30

I helped Red Ken loop the heavy steel hook round the eight bars and back onto the cable. He turned to Dex. ‘All right, mate, let’s do it. Nice and slow.’

The winch hauled in the cable until it was taut. Red Ken and I slipped round the corner of White and Red to get out of the way. If the cable snapped under tension, the whiplash would tear up anyone in its path, like shrapnel from a mortar round. Dex lay flat on the cab for the same reason. We heard the strain in the steel strands, and then a loud crack and rumble as the whole section of wall came away. It hit the ground with a thump and sent up a cloud of dust.

There wasn’t time to celebrate.

Red Ken undid the hook. I turned on my head-torch to constant red and climbed through the hole. I couldn’t see a thing. The red light bounced straight back off the dustcloud, like headlights in fog. The air was hot and musty. It felt like we were breaking into a pyramid. Coughing and spluttering, I began to make out plasterboard walls. I was in an office. I groped for the door. My nose and mouth had filled with grit. I gobbed it onto my shirt. I needed to contain my DNA.

I carried on through the door. My coughs suddenly echoed. I was in the warehouse proper. I turned towards where I thought the shutters should be and my torch beam hit their metal slats. The operating mechanism was mounted on the side wall. I tried pressing the ‘open’ button just in case. Then I grabbed the chain as high as I could and pulled. It didn’t budge. Years of disuse had seized it up.

I jumped up, with arms extended, and hung on, then kicked out from the wall like a kid in an adventure playground to apply some weight and traction from another angle. It gave an inch. I went through the same routine again, jumping up and kicking out, until it gradually relented. I sank to my knees as the slats began to concertina. My sweat-soaked face was coated with sand.

One final wrench and the shutter ascended. I could see Red Ken’s boots in the glow of his head-torch. The hook and webbing straps lay beside them. As soon as the gap was big enough, he rolled under and helped me pull. The shutter came to a complete stop as the inset door hit the top of the roll.

Dex was still on the wagon, silhouetted against the starlit sky.

The dust had almost settled. Our torch beams criss-crossed the interior of the building like lasers. The crates lay in the middle of the warehouse. Six feet by four and two feet high, they each stood on an individual pallet. We moved forward. I felt my heart beating faster. I didn’t want these two silly fuckers to be here – and I didn’t want to be here either.

Red Ken dropped his day-sack on the nearest crate and pulled out a mini-crowbar. We needed to be sure this wasn’t just a bulk shipment from the nearest burqa factory.

I went out to keep Dex in the loop. ‘Found the boxes, just checking – wait out.’ I ran back inside.

‘You need to have a look at this.’ Red Ken was surrounded by tiny white polystyrene balls. They still streamed from the panel he’d wrenched back from the corner of the nearest crate.

I leant down and did as I was told. A few little white balls still clung to the glimmering sheet of engraved yellow metal inside, but not enough to obscure the familiar moustache and smiling face of Saddam Hussein.

He banged the slat back into place. ‘This is the one we’re going to have. Fuck checking the rest.’

We fed the strapping under the pallet, secured it and worked the hook into the side of the webbing strap.

I ran back out. ‘OK, mate. Gently.’

There was nothing gentle about his reaction. ‘Pay day, pay day!’

The electric motor whined as the winch took the strain. The pallet groaned and jerked, then started to creep across the concrete floor towards the exit. Soon it was gouging its way over the open ground. We kept either side of it to make sure it didn’t tip over. We were just metres from the wall. At this rate we’d be fully loaded and out of here within thirty minutes.

Dex slackened off the cable. We grabbed the hook and moved it to the top of the webbing.

‘OK, mate, take it up.’

All he had to do was lift it over the wall, swing left, and lower.

Nothing happened.

I looked up. Dex was on his knees, leaning down towards us.

‘Not good, chaps. We have headlights moving towards Black.’

Red Ken had already grabbed the cable and hoisted himself up to join him.