trouser pocket. ‘Carrying a firearm, assault with a deadly weapon. You’re looking at five years and you can’t be more than sixteen years old …’
‘Get out to the car,’ the first cop growled, as Michael wondered if Gabrielle would have wanted him to pull the trigger.
46. CASH
Sasha kept low as he sprinted out of the bus with a $260,000 brick under his arm. James was scared of getting shot and wondered if he should fake an injury and leave Sasha’s capture to the police. But Sasha knew the airport well and James didn’t like the idea of him getting away.
James straddled the rubble and followed Sasha down a breeze-block corridor as a recorded female voice repeatedly told them that there was a security alert and to evacuate the terminal by the nearest exit.
After thirty steps the pair found themselves in a stockroom piled with yesterday’s newspapers and boxes of crisps. Sasha put his head around the door at the opposite end and stared into a deserted shop.
‘Looks clear,’ he whispered.
They crouched low as they walked between two racks of magazines and peeked on to the airport concourse. When they’d arrived it had been jammed. Now the open space was dead except for the tannoy announcement and the squeaking boots of an armed officer patrolling the polished floor.
‘Is it safe?’ James asked.
But Sasha had moved away. He reached behind the counter and grabbed a large carrier bag.
‘Open it,’ he said, as he passed the bag to James.
James held the bag, enabling Sasha to drop the brick of cash inside.
‘How do we get out of here?’ James asked, as he eyed the cop’s machine gun.
Sasha pointed out of the open shop front and to the left as he pulled a knife from inside his trousers.
‘Passengers evacuate into the bus terminal, which is fifty metres that way,’ he explained in a whisper. ‘We’ll make sure Robocop’s looking the other way when we step out, but once we get outside there’s going to be a couple of thousand people hanging around waiting to be let back in.’
James felt queasy with fear as Sasha stuck his knife inside the carrier bag and sliced the plastic wrapping away from the money. He briefly considered shooting Sasha in the leg, but before he got a chance Sasha thrust a stack of hundred-dollar bills into his hands.
‘What’s this?’ James asked.
‘Crowd control,’ Sasha said mysteriously.
*
The stolen cash would have easily fitted into a single van, but Sasha’s plan called for two because the police would be stretched thin and two vans would maximise their chances of getting away with at least half of the money.
Bruce had a ten-minute ride in the back of a van, with Tim Kruger, eight hundred thousand dollars and a slow puncture in the left rear. They ended up in an overgrown courtyard on the edge of the Thornton Estate.
Wheels waited in the powerful BMW, with the boot open. Two bricks of cash were loaded inside, while Tim Kruger stuffed the two that belonged to him and his brother into a Samsonite wheelie bag. He pulled it across the pavement and lifted it in the back of a Renault parked across the street.
As Wheels followed the Renault’s exhaust plume, Riggsy – who’d been driving the van – fetched a can of petrol from the cab and began splashing it around.
‘You look like a lost dog, Brucey boy,’ he smiled.
‘Where’s the other van?’ Bruce asked anxiously. ‘Did you see what happened to James and Sasha?’
‘Different meeting point,’ Riggsy explained.
‘But I’m sure they got left behind,’ Bruce said. ‘I ran for the van and jumped in and I saw Tony Kruger jump in the other one—’
Riggsy didn’t like teenagers and sounded annoyed. ‘Keep calm, kid. Get out of those bloody overalls and toss ’em in the van before I burn it.’
Bruce was so worried about James that he’d forgotten he still had LUTON SECURITY written across his back.
‘When things go bad you’ve got to keep your head,’ Riggsy said, as Bruce hurriedly peeled his overall down his arms. ‘Go back to the Zoo, think up a bloody good alibi and keep your head down. Whatever you do, don’t try and contact Sasha before he contacts you. I can drop you at the bus station if you like.’
As Riggsy spoke he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and gave Bruce a hurry up with the overalls look. Bruce looked in the back of the van and realised that it was a goldmine of forensic evidence: fingerprints and