Chapter 8 — Red

Exit lanes, concrete pylons and patches of yellow light sweep past as Red drives west along Sydney’s M4. A Christmas banner emerges from the gloom with an invitation to see Santa at Penrith Leagues Club. A lone car drives in the opposite direction on the other side of the motorway.

Reaching down between his legs, Red tries to slide his seat rearwards but it’s stuck. He pulls a side lever and the back of the seat drops too low. He gives up. He should have thought of this when they got the keys off Paddy. Corollas were never Red’s kind of vehicle.

A woman’s GPS voice announces that it’s twenty minutes to the destination. The clock says 2.18 am. By the time they arrive it will be 2.38, twelve minutes before the deadline, provided there are no glitches like highway patrol cars.

A stench of blood fills the car. Red slides the window down a little to let in some air. What would he actually do if he was pulled over? There’s no way the cop would just stand there when the driver’s in a blood-soaked KV uniform, smelling like an abattoir, and a woman’s stretched out on the back seat with a gash in her head. The Kriss automatic, which is right there in the door pocket, would be the only option.

He watches Mia in the rear-view, out like a light and mouth open, skin changing from white to grey to yellow as the lights of the freeway roll past. She could be some kind of zombie with that blood-soaked rag stuck on her forehead—arms and legs at all angles like she’s just fallen out of the sky, which she kind of has. Having traded clothes for the next part of their plan, she’s now wearing his black motocross jacket half zipped-up over her bra, one bloodstained hand resting on the Wand as if she’s still trying to stop the fucking thing from flying away.

He pushes the radio button. A DJ takes song requests, an ad for washing powder plays. A news flash announces Tate’s assassination, the announcement followed by interviews with witnesses. An ambulance driver tells of an anonymous call-out to a shot-up Hummer where he found a young security guard and took him to ICU.

Red turns it off. He should never have allowed Mia to call 000. It’s going to get them all killed. And what a waste of a phone!

You use a phone like that, you throw it away.

‘See?’ Mia’s soft waking-up voice says from behind him. ‘It was worth the two minutes.’

He could point out that those two minutes might be the death of them. He could point out a lot of things. He should shut up. The fact is, he got target number one: Tate.

‘By the way,’ Mia adds, ‘was it you that cut up Adams?’

‘I wish,’ Red says, laughing.

He’s not sure he really could have cut up Adams. It was bad enough climbing over the wall and feeling like he was defiling poor old Paddy’s sacred turf, let alone playing that shit on a church wall, of all places.

‘So, who did it?’ Mia says.

‘No idea—probably Dog. By the time I got there, Adams was out to it. They must have thought they’d killed him. It looked like they’d found the Wand, so I put your video on to fuck things up for Adams and Tate.’

‘How long to go?’ Mia asks.

‘Fourteen minutes.’

‘No problems?’

‘It’s all good, honey.’

‘The back of your head doesn’t look so good, Gorgeous,’ she says, sitting up and rubbing his neck. ‘You’ve got this purple lump.’

Red shrugs. There’s not much he could do even if his head was about to fall off. She’s not so good herself, from what he can see.

‘It stinks of blood in here,’ she says, winding a window down.

‘Thanks Tate,’ he says. ‘And thanks Mia.’

About to joke about turning up at the warehouse in one of Tate’s uniforms, covered in Tate’s blood—courtesy of Mia—Red stops himself. He’s used to this and to having a laugh with his mates when the shit is flying. But Mia isn’t laughing, no, she’s been thinking and scheming.

This girl would make a good commando.

She’s come up with a classic piece of subterfuge—a distraction—which will be her as a fresh piece of human merchandise in bare feet, jeans and a bra, along with authentic cuts and bruises. Instead of a worry, she’s a Christmas present. The fuckers at the warehouse will be thinking more about Mia than Red, and by the time they get their balls back out of their brains, he and Mia might have the upper hand. At least, that’s the hope.

The trouble is, for all its brilliance, this plan’s got assumptions all over it.

‘No more tweaks for our plan?’ Mia asks.

‘Nope. Get Oksy, and it’s all dead man walking after that.’

‘Maybe, honey, or maybe not. Remember what the Badger said? “Help will come.”’

‘Might come.’

‘Take the next exit to Penrith Industrial Estate,’ the GPS voice says.

