But then the inspector spots something that puts her in a better mood. Two riot vans are approaching the gas station. The robbers’ white helicopter has also just dropped down toward the roof. It’s hovering just above the cash depot now. There’s no doubt about it: the pilot has also seen the riot vans.
Thurn nods to herself.
These are the type of officers she’s willing to send into the building.
“Finally,” she says in the direction of the frustrated security chief.
86
5:40 a.m.
The riot vans drive up to the gas station and come to a halt next to Thurn. An enormous police officer climbs out of one of them, he has to be over six and a half feet tall, with a crew cut and shoulders like a bodybuilder. He’s the commanding officer.
“Who’s in charge here?” he barks.
Thurn points to herself. The man nods uninterestedly and glances over to the building and the helicopter hovering above it.
“You want us to take him down?” he asks.
“Take him down?”
“We can shoot the bastard down,” the uniformed officer says with a confident nod.
Thurn looks up at the helicopter. The beefed-up policeman is insane, she thinks. Shooting down the helicopter while it’s hovering above the roof could cause it to explode and fall onto a building full of people. What is he thinking? But before Thurn has time to say anything, Palle Lindahl sticks his head out of the police van.
“The robbers seem to be on the move,” he shouts.
He has his laptop in one hand, prepared to prove his words by showing them the images from the CCTV cameras.
Thurn turns to the riot squad leader.
“Storm the building,” she says to him. “Now. Get them before it’s too late.”
It’s time for Palle Lindahl to prove that being able to open doors from his computer wasn’t just talk.
The riot squad leader is already striding back toward his van. Thurn glances at her watch. Why hasn’t the helicopter pilot called?
87
5:41 a.m.
Jack Kluger is breathing too quickly. He’s hyperventilating. And because his body isn’t getting enough oxygen, his hands are shaking. He’s been through this before. Many times. He knows he needs to calm down. He needs to breathe more deeply, draw air into his lungs.
But it’s impossible.
Nothing is happening. The green light from his watch is glowing fiercely on his wrist. Almost thirty minutes have now passed. Thirty minutes. Something must have happened. How long should he wait, how long should he just sit in position above the roof, waiting for them? Would it be better to just leave?
He has no way of communicating with the robbers inside.
What are they waiting for?
And right then, the fuel-warning light starts to blink. In the darkness inside the helicopter, the red light pulses with unrelenting arrogance. The countdown is serious now. The light’s blinking matches the pounding of the blood in Kluger’s temples. Beneath him, on the dark ground, the flashing blue lights of the police cars cast long, licking beams of light onto the cash depot, which lies heavy and calm. The building’s powerful brick walls and dimly lit windows give no indication of anything in particular going on inside.
In the bright glow of the light on the roof, Jack Kluger is at no risk of making a mistake. He gently tilts the helicopter forward a fraction and stares down at the ladder that is still sticking up through the broken window.
No movement, no shadows, nothing.
The roof is empty.
The red fuel-warning light illuminates his face. His blue eyes reflect the blue light from the police cars over by the gas station. It’s getting more and more crowded down there, new cars keep arriving all the time.
The helicopter pilot doesn’t notice that he’s sweating. He is no longer thinking about his breathing being too quick or too shallow.
Suddenly, something new happens down by the Statoil station. Kluger spots it out of the corner of his eye, and he turns the stick to the right so that the helicopter twists in the air. He sees the two riot vans arrive.
Having done small jobs for Balik in Södertälje for over a year now, Jack Kluger knows that riot vans are a bad sign. They’re full of the kind of police officers he remembers from Texas. People who aren’t afraid of firing a weapon, people who don’t care.
Again and again, Kluger stares toward the southern horizon. He expects to see the police helicopter approaching at any moment, and he makes up his mind: If it appears, it’s over. He’ll fly away.
But maybe that has to happen sooner.
They took off from Norrtälje with less than a full tank of fuel to avoid being overweight. He realizes now that that was a mistake. The indicator has been at the bottom for a minute or two now.
He swears loudly.
His breathing is quick.
One more minute, he thinks. Then I’m off.
88
5:39 a.m.
Jakob Walker is behind the wheel.
He’s sticking to forty miles an hour, he doesn’t dare go any faster through the dense forests of Värmdö. He also doesn’t want to admit how tired he is. They landed at two, managed to get a couple of hours’ sleep and then the call came in.
The car’s headlights cast a bluish glow onto the pines and spruce. They pass low, rocky outcrops and suddenly appearing fields. Jakob has driven between the station and the hangar hundreds of times before, but at night he’s always surprised by the many tight bends.
“Maybe we could go a bit faster?” says Larsson.
Jakob turns his head. He has never really got to know Conny Larsson. They’re too different. Larsson is a quiet, solitary man in his sixties, from the far north of the country, while Jakob was born and bred in Stockholm.
“Better to make it there in one piece than end up with an elk through the window,” he says.
As expected, Larsson doesn’t reply.
Last week, they had been stationed at the National Task Force base in Solna, taking the helicopter up into the air once an hour despite the fact that absolutely nothing was happening. Jakob has never done military service, but he imagines that his night in the army-like police department is as close as he’ll ever get. They had been given a quick briefing about the robbers’ plans the night before; how a helicopter would land on the roof of the Panaxia cash depot in Bromma and then, in all likelihood, be used again for the getaway.
The night had been an emotional roller coaster. The mood in the briefing room was tense, serious, and it had felt as though all the men with the powerful jawlines around him were preparing for war.
The task was, and still is, Jakob assumes, to obstruct or possibly pursue a Bell JetRanger helicopter. He knows the model well. The 206 was the first in the series, a type of helicopter originally developed for the Americans and then successfully marketed to the civilian population once the US Air Force changed its mind and decided not to order any.
Both the Swedish military and police had used the model, or variants of it, anyway. It was actually a JetRanger II in which Jakob had taken his helicopter pilot’s license. These days, they tended to fly the ordinary Airbus Eurocopter. To an outsider, the only visible difference was the encased fantail, Eurocoptor’s pride and joy, for which it held the global patent.
In the distance, they finally spot the lights illuminating the hangar at Myttinge, and Jakob steps on the accelerator for the last quarter mile. Conny Larsson sighs. What he means by that remains to be seen.