8 Hours to Die

by JR Carroll

  Christo firmly secured his .45 down the back of his jeans. He put his left foot on the tap at the base of the water tank, but was too short to reach the top of the tank to gain a purchase. Cornstalk put the torch down and gave him a bunk up on his shoulder. Christo grabbed the rim of the tank and tried to scramble his way up to the top of it. For a second or two it was touch and go, but then he gripped onto the downpipe and was able to stand up straight on the rim of the tank.

  ‘Don’t fall in, or you’re on your own,’ Cornstalk told him.

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Christo said. ‘Shine a light on the roof, will you?’

  It was not going to be easy: this was a pitched iron roof with valleys and steep slopes. The windows were set into the slope, about halfway down. There was nowhere to gain a foothold, so once he got up onto the roof from the tank, Christo was going to have to slide down on his backside to get to the window.

  Christo grabbed the guttering and, with considerable agility, hauled himself up so he could throw his right leg onto the roof. He then managed to drag the rest of himself up until he was sitting on the peak of the roof.

  Say what you like about him, Cornstalk thought, but Christo was a tough, determined bastard who was possessed of great upper body strength. Cornstalk couldn’t have done that—not now, not ever.

  Stav drew alongside Cornstalk and took a slug of Beam. He seemed to have reached the stage where it had little effect on him these days, just downed it like water. Sometimes he wondered what it was doing to his liver, but not too often.

  ‘Shine a light,’ Christo called out. ‘Right here in front of me. Miss my footing, I bust my fuckin’ neck, probably.’

  ‘Probably,’ Cornstalk said. He put the light in front of Christo as he began his descent. Inch by inch, down he went.

  Shine a light.

  The words resonated automatically in Stav’s consciousness. They were words spoken long ago, their purpose to instil fear, and he still remembered them, the circumstances in which they were uttered.

  21

  Stefan was having a bad dream. It was a Saturday night; he’d fallen asleep half drunk while listening to the goings-on of Luc and his friends. The monster at the foot of his bed loomed; he tried to cry for help but as usual made no sound. His arms and legs seemed bolted to the bed; he couldn’t move at all as the monster came for him. He tried with all his might to scream, but only a pitiful squeak came out. Now he was at its mercy; bristles scraped against his body. He attempted to grapple with the creature, desperately trying to fend it off, but his was a hopeless plight, and eventually he gave up the struggle.

  When he woke next morning Stefan felt terrible—not just because of his hangover, but something else even worse. He remembered the nightmare; it was like a movie being replayed in his mind, over and over. It still seemed so real.

  Maybe it was, he thought.

  He realised his pajama pants were halfway down his buttocks.

  His backside was sore, as if it had been scraped with a wire brush.

  There was also a strong smell on his skin—a not-unpleasant smell. It was the smell of sex. Stefan remembered it from somewhere, one of the mysterious tubes he’d found in Luc’s bedroom drawer, along with his other secret things.

  Something was definitely wrong—very wrong.

  Yet, later that evening as he sat with his ruddy-faced, opaque-eyed uncle listening to music and enjoying a shot of Kahlua, he didn’t mention anything about it. What could he say? His uncle was not very communicative at present. He was subdued, as if transported by the music. Stefan noticed he had about a three-day growth on his cheeks, meticulously cultivated around the edges.

  He helped himself to another Kahlua. It was becoming his preferred drink.

  One evening during the following week he went into the kitchen where Luc was refreshing their pre-dinner drinks. Luc was in the middle of putting a powder of some sort into Stefan’s cut-crystal glass of Kahlua. He looked up sharply when he saw Stefan enter the room.

  ‘What’s that?’ Stefan asked.

  ‘That? Well …’ His uncle hesitated before continuing: ‘That’s a medicinal additive, Stavvie. I’ve noticed you haven’t been yourself lately. This is a … a pick-me-up; a tonic. It’ll make you feel better.’