Red follows the exit onto a gravel road, which leads to a muddy, cow-padded lane, overgrown with weeds and strewn with car bodies. The GPS says they have eleven minutes. Pulling over into a forest of weeds, Red kills the lights and leaves the motor idling. Mia puts her head on his shoulder. Whispering a prayer, she hangs the Wand around his neck.

‘Hello little fucker,’ he says, holding it up. ‘You’re causing a lot of shit right now.’

‘Our kiss of death,’ she says.

‘And you’re still okay with the plan?’ he asks, stuffing the Wand down inside his T-shirt.

‘Yes.’

‘So—it’s me, the brain-dead delivery boy driving through the boom gate.’

‘And me, the slutted innocent in the boot.’

‘I get you out of the boot and walk to the door with you behind me on a rope.’

‘Uh huh. And your opening gambit, honey? What are you going to say?’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘What about—“We’re here to pick up Oksy?”’

There’s a long silence. She rests her head on his shoulder and starts to cry.

‘Yeah, it’s hard to bloody think straight right now,’ he says. ‘What if we just go for a one-size-fits-all, “Sorry we’re late, the money’s in the car. And I’ve got a bonus, a woman.”’

‘Sounds good, darling; then we follow their lead.’

‘Yep.’

Leaving the motor running, Red pops the boot and lifts out a grey backpack full of weapons and ammo that he’d salvaged from the Hummer. He places it on the rear seat, turns on his phone light, unzips the bag and does a last-minute check of three Glocks, magazines for the Kriss and a brown hessian bag—which includes a KV uniform cap and a red plastic box marked ‘Explosives’.

Pulling the cap on, he opens the box. It’s lined with cotton wool and holds a black cube the size of half a brick. Sliding the cube out, he finds a miniature control panel on the back, which has an on/off switch and an LCD screen with three buttons below it correlating to the words ‘start’, ‘pause’ and ‘clear’. Next to the ‘clear’ button is an arrow-up and an arrow-down button. This has got to be C4 explosive. What the hell will he do with something like this? It’s not like he’ll be blowing a bridge. A sticker on the back says ‘Made in China’. If nothing else, it’ll be a big firecracker—bloody lucky if it even works.

The engine coughs, almost stops and settles back into idle mode.

Mia puts a hand on his shoulder, urging him to hurry. He zips up the bag, closes the doors and stops right there. He has one more thing to do. He needs to test drive that Kriss, to see if the bloody thing actually works. He would love to sight it in, but that’s a luxury he can’t afford. Opening the driver’s side door, he takes out the Kriss, tells Mia what he’s about to do and fires one round into the mud.

It works!

Mia tells him they need to go now. They’ve still got ten minutes, he tells her, looking up at the sky. It’s so dark and full of stars. It’s beautiful.

‘I love you,’ he says, lifting her off the ground.

She wraps her legs around him and squeezes the breath out of him. He tells her how much he enjoys every bit of her, every muscle and sinew and that heart he can feel pounding in her chest—and her face so cold and her lips right up against his ear. She whispers a prayer: ‘Please protect our little Oksy.’

‘We’re gunna kill the fuckers!’ Red says. ‘And if you’re up there, God, we’d like you to join the party.’

‘Yes God,’ she says, squeezing Red harder. ‘Kill the fuckers.’

‘You heard the she-wolf,’ Red says.

Mia starts to cry.

‘Lord Jesus,’ she sobs, ‘you’re also supposed to be a warrior. So where are you?’

Red lets her go. She slides to the ground, rips the bandage off her head, grabs a handful of mud and rubs it into her face. Red wants to know what the hell she’s doing. She explains that she wants to look more like the real thing. He tells her she’s totally convincing. She climbs into the boot; he passes her a Glock and shuts the lid.

Suddenly aware that his bladder’s not going to make it, Red turns away from the car, unzips and opens the floodgates. Back in the driver’s seat, he switches the headlights on and cruises along an uphill gradient of weed-infested laneway that’s overhung with trees and spider’s webs. Just over the crest of the hill, a herd of milking cows walks across, blinking in the lights: massive pink udders swaying like the rigging of ships, steam rising off their backs.

With the last of the cows across the road, he cruises down towards the bullseye on the GPS, which turns out to be a big floodlit yard about the size of a football field. The yard has a transportable house, shipping containers and a large navy-coloured warehouse.

