The Nightmare (41 page)

There is a small movement near the high steel gate guarding Östermalms Saluhall. Gourmet food stalls have reinvigorated the interior of the huge redbrick building. Now the weak shine of glass in the entrance is briefly hidden by dark movement. Jenny Göransson calls Carl Schwirt. He’s on a park bench between the trees where the Folk Theater had once been. Two garbage bags of scavenged cans sit between his feet.

“I don’t see a damn thing,” he replies.

“Stay there.”

Maybe
, she thinks,
maybe I should let Blomberg leave his spot next to the church and jog down Humlegårdsgatan to check this out.

Jenny peers through her binoculars at the entrance again. She can now see the vague image of someone on his knees inside the black grille. An illegal taxi has driven the wrong way on Nybrogatan and swings around. Jenny watches the light from the car’s headlights slide along the redbrick wall of the Saluhall. The light flicks across the entrance, but now she sees nothing. The car stops and reverses.

Idiot
, she thinks as the taxi drives backward until one wheel goes up on the sidewalk.

Then the headlights shine onto a display window farther along the street, and that window glass throws a reflection right into the entrance.

There
is
someone behind the high fence.

Jenny needs only a second to understand. The man is adjusting the scope on a rifle.

She drops the binoculars and radios Central Control.

“Alert! I see an armed man!” she almost shouts. “Military-grade rifle with scope, at the entrance to the Saluhall … I repeat! A sniper at ground level at the corner of Nybrogatan and Humlegårdsgatan!”

The man at the entrance waits patiently behind the bars of the gate. He has been surveying the empty square for some time and waiting for a homeless collector of cans on the park bench to leave, but decided to ignore the homeless man when it appeared he was going to spend the night on the bench. Under the cover of darkness, he unfolds a tubular barrel with the absorbing shoulder support for a Modular Sniper Rifle. With precision ammunition, the sand-colored semiautomatic rifle is accurate for distances of up to two kilometers. Calmly he mounts a titanium flash suppressor on the barrels, pushes in the magazine, and lowers the tripod in front.

He had slipped inside the Saluhall just before it closed for the night. He’d hidden in a storage area until the cleaners had finished and the guards had left, and as soon as the place was locked and all the lights were off, he’d moved into the Saluhall itself.

It took only a short time to disconnect the building’s alarm system from the inside. Then he was able to slip into the outer entrance, which was protected from the street by a large wrought-iron fence.

He’d been protected from all sides in this deep entrance, like a little hunter’s hut, behind the fence. He has a clear view out but can’t be seen at all if he remains still. If anyone happens to come near the entrance, he can simply back away to disappear into the darkness.

He aims his rifle at the building where Penelope Fernandez is located. He seeks her room using his electro-optic scope. He’s patient, slow, and systematic. He’s been waiting a long time. Soon it will be morning and before light comes, he’ll have to retreat, reactivate the building’s alarm system, and wait for tomorrow night. His instinct tells him that she will be drawn to the window to look out sometime, assuming the bulletproof glass will protect her.

He adjusts the scope and then the headlights of a car pass over him. He turns away for a moment and then returns to his observation of the apartment at Storgatan 1. There is a heat signature behind the dark window. The image is blurry and vague, weakened by the distance and the bulletproof glass. A worse target than he had expected. He tries to get a fix on the center of this blurry outline. A pale rose shadow moves in the speckled violet, thins out, and then appears again.

He is interrupted. Two figures have materialized from somewhere on the square, and they run directly at him, pistols out and close to their bodies.

78

östermalms saluhall

Penelope wakes up early and sleep is gone. She lies in bed for a while, but then gets up and starts some water for tea. She thinks about the watch the police have on her and wonders how long they can afford to keep it up. Perhaps for only a few days. If police officers hadn’t been killed, they might not even have given her that. It would be too expensive.

She takes the kettle of boiling water from the stove and pours water into the teapot. She drops in two bags of lemon tea, takes the pot with her to the dark living room, and puts the teapot and cup down by the window nook. She turns on the green glass lamp hanging there and looks down into the empty square.