  He handed Stefan his drink. Stefan sipped. It tasted just the same. But why, if it was supposed to do him good, did his uncle put it in his drink without telling him about it first?

  The additive, whatever it was, didn’t make him feel any better, or any worse. And since he was drinking so much anyway, it didn’t matter a damn.

  Stefan was spending most of his waking hours wandering around in a dreamy haze. He didn’t care. He was floating and didn’t care about anything much. It felt cool being in that state. His stock phrase became: I don’t care. Some days he’d steal a bottle from Luc’s cabinet after school—when he attended—and meet some friends down at the stormwater drain, where they’d get drunk and mess around with a couple of the more adventurous girls. He even managed to persuade one of them, a half-breed Mohawk Indian named Martine, to do the business with him while the others watched. He’d come prepared with a condom from Uncle Luc’s secret treasure trove.

  That was really something.

  Now Martine wanted to be his steady girl. Stefan didn’t care. She could be his steady girl if she wanted, as long as she did the business whenever he felt like it. Give her a drink and a smoke and she’d go off. She even let him do it in her mouth, the dirty little skank.

  They saw each other on and off for three months. By this time he was stealing condoms from the pharmacy. Martine wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was all right. Stefan, by contrast, was growing into a handsome young man: regular height and lean, athletic build; dark brown curly hair, olive skin and translucent blue eyes that were even more striking because of his dark complexion. Those looks, together with his indifferent, laid-back manner, gave him plenty of appeal among both boys and girls: boys because they wanted to be like him; girls because they wanted to be with him.

  Early in the spring of ’83 he was called from his classroom to meet with the social welfare person, a sharp-featured young witch named Miss Claridge. While he waited in her little office he cast his eyes around, looking to see if there was anything worth stealing.

  Eventually Miss Claridge came in with the vice-principal, Mr Cheeseman—known among the students as Cheesedick—and together they began questioning Stefan about his frequent absences and falling grades.

  ‘You’re a bright student,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to do well at school and have a good career?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Stefan said.

  ‘You don’t care?’ she said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Silence from Stefan. Dumb question; didn’t deserve an answer.

  ‘If you keep going the way you are, you’ll be a dropout,’ Miss Claridge said, an edge creeping into her voice. ‘You’ll have no future. You’ll be on minimum wage, or on the streets.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he answered.

  Miss Claridge was becoming irritated. ‘It’s a waste of your intelligence, and a great disappointment to your parents and your school.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ His parents? What did they have to do with anything?

  ‘Do you like school?’ Miss Claridge said.

  An indifferent shrug from Stefan.

  ‘Listen, young man,’ Cheesedick put in. ‘Your teachers and Miss Claridge are very concerned about you. They’re working hard on your behalf. Don’t you think you could at least make an effort, show some interest?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Stefan told Cheesedick without looking at him.

  ‘You’ve got serious attitude problems, young man,’ Cheesedick said.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  So it went for another half an hour, before they let him go.

  Stefan’s life, even at age thirteen, was on the slide. He knew it was. But he didn’t care.

  22

  Tim had
risen to his feet at the sound of activity, and a voice—shine a light—above.

  ‘Somebody on the roof,’ he said.

  Amy took no notice. She was still sitting on the landing, hands clasped across her knees, trembling all over. She seemed to be in a fear-induced coma, staring straight ahead at nothing. Perhaps envisioning her brutal death once these thugs got their hands on her. He might’ve been talking to himself.

  Fear was a contagious state. Just looking at her intensified Tim’s own dread, made him understand how bad—hopeless—their situation was.

  Somebody was definitely clambering on the iron roof. Tim went into the bedroom. Holding a lantern he saw immediately what their objective was: the window. It was a small window, divided into quarters. It opened by an outward-winding mechanism. At present it was locked, but it could easily be kicked in.

  Whoever was on the roof was sliding down it, moving ever closer.