At the bottom of the hill he turns onto a blue-metal driveway that takes him right to the entrance. A sign on a boom gate says ‘Local Storage’. Next to Red’s car window is a white post with instructions for magnetic swiping.

Red looks at the post and the shed. It all seems so normal and business-like. What if a truckie came round the corner just now, and all he had on board was a load of soft drink? Every commando knows the feeling, the question—Have I made some mistake?—the look of surprise on a man’s face when a soldier charges around a corner, rifle blazing. ‘What are you doing?’ the dying man seems to ask. ‘Why are you killing, maiming and destroying?’

There’s no way Mia’s ready for this. She’ll freeze up when it comes to blowing heads off. Too late now. He pulls his cap lower and swipes the card.

Nothing happens. He swipes it again. The gate opens and a surveillance camera on a post swivels around, keeping them in view. Red follows arrowed office signs to the house. He parks near the front door between a yellow Suzuki jeep and a garden with two dead palm trees. The door has an after-hours sign with a big red button.

He puts a hand on the Kriss and takes it off again. Walking in with that would be like walking in with a snake in your hand. The Glock will have to do, the more routine and boring-looking the better.

He walks to the door, knocks hard and pulls the tip of his cap down. Two Rottweilers stand in the shadows and stare. This could be awkward.

Inside, shuffling feet approach the door. The door opens and a dumpy man with a brown beard peers out, rubbing his eyes and smelling of petrol—like he’s a mechanic. Red goes to apologise, sure they’ve made a mistake, but the man beats him to it.

‘Good timing, buddy,’ the man says. ‘I was about to pull the plug.’

‘Been a long day,’ Red says.

‘Big fella got his head blown off, eh?’

‘Yep,’ Red says, holding up a blood-soaked sleeve for him to see.

‘Holy shit!’ he says, turning pale.

‘Yeah, it was bad.’

‘You got the cash?’

‘Yep. And they threw in a bonus if you want her,’ he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

‘The bloody car?’ Brown Beard says, laughing.

‘No mate—a woman in the boot.’

‘How old is she?’

‘No idea: twenty, thirty?’

‘Got the PIN?’

‘R738—a little girl I believe.’

‘How the hell did you know it was a girl?’

‘The boss told me.’

Brown Beard doesn’t answer, just stares at the car, running big grubby hands through his hair. He looks at the KV Corp badge on Red’s suit and shrugs. It occurs to Red that Brown Beard’s eyes are pale grey, a bit like Paddy’s, except with weird flecks of black in them.

‘Okay, let’s do it buddy,’ Brown Beard says, commanding the dogs to stay.

The Rottweilers lie on the ground. Red walks to the car, opens the boot and grabs the bag of cash. Mia climbs out into the glare, blinking and shivering, her head down and hair hanging around her face.

‘Nice!’ Brown Beard says from the doorway.

Taking her wrist in one hand and the cash bag in the other, Red twists her arm up behind her back and walks her forward, bringing her all the way up the steps and into the glare of the building’s lights.

Still no one else in sight in sight. Slav wasn’t bullshitting.

Red puts the cash on the floor and stands there, watching. Brown Beard crouches with his back to them, .457 Magnum in one hand and opening drawers with the other. The soft and tired expression has gone. The guy is angry.

‘What the fuck do you think this is?’ the man hisses, still with his head down, rummaging.

‘What?’

‘Restraint!’ he yells, pulling out a set of shiny metal handcuffs and throwing them at Red. ‘It’s the first rule. You should know that. They get away here and we’re dead meat.’

Red turns Mia around for the handcuffing. The skin of her back is so soft and white. There’s a red gouge on her shoulder he didn’t know was there and her bra strap is about to fall off. He should push it back up. He doesn’t. The steel claws lock and Mia’s there in front of him like a piece of property.

‘Nice, eh?’ Brown Beard says from behind him. ‘It’s more fun with steel and chains.’

‘Uh huh,’ Red says, turning around, staring at the floor. He can’t lose it now.

‘Calm down, buddy,’ Brown Beard says, laughing. ‘You’re new at this eh?’

‘Yep,’ Red says.

Brown Beard stares past Red at Mia. Putting the Magnum on the table, Brown Beard picks up his phone and makes a call. All he gets is dial tone.

