Bubble: A Thriller (39 page)

In the gloom of the back of the car, if she squinted slightly Uncle Tage looked very much like Dad. His posture, his slightly archaic way of speaking, even the way he smelled was almost the same.

Cigars, aftershave, and something else.

Something that brought a rather sad lump to her throat.

♦  ♦  ♦

He was pinned down on the floor, with Jeff lying motionless on top of him. The van was bouncing and lurching along on the gravel track, making the strut holding one of the seats dig into his leg. Weirdly, he couldn’t hear any sounds around him above the high-pitched whistling tinnitus noise that seemed to be rebounding around his head. He pressed his hands against the floor and tried to pry himself free.

Suddenly he felt Jeff move, and a moment later the heavy body rolled off him.

At the same time his hearing returned.

“What the fuck happened?” he yelped.

“The barn!” Nora shouted.

“W-what?” He tried to get up off the floor.

“The barn exploded,” she yelled, trying to wedge herself against one of the side windows.

“The roof fell in, then there was an explosion . . . The sky was full of smoke and there was no sign of the helicopter. Don’t know what happened!”

“The explosives . . .” Jeff coughed. “The explosives and detonators were in the Polo, next to the welding tubes. The trunk was open. And there was chemical fertilizer in those white sacks in the corner . . .”

HP struggled up into the seat next to Jeff. The big man’s eyes were closed and HP could clearly see his muscular chest rise and fall under his soaking-wet T-shirt.

The van flew over a bump and HP found himself on the floor again.

There was a thud, then the van veered sharply to the left, and suddenly the sound of the road changed.

“Nice driving, Kent!” Nora yelled toward the front seats, and Kent muttered something in reply.

“We’re out on the main road,” she said, helping HP up.

“How’s your . . . ?” He nodded to her blood-streaked face.

She put her hand to her head, then stared at the blood on it.

“Shit!” she said. “I hadn’t noticed, must be the adrenaline. I’ve got the first-aid box in the front . . .”

She clambered past him and slipped into the front passenger seat.

He leaned forward to ask whether she needed help, but a hand pulled him back.

Jeff had his eyes open.

“Thanks,” he said quietly.

“No worries,” HP mumbled.

Jeff nodded, then shut his eyes again.

“There’s a gas station up ahead, can you pull in there?” Nora said to Hasselqvist.

HP leaned over to look out the side window. A large plume of smoke was clearly visible above the forest, but there was no sign of the helicopter.

“There’s a car-wash shed around the back, pull in there. We can lie low till it gets dark,” Nora went on.

Hasselqvist drove around the building and slipped inside the shed, a corrugated metal box with a row of vacuum cleaners and buckets along one wall. A lone pensioner was washing the windshield of his old Saab, but otherwise it was empty. Hasselqvist stopped the van and they sat in silence for a few moments.

Nora was using the mirror behind the sun visor to inspect the wound to her head.

“Ow, shit . . .” she muttered as she used a pair of tweezers to pull a razor-sharp splinter the size of a one-krona coin from the wound.

“Can you press here, please, HP?”

“Sure.”

He leaned over her head.

“Right, take this compress and hold it down, as hard as you can.”

He did as she said, trying to get his hands to stop shaking from the adrenaline rush.

“We’re fucked,” Hasselqvist suddenly blurted out. “They know where we are, what van we’re driving. We’ve got no chance . . .”

No one said anything.

“Because surely no one thinks it was a coincidence that that fucking helicopter showed up?” Hasselqvist’s voice was
steadier now. “If we set off now, we can be back in the city by midnight. We can come up with a new plan, find another way to—”

“There is no other way, Kent!” Nora snapped. “And you know that perfectly damn well! If we give up now, we might as well not bother. And that means the Game will win. Is that what you want?”

Hasselqvist didn’t answer.

“We haven’t got any stuff, Nora, all our equipment just went up in smoke,” Jeff muttered. “Without it we don’t stand a chance of getting into the Fortress . . .”

Total silence descended inside the van.