  Tim put the lantern on the floor and stood by the window, next to the curtain, where he could not be seen from outside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Amy called. She was standing in the doorway, arms across her chest, staring at him.

  He put a finger to his lips. ‘I think they’re going to try for the window,’ he whispered.

  They both looked up. There were sounds of feet and hands on the roof right above them.

  Tim waited, braced himself.

  A figure drew up alongside the window. He grabbed hold of its edge to steady himself. Now he could stand up. He withdrew something from the back of his pants, held it up in front of the window.

  Tim heard the unmistakable metallic sound—click-click—of a semiautomatic handgun slide chambering a round. He took a deep breath.

  Amy wiped her sweating hands on her jeans. Then she shrank backwards into the darkness, a hand at her throat.

  A foot appeared through the window. It shattered with a tremendous crash, bits of glass flying into the house. The foot kicked several more times in rapid succession, knocking out as many of the remaining shards still embedded in the frame as it could, until the opening was pretty much cleared.

  Tim waited. His heart was thumping and his mouth bone dry. He still had a surprise element in his favour.

  A man’s head appeared through the smashed window. Tim quickly stepped out from his cover and confronted a man whose name he didn’t know and whom he’d never seen before. He registered dark hair and eyes, a Mediterranean complexion, mid-thirties. The man’s eyes were wide, his mouth slightly opened.

  That was all Tim had time to notice before a large black handgun was thrust in his face.

  23

  Patience is the key to success. Dingo’s words revolved in Sammy’s brain as they rolled through Randwick en route for Matraville. Patience wasn’t his strong suit. He was already pumped with adrenaline, and they had a whole night’s work ahead of them.

  It was 11pm. The prime mover Dingo drove was an old Volvo with painted-out sides and stolen number plates. They rode high in the cabin; it was like being in the cockpit of a big jet. Dingo didn’t speak as he drove. He had his eyes peeled, looking every which way in case a patrol car happened along. He drove under the speed limit and did nothing to attract attention. There were some other vehicles on the road, but not too many. Enough so they didn’t stand out.

  Dingo was wearing a dark hoodie, zipped up, and black leather gloves. Sammy had on a T-shirt as usual, black with no writing on it, a black baseball cap, some cheap wool gloves he’d bought that day.

  ‘There it is,’ Dingo said, indicating a large yard with a razor-wire-topped, chain-link fence. He drove past it, took a left, then did a three-point turn and went back out in search of a place to park with a clear view of the yard. Finally the rig came to a juddering halt some little distance along, maybe fifty metres, on the same side of the road. Dingo switched off the engine, and silence settled over them.

  There were maybe twenty, twenty-five trucks lined up in that depot. Sammy wondered if Dingo knew exactly which one was theirs, but he didn’t say anything; Dingo was obviously in control. He didn’t seem concerned as he checked his watch and settled in for the wait.

  ‘Eleven twenty,’ he said, making himself comfortable.

  Sammy did the same. But he was nervous. He had the same twitch in his guts he felt just before a bout in the dojo. He was itching to get it on.

  Dingo lit up a smoke and as he fished in his pocket for his lighter, Sammy saw the butt of a pistol shoved down the front of his pants. Dingo withdrew it, a large black automatic, and set it down in the console between them.

  ‘Insurance,’ he said. ‘Just in case. Dunno about you, mate, but I got no intention of going back inside.’

  Sammy had not thought for a moment that guns would be involved. Far as he was concerned, they were ripping off a truck. He didn’t want to go back inside either, but shooting it out with cops if the job went to shit wasn’t anywhere on his radar. There was only one possible outcome from that.

  Sammy carried his butterfly knife folded away in the back pocket of his jeans. In prison, sometimes a prisoner would be stabbed from behind when he wasn’t prepared or even aware he was a target. So Sammy carried a shiv to guard against such cowardly attacks. It was a habit he’d never lost, even though it’d got him into stir in the first place. You had to be able to defend yourself in an unfair fight.

