8 Hours to Die

by JR Carroll

  ‘OK,’ Sammy said. His head was full of questions. He had no idea how a loaded container could possibly be stolen from a depot.

  Dingo smiled at him. ‘This depot has a steel fence topped with razor wire. The gates are secured by two padlocks on heavy chains. The padlocks are case hardened. Take you a day and a half to get through them with boltcutters. But we won’t need boltcutters.’

  ‘So how do we get through the padlocks?’ Sammy said. He could see Dingo wanted to lay it all out.

  ‘We have a man inside,’ he said. ‘Most cases, that’s how it works. You need an insider. This man will replace those padlocks with two identical ones of our own on the night in question. We will have the keys. So, we simply unlock the gates, drive in, unhook the box from the prime mover, hook it onto our own, and drive out. Simple as that. Take fifteen, twenty minutes, max.’

  ‘What about security?’ Sammy said. He could see it all unfolding just as Dingo had described it.

  ‘There’s no security on site—no night watchman. They have a roving security service instead. Most of the container yards do now. It’s cheaper, and they like to kid themselves it’s more efficient. It’s not. They swing by twice a night—at about midnight, and then at around three, three thirty. All they do is look around, stuff their card in the gate. So, we got a window of about three hours, two and a half more realistically. But we won’t need anything like that. We hit the place soon as he’s gone after the midnight call, and we’re out of there by one o’clock. End of story.’

  ‘What about cameras?’ Rafe said.

  ‘Not a problem. This is a low-tech yard. Cameras are antiques, still using videotapes that they tape over every night, till they’re fuckin’ near wore out. Our man will put in a very old one, so all they’ll see are these blurred, grainy images, like a fuckin’ 1920s movie.’

  Sammy said, ‘Why don’t we take their truck? Be a lot easier, already hooked up. We just drive it out.’

  ‘The truck is owned by a nationwide logistics company. It has highly distinctive livery and a real live number plate. That rig is reported stolen, we can be picked up before we have time to unload the fucker.’ He downed half a schooner, wiped his mouth this time. ‘But our truck has no livery or distinctive markings; plus it has a dud number plate, stolen earlier in the day. Cops won’t know what to look for after the balloon goes up. And boxes all look the same, give or take a serial number or two.’

  Sammy wondered what that meant: after the balloon goes up. What balloon?

  ‘Where do we take the stuff?’ Sammy said. Thinking: Where do you hide a semitrailer loaded with stolen Scotch?

  Dingo leaned forward. ‘There’s this place near Warwick Farm. An abandoned army depot. It’s wide open. They got truck bays that haven’t been used since the fuckin’ Vietnam War. And that’s where Rafe’ll be waiting with a moving van. We transfer the goods; you and Rafe head for a lock-up in Liverpool while I go and dump the box somewhere out on the highway before the cops have time to put a trace on it.’

  Sounded like a plan to Sammy. Clearly Dingo had done this before, more than once.

  ‘It’s a well-oiled, tried and trusted system,’ Dingo, said, reading his mind. ‘And patience is the key to success. You and I arrive at the depot in Matraville at half-eleven. We prop there and wait for the security guy to come and go. You have to be ready for the unexpected. They might’ve changed their roster. Maybe they got dogs now. Who knows? Whatever, we sit and wait till I say go.’ He gave a nod towards Rafe. ‘Left to shit for brains here, we’d come crashing through the gates like the fuckin’ Terminator. No offence, mate.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely none taken, mate,’ Rafe said. He got up and went to the bar.

  ‘Any questions, young Sammy?’ Dingo said when they were alone.

  Sammy didn’t have any, not yet. He felt he was in capable hands.

  18

  Soon as he saw the flames Tim grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and snuffed the fire before it had a chance to really get going. If it had taken hold of the window frame and shot up to the ceiling he would’ve had a big problem bringing it under control with just one small extinguisher. The extinguisher was only there in case of accident in the kitchen. Someone wanted to set his house on fire, he had no show. They could burn the place down anytime and there was not one thing Tim could do about it, not when he was trapped indoors.