“Actually, we do,” HP said after a while, but they all seemed too upset to hear what he said.

“You asked me to put together a backup plan, remember?”

He looked at Nora and finally got a reaction.

“I know how we can get in, but it means you’ll have to do as I say . . .”

Far in the distance they could hear sirens getting closer. It sounded like several of them.

“We have to go,” Hasselqvist whimpered.

“Hang on,” HP said. “The cops always switch their sirens off when they get close to their target . . .

“So they don’t scare the bad guys away . . .” he added when no one seemed to get what he meant.

“So as long as the sirens are still on, they haven’t got to where they’re going. Get it?”

The sirens were close now, at least three of them, maybe more.

Nora glanced at HP.

Hasselqvist moved his hand to the ignition key.

HP put his hand on his shoulder.

“Just relax, Kent. It’s the fire brigade, I swear,” he said quietly.

The sirens were so close that the sound echoed around the little tin shed, making the old boy look up from his insect-smeared windshield. Then they slowly diminished in strength. Thirty seconds later they vanished altogether.

“You can get moving now, Kent,” HP said, patting Hasselqvist on the shoulder. “Head north . . .”

He leaned back in his seat and tried to gather his thoughts.

“By the way, there’s something we’ve forgotten . . .” he said as they pulled out onto the main road.

“Did anyone see how Mange got out?”

THE NEW VAN
smelled of Car-Freshner. Jasmine. Or possibly just new-car smell . . .

It had taken him ten minutes or so to steal it from a multistory parking lot, which meant he was losing his touch. As an extra precaution he had nicked a couple of license plates from another car, in case the van’s owner was quick to report it stolen.

They had spent about an hour in a run-down industrial estate, getting changed and sorting out the new van. White overalls and full-face protective masks that he pulled out of the sports bag, along with a couple of large stickers for the van. Two identical backpacks made of rigid plastic, fastened in four different places across the chest, making them look like something from a science fiction movie. One for him and one for Jeff. And everything courtesy of the Fenster’s little emporium.

The forest track they were now parked in lay almost opposite the road leading to the Fortress. The lamps surrounding the steel gate were just visible a few hundred meters away through the dark forest.

Everything was ready.

Time to get moving . . .

“Okay, let’s get going. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s going to work.”

Three nods in response, two confident, from Nora and her brother, and one more hesitant from Hasselqvist.

“And you’ve got everything ready? Name badges in place?”

More nods.

“How’s your head, Nora?”

“Okay, the skin adhesive seems to be working.”

“Good!”

HP took a deep breath.

“Okay, off we go then . . .”

Hasselqvist seemed to hesitate for a moment, then started the engine and put the van in gear.

“Shame about Mange,” Nora said once they’d started to move. “He seemed like a good guy.”

“Yeah,” HP muttered.

“Are you sure there’s no way he could have got out?” Hasselqvist said.

“No chance. When everything went up he was still shut in behind us . . .” Nora said.

HP swallowed to clear the lump in his throat.

“Besides, we must have called his cell at least twenty times, and he hasn’t answered.”

♦  ♦  ♦

They turned onto the newly surfaced tarmac road and drove up toward the gate, a massive thing fixed to solid concrete pillars on either side. As if that wasn’t enough, there was a sawtooth metal bar set into the tarmac, stretching right across the roadway. On top of the pillars were double rows of floodlights,
and, just below them, aluminum camera boxes. Trying to force the gates with anything less than a tank would be utterly futile.

There was a large yellow warning sign on the end of the concrete bunker that was evidently the gatehouse. The sign was partially obscured by black plastic, but the wind had shredded it enough for the text to be clearly visible.

STOP
High Security Area
No admittance without permission
No photography, recording, or surveillance
without permission

Hasselqvist stopped the van at the clearly marked line, just a couple of meters from the sawtooth metal bar.

HP opened the door, jumped out, and went over to the glass hatch in the gatehouse.

A sour-faced woman in uniform glared at him through what looked like a double layer of bulletproof glass. He carefully adjusted his fake glasses, then gave her his friendliest smile.