Two people pop up from nowhere and go running over the stone pavement. Then they fall flat and lie still. It looks odd, like a puppet show from up high. She quickly switches off the lamp. It sways from her jerky movement and bangs against the windowpane. She moves to one side and looks out again. A SWAT team is running along Nybrogatan and she sees a sudden pop of light in the entrance to the Saluhall. At the same moment, it sounds as if someone has thrown a wet rag at the window, which thumps as a bullet goes through the glass and into the wall behind her. She throws her body on the floor and crawls away. Glass splinters from the green lamp are all over the floor. She doesn’t notice that she’s cut her palms.

*   *   *

Stewe Billgren had always had a very quiet job at CID. However, right now he’s in the passenger seat next to his boss, Mira Carlsson. They’re in Alpha Car, an unmarked car slowly proceeding up Humlegårdsgatan. Stewe Billgren has never found himself in an active position, though he’s wondered many times how he might handle it. This situation was beginning to wear on his mind, especially since the woman he was living with had come out of the bathroom with her pregnancy test and triumphantly shown him the results.

Stewe Billgren’s entire body aches from playing in a soccer game yesterday, and experience has taught him the pain will only get worse over the course of the day.

Shots snap out somewhere. Mira has just enough time to glance out the window and ask, “What the hell was that?”

A voice over the radio yells that two officers are down, shot, and lying in the middle of Östermalm Square. Group 5 is ordered in from Humlegårdsgatan.

“We’ve got him!” Säpo’s chief of operations shouts. “There are only four doors to the Saluhall and—”

“You’re sure?” Jenny Göransson’s voice demands.

“Nybrogatan entrance, one in the corner, and two on Humlegårdsgatan.”

“Get more people there!” the chief of Central Control is yelling to someone.

“We’re trying to get a layout of the Saluhall.”

“Move Groups 1 and 2 to the front door,” someone else yells. “Group 2, go in, Group 1, secure the entrance!”

“Go! Go! Go!”

“Group 3 to the side entrance and support Group 4,” Jenny says. Her voice sounds focused. “Group 5 already has orders to go inside. Alpha Car! Come in now!”

*   *   *

Ragnar Brolin, chief of Central Control, calls Alpha Car. Stewe Billgren glances nervously at Mira Carlsson as he picks up the call. Brolin’s voice is tense as he orders them to drive to Majorsgatan and await further orders. He swiftly explains that the area of operation has expanded and that they will probably have to provide fire support to Group 5.

The radio repeats again that the situation is critical and that the suspect is now inside the Saluhall.

“Damn,” Stewe whispers. “I shouldn’t be here … I’m an idiot!”

“Calm down,” Mira says.

“I just found out my girlfriend is pregnant. I just found out last week. I’m going to be a father!”

“Congratulations.”

He can feel himself breathing more quickly. He bites the side of his thumbnail and stares straight ahead. Through the windshield, Mira watches three heavily armed police officers rush from Östermalm Square down Humlegårdsgatan. Two of them click off the safeties from their laser-scoped automatic guns and head inside the building. The third runs to the other side door to force open the wrought iron fence.

Stewe Billgren stops chewing his thumbnail and feels the blood drain from his face as Chief Brolin calls their car again: “Alpha, come in!”

“Answer,” Mira commands Stewe.

“Alpha, Alpha Car!” yells the chief impatiently. “Come in!”

“Alpha Car here,” Stewe answers unwillingly.

“We can’t wait any longer for more people.” Brolin is almost screaming. “We’re going in now. You have to back up Group 5. Clear?”

“Clear,” Stewe replies, and feels his heart pound.

“Check your weapon,” Mira says tersely.

As if in a slow-moving dream, Stewe takes out his service pistol, opens the magazine, and checks his ammunition.

“Why do we—”

“We’re going in there!” Mira says.

Stewe shakes his head and mumbles, “He’s killing police like flies—”

“Now!”

“I’m going to be a father and I … perhaps I should—”

“I’ll go in,” Mira says. “Use the car as a shield. Watch the door. Keep in radio contact at all times and be ready if he comes!”

