TWENTY-FOUR
‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’ Leah said.
Wyatt felt her kick him under the table. He looked up. She was watching Tobin eat. So was Snyder. Like Wyatt, they had eaten small bowls of porridge and were sipping strong coffee, not having the stomach for anything else, but Tobin had eaten two bowls of porridge and was now attacking a mound of scrambled eggs and bacon. They heard the slush of the food in his mouth and gullet. They heard him swallow. And he was eating rapidly, as if this were his last meal.
Wyatt returned her smile abstractedly and looked away again. Now that they were ready to go, he felt concentrated and still. He’d eaten little, not from nerves but because food didn’t interest him just then. It would be different afterwards. Afterwards he would be high on adrenalin and in need of food to bring himself down. He would also need Leah. But he didn’t think about any of that. At this stage he had no emotional stake in what they were doing or what the results would be. He was waiting like a piece of machinery that won’t activate itself until after other machinery has been set in motion.
He got up and left the room. He stood on the verandah for a while, drinking coffee, looking out across the valley. Visibility was good, the sky clear and windless. There was no indication of storms or other atmospheric conditions that might interfere with radio transmissions. A sparrowhawk floated on the air currents some distance away. A fieldmouse, he thought. Maybe a quail or plover chick. As he watched, the bird seemed to close up with a snap and plunge earthwards, coming out of the dive at the last second with the creature in its talons.
Leah joined him, trailing her fingers briefly across the seat of his pants before standing there dreamily, both hands clutching her cup of coffee. ‘The waiting game,’ she said.
It was always like this before a job. Wyatt had never worked with anyone who hadn’t got jumpy and needed to talk. Normally he kept out of their way and if that wasn’t possible, he closed his eyes until they shut up and left him alone. Something told him now not to do that to Leah. For the sake of her peace of mind, he said the sort of thing he knew people expected to hear. ‘Yep, always the same.’
In fact he had no feelings one way or the other about waiting. He knew that waiting rattled other people, and he knew why, but not because he’d experienced it himself. It was the machine part of him again.
‘You must be used to it by now,’ Leah went on.
‘It doesn’t do to get too relaxed,’ he replied, playing the part. ‘You have to stay alert.’
She nodded as if he’d expressed an essential truth. She jerked her head. ‘It’s going to be hard spending time here with those two afterwards. It’s going to be like an anti-climax.’
Wyatt nodded. She was talking sense now, not platitudes. A lot of jobs go sour if waiting is involved after the hit has been made. That’s when the bickering and dissension start. The hotheads decide they deserve a bigger cut and have to be placated. The cowboys want to take off and start spending their money and have to be stopped before they get caught and lead the cops back to you. It came down to psychology.
‘It’s the way they watch me,’ Leah continued. ‘They’ll be high after this. We’ll have to watch our backs.’
‘If there’s any bullshit,’ Wyatt said, ‘we hit hard and fast.’
At nine o’clock they changed into brown overalls and Wyatt directed them in a detailed clean-up of the farm. They buried tins, paper and food scraps in the pit, then raked it over and disguised it with stones and rusty fencing wire and strainers. The fold-up chairs, sleeping bags, camping stove and personal belongings were stacked in the tray of the utility, ready to be taken out and used again when and if they did return. They put on latex gloves then and wiped their prints off every surface in the house. They spread a fine layer of dirt over the floors. Finally Wyatt distributed the balaclavas and hand-held radios. Snyder already had his radio and jammer tuned to the Steelgard frequency. The signal was clear. The driver was reporting in every five minutes and he was on schedule.
Wyatt sent Leah off first. She had thirty minutes to reach Vimy Ridge on the Suzuki and pick up the Steelgard van. Then he and Snyder left in the Holden utility, followed by Tobin in the truck. Twenty minutes later they turned onto the short cut and Snyder placed a road-closed sign across the entrance. Tobin pulled over into the grass at the side of the track near the creek bed, letting Wyatt and Snyder edge past him. They saw no one on the track, and at the junction near Belcowie, Snyder put the second sign in place. Then they drove back to Tobin. When the utility was concealed, Tobin blocked the road with the truck. The rear was in the centre of the track. All they had to do when they had the van blocked was drop the ramp and winch it aboard.
The three men settled down to wait. Every five minutes the Steelgard van announced its position and progress. Wyatt checked his watch: eleven twenty-five. As if on cue, the radio came to life again: ‘Steelgard One.’
‘Go ahead, Steelgard One.’
‘Leaving Vimy Ridge. On schedule. ETA Belcowie approximately twelve midday.’
‘Roger, Steelgard One.’
Tobin sniggered and adjusted his reflective orange lenses. ‘Just like the movies.’
‘Go and wait in the truck,’ Wyatt said. ‘Any last minute questions?’
‘Not me, mate.’
Wyatt settled back in his seat. Leah would be following the van now. He calculated that they had about twenty minutes before the van reached the short cut. He didn’t need to look at his watch to know. When he was operating at this level of concentration, he knew how to judge time.
The radio crackled. It was Leah. She didn’t use names; she simply said, ‘Move.’
‘Moving,’ Wyatt said.
He got out of the utility and jogged back along the track to the first road sign. He hid it where Leah could find it in the long grass of the roadside ditch then returned to the utility. Five minutes.
‘So,’ Snyder said.
Wyatt almost frowned. Here it was again, the need to make an effort to keep someone happy or calm. But he usually did make the effort. He knew people found him solid and reassuring. He was impersonal, so nothing about him threatened them. When he was wasn’t working he made no particular effort to get along with people, and that was the time he liked best.
‘Not long now,’ he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Thought what you’re going to do with your cut?’
‘Holiday,’ Wyatt said. ‘Buy a new place.’
‘I heard you had to dump everything after that job in Melbourne.’
Wyatt’s senses tingled. There it was again, oblique references to his last job. ‘It happens.’
‘Me, I’m investing in real estate,’ Snyder said. ‘The market’s low at the moment. Good time to buy.’
‘Yes,’ Wyatt said.
Something about Snyder bothered Wyatt. It wasn’t what Snyder was saying, it was something about his attitude. He seemed to be playing a game-almost. Wyatt thought, as if he’s going through the motions, as if he’s not listening. Snyder’s face was giving nothing away, but something was there.
He pushed that away. He sensed it was time for Leah’s signal. He began to prepare himself for it.
When her voice did come over the radio it was breathless and panicky.
‘Something’s wrong. It didn’t stop. It’s gone on past the turn-off.’
TWENTY-FIVE
‘We abandon,’ Wyatt said.
He looked at them in turn. Leah had just ridden up on the Suzuki. She looked bleak, defeated, scraping her palms down her cheeks as if to rid herself of tiredness. Tobin paced next to the truck, landing occasional kicks on the rear tyres. Only Snyder was still, staring at Wyatt, his eyes hard and suspicious.
‘All that time and effort,’ Leah said.
‘It happens.’
‘We could try next week.’
‘No chance,’ Wyatt said. ‘They’ve changed the route.’
‘But why?’
‘I can think of a lot of reasons. It’s routine; the driver wanted a change of scenery; something’s made them suspicious.’