The more Red sees of this place the more amateur and ridiculous it feels. But amateur can also mean unpredictable. Hanging down from the ceiling are two CCTV monitors showing the boom gate and the big shed. A bin in one corner of the room overflows with old pizza boxes and Coke bottles. A rancid smell competes with the petrol smell—and not a security camera anywhere in the room.

‘Shit!’ Brown Beard says, picking up the gun again. ‘They’re not answering. We’ll have to go over.’ Tearing his eyes away from Mia, he looks at the bag and says, ‘Cash?’

‘All there,’ Red says, handing it to him.

‘Let’s have a look,’ he says, tipping it out on the table and doing a quick add up.

Kneeling on the floor, Brown Beard fiddles with a safe combination. The safe door swings open. Grabbing more bundles of cash, he shoves everything into the bag, ties a knot in it and puts it on the table.

‘Ten minutes and we’re out of here!’ Brown Beard says, heaving himself back up. ‘That’s her there,’ he adds, holding up a picture of a ghost-faced Oksy: a piece of cardboard dangling from her neck with the number R738. ‘Forget you ever came here, buddy. The boss says this is our last deal—ever—too much shit going down. We have one boy left over and he’ll have to go on the scrap heap.’

‘Scrap heap?’ Red asks.

‘Yeah. Is that a problem?’

‘Nope.’

‘Good,’ he says, looking at Mia. ‘And this other one you just brought in, you like her, don’t you?’

Red nods, grinning.

‘Naughty, naughty,’ Brown Beard says, wagging a finger.

‘It’s all good,’ Red says.

‘What’s this then?’ Brown Beard says, sniggering and pointing at Red’s neck. ‘A mozzie bite or a love bite?’

Red instinctively puts a hand to his neck. Shit! It’s where Mia bit him. Brown Beard laughs. Red grins stupidly, explaining that it is a love bite.

‘We all get some on the side around here,’ Brown Beard says, looking directly into Red’s eyes.

Red looks at the floor. If this fucker keeps it up, he’s going to lose it. He needs to be patient. He can feel a moment coming. Thanks to Mia’s bite, this clown has dropped his guard.

Brown Beard puts one foot up on the table, rests his hands on his knee and stares at Mia, like a stockman at a saleyard. Red watches that gun hand. If only the bloody table wasn’t in the way.

‘So, we’ve got a real princess here,’ Brown Beard says, putting the gun down and walking around to Mia. ‘Let me guess—Bulgarian, Russian?’

‘No idea,’ Red says.

‘Speak English?’

‘Dunno.’

‘What else don’t you know buddy?’ Brown Beard holds her arm and lifts her chin. ‘Bloody hell! What happened to her head?’

‘Someone hit her.’

‘Easily fixed,’ Brown Beard says, wiping a trail of blood off her eyebrow. ‘Hey princess,’ he smirks. ‘I got a question for you. How about the three of us?’ Mia twists out of his grip and walks away. ‘Fuck off then!’ He shoves her hard at a table, one corner of which digs into her belly. She falls to the floor, groaning, ‘Spirited,’ Brown Beard says, winking at Red.

Red looks at Mia. The gun is still on the table. The man just stands there, looking at him. Now is perfect.

‘Thanks for the offer mate,’ Red says, reaching out as if to shake his hand. ‘But I need to collect and get going.’

Brown Beard extends a hand. Instead of meeting it, Red thrusts his hand into Brown Beard’s throat, lifting him off the floor, thumb and forefinger on carotid arteries. He passes out. Red drops him on the floor like a blanket.

Taking a bunch of keys off Brown Beard’s belt, Red unlocks Mia. That table has left a nasty bruise on her. She says she’s okay. She says they need to lock up Brown Beard. Red wants to kill him. With Mia’s help, he pulls off Brown Beard’s boots, strips him and handcuffs his hands and feet.

‘Let’s get to the shed now!’ Mia says.

‘Too risky,’ Red says. ‘We need more information.’

Brown Beard starts screaming. Red ties a cord across his mouth, pulling it tight like a bit on a horse. Dragging him to a steel pole in the middle of the room, he shackles him and fires questions about the shed: how many guards? What about cameras? But Brown Beard ignores him and just kicks and heaves his way around the pole.

