Nick scrambled back up the ladder.
‘Get away from there,’ he yelled through the shattered window, pointing to the wall on his right. ‘I’m going to try and break through. Go to the far corner, by the cashboxes, and stay as far back as you can. Move him, too.’ He indicated the prone man on the floor and then clambered down the ladder again.
His efforts might all be for nothing. Any moment now he might be blinded by a white-hot detonation, and flung across the car park by the blast.
Nick had to try to free those people. He sprinted over to the vehicles, keys in hand. He got lucky on the third truck. He slid onto the cool leather seat, stuck the key into the ignition and heard the engine turn over.
He didn’t want to think about the enormity of what he was going to attempt. As a paramedic, if Nick had to choose between a car crash and a shooting, he’d choose the shooting ten times out of ten. Bullets could kill, it was true, they could rip their way through flesh with devastating effect, but they had to be accurately placed to be fatal. He’d known people to survive supposedly lethal gunshots and live to tell the tale quite happily.
Car crashes were different. Nick had seen horrors inside motor wrecks. He’d pulled out too many dead bodies, people who wouldn’t have wanted to survive if they could, given the crippling extent of the injuries they’d suffered.
A car accident could tear you apart in ways that a bullet never could.
There was only one way he was going to be able to break into the strongroom, though. He was going to have to direct the armoured vehicle at the wall like a missile, and drive it there himself to make sure it connected with sufficient force.
Nick had no desire to be inside when it hit the wall. Crashing into a solid barrier wasn’t like hitting another car – he’d have no height or weight advantage, not even in this tall, high-riding vehicle. He’d have to dive out just before the truck met the wall.
That wasn’t a welcome prospect, but it was as good as he was going to get.
He pulled out of the parking bay and glanced back at the security boom. The overalled man was peering out anxiously. Masondo was gone.
He reversed all the way up to the boom. The driveway sloped down towards the strongroom. That was good. It meant that with every metre that passed, the armoured car would gain momentum.
Nick revved the engine and took a long, deep breath. Don’t think, just do, he told himself.
He held open the driver’s door with his right arm, flattened his left foot on the accelerator and half-rose from the seat, bracing himself against the door frame, gripping the wheel with his other hand.
The van roared down the driveway, disconcertingly responsive to his commands. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sipho watching him at Stronghold’s entrance, his small hands clasped tightly together.
As the truck gathered speed, Nick fought to keep the door open against the increasing wind resistance. The speedometer needle reached sixty kilometres an hour, then passed it, heading towards eighty. The wall loomed ahead. The whine of the engine filled his ears.
And then it was time to jump. Now. Now or never.
Kicking off from the doorframe, Nick flung himself out, praying he wouldn’t be pulled under the truck’s massive wheels.
Its white flank flashed past him. Then he was down. The tarmac bludgeoned him like a sledgehammer as he tumbled forward. His head bashed against it and he saw stars and felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder blade.
He stopped rolling when he slammed into the hard edge of the kerb, just as the enormous vehicle smashed into the front wall of the strongroom.
The truck’s front tyres smoked and howled as its bonnet embedded itself in the wall with a metallic, rending noise. The engine kept on going regardless and, rear wheels spinning, the back of the van lifted high off the ground. Its roof smacked against the wall, sending out another volley of bricks. The truck skidded sideways along the wall and then dropped back, bouncing down onto its buckled chassis, its bonnet ripping free again in a shower of glass and metal fragments. The smell of scorched metal and burning rubber filled the air.
The only sound was the soft hissing of the ruined engine.
He was through. He could see a gap. His plan had worked.
Blinking away the stars that still danced at the edge of his vision, Nick clambered unsteadily to his feet and limped over to the crash site. Sipho was already there, banging at the broken bricks with the hammer to enlarge the hole.
