his mask. The blast had buckled the aluminium shelves at the back of the cage, causing its contents to spill into a pile on the floor. He swept aside a mass of envelopes and small boxes that probably contained precious stones or jewellery and bent at the knees to grab the first brick.
Thirty centimetres wide, twenty deep and twenty high, each plastic-wrapped brick contained two hundred and sixty thousand dollars belonging to the United States government. The shipment had left America for Amsterdam the night before and was bound for Iraq, where the money would be used to pay the security forces.
Bruce passed the brick out of the door to James, who backed up to the outer door before hurling it down the staircase into the arms of Tony Kruger. It took less than forty seconds to extract two million vacuum-packed dollars and load them on to the bus.
As the boys ran down the steps, they spotted an airport fire engine racing towards the scene. It could only be a matter of seconds before the airport police were on their backs too.
James jumped on to the bus behind Bruce and the Kruger brothers, and Sasha floored the accelerator without bothering to shut the doors. Their exit was on the opposite side of the airport, but whilst Sasha wanted a quick getaway he discovered that the hydraulic brakes locked on every time he reached twenty-five miles an hour.
‘There’s a bloody speed limiter,’ Sasha yelled, as he turned around the nose of the plane and began heading back towards the passenger end of the terminal.
Tim Kruger watched in shock as the speed limiter locked on for the third time.
‘Makes sense,’ James said quietly, as he sat on a padded bench next to Bruce. ‘You wouldn’t want your minimum-wage airport bus driver putting his foot down and careering into a fifty-million-pound jet.’
Twenty miles an hour felt agonisingly slow as they drove along the path in front of the terminal, passing the shadowy outlines of a dozen passenger jets.
But there was still no sign of airport police as Tim Kruger radioed through to the rest of the team: ‘We’re passing Gate Three and should be at the exit in just over a minute.’
‘Roger that,’ Savvas answered. ‘I’m heading in.’
‘There’s the cops,’ Bruce yelled, as he looked behind and saw two airport police cars roaring across the tarmac with their sirens blazing.
They were closing fast as Sasha took a final slow turn around the end of the passenger terminal. The vehicle access point where fuel tankers and catering trucks entered the airport was directly ahead of them, complete with heavy barriers and a security booth with an armed guard inside.
James only glimpsed it before he saw the truck with the battering ram welded to the front barrelling towards the gate at more than fifty miles an hour. The huge ram tore into the security booth, ripping the entire structure out of the ground. As the truck ploughed on, it hit a kerb so fast that the front wheels flew off the ground. It shattered the exit barriers and closed on the side of the terminal building.
‘He’s ballsed it up,’ Tony Kruger gasped.
Savvas was supposed to brake hard and turn once he was through the gates. But your brakes don’t work when your wheels are off the ground.
A wall of sparks exploded around the front edge of the battering ram as the truck touched down, throwing the helmeted Savvas across the cab. The truck smashed into the terminal building, tearing a massive hole and exposing ventilation shafts and a service corridor.
‘Jesus,’ Bruce gasped, as dust billowed and masonry chinked to the ground. ‘That must have knocked him out.’
Sasha stopped the bus and the two black Mercedes vans roared through the tangle of concrete and wire where the security barriers had been. James and Bruce grabbed a brick of money and ran towards them.
At the same time, Savvas fought to open his stricken truck, but the collision had buckled the door and he was forced to climb through the window. The two airport police cars had stopped fifty metres behind the bus and the Kruger brothers ripped out machine guns and fired warning shots into the air.
‘Stay back,’ Tony warned.
Bruce started making a second run with two bricks of money. James was about to grab the last one when Sasha pointed him towards the truck.
‘Go help Savvas. He’s stuck.’
Savvas was losing his struggle to get out of the truck. A jet of water sprayed out of the