Red stares at the wall: he has a hundred simple torture techniques he could apply but he’s in a hurry, he needs to look more like a total nutter. The Kriss might do the trick. Leaving Mia to search the office, he walks outside, past the dogs, to the car. Stuffing the Kriss inside his SWAT suit, he comes back inside. The feel of cool steel flows through his body like a shot of some magic potion. He sits on the floor in front of Brown Beard, cocks it and points it at him.

‘Quit fucking around and tell us everything,’ Red growls. ‘Otherwise we peel you, fingernails first.’

Mia stops what she’s doing and watches. Red looks at her. She’s not in a good way. Brown Beard slumps on the floor, silent, hardly breathing. He’s stalling.

Longing to pull that trigger, Red scrolls through the messages on Brown Beard’s phone. Mia searches the desktop PC. They might get lucky, might find a password or a map. Mia tips out drawers full of needles, syringes, ropes and bottles of sedative but there’s no joy.

Brown Beard thrashes and grunts, farting and spinning around the pole—literally shitting himself. The smell fills the room. Now he has a nosebleed, the blood pooling on the floor and mixing in with the brown muck. Red laughs.

Mia hurries for a door that says ‘bathroom’. Following her in, Red stands at the door while she heaves and heaves. The room has a bath, which gives him an idea. Red explains his plan to Mia. To his surprise, she agrees. There is a she-wolf in there. She doesn’t give a shit, she tells him. She wants her Oksy.

Back at the pole, Red holds the man in a headlock while Mia wraps his head in yellow duct tape, leaving a small crack for the nose. The finished product looks like a wrestling contestant on a bad day: all arms and legs and fat wobbly belly with blood running out the nose-hole, a haemorrhagic lemon.

Mia washes her hands and plonks herself down on the office chair.

‘Can’t do this anymore,’ she says.

‘Do what?’

‘That.’ She points at Brown Beard.

Red shakes his head and tells her she’s amazing. She looks at him, looks at a clock on the wall, which says 2.54, and tells him they’ve already wasted fifteen minutes, they should ‘just do it’. He tells her they will, but not before ‘this’ he says—pointing at Brown Beard—has either talked or is dead.

Brown Beard flinches. That means he’s listening, which is good. When the victim pays attention Red knows he’s getting somewhere. Coercion is a mysterious art. His trainers had instructed him to stay right away from torture and to only ever engage in legal persuasion. Who were they kidding! They had also explained that anticipation and hope were much more useful weapons.

Detaching Brown Beard from the pole, Red drags him into the bathroom, fills the bath and drops him in: handcuffs, shit and all. Every time Brown Beard’s head bobs to the surface, Red pushes it back under.

The body writhes and thrashes like a walrus. The water turns into a brown soup. There’s a loud moaning noise. Brown Beard stops struggling and floats.

Red checks the time. It’s 3.01. If this really is ‘closing-down night’, they could be getting visitors any time.

Red drags him out, dumps him on the floor, rips the tape off, unties the gag and lets him vomit. The vomiting goes all the way down to dry retching. Finally, Brown Beard stops and lies on the floor, begging Red to let him go.

‘Shut up!’ Red says.

‘Please,’ he says. ‘There’s only two guards. They hate it here too.’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Red puts the barrel of the Kriss into his ear. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off.’

‘Please.’

‘Listen pal, you’re looking at the father and the mother of R738.’

‘But I’m just the office guy.’

‘Nah. You’re the “scrap-heap guy”,’ Red says. ‘And you’re a liar.’

Brown Beard keeps talking but Red’s not listening. Either this guy’s a hard case or he knows help is on its way. Or maybe he’s just a moron and he does actually know nothing. Either way, they’re wasting time.

Red drags him back out, hitches him up to the pole, re-tapes his mouth and tapes his eyes as well. If Red had an hour or a day he would be playing some ‘anticipation and hope’ games, but they’re out of time. He’s going to have to just put old mate quietly away and try his luck in the shed.

Red turns to see if Mia’s watching. She’s sitting at a desk with head down and her eyes closed. He takes out his knife and thrusts a knee into Brown Beard’s back, pushing him hard against the floor. Brown Beard lies limp as a rag.

About to slit the man’s throat, Red stops. There’s C4 out there with a clock on it. Talk about mind games! How could he have overlooked that one?