  He stood watching the blackened, smoking curtains. There was foam all over the place. Then he turned to Amy. She was standing at the top of the staircase, watching him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Everything’s under control.’

  Straight away he realised the stupidity—the emptiness—of his words of assurance. Nothing was under control.

  ‘What if they start another fire?’ she said. ‘And then another one? We can’t hold them out forever.’

  Tim raised a hand to his eyes. He didn’t want to answer. She was right. They could drive a truck through the front of the house if they were desperate enough. He didn’t know if they had a truck, or what they were driving. And if they had guns, there was a fair chance they had explosives, petrol bombs, whatever.

  Tim went up the stairs, still carrying the extinguisher. He curled his hand around the back of Amy’s head and brought it against his own. Then he kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘Sit down a minute,’ he said.

  They sat on the top step of the steel staircase.

  ‘Wish I knew who they were,’ he said. ‘What the hell is going on.’

  ‘You said they were bikers.’

  ‘The one I saw looked like a biker,’ he said. ‘Can’t say about the others. That other one—the one I hit—he’s an American. What’s that all about?’

  ‘I guess Americans can be bikers too,’ she said.

  He gave her a grim sort of laugh and even she realised the unintended black humour of her observation.

  They could hear the men’s voices from outside as they talked among themselves. Every now and then one would laugh. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. And—more worryingly—they seemed to be in no hurry. They were in for the long haul.

  Tim hadn’t seen or heard any motorbikes. If they had ridden, the bikes would be parked out front and he would’ve heard them for sure. But these days bikers didn’t necessarily ride motorcycles. The culture had changed. Some of the major outlaw gangs had evolved into corporate organisations that rivalled any in the legitimate world. They conducted themselves like business entities, with all the trappings. Gang leaders were CEOs, flaunting their wealth in Armani suits, draped in gold and silver, vacations in the Caribbean and such places, riding in stretch Hummers and Lear jets. Such was the scale of their drug operations, money laundering, gun running and whatever else they did to turn a dirty dollar. They spread their tentacles internationally, opening branches in third-world countries, hooking up with overseas criminal cartels, doing deals, slicing up turf like civilised businessmen instead of shooting it out in the streets.

  But these guys didn’t seem like corporate bikers.

  The tall one with the ponytail looked about fifty, tough as nails, rough as guts. Going by their voices, the American was younger, maybe fortyish; the third man, who Tim figured was the one who’d tried to kick the door in, was probably in his thirties. He sounded Australian, born here but maybe with a European background. He spoke rapidly; possibly that meant he was the excitable type, dangerous and unpredictable.

  The leader had said he had a package to deliver for Mr Fontaine. There was a wealth of information in that one sentence. Delivering a package was a cliché from any Charles Bronson action movie; it meant he was a hit man who represented someone else, a third party.

  So who did Tim know who was ruthless enough not just to want him dead, but to act on it, and who had connections with homicidal bikers?

  That definitely reduced the number of possible candidates.

  Tim himself had had run-ins with outlaw bikers, both as cop and lawyer. He’d made his sh
are of enemies over the years. It was unavoidable, came with the territory, just as delivery van drivers couldn’t help getting parking tickets. But you grew immune to that; most hardcore criminals who copped what they considered a rough deal made threats, but in the end they were only words. Frightening, but rarely backed up with action.

  Rarely.

  His thoughts kept returning to Dale Markleigh. During his long incarceration, Markleigh had not only insisted on his innocence, but repeatedly blamed Tim for not getting him off. Tim had hoped that his old mate’s years in stir would mellow him, but that was not the case. Instead, his anger and bitterness had become more intense. Numerous times over the years, Tim had received messages from Long Bay to the effect that his days were growing shorter as Markleigh drew closer to his release date.

  And Markleigh had been involved with biker gangs, both in and out of prison—wouldn’t be hard for him to set up something like this. A five-minute conversation in the exercise yard would do it.

  But Tim knew, too, that outlaw bikers sometimes freelanced, performing dirty work on a mercenary basis. The man behind it all could be someone else entirely; someone whose threats Tim had wrongly dismissed as empty rhetoric.