Mira clicks off the safety on her Glock and climbs out of the car without looking back at Stewe. She runs to the closest door through the broken fence, pokes her head in and back for the briefest of looks. The officer from Group 5 waits in the stairwell for her. Mira takes a deep breath, feeling fear pour through her body, and then steps through the narrow door. It’s dark. There’s a slight smell of garbage from the storage area on the first floor. Her colleague meets her look and motions for her to follow and secure the line to the right. He waits a few seconds and gives her the sign for the countdown: three, two, one. He turns into the Saluhall and runs through the door to crouch behind the counter in front of him. Mira follows and concentrates to catch any movement from the right. Her partner presses against the counter, which holds wheels of cheese the size of car tires. He’s murmuring into his radio. The little pinpoint light from his scope dances on the floor in front of his feet. Mira moves up to his right and peers around. The gray light of morning filters down from the glass ceiling twenty meters above her head. She raises her Glock. The room is full of shining stainless steel surfaces. She sees a large air-dried ox fillet. Something wavers among the reflections. She intuits a narrow figure with shining wings. An angel of death, she thinks in the split second before the dark Saluhall is lit by the muzzle fire of a silenced automatic rifle.

*   *   *

Stewe Billgren huddles behind his armored, unmarked car. He’s pulled out his SIG Sauer and it’s resting on the hood as he lets his gaze sweep rapidly back and forth between the two entrances to the Saluhall. Sirens are screaming nearer from all directions. There is the small nattering sound of a pistol from behind the wall. Stewe jumps. He prays to God that he’ll be safe and wishes with all his heart that he could just run away and quit being a policeman.

79

when it all goes down

In his apartment on Wallingatan, Joona Linna wakes up. He opens his eyes and looks outside at the light early summer sky through his open curtains. He never closes them, preferring natural light.

It’s early in the morning.

Just as he turns over to fall back to sleep, his phone rings.

He knows what’s happening before he sits up to answer. He listens to the excited voice telling him the latest developments in the operation while he opens his safe and takes out his Smith & Wesson. The suspect is in Östermalms Saluhall and the police have just stormed the building with no strategy at all.

*   *   *

It’s been six minutes since the alarm was sounded and the suspect retreated toward the center area of the building. The leader of the operation is now trying to close off the surrounding area while still continuing to guard Penelope Fernandez.

A new SWAT team heads into the entrance from Nybrogatan. They swing left past the chocolate counter and among the tables in the fish restaurant. Chairs are still upside down on the wooden surfaces. A chilled display counter shows lobster and turbot on crushed ice. The officers’ footsteps echo up from the floor as they rush forward. They spread out and take cover behind pillars. As they wait for further orders, someone can be heard moaning deeply in the darkness. A colleague sounds badly wounded and must be lying in his own blood.

*   *   *

The rising sun’s light is spreading through the sooty glass windows in the ceiling. Mira’s heart is thudding. Two heavy shots had just been released, followed by four quick pistol shots and then two more heavy shots. One police officer is quiet and the other one must be terribly wounded. He’s screaming he’s been hit in the stomach and needs help.

“Can’t anyone hear me?” he pleads.

Mira sees a reflection in the window. A figure moving behind a display of hanging pheasants and reindeer shanks. She signals to her colleague that someone is right in front of them. He calls the chief of operations to see if any police officers are in the middle hallway. Mira wipes sweat from her fingers and regrips her gun. The obscure figure is moving very oddly. She goes closer, bent over, pressing her side against a vegetable counter. She smells the green of parsley and the earthy scent of potatoes. Her Glock shakes slightly in her hand. She lowers it, takes a deep breath, and nears the corner of the counter. Her colleague gestures toward her. He’s preparing an operation with three other officers who’ve already gotten in from Nybrogatan. He’s moving toward the suspect along the counter with the wild game. All of a sudden, a high-speed automatic rifle fires from the direction of the fish restaurant. Mira hears the wet, sucking sound of a bullet going through the protective vest and the body armor of boron carbide of an older officer and into his body. The empty cartridge of the high-speed automatic rifle clangs on the stone floor close-by.

*   *   *

The hit man sees his first shot enter the policeman’s chest and blood spurt from between his shoulder blades. The man is dead before his knees buckle. As he slides sideways to the ground, he pulls one of the tables with him. A salt-and-pepper stand clatters to the floor, and the shakers roll beneath a chair.