He hurries to the door. On the way he hears Mia groan. He looks around, but can’t see her anywhere. The groan comes again, from the direction of the desk. He runs to the desk and finds her on the floor, dry retching.

‘It’s okay,’ she says, ‘keep doing what you have to.’

Squeezing her hand and telling her to stay right there, he jogs outside. The dogs are still at their post. Red retrieves the C4, brings it in, peels the tape off Brown Beard’s eyes and shows him the explosive.

‘This is for you,’ Red says.

Sitting on the floor, just close enough for Brown Beard to see what he’s doing, Red flicks the switch to ‘on’ and watches as the LCD glows with a bright green 00:00:00. He touches the arrow-up button. The screen changes to 00:01:00. He breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe it will work after all. Even if it doesn’t, it should do the trick.

Without a word, he puts the C4 on the floor well out of reach of Brown Beard. Setting the counter at 00.35.00, he pushes the start button. The screen starts counting down. Brown Beard begins to weep. Red stands up.

‘Something strange is happening to me,’ Red says, looking at Brown Beard. ‘I’m dead already and I’m laughing. But you seem to think you have something to live for.’ Mia sits up and looks at Red the way she does when he’s getting awkward at a party. Red shrugs and keeps talking. ‘Lets do a deal buddy. Make it easy for us, and we’ll be back in time to turn this bloody thing off.’

Red wanders over to the sink, fills an electric jug, puts it on and tells Brown Beard he’ll make a coffee while Brown Beard thinks about it. But Brown Beard’s already ‘miffing’ and ‘moofing’ a ‘yes!’ through the duct tape.

‘Good boy,’ Red says.

‘We don’t have all day!’ Mia yells, walking over and ripping the tape off Brown Beard’s mouth.

Brown Beard blabbers away with facts: there’s a blueprint of the shed on the computer, the shed has a cellar where Oksy’s being held and there are two guards: one in the shed and one down in the cellar. This time there’s no more eyes on Mia. While he recites his facts, Red points the barrel of the Kriss at his head and Mia checks the information on the desktop.

The clock on the wall says 3.39. They’ve been here more than an hour. Well past the deadline. If Brown Beard has secretly activated some alarm, shit should be happening by now.

Mia finds the blueprint. Red leaves Brown Beard at the pole and joins Mia at the desk. The map shows that the place was once an animal shelter. Holy shit! The cellar is full of cages and storage shelves for food and water. CCTV cameras have been added to the main gate, the front of the cottage and the front of the shed: nothing inside this room, fortunately.

Everything seems to match. The shed has a roll-a-door at the front, which can take large vehicles, and a small door around the side. There are no cameras on the side door. The outside wall of the shed has one CCTV camera monitoring the gate, one monitoring the house and another monitoring the approach to the shed; the guards will have seen him drive in. A transaction will be expected.

Red wants to know about vehicles and the dogs. Brown Beard explains that the dogs can be distracted with ox bones from the fridge. He says he’s texted the shed’s guard already and as long as they give him Oksy’s PIN, it should be okay. All they have to do is go to the shed door, push an intercom button and say the PIN number. The cellar guard will let Oksy out of the cellar, the shed guard will open the door and Oksy will be free to go. Red’s already seen the text. It all adds up, except for the fact that the shed guard hasn’t replied.

‘He’s just a kid really, that guard,’ Brown Beard reassures him. ‘But he has an AK-47.’

‘What about the one in the cellar?’ Red asks. ‘Does he have CCTV?’

‘He’s a professional. No CCTV, but he has a mobile.’

Red winces at that word ‘professional’, the guy’s probably just some knucklehead.

‘Did you message him?’ Red asks.

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I normally do when the boy doesn’t answer, but—’

‘We screwed up the protocol,’ Red says, smiling.

The man nods.

‘Should we message him now?’ Mia asks.

Brown Beard shakes his head in a no. ‘Please don’t leave me here,’ he pleads, tears welling in his eyes. He looks at the C4 and bursts into sobs, begging them not to forget him.

‘This one in the cellar,’ Red says. ‘What weapons has he got?’

‘AK-47.’

‘And our girl—’ Mia says and stops, looking like she wants to kill him, ‘is down there with him?’

