‘He goes first,’ Baird went on. ‘There should be one more guard, but I can’t spot him. What’s the time?’
‘Six minutes to twelve,’ Rico said, through dry lips.
Baird grunted. He began to search the bush with his glasses, but he couldn’t spot the fifth guard.
‘Maybe he’s in the hut or somewhere with the dogs,’ he said, slipping the glasses into their case. He raised the Winchester and squinted through the telescopic sight. ‘I wish I’d had a little more practice with this gun,’ he muttered under his breath. He cradled the barrel in a fork of a branch. After shifting the gun a little he got the guard’s head in the exact centre of the cross-piece in the sight. He grunted, satisfied, and lowered the gun. ‘Seen Noddy?’
‘He’s by the truck with the red disc on it,’ Rico said, looking through his glasses. ‘That must be Hater near him.’
Baird took his glasses from the case and focused them on the truck. He spotted Noddy, standing by the truck, a cigarette in his mouth. His battered panama hat shielded his face, but Baird recognised him by his pigeon chest and tall, stooping figure.
Hater was shovelling liquid mud off the steam shovel into the truck. He was standing up to his knees in the heavy wet muck, and Baird recognised him immediately by his balding head and beetling eyebrows. He was the only convict in the gang who was bareheaded. He worked slowly and listlessly, stripped to the waist, his emaciated body burned brown by the sun.
‘That’s Hater,’ Baird said, nodding. ‘You’d better get down now and take up your position. Lob the first bomb on to the deck of the big dredge. Make sure every bomb you throw falls on something hard.
They won’t go off if they hit mud.’
Rico muttered something. Sweat ran into his eyes, making them smart. He was trembling so badly he was afraid to let go of the branch he was clinging to.