  So it wouldn’t do to fix on Markleigh alone, although he remained top of the list.

  Much of this he had never told Amy, for obvious reasons, although she was well aware of the situation. She was a journalist and broadcaster; she had sources unknown to Tim who fed her information. She got around; heard things on the grapevine. People rang her up at her radio station and told her things. That was part of her job.

  He looked at her. She was sitting still, utterly silent, seemingly frozen and mute with fear.

  Tim’s own guts churned with fear, and dread. He was trying to imagine how tonight could end in anything but a bloodbath, but without success. If he had to die, he hoped he could do it with some dignity and bravery. He hoped when it came to the moment, he wouldn’t quail and cry and beg for his life, die like a weak dog. But that was something no one ever knew about themselves until the moment arrived.

  There was some consolation in Amy’s petrified state. It meant she wasn’t hysterical; she wasn’t fighting him and venting her fear. It gave him some small measure of hope. Provided she remained calm, they might be able to work together to somehow deal with their predicament.

  Outside there was mostly silence, just intermittent voices. Planning their next move, no doubt. Tim wanted a miracle: that they’d decide to give up and go away.

  Dream on, he told himself.

  *

  Christo took a slug of the Beam. ‘We had a tow truck, we could tear the place apart,’ he said, wiping a hand over his chin.

  ‘We don’t have a tow truck,’ Cornstalk told him. ‘Next suggestion?’

  He wandered over to the smashed window, now curtained with blackened shreds of burnt material. He peered inside, saw nothing. Aimed his pistol into the open space. He had an overwhelming urge to open fire, but reason prevailed. No use shooting at inanimate objects. He wondered where Fontaine and his wife were hiding. From where he stood he could see the base of the staircase, but no higher up. He figured they had to be upstairs somewhere. That’s where he’d be, in their position.

  Cornstalk grabbed the bottle from Christo and took a swallow. They were all half-cut as they’d had beers in the afternoon and this was the second Beam bottle. It helped.

  Booze was one thing, drugs were another. Cornstalk disapproved of all drug addicts. They were hopeless losers, cockroaches to be crushed underfoot. He had a vision, a sort of sci-fi fantasy, in which every last addict was rounded up, put in chains and shipped off to the desert somewhere, a walled prison compound he called Area 57, where they’d be dumped to burn up in the sun. Drug addicts were no use to anyone. He’d known plenty in the criminal and bikie world. Some were OK socially, just to hang with, but when it came to business not one of them was worth two bits. They were fuck-ups through and through.

  But he made an exception in Christo’s case. Christo was, unfortunately, an ice addict, which transformed him from a sweet kid who adored his mother into a crazed monster, an unpredictable tornado of destruction and death. They’d been through a bit together; Christo’d earned his stripes the hard way and had a quality of menace and commitment—even when off his face on crystal meth—that made you respect him.

  Respect. An overused word in the modern world. A simple rule: those who demanded it didn’t deserve it. Boxers, sportsmen, gangsters, rappers—all full of shit. I want respect. Fuck that. Respect flowed from your deeds or not at all.

  As for Stav, Cornstalk had a sneaking admiration for him, though he’d never admit as much to the Canadian’s face. But that was Cornstalk’s style: he was always more likely to bag someone than praise them, whether he meant it or not. People who knew him understood that. The more he bagged someone to his face, the more he respected them, usually.

  In some ways Stav reminded Cornstalk of a younger version of himself—he had dash; charmed the pants off girls, no sweat. But he had something extra, an indefinable quality, along with that accent and his matinee-idol good looks. Those looks were deceptive. Stav possessed a devil inside him; he could butcher a man for little or no reason and then carry on as if nothing had happened. He’d chopped up the old boy at the shop less than an hour ago, but you’d never think so—he gave the impression he’d forgotten about it already. Even Cornstalk felt something after doing grievous violence on a person. At least for a while.

  But Stav was loyal, and staunch. He was faithful to the code: Live free, die free. A true one-percenter. He was a man you could count on to get the job done, no matter what. He’d see it through.

