-to-know,’ said Mickey. ‘That’s why I trust him. He’s never told me anything about his other clients and I’m pretty sure he never tells them one word about me.’ Mickey took a bite of his sandwich. ‘You’re not getting nervous, are you, mate?’ he said, through a mouthful of bread, egg and cress.

‘Wary rather than nervous,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m the new guy on the block, remember? I’m on a job with faces I’ve not worked with before, on a way to rob a place I’ve never seen, using rocket-propelled grenades to break in, then handing over the money to someone I’ve never met. And on top of that, two guys I don’t know are taking a quarter of the money between them.’

Mickey laughed. ‘Yeah, I can see your point,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to trust us, mate. Same as we have to trust you.’

Shepherd smiled, but the knot of guilt tightened in his stomach.

Mickey finished his sandwich and belched. ‘Final stretch, lads,’ he said.

Shepherd and Mickey reached London in the middle of rush-hour and spent the best part of an hour and a half crawling through traffic. The warehouse was on an industrial estate to the south-west of the city. Mickey phoned Yates as they drove onto the estate and he had the delivery door open for them as they approached.

Mickey drove in first, then Wilson, and the door rattled down behind them.

Davie Black was standing by a table, pouring water from a kettle into coffee mugs.

Shepherd climbed out and walked to the four wooden crates that were sitting on the ground next to a black Jeep Cherokee. ‘Hasn’t anybody opened them?’ he said.

Yates shrugged. ‘What’s the point? We wouldn’t know if they were the real thing or not.’ He pointed at the Chinese characters stencilled on the side. ‘Besides, they’ve got Chinky writing on them, so that’s got to be a good sign.’

‘Where’s the Jeep’s tool-kit?’ asked Shepherd.

Black got it for him and he used a screwdriver to lift off the lid of one of the crates. He pulled away the polystyrene packing material to reveal the launcher unit, which he lifted out. ‘It’s the real McCoy,’ he said. He checked the other three launchers, then went through the packs containing the warhead units and booster charges.

‘Okay?’ asked Mickey.

‘Perfect,’ said Shepherd. ‘What about the rest of the gear? The shooters? We are going in with shooters, right?’

‘Mark and I’ll pick them up later,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a lock-up in Bromley with everything we need.’

‘And what do we do until the off?’

‘We hang around here until six thirty, then head out.’

Black pointed at five camp beds against one wall. ‘We’ve got all mod cons,’ he said.

‘And I’ve got a pack of cards if anyone fancies losing some of their share in advance,’ said Yates.

Bradshaw walked around the removals van, nodding. ‘You’ve done well, brothers,’ he said. The van had been painted white with the logo and company details in dark green. There was no indication of the modification that had been made to the roof. It was just before ten o’clock at night. ‘We shall do it tomorrow morning,’ he said.

‘So soon?’ said al-Sayed, scratching his neck.

‘We’re ready,’ said Bradshaw.

‘We need to practise,’ said Kundi, taking out his packet of cigarettes.

‘We have time,’ said Bradshaw. ‘We have plenty of time to go through it. Then we sleep, then we pray, and then we go to the airport.’ He grinned and put his arms around Al-Sayed and Kundi. ‘Tomorrow, my brothers.’ Talwar and Chaudhry were stripping off their overalls. ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Bradshaw. The men nodded. ‘Okay, first we practise, then we eat. Tonight we will eat like kings, because tomorrow we will be warriors.’

‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine,’ said Mark, kicking Shepherd’s camp bed. He held out a mug of coffee. ‘Breakfast’s ready and I want mine.’

Shepherd blinked to clear the sleep from his eyes, sat up and took the mug. ‘Cheers, mate.’ He looked at his watch. It was half past five. Mickey and Yates were standing by a Sony laptop computer, peering at the screen. Shepherd took a gulp of coffee and grimaced as he discovered there was sugar in it.

‘Come and have a look at this, Ricky,’ shouted Mickey. ‘You’re always complaining we don’t keep you in the loop.’

Shepherd stood up and carried his mug to the computer. Mickey had inserted a thumb-drive into it and was scrolling through a series of photographs on the disk. ‘The depository is twelve miles away,’ said Mickey. He stopped at a Google Earth picture of an industrial estate. ‘This is where we’re going,’ he said. He pulled back so that they could see a dual carriageway about a mile from the estate. ‘We’ll come down this road. At this time in the morning there won’t be much traffic around. And we turn off here.’ He tapped the screen at a road that curved away from the dual carriageway. Then he ran his finger along the road to farmland. ‘This runs between two farms,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of Land Rovers around so no one will pay us any attention. We drive down to these gates. They’re padlocked but we cut the lock and drive across the fields.’

‘What sort of crops?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Potatoes,’ said Mickey, ‘and grass. It’ll be rough but the four-wheel drives can handle it. We have to cross two ditches but we’ve got the metal bridges that’ll get us across.’ He gestured at four metal trusses leaning against the wall. They were about twelve feet long and two wide, made of ridged steel. ‘They’ll take the weight, no problem.’

