Into The Fire

Prologue

Prologue

The gate burst inwards as it was struck by the speeding van, almost flying off its hinges with the force of the impact.

Once through the van raced across the yard before coming to a stop near the roller door that provided access to Hartwell Electrical’s warehouse. A second van skidded to a halt alongside a moment later.

The vehicles were a matched pair of white Ford Transit vans, both so dirty an observer might believe they had come from a rally race. Except for the locations of the individual mud splatters they were identical, down to the licence plates, a tactic intended to make it harder for the vehicles to be identified or traced should anyone see them and report them to the police.

Four people, three men and a woman, all of them dressed in dark clothes and wearing gloves and balaclavas, got out of the vans and assembled by the roller door.

A pair of bolt cutters was produced and the padlock securing the door quickly cut away. A siren blared the moment the door was raised, making two of the four jump in surprise, even though they had been warned to expect it. The other two showed no such alarm at the sudden noise, they simply ducked under the rising door and disappeared into the darkness of the warehouse.

Less than a minute later the noise died away and the two reappeared.

“Get the doors open,” the leader of the quartet ordered brusquely.

He was obeyed swiftly, and once the rear doors of the van he had driven onto the property were open he reached in to grab a pair of high-powered torches. He kept one for himself and handed the other to his number two, who immediately turned it on, chasing away the shadows with its narrow beam.

“Three, you’re with Two, Four, you’re with me,” One said. Referring to his colleagues by a number was a security measure he had insisted on during the planning stages of the heist, not that any of them expected to be overheard or witnessed during the raid.

The industrial estate on which Hartwell Electrical had their warehouse was patrolled by guards from a security firm. They had no cause to be concerned that the guards on duty that night were going to trouble them, though, because before going to the warehouse they had paid a visit to the portacabin the guards operated from – the guards were tied up, and would be unconscious for some hours to come.

With the guards not an issue, and the alarm silenced, the quartet got on with their business. One and Four made their way through the warehouse to the stairs that led up to the office, while Two and Three kept an eye out from the yard in case someone were to pass and take note of them.

“Get the computer,” One instructed his companion once he was in the office, having resorted to the simple expedient of booting open the door to gain access. “Take all of it and chuck it in the back of the van.” They only needed the hard drive to deny the police any surveillance footage that might help them but it was quicker, and easier, to take the whole computer than it was to dismantle it and remove the hard drive. “And take anything else that looks like it might be connected to the security cameras.” He was sure it was just the computer, but he didn’t want to take any chances, even if their faces were hidden and their vans had fake licence plates on.

While Four got on with that, it was a task he could manage without difficulty since it didn’t require him to know anything about computers, only how to remove cables, One searched for the delivery paperwork. He located it soon enough, and quickly found the licence number of the lorry that held the load he was after; there were three lorries in the yard, all of them filled with cargoes he could make money off, but the one he was interested in held a mix of goods that would be easiest for him to sell.

Above the hook that held the delivery paperwork was a locked cabinet. One had it open in moments and he quickly searched through the keys it held for those belonging to the lorry he was interested in. He took them down once he found them and hurried from the office, trusting Four to finish up the job of removing the computer, not that he liked to trust the younger man any more than was necessary.

“All clear?” he asked when he reached the loading bay.

“Not a peep,” Two answered, her eyes on the wrecked gates, which would have been a clear sign to anyone passing that something was going on. “You got them?”

J answered by holding up the keys. “We’re after FR67 OST,” he told her. “Second lorry in by the looks of it. Come on, let’s get going.” Climbing behind the wheel of the van he had driven into the yard he drove quickly over to the trio of lorries, loaded and waiting for their drivers to arrive in the morning and take them to their destinations.

It took just a few seconds to pull the van up by the lorry he was interested in, and he was out again before the second van could reach him. While Two brought the second van over, One unlocked the doors at the rear of the lorry and swung them open to reveal the pallets of electrical items he was there to steal.

Climbing up he took a knife from his pocket and, with a quick slice, dealt with the plastic that had been wrapped around the first pallet. The first thing he picked up was a Playstation 4 which he quickly dropped down to Three, who had hurried round to catch it and load it into the back of the nearest van.

A second Playstation followed, then an Xbox One, a Blu-Ray player, another Playstation and a television. By then Four arrived with the computer from the office, which he tossed casually into the back of the nearest van, and One was able to organise a chain to keep the goods moving from the lorry to the vans. Each item was stacked neatly to ensure they could fit as much as possible in, even so they ran out of space in the vans before they could unload everything from the lorry.

It annoyed One to be leaving behind so much valuable merchandise; if he could have managed it he would have driven away all three lorries, and made enough to set himself up comfortably for the rest of his life. That simply wasn’t possible, though; he had nowhere safe to store three stolen lorries, and though he had the connections to get rid of stolen goods, he didn’t have enough connections to deal with three lorry-loads of it. Criminal and corrupt he might be, incautious he wasn’t, which was why he was only taking as much as he was sure he could handle.

Working by hand it took almost an hour to fill the two vans, and the moment they were done One jumped down from the back of the lorry, which he left open – there was no point in making an effort to conceal what they had done, not when the mess they had made of the gate would tell anyone the place had been broken into. Climbing into the van he shifted into gear while Four slammed closed the rear doors, and the moment the younger man joined him he reversed away from the lorry and raced away across the yard.

A smile, hidden by his balaclava, was on One’s lips as he drove out of the yard. He estimated that he would be able to make thirty thousand pounds from his haul, and that was being conservative. It was a good night’s work.