Breathless and panting, as if he’s about to pass out, Brown Beard nods a yes and says that the boy has an intercom button on his desk through which he calls the cellar guard up when a pick-up job is on.

Brown Beard stares at the timer and begs Red not to leave him here.

‘We’ll see what happens,’ Red says, deliberately not looking at the C4. ‘Normally, shit happens.’

Leaving him in his pile of faeces—re-gagged and re-taped—Red cues the stopwatch on his phone to what is now 00:28:05 on the C4. They walk out into the coolness of early morning: Red with the ox bones and Mia with the car keys.

They drive across the yard, the two Rottweilers trotting alongside, sniffing the air. Red tosses the ox bones as far as he can. The dogs hesitate and then bolt off after the prize.

At the shed, a glaring white light illuminates a cloud of moths around the main roll-a-door. Mia slows the Corolla to a crawl. Red’s sure he can hear music playing, loud and rhythmic. He tells her to go past the camera to the corner of the shed to where they can see the side door. She drives through the cloud of moths, around the corner and stops.

Behind the shed, a shaft of bright yellow light shines through a partially opened door. Moths swarm in the glow. Hip-hop music belts out through the doorway. Red tells Mia to leave the motor running.

‘An alarm might have been triggered,’ he says. ‘I’ll go.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she says, turning the motor off.

Red’s not arguing; she’s the mother, she’ll do what she wants.

Silky, rhythmic hip-hop plays like someone’s waiting for them. But if the alarm’s been triggered, why even bother with music? Maybe this ‘kid’, as Brown Beard called him, is just having fun.

Red passes the Glock to Mia and steps out of the car onto gravel, his Kriss cocked and ready. Mia climbs out the other door and they walk towards the light. Signalling Mia to follow, Red stays out of the light and walks with his back against the wall, Kriss angled slightly down. He doesn’t want to be looking too hostile. But that open door is a worry, Brown Beard said it would be shut. The door is less than an arm’s length away now.

He sniffs the air. There’s that petrol smell again, even stronger, like someone’s spilled a drum. He reaches the door. Something shines in the gravel at the foot of the doorway—bits of black plastic.

He kneels down for a closer look. It’s hard to think with this freaking doof-doof going. The earth at the door has been kicked around. Further away from the door is a Macca’s fries packet, AA batteries and something like a TV remote. The razor wire’s been cut and the fence sags like someone’s climbed over it.

He sweeps his hand through the gravel, exposing a slab of concrete at the doorway, old and undisturbed. Shit! There’s running boot-prints all the way from the door to the fence. Someone’s bolted and gone over!

Red looks into the shed, the light is coming from a lamp on a desk. Next to the lamp are three CCTV screens: one showing the boom gate, the next one the house and the third showing the outside of the shed along with the rear end of the Corolla. Back from the desk is a lounge facing a flat-screen; the screen paused on a video game, which has a ‘ready-to-play’ icon flashing and music pumping. A white mug sits on a coffee table. An AK-47 leans against an arm of the lounge.

Crouching on his haunches, Red signals for Mia to wait and nudges the door open. Stepping inside, he swings the nose of the Kriss in a slow arc. No cameras and no guards. Animal shelter signage is still up on the walls with information about dog collars, dog food and leashes.

Red walks to the lamp and waits, hoping for something; but there’s nothing. At least nothing he can hear above that bloody racket from the speakers. Mia stands next to him, Glock in hand. He tells her to move back to the door where she can watch the outside. She refuses. What can he do?

He walks around the perimeter of the room, looking for cameras and exits. A large wooden trapdoor on the floor must be the cellar. At the far end of the shed he discovers the source of the fumes, a forty-four-gallon drum with its cap off: a long garden hose coiled up next to it as if someone’s planning a siphoning job. This would have to be Brown Beard’s exit plan: burn the place to the ground—including whatever human merchandise is in the cellar, for Christ’s sake!

Red walks over to Mia and asks if she’s seen anything. She shakes her head. She holds the Glock like she’s dying to shoot some fucker, but she’s looking like a skeleton under that yellow light. He points at the trapdoor, walks with her to the guard’s desk and points at the intercom button.

‘We’ll have to push that,’ he whispers into her ear, ‘and say something.’

‘A male voice would be the best,’ she says, leaning against the desk.