“Yes, how can I help you?”

Her voice was surprisingly melodic, almost disconcertingly so. Hell, she ought to be on the radio, not sitting out here in the middle of nowhere.

“Er . . . E-Erik, Erik Andersson . . .” he began.

Fuck,
the smooth radio voice had almost made him forget his assumed name.

“From Andersson Sanitation,” he added quickly. “Apparently you’ve got trouble with a couple of blocked filters. They said it was urgent . . .”

“Are they expecting you?”

“I certainly hope so . . .” He nodded, throwing in what was supposed to look like an innocent smile, and trying not to glance at the camera fixed to the window just to the left of her.

“One moment.”

He watched as she turned to her left and began typing on a keyboard.

“Have you got some ID, Erik?”

He nodded again, removed his fake ID from its plastic holder on the breast pocket of his overalls, and put it in the metal drawer that slid out below the window.

The drawer slid back in with a whirr.

He could hear the faint sound of typing over the speaker.

He looked back quickly over his shoulder.

The van looked fine, almost better than he’d expected it to.

The stickers with the words
Andersson Sanitation
could have been a bit straighter, but what the hell . . .

They hadn’t had any time to waste on details, and besides, it was hardly noticeable when the sliding door was open.

Jeff was visible in the doorway, with Nora just behind him.

More typing.

Come on, for fuck’s sake, Rain Man. Show us your magic!

“Would you mind looking into the camera, Erik?”

“Of course.”

He adjusted his glasses and tried to look relaxed. To judge by the reflection in the window, he more or less succeeded . . .

What if they had one of those face-recognition programs?

Shit, he hadn’t even thought of that until now!

Fake glasses might stop you from looking like the guy in the newspapers, but no way would they fool a piece of software . . .

He glanced over his shoulder again, then looked into the camera. A bead of sweat formed on the back of his neck and
trickled down between his shoulder blades. Then another one. And in just a few moments their cousins would begin to appear on his forehead . . .

The guard reappeared.

“Right, Erik . . .”

He smiled again, a nervous, loose-boweled smile. He didn’t need to check his reflection to know that.

“Here are your cards. The email said five people in total. The lads in Operations will be responsible for letting you in and out, and I don’t want to hear about you blocking any of the doors to keep them open, is that understood?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded.

“Good. Okay, carry on down the slope and follow the signs for the Operations Division. You’ll have to turn right, but you’ll see the sign. Don’t forget to hand your cards back when you leave . . .”

“Okay, thanks!”

The drawer opened and he pulled out his ID and the five cards marked
Visitor
before turning and heading back toward the van.

A loud click startled him, but it was only the sawtooth bar being lowered.

As he got into the van the gate began to swing open.

Hasselqvist put the van in gear and they rolled slowly through the gate and down the hill. The road was cut deep into the rock and soon they could no longer see the edge of the forest.

“Shit, it actually worked . . .” Hasselqvist sounded slightly happier.

“Yep, Kent, my mate Rain . . . I mean, Rehyman, is a bastard when it comes to security. It only took him ten minutes to spot the weaknesses in their system. Ordinary, unencrypted
email between the Fortress and the gatehouse. All Rehyman had to do was find out the addresses, then set up a cloned account that looked like it came from the Fortress . . .”

“Then, hey, presto, it looked like we were expected, yeah, we got that bit when you told us. But we’re not home and dry yet. The hardest part’s still to come . . .”

HP opened his mouth to say something cutting but changed his mind at the last moment. He was still holding Mange’s superfluous visitor’s badge in his hand. He stared at it for a few seconds, then slowly slipped it into one of his breast pockets.

“There’s the sign.”

Nora pointed to the right.

“Shit, what a place . . .”

They reached the end of the cutting and emerged into a large gravel yard. Right in front of them was a two-story building and something that looked like a garage. Behind and above the buildings, the rock face rose up vertically at least thirty meters.

“There’s only one way out of here . . .” Hasselqvist muttered, glancing in the rearview mirror.