  Since this was a light industrial zone, there was little or no pedestrian traffic, especially at this hour. No reason for it. Blocks of flats nestled among the trucking yards, warehouses and storage places, but there were no pubs or nightclubs. At eleven thirty it was deserted.

  Every now and then Sammy found himself glancing at Dingo’s pistol butt. He’d never fired a gun, or even held one, but now he thought it might not be a bad idea to get hold of a piece, if he could find out how. No doubt Dingo could be of assistance in that regard.

  At ten after midnight a small white car drew up outside the depot. It had orange lights on its roof rack, but they were not switched on.

  A man got out and played a powerful torch beam over the depot. He checked the padlocks on the gates, after which he patrolled the perimeter of the premises, right around the corner, still shining his torch inside the chain-link fence. Eventually he returned to the gates, where he wedged something—a card—between them before switching off his torch and hopping back into his little white car. In a moment he was gone.

  Dingo gave it five minutes. Seemed a long time to Sammy. He was about to say something when Dingo fired up the Volvo’s motor.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’ll do. Let’s roll.’

  They idled up to the front of the depot. When they’d stopped, Dingo handed Sammy a ring with two keys on it. ‘Open sesame,’ he said with a grin.

  Sammy climbed down onto the footpath and checked both ways. No one; nothing. A dark, empty, rain-slicked street. He undid both padlocks without difficulty, removing the heavy chains that linked the two gates. Then he pushed them open. Once Dingo had driven inside, he closed the gates and rearranged the chains and padlocks so that, to the casual observer, it all looked secured.

  He put the keys in his pocket and hurried to the Volvo.

  By the time he reached it, Dingo was already on the ground, making his way to a Kenworth that was attached to a semitrailer: a flat bed carrying a large shipping container. Working fast, Dingo unscrewed the rear number plate and replaced it with a fake one that matched the Volvo’s.

  Using a wrench, he showed Sammy how to disconnect the Kenworth’s air hose, used for its braking system, along with a nest of coiled electrical cables. Then he shone the beam on the truck’s coupling pin, which connected to the semitrailer through a large, flat device that was shaped like a horseshoe. Dingo referred to it as a ‘fifth wheel’. The coupling pin was attached to the truck by a chain, which allowed flexibility, so it could be removed and put in place easily.

  It all looked pretty complicated to Sammy, all these cables and chains and whatnot. But Dingo took him through
it like an expert; obviously he’d been around trucks a bit and knew all about them.

  Dingo climbed into the Kenworth’s cabin, which was conveniently unlocked. Then, after a couple of minutes fiddling around under the dashboard, the motor exploded into life. Dingo gave him the thumbs up.

  Sammy lifted the coupling pin from the fifth wheel and let it hang from its chain. Then he undid the cables. They were stiff, except for the one Dingo had loosened, but Sammy was strong, and soon got the better of them with the wrench. There were five hoses and cables all up.

  When the job was done and he was sure the Kenworth was completely separated from its trailer he went around to the cabin and signalled a thumbs up to Dingo.

  Dingo put the big truck in gear and moved forward. He found a spot to park alongside another, identical, prime mover, then killed the engine and jumped down.

  Without delay he climbed into the Volvo and backed it up to the Kenworth’s semitrailer. Using his mirrors and considerable skill he got to within an inch of the fifth wheel before stopping. He got out for a look, said nothing, then climbed back in and eased it right up to the trailer so that the two were touching.

  Sammy dropped the Volvo’s coupling pin into the fifth wheel, then set about connecting the braking and electrical cables. It took him maybe three minutes, though it seemed longer. He was conscious of Dingo waiting, sweating on him.

  When he was confident it was done properly he hauled himself into the cabin with Dingo. In silence Dingo moved the truck and its load forward until he felt the extra weight of the big load kick in. He gave Sammy one of his grins, which seemed to indicate he was satisfied with his young apprentice. He picked up some speed, moving through several gears, until they reached the gates.