There were surfboards in the bed of the pickup. The driver, seeing him walking effortfully in the middle of the road, stopped by him and leaned out of the open window. He had long hair.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “You look pale.”
Osborne didn’t reply. The fear and the drugs had ravaged his face.
13.
Greg Wheaton mopped his neck with a handkerchief. It was five in the afternoon and the workers had just left the site. He was the one who had the keys to the south hut, a large removable steel construction specially designed for storing explosives. Two engineers were just coming out of it: Davis and Matthews, two strapping men in checked shirts who could have played supporting roles in a John Ford western. They had just been scouting locations for the next explosion, scheduled to take place in two days. Tomorrow was a public holiday, so they had abandoned everything—the machines and the diggers, the tools, the breeze blocks, and the first foundations—to go home to their families and celebrate New Zealand’s national day: Waitangi Day.
At the foot of the disemboweled hill, earth and stones lays in huge piles, like giant molehills. Wheaton was proud of his work. He had never supervised a site as big as this.
A truck was waiting outside the hut: apart from a few sticks of dynamite, the most dangerous explosives were always taken back to the factory. Burke, the driver, was in a hurry to load the stock. It was a long way to Wangharei, and he wouldn’t get home before eight. Tomorrow, he was going hunting with his buddies, and he wanted to use this evening to prepare.
“Everything OK?” he asked the engineers, who were chatting outside the hut.
“Yes, sure! Take it away!”
Burke lowered the tailgate of the truck. It was one hell of a job, carting high explosives around. Even with danger money, he barely had enough to pay for the house and the rest. As he started loading, the two engineers shook hands and wished each other a good weekend.
“See you Monday! Regards to your wife!”
“Same here!”
The two men said good-bye to Wheaton, who was brooding in his corner—his wife had left him for another man and, even though he had never really cared for the bitch, it made him hopping mad just to think about it. Fortunately, that didn’t happen too often. Like everyone else, he was thinking about the coming weekend, when he saw two hooded men emerge abruptly from the nearby woods: two tall guys dressed in black running in his direction. He quickly looked around and saw three more men, on the left, coming around the corner of the hut. That was when Wheaton realized they were all armed.
“What the fuck . . . What is this?”
In a matter of seconds, the site supervisor, the two engineers and the truck driver found themselves surrounded by a group of eight men, all carrying submachine guns. None of them said a word, but they were all impressively built.
“Hey!” Matthews said, raising his hands. “Let’s cool it! What do you want?”
The barrel of a revolver was pressed to his temple.
“You’re going to take your cell phone out and call your wife,” the leader of the group said. “You’re going to tell her there’s a problem on the site, that it’s going to take you all night to deal with it, that you’re sorry but there’s nothing you can do. Hang up quickly, without any fuss, and everything will be fine. If not, you’re dead. All of you.”
Matthews was stunned.
His cell phone was pressed to his ear. “Do it!”
The others, all covered by the submachine guns, implored him with their eyes to do as he was told.
The first part of the plan went smoothly. The wives protested, grumbled, then obeyed. There was nothing to suggest what would happen. After that, orders were given by walkie-talkie.
The second part of the plan was more technical, since it required the assistance of the two engineers. Chlorine, ammonia, ammonium perchlorate, core components of rocket fuel: it wasn’t just the hill they were going to blow up, it was the whole site.
* * *
A gloomy twilight was falling beyond the pines. Hana was driving fast along the trail. They had left two hours earlier and the medication had clearly had no effect on the boy.
“Where are we going?”
“I already told you. To see your father.”
“My father’s not here.”
“No, that’s why we’re going there.”
“Where?”
“To see your father.”
“Where is he?”
“Where we’re going.”
“And where’s that?”
“This way.”
“And where’s Josie?”
“With your father.”
“I want to see them.”
