The sweat is running down his forehead, and the drops that don’t get caught on his eyebrows roll down into his eyes. He tries to blink them away. No one can hear him, the loud thudding of the machine is overpowering everything else, and they can’t communicate using their headsets, because they have chosen not to put them on. All nonessential electronics have been switched off. They don’t want to be caught on the military or police radars. They’re flying dark, with a red blinking warning light constantly reminding them of reality.
“Fucking idiots!” Kluger shouts again, though no one hears him.
Maloof is in the seat behind Jack Kluger. He leans forward with his eyes closed. Waiting for the explosion. He tries to tell himself that if the police had been given orders to shoot them down, it would have already happened by now. But still, he’s waiting for the rocket. The sound of the blast, followed by the sensation of falling. Weightlessness. Emptiness.
But there is no blast, there is no explosion. Maloof slowly sits upright. He opens his eyes. Nordgren is half-lying across the seat next to him. Diagonally in front, he can see the outline of Sami’s face beneath the anonymizing polyester of his balaclava. The blood is still pounding in Maloof’s neck, but the stillness around him comes suddenly. Is it over? He looks out the window. The sky is grayish black, he’s flying.
Is it over?
Niklas Nordgren is on his stomach on top of one of the mailbags. He had thrown himself into the helicopter, onto the seat behind the pilot and next to Michel Maloof. The way he landed means he can see out through the window in the door, and down on the ground a swarm of swirling blue lights continues to search for opportunities. There are several dozen emergency vehicles on Västberga Allé and Vretensborgsvägen, gathered in three distinct groups.
It looks like a still life, Nordgren thinks, as though someone had placed the cars there to create drama in an otherwise sleepy business park.
Along the streets crisscrossing the Västberga industrial area, the sharp white light of the streetlamps is painted like street crossings on the ground. The six-lane highway alongside it is still relatively empty. And with each second that passes, the helicopter takes them farther and farther away from the looming tower and its glowing glass pyramid on the roof.
It’s over, Nordgren thinks, but he still can’t take it in. He can feel the cold metal of the ladders beneath his palms, in the arches of his feet, but his muscle memory is clearer than his other senses.
Did we do it?
We did it, he thinks.
Despite the stubborn blinking light, Kluger carries out the planned diversionary maneuver. He makes it shorter, tighter, saving them just over a minute. His powerful jaw muscles seem to be chewing something, possibly a piece of gum that has long since lost its taste. Not once, despite his cursing, has he given his three passengers as much as a glance.
He cuts across the park in Årsta. They’re barely a hundred and fifty feet off the ground, and each of them gasps when Stockholm’s southern neighborhoods suddenly loom up in the distance, the illuminated Globe Arena—an enormous, abandoned golf ball—a clear navigation point in the foreground. Right beside it, Kluger spots the rows of red buses in Gullmarsplan. Waiting for the first departure of the morning. He takes in the proud arc of the Johanneshov Bridge, allowing the cars to roll dramatically down toward the gaping mouth of the South Way Tunnel, and higher up, to the left, the huge hospital complex like a cluster of dark, gloomy blocks. He puts the helicopter into a sharp right turn and the bright city lights disappear from view. Along the road toward Älvsjö, all that is beneath them is forest.
Sami is next to Kluger, and is staring out the window. The sky is still dark. It’ll be another half an hour before daylight starts to reveal the thin strips of cloud that are currently no more than gray shadows high in the sky, but Sami can already make out a faint glow on the horizon. The helicopter sweeps across the treetops. The Gömmaren nature reserve sweeps by beneath them in dark silence; a spellbound world of trees, paths and thickets hiding wild animals and abandoned cars.
Sami turns on his phone. It has been off since before they went into the building. He calls Team 2 at the gravel pit in Norsborg, but he can’t hear a thing, the roar of the helicopter drowns out any sound from his phone. He glances at the display. The call seems to have gone through.
“Turn on the lights!” he shouts.
He can’t hear whether anyone answers. He ends the call and tries again.
“Turn on the lights!”
If the team on the ground doesn’t turn on the headlights, it’ll be impossible for the helicopter to land in Norsborg. The gravel pit might be big, but the forest around it is dense.
“Turn on the lights!” he shouts.
Now that he has given the instructions three times, he feels satisfied. They’ve been waiting for his call, and he knows it went through. That’s enough.
Sami unbuckles his seat belt and turns around. Maloof is diagonally behind him. He nods, pulls his balaclava up over his nose, scratches his beard and grins.
Sami turns again and glances at Niklas Nordgren. His black balaclava doesn’t reveal any expression, but he nods too.
Sami turns back to face forward.
He can no longer hear the noise of the rotor blades.
They did it.
They did it.
Thoughts of how his brothers will react when he throws the bundles of cash at them fill his mind. Payback. He can already feel people’s eyes on him in town, everyone knowing that he has fulfilled his promises. He can just see them coming over to say hello without looking him in the eye as he’s eating a meal at some fancy restaurant. And Karin. She’s in front of him, with John clinging onto one leg and the baby on her hip at the other side. He won’t need to say a word. Their eyes will meet and she will know it’s all over. He’s the man who kept his word.
Jack Kluger is flying low, no more than 100 or 120 feet above the treetops. He assumes they have six or seven minutes of fuel left. As the forest comes to an end and the water begins, the blinking fuel light is replaced by a steady red glow. He flies straight above the treetops on the south side of Lake Alby and continues north, toward the glittering lights of the E4 road.
94
5:51 a.m.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Thurn drives out of the industrial area in Västberga, leaving the sea of blue flashing lights behind her. She isn’t responsible for the fact that Central Command seems to have directed all the patrol cars in the county to G4S. Thurn’s initial order not to shoot at the helicopter has now become the official line—meaning that the only thing the fifty or so frustrated and slightly bored officers at the scene have done is to stand and watch as the robbers lifted off and flew away.
Thurn is still experiencing an adrenaline rush when she reaches the entrance ramp to the highway. She brakes and hesitates. She still hasn’t heard from the riot squad and has to guess where the helicopter might be heading.
The question is whether she should go north or head south on the E20. There are plenty of exits and on-ramps around Västberga, so whatever she decides, she can quickly change her mind.
No Swedish police officers have experience chasing helicopters at night. But after all the years Caroline Thurn has spent hunting robbers, she has developed a keen sense of intuition. And the minute her hands grip the wheel as hard as she can, swinging up the on-ramp heading north, back into Stockholm, her intuition tells her that it’s too late. It’s just a vague feeling, she hasn’t even formulated the thought, but there’s no ignoring the emptiness burning in her stomach.