‘Actually, a voice is a dumb idea,’ he says. ‘Too risky.’

‘Why not just push the button, and keep pushing for a few seconds?’

This woman is a fucking genius.

Mia agrees to do the button pushing. Red tells her they’ll have to lie on the floor and wait for the guard show his head. Red will shoot first.

Red’s phone says 00:13:31. He lies on the concrete, Kriss pointed at the trapdoor. Mia pushes the button several times, runs to Red and lies next to him. Nothing moves except for moths fluttering in yellow light and the skin of a speaker rising and falling.

The trapdoor opens, blue light pours out into yellow. A huge lump of a man with a shaggy head emerges, holding an AK-47. Red squeezes the trigger. The Kriss jerks. The guard’s throat ripples. His head whips back against a blood-splattered trapdoor.

Still firing, Red scrambles to his feet and chases a now-tumbling body down a short stairway. He slips and falls on the target, grabbing a fistful of hot, bloody throat. Mia comes down on top of him. The thought crosses Red’s mind that there might be more guards.

Mia screams for Oksy. Still holding that throat in one hand and holding Mia back with the other, Red checks a cellar that’s lit with blue light. The place looks empty. Oksy calls out. Mia breaks free and runs.

Red’s still got that throat, blood spraying everywhere. The guy’s dead, kicking around like a decapitated ant. Oksy’s still calling but Red can’t let go. He must kill and kill and kill this thing.

‘Mummy!’ Oksy yells. ‘Daddy!’

Red puts one more round into the guard’s head, giving himself an instant headache. Mia calls for keys. Rolling the body over, Red finds a bundle on the belt, unclips them and runs to a cage where Mia holds Oksy through a wall of mesh: her face looking blue, and her hair and nightie black under the blue light.

Passing the keys to Mia, Red reaches through the cage to Oksy and holds her. She cringes, seeming not to recognise him. He chucks his cap away; she lights up and throws herself at him.

Mia unlocks the cage. The gate swings open, Oksy jumps into Mia’s arms and the little family are wrapped in a sobbing embrace. In between the kissing, yelling and screaming, Red checks his phone. It’s 00:08:17.

‘Let’s go!’ he yells.

‘But Daddy, there’s a boy!’ Oksy says, pointing at a pile of blankets in the next cell.

Peering out over the blankets is a dark-skinned kid with a thick head of hair and big eyes. This must be the ‘scrap-heap’ one. Mia unlocks the cell and they walk in. The boy recoils, pulling his knees up to his face, his eyes locked on Red.

‘It’s this uniform,’ Red says, backing away.

‘It’s okay, Yop,’ Oksy reassures him, taking his hand. ‘This is Mummy and Daddy.’

‘Hello Yop,’ Mia says, kneeling down.

‘Water?’ Oksy asks, pointing at a tank in the corridor.

The boy nods and says something in a foreign language. Oksy runs to the tank and brings back a cup-full for him and one for her. She explains that the two of them had been given nothing to eat or drink after the others were all taken.

The clock says 00:06:17. The boy finishes his drink and wants another one, which does the trick. Oksy pulls the blanket away and tries to help him up but he can’t walk. He’s skin and bone.

Red takes the boy in his arms. Walking carefully around the bloodied corpse, he hurries back up the steps to the yellow room. Mia and Oksy follow close behind. Nothing has changed, the music still pumps and moths swirl. The Corolla is where they left it. That guard must have really wanted out.

Leaving the boy with Mia and Oksy in the back seat, Red accelerates across the yard for the boom gate. Mia says they need to stop the bomb. Red says that Brown Beard can go to hell. Mia says he has to keep his word.

They stop at the gate. Red winds the window down to swipe the card. He hesitates. Oksy says he should listen to Mummy. He says he is, and while he’s saying that he thinks about the yellow Suzuki near the office. It might be a good time to swap. Paddy’s Corolla is probably on KV’s list by now.

He drives back to the Suzuki and they change vehicles. He’s about to go again. Oksy looks at him. The stopwatch says 00:03:21. Fuck it! He’ll give Brown Beard a break.

The C4 is deactivated at 00:01:33. Brown Beard is left tied to the pole and they speed away in the Suzuki along with the C4, their weapons, ammunition clips, ten grand in cash and a video camera that Mia found in the office.