  Watching him right now, casually flicking gouts of blood from his smashed nose, Cornstalk thought of him as a front-line soldier, a senior non-com, one you’d want alongside you in the heat of battle.

  But Stav had a secret or two up his sleeve. Cornstalk was pretty sure of that. There were black moods, explosions of temper, periods of non-communication. Everyone has their own shit to carry.

  In his more reflective moments—few and far between—Cornstalk had to admit he was envious of Stav in some ways. Stav had a personal life, for starters. He had this longstanding partner, a stunning woman named Antoinette, who was a writer for a fashion magazine. Strange combo, that. He also had a couple of kids, boys who were well balanced, or ‘centred’, as Antoinette put it once.

  They didn’t seem to be following their father into a life of biker lawlessness and killings for hire.

  It was unusual, rare even, for a one-percenter to have a stable, happy home life. In a way it flew in the face of the lifestyle. But Antoinette hardly ever made an appearance in her husband’s grubby domain; only once to Cornstalk’s knowledge had she gone on a run with them, down to Braidwood for a music festival. They lived parallel lives, pretty much. Cornstalk wasn’t even sure if they lived under the same roof. But whatever they had going, it worked, at least by appearances. Cornstalk wondered if she had any idea what her husband got up to when he wasn’t at home. Just out for a day’s pillaging, dear.

  Cornstalk’s personal situation was, by comparison, non-existent, tawdry, at best. His sex life had gone from bad to worse, one meth- or coke-sniffing skank after another. These dalliances were all OK for a time, but once the gloss wore off there was nothing underneath, no basis for anything lasting. In the end there was usually a confrontation and a nasty bust-up.

  Far as kids went, Cornstalk might’ve had Rory, whom he never saw, plus a couple more out there somewhere who didn’t even know he existed.

  Anyhow, those were his choices. He’d made his bed many years ago. All he could do now was change the sheets every so often.

  19

  One time long ago Cornstalk rode with a crew to an isolated farmhouse outside of Yass. An Italian drug importer lived there with his wife and rugrats. His name was Alfredo Zanotti. Zanotti made a good living: in the driveway of his large acreage of prime graz
ing land were a Lamborghini and a Mercedes sports car. He had recently imported a huge amount of cocaine, concealed in furniture that was destined for the family’s emporium in Sydney. Cornstalk’s mission was to persuade Zanotti to tell them where the cocaine was hidden, and hand it over. It was never going to be easy; although he came across as a gentleman, Zanotti was in fact a ruthless gangster who had murdered and maimed plenty of people both in Italy and Australia. But Mafia soldiers and assorted scumbags who disappeared mysteriously did not rate on the news.

  Once they were inside the house, matters turned ugly fast. Zanotti came at Cornstalk with a large knife—he was in the middle of carving the Sunday roast. Soon as he was disarmed and put on the floor, a biker’s boot clamped on his throat and a handgun aimed at his face, Cornstalk put the two barrels of his shotgun against the head of Zanotti’s wife and pulled back both hammers. The family screamed blue murder and Zanotti started going nuts.

  ‘Shuddup you greasy wop, or I’ll blow her fuckin’ scone right off,’ Cornstalk said. ‘Nod if you understand.’

  Twisting his head from under the boot to see properly, Zanotti nodded furiously. A frightened silence and some measure of calm gradually descended. The rugrats quailed and sobbed; the two other adults present sat stonily at the table, petrified with fear. Five leather-clad bikers in the house, armed to the eyeballs, liable to do anything at any time—why wouldn’t they be?

  One of the bikers was Cornstalk’s good mate Stav. He was in his element, barely able to control his bloodlust, desperate to mete out punishment. You could see it in the mad glitter of his blue eyes.

  ‘Tell us where the fuckin’ dope is, mate,’ Cornstalk said. They’d heard it was in a lock-up somewhere, address unknown. ‘That’s all we want. Then we’re outta here.’

  ‘I don’t have dope,’ Zanotti said.

  The boot came down harder on his throat. Zanotti gagged and gurgled. The wife whimpered, clutched her face.