“Which damn cable?” Ezra asks, holding his hands up in the air.
It’s the first thing he has said since the two key players arrived. He knows his place. Nordgren has his balaclava pulled down over his face, and though Ezra has worn one like it many times before, it still commands respect.
Sami, who had been testing the headlamps, turns around.
“The cable,” says Nordgren.
“I took everything that was there!” Ezra shouts. “Do you think I’m some fucking—”
“The long cable’s missing. It’s fifty feet long.”
There’s no doubt in Nordgren’s mind. He knows he packed it.
“I mean, shit, I don’t know…” Ezra begins, but he quickly falls silent.
“What the hell!” Sami says, glancing at his watch.
It’s quarter to two.
“We’ve got to have it,” Nordgren says. “Without that long cable, we can’t blow out the reinforced glass on the sixth floor.”
Sami walks over to the rest of the equipment. He feverishly rifles among the ropes and bags, hoping to find the cable.
But it isn’t there.
“Shit, Ezra!” he hisses.
Ezra Ray looks deeply unhappy.
63
1:17 a.m.
In the apartment in Norrtälje, Michel Maloof places the food on the kitchen table. He had gone into the McDonald’s alone while Petrovic and Kluger waited outside. Three large Big Mac meals with Coke Zero. Extra salt. He sits down and starts eating before it gets cold. Halfway through his burger, he realizes that the others aren’t planning on joining him.
He gets up from the table and goes into the bedroom. They’re busy checking the weapons. Petrovic and the American have taken apart the machine guns and handguns and laid out all of the parts on two sheets.
It turns out that Kluger is as much a perfectionist as the tall Yugoslavian, and every single bullet has to be checked before it can be pushed back into the magazine.
“I could do this blindfolded,” the former marine says in his broad Southern accent, adding, “I have done it blindfolded.”
“Right.” Maloof nods. “The burgers are getting cold?”
“That’s fine,” Kluger replies.
“I might have a few fries later?” Petrovic says, to show goodwill.
“No, no,” Maloof says. “Or maybe… can I have your burger?”
“You’re insane,” Petrovic decides.
“So it’s OK?” Maloof asks.
“Totally fine.” Petrovic returns to his machine gun parts.
The realization that Petrovic and the American are like two big children playing with Legos strikes Maloof as he sits back down at the table and tries to stop the lettuce from falling out of the burger when he lifts it from its cardboard carton.
Back in the bedroom, Kluger makes the exact same remark.
“He’s like a little kid,” the American says to Petrovic. “I mean, who eats McDonald’s?”
64
2:05 a.m.
Sami grabs a large branch from the ground and swings it down onto a rock. Splinters fly. But he doesn’t say a word. The helicopter isn’t where it’s meant to be. The detonation cable is missing. He’s also worried that the ladders might be too short.
They’re “extension ladders,” or at least that was what the kid at Bauhaus had called them. One is thirty-six feet long, with three twelve-foot sections, and the other is twenty-four, three eight-foot sections. You unscrew the plastic clips, pull out the two collapsed sections and then screw it back together again.
The longer of the two ladders will be lowered through the glass roof down to the balcony on the fifth floor. They’ll then use the shorter ladder to climb up to the sixth floor and blow a hole in the reinforced glass. But Sami isn’t convinced that thirty-six feet will really reach all the way to the balcony from the roof.
Not that there were any longer ladders suitable for being strapped onto a helicopter.
It had to be enough.
He moves in circles around all their things. Loop after loop, and Nordgren starts to get annoyed. He does the math in his head. To Lidingö and back can’t take any more than forty-five minutes. They’ll be able to get the cable here before the helicopter lands. He’s sure it must be lying exactly where he left it.
Water has worked its way into Nordgren’s left shoe through a small hole. Suddenly, he feels exhausted, but he knows his weariness will vanish the minute it’s time to get going. Since Ezra still isn’t back, Nordgren pulls off his balaclava for a moment. His hair is damp.
Sami’s phone starts to ring and both men jump. The silence in the woods is so compact, the breeze so faint, that it’s not even making the treetops whisper; to them, the phone sounds like it could wake half of Östermalm.
It’s five past two in the morning.
Sami glances at the display. It’s Team 3. Myttinge.
He takes a deep breath before he answers.
“Yeah?”
“The police helicopter just landed.”
Västberga, Marieberg and Norsborg have all called in. Everything seems fine.
“Time for Michel to do something at last,” Sami says.
He calls Maloof in Norrtälje. It’s the first time they’ve spoken since Hjorthagen.
“Morning, morning,” he says.
“Good morning,” Maloof replies.
“All green,” Sami says. “Time to go.”
“Right, right,” says Maloof, hanging up.
65
4:39 a.m.
Team 3 consists of two nervous teenagers lacking in experience, if not criminal records. They have been lying low in the woods in Myttinge for some time now, waiting for the police helicopter to return to its base. They have no idea how much is at stake; no idea that without their input, months of planning will have been in vain. They saw that the hangar was empty and then started playing strategy games on their phones.
But not on the phone Sami had given them.
When they hear the sound of thudding rotor blades in the distance, long before the helicopter’s blinking warning lights appear in the dark night sky, they’re not even sure it really is the police helicopter at first.
A few minutes later, they hear the sound of the chopper landing on its dolly, followed by the noise of its being rolled into the hangar. Five minutes after that, the pilots leave the area. They lock the huge iron gate with a chain and padlock, then drive away in the car that has been parked outside the fence.
That’s when Team 3 lets Sami know that the helicopter is back.
And then they wait for the green light.
When the phone rings and Sami shouts that it’s time, they feel like they’ve been waiting a long time.
One of the boys carries the two black toolboxes, the other takes the bolt cutters. They move quickly through the trees, involuntarily squatting as they run, as though that will make them less visible. But there’s no one around to see them, nothing but a startled hare or two. The police helicopter base, still considered temporary after six years of use, has been left abandoned and alone in the deep forests of Värmdö.
The boys cross the road. The first uses the bolt cutters to smash the surveillance camera on a post opposite the gates, then he moves on to the chain and the lock. At first, he tries to cut the padlock, but it’s impossible, the shackle is too thick. He tries the chain instead. That proves easier. After just a few attempts, he manages. When he pulls the chain through the steel fence, the noise is ear splitting.
The boy runs back onto the road to keep a lookout while his friend, carrying the black toolboxes, opens the gates and moves into the area. The hangar has two doors, and the boy decides to prepare the boxes in front of the farthest one. He sets them down on the ground and opens the lids.