He held out his hand to Tayla and she grabbed it tightly, her blue-painted fingernails digging into his palm as he helped her through the narrow gap. Nick couldn’t help but stare, shocked, when he saw her face. Tayla had a grotesquely swollen nose, bloodied lips, a bruised and half-closed eye. Her shoulders were heaving as she sobbed. Unable to bring himself to speak to her, he just shook his head before going back to help the others. He knew she would face arrest, trial, a prison sentence. Right then, though, all he could think of was that she looked exactly the way his mother had done when Paul had finished with her.
Rachel followed, and Nick squeezed her hand before turning back to help Ramsamy, who had somehow managed to carry the unconscious man in his arms. Nick grabbed the man’s shoulders and helped to lift him through. Ramsamy followed, sweating and puffing from the effort.
‘Thank you,’ he gasped.
Over there,’ Nick yelled, indicating the direction the others had gone. ‘Round the other side of the offices. Hurry.’
Nick and Ramsamy had almost crossed the car park when the strongroom blew.
The sound was immense, a single giant blast that seemed to explode right inside Nick’s skull. The shockwave knocked him off his feet. He lost hold of the man’s shoulders and landed flat on his back. For the second time in as many minutes, his throbbing head cracked painfully against the paving.
Chunks of brick, mortar, twisted fragments of metal scattered around them. Nick choked on the billowing cloud of dust.
He raised his head cautiously, blinking the dust from his eyes.
The strongroom was in ruins. Two of its walls had collapsed, and its roof was torn away. The force of the blast had been channelled through the gap that Nick had made, and the armoured car had taken the brunt of it. It had been flung all the way to the opposite side of the parking lot, badly damaging three of the vehicles in its path.
Ramsamy, who’d also been knocked over by the blast, looked unhurt, and the unconscious man was starting to come round. They carried him round the corner and Nick laid him gently on the grass in the recovery position and checked his vital signs before advising Ramsamy to call an ambulance to take him to hospital.
Straightening up, Nick felt a touch on his shoulder and, turning, saw Rachel there.
‘Nick,’ she said. ‘You OK?’
He had to concentrate hard to hear her words, because his eardrums were still popping after the blast. He hugged her hard, held her tight.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I checked out of the guesthouse early. I ran away. I didn’t know … Sipho told me you’d …’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He stroked her hair. ‘It’s all right now.’
She had a bloody graze on her temple – Paul’s handiwork, he was sure, but now she was alive and well and in his arms.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Here’s your SIM card. At least, I think it’s yours. I picked it up at the old premises.’
He fished in his pocket, took it out and handed it to her.
She gave a small laugh. ‘Thank you. I’ll check it, if you like. Do you think you could …?’
He swapped it with the one in his phone. After a few seconds it beeped and the display showed that there was a new voice message from ‘Adam Home’.
‘Yes. It’s mine,’ she confirmed.’
Nick looked at her more closely. Something was different about her. The first time she’d mentioned her husband he’d noticed a sadness in her eyes. Now it was gone. As she listened to the message, Nick saw her smile.
‘You’ll call him back,’ he said. It was a statement not a question, but at the same time he knew it was a question of sorts.
Rachel looked up at him, then nodded. She had understood.
‘Not right this minute. But yes, I think I will call him soon.’
Nick gave her a final hug and then gently released her.
The minute he put his own SIM card back in, his phone rang.
Donelle from dispatch was on the line.
‘Alpha 25, come in, please. Come in. Are you there, Nick? Got a collision on the corner of Grayston and Sandton Drive. You’re closest. Will you respond?’
‘I’m on my way,’ he said, his hearing almost clear.
Parked behind the big security vans, his car had been protected from the blast. Nick climbed inside, his movement hampered by the piercing pain in his shoulder blade. He felt sore and battered all over; he was too old to be hurling himself out of moving trucks.
A young man’s job. Would working for Johan be any easier? He didn’t know. It might be harder, but then, he didn’t think easy was what he was after.
Nick drove carefully out of the premises and headed onto the road. He glanced back, but couldn’t see Rachel. All he could see was Stronghold Security’s car park, strewn with debris.