For a quarter of a minute the ticking seemed to stop all over the world. Cari and Favorito jumped when the vault ticked one more time, and then they were busy.
Favorito could not reach everything in the vault. Cari helped him and together they removed the brightly colored loops of blasting cord and the drab detonators to the table, leaving the Semtex in the vault where nails were packed in around the explosive for shrapnel.
They did not want to use a cell phone near the vault, so, when the detonators were out and away, Cari left Favorito in the basement and went to give the all-clear, waving with the bird on her fist above her head.
It went quickly then.
Like a fire brigade they passed the Good Delivery bars, the kilo bars, the rough bars from the illegal Inirida mines and the bags of the fat little tola bars, each a little bigger than a Zippo lighter. Inside the van were three top-loader washing machines, heavily braced inside with rebar welded at the boatyard.
Gomez stood behind Favorito in his wheelchair and hoisted him, wheelchair, toolbox and all, and carried him up the stairs.
In minutes the van was rolling toward the airport through a light rain. On the Julia Tuttle Causeway they met and passed a fast-moving convoy going the other way, toward Miami Beach.