Mickey went in closer on the Google Earth picture so that they could see the wall of the depository and the field beyond. ‘We stop here, two hundred yards from the wall. We’re out of coverage of the CCTV cameras so we’ve all the time in the world. You and me will be with the RPGs. Mark, Davie, Barry and Chopper will be in the other Land Rover and the Jeep. As soon as we let fly with the first RPG, they’ll head for the wall. You let fly with the second RPG and we’ll see what the damage is. If we need a third or fourth, it’s your call. Then we pile into the Land Rovers and it’s full steam ahead.’ He jabbed a finger at a large white dot on the screen. ‘We stop the vans here. The CCTV cameras are fixed and they’re covering the wall, not the field. Providing we don’t get any closer to the wall than this, no one will know what we’re driving. Once we’re out of the area, we’re free and clear.’

‘I was wondering about that, because the Land Rovers are pretty distinctive,’ said Shepherd.

‘The Professor spent weeks casing the place and he’s got every base covered,’ said Mickey. ‘We let Davie and Chopper attack the hole with pickaxes to widen it if necessary, then Mark and Barry will go through with wire-cutters to get into the money trolleys. Then we follow and it’s just a matter of logistics – how much money we can get into the vehicles in six minutes.’

‘Sort of
Supermarket Sweep
, but without Dale Winton,’ said Mark.

‘Then we go. We head back across the fields, over the metal ramps, and onto the dual carriageway.’

‘Back here?’ said Shepherd.

‘Nope, we’ve another changeover area fixed up where we swap vehicles.’

‘Where’s that?’ asked Shepherd.

Mickey grinned.

‘Don’t tell me – need-to-know.’

‘It’s where we give the cash to the laundryman and switch to clean vehicles,’ said Mickey. ‘Then we’re straight to the airport.’

‘Airport? I thought we were taking the ferry back to Dublin.’

‘No need, mate,’ said Mickey. ‘No one’s going to be looking for us on the way out. We’ll fly to Amsterdam and get the EVA flight there.’

The previous evening Mark had taken the Land Rover out and had returned two hours later with three large aluminium suitcases. Now Mickey pulled out one of the cases and flicked the locks open. Inside three sawn-off shotguns nestled in foam rubber with three boxes of cartridges.

‘Choose your weapons, guys,’ he said. He opened the second case, which held another three shotguns and ammunition.

Shepherd picked one up and pretended to examine it while his mind raced. Button was expecting the gang to head to Holyhead and Dublin. He had to get word to her that they were flying out of the country.

Yates twirled a shotgun and pointed it the wall. ‘You looking at me?’ he snarled, in a reasonable imitation of Robert De Niro. ‘Because I don’t see anyone else here.’

Mark was slotting cartridges into one of the guns. Mickey opened the third aluminium case to reveal dark blue boiler-suits, black ski masks, black leather gloves and nylon slings to hold the guns. ‘Everything the best-dressed man needs to carry out the perfect robbery,’ he said.

The five men finished praying and stood up. ‘Soon it will be time, my brothers,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Are you ready?’ Talwar, al-Sayed, Chaudhry and Kundi nodded enthusiastically. ‘We shall practise again. When we do it for real there must be no hesitation.’

Kundi climbed up onto the tailgate, then held out his hand to help Chaudhry up. Bradshaw joined them. They moved into the middle of the van while al-Sayed and Talwar raised the tailgate and locked it. Kundi switched on a small electric lantern hanging from the wall. It gave just enough light for them to see what they were doing.

Bradshaw stood in the corner, close to the tailgate and next to the crated Stinger missile. He clicked the digital stopwatch on his Casio. ‘Begin,’ he said.

Chaudhry picked up two metal poles and handed one to Kundi. At the end of each pole there was a curved hook, and the two men used them to unlatch the bolts in the roof of the van. The panel dropped and they used the poles to steady it and lower it to the floor. Light flooded in from the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

Chaudhry opened the crate and Kundi took out the Stinger, then manoeuvred it carefully onto his shoulder. He stood with his left foot on the roof panel and sighted up through the hole. The blowout disc at the end of the launch tube was about a foot away from the tailgate. Kundi checked that the battery coolant unit was in place, then unfolded the antenna and removed the cap from the front end of the weapon. ‘Ready to fire,’ he said.

‘Right. I’ll be on the mobile as I check the incoming planes,’ said Bradshaw. He took his phone out of his pocket and pretended to talk into it. ‘Target sighted, two minutes from you,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Target sighted, two minutes,’ repeated Chaudhry.

Kundi kept the launch tube pointing up through the roof.

‘Ninety seconds,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Ninety seconds,’ repeated Chaudhry. He chewed his gum mechanically, eyes staring fixedly ahead. There was no need for him to look up through the roof. His role was solely to pass on Bradshaw’s instructions.

The seconds ticked by, the only sound the breathing of the three men in the enclosed space, and Chaudhry’s chewing.

‘Sixty seconds,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Sixty seconds,’ repeated Chaudhry. ‘Lower the tailgate!’ he shouted.

Outside the van, talwar and al-Sayed unlocked the tailgate and swung it down, then moved quickly to the front of the van, away from the potential backblast.

‘Thirty seconds,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Thirty seconds,’ repeated Chaudhry.

Kundi flicked his thumb across the safety switch but didn’t activate it. ‘Safety off,’ he said.

‘Twenty seconds,’ said Bradshaw.

‘Twenty seconds,’ repeated Chaudhry.

The seconds ticked slowly by. Bradshaw’s mouth was dry and he swallowed. ‘Ten seconds,’ he said.

‘Ten seconds,’ repeated Chaudhry.

Chaudhry and Kundi began to count down from ten, their voices blending into one. ‘Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one . . .’