Snowdrift

by Helene Tursten

  He’d also been trained in other aspects of police work. As they approached the boxes, his head went up. Whimpering with excitement, he ran over to a stack at the far end, then froze.

  Olle looked at his dog.

  “We can ignore those—they contain drugs,” he said.

  The text on the boxes was written in the Cyrillic alphabet; the only thing they could understand was the logo, Motor Company Ltd. There were fifteen boxes total—twelve if you ignored the ones Tore found most interesting—and they were heavy. Embla hoped at least some of them contained guns, so they wouldn’t have to use the Beretta.

  They tackled the first box. Beneath a layer of wood shavings lay a selection of machine parts, then more shavings. They tipped the lot onto the floor to reach the bottom layer, which was covered with a piece of Styrofoam. Olle cautiously lifted it up.

  “Fuck!” he said. The bottom of the box was packed with hand grenades, each sitting in its own compartment in a thicker piece of Styrofoam.

  “We can use those. How are your throwing skills?”

  At first Olle looked like a giant question mark, then his face brightened.

  “I was pretty good in school, and I did my military service with the infantry. Hand grenades are not a problem.”

  “Grab a few and keep an eye on the house in case the guy with the rifle decides to come over here.”

  “Okay.”

  He took three, slipped two in his pockets and kept one in his hand as he moved over to the window by the door, which gave him a good view of the cottage.

  Embla started on the next box. Wood shavings, machine parts, more hand grenades. Next box.

  Suddenly Olle said: “The door’s opening! A guy with a pistol . . .”

  A second later the window shattered. Embla and Tore were a safe distance away, but if Olle hadn’t been quick enough, he could have been injured by flying glass. Or he could have been shot. Fortunately he’d managed to press himself against the wall and was unhurt. They needed backup, but with no cell phone coverage, they had no way of contacting anyone. Embla’s heart began to pound, but she forced herself to sound calm and composed.

  “Throw.”

  Without a word Olle removed the pin, counted to three, then tossed the grenade through the empty window frame.

  The explosion was deafening and even made Tore whimper. Snow, gravel, and splinters of wood whirled around and hit the walls of the shed with terrifying force. When everything had settled, Olle ventured a quick glance outside.

  The Mercedes was no longer white, but was covered in a layer of dirt. There wasn’t a sound from inside; presumably the occupant had received a genuine shock, which filled Olle with great satisfaction. However, the sight of the cottage brought him down to earth with a bump.

  “Jesus . . . I scored a direct hit on the porch. It’s been blown to pieces—and I think the guy with the pistol’s gone with it.”

  Embla couldn’t hide her relief.

  “Good! Keep watching the house in case there’s anyone else in there.”

  If they were lucky, it was the sniper from upstairs who’d been blown to pieces along with the porch, but they couldn’t count on that. With renewed energy she tackled box number three. Wood shavings, machine parts . . . Yes! Two small assault rifles. She picked one up and weighed it in her hand; it was pretty light, somewhere between three and a half and four kilos. It was far from new, and former users had carved centimeter-long marks on the stock. She counted fourteen—was that the number of people who’d been killed with this gun? Possibly. Both rifles seemed to be well-oiled and in good condition. She took a closer look and decided the model was probably of Serbian origin, a Kalashnikov 7.62mm, generally known as an AK-47.

  She scrabbled around in the wood shavings, but there was no ammunition in the box. She moved on to the next box and was disappointed to find that it contained two guns of the same type but no ammunition. She would just have to keep looking.

  She was still a little hard of hearing after the explosion, so it took her a moment to realize that Olle was calling quietly to her. She stopped what she was doing and turned to face him.

  “What?”

  “There’s a car.”

  She listened carefully, and picked up the sound of a powerful engine.

  “Could be the Range Rover we met on the way,” Olle said. He’d moved over to the window on the gable end, which gave him a clear view of the road. It meant he could no longer watch the house, but then they’d already caused considerable damage there. If anyone else was inside, they would probably lie low for a while.

  If the two men in the Range Rover were on their way back, they would no doubt be armed. Olle and Embla were also armed, of course—they had plenty of hand grenades and a growing pile of guns. Resolutely, Embla continued her search for ammunition, sweat pouring down her back as she struggled with the heavy machine parts.

  She lifted the bottom layer of wood shavings and let out a whoop.

  “Yesss! We have ammunition!”

  With a triumphant smile she picked up two full magazines and a box of bullets, but her smile faded when she saw Olle’s grim expression.

  “Load the guns!”

  Only now did she realize that the sound of the engine had stopped. The new arrivals had parked around the bend, behind Olle’s car. They were intending to approach on foot. She pulled off her gloves and slammed a magazine into one rifle, then another. Before joining Olle she slipped a hand grenade into each pocket, plus two spare magazines. Each contained thirty bullets; that should be enough. She crouched down and ran across the room, making sure she couldn’t be seen from outside.

  Olle was busy securing Tore’s leash to one of the pillars well away from the windows; his hands were far from steady.

  “I don’t want him running around if there’s shooting,” he said.

  “Good thinking. He could get hit by mistake if we don’t know where he is.”

  She handed him a rifle and one of the spare magazines. Olle looked unsure of himself but crept back to the window.

  “Two men are heading this way. With pistols.”

  “Are they the ones we saw in the Range Rover?” Embla’s mouth was dry, and her voice came out rough.

  “I think so.”

  “Distance?”

  “Twenty to thirty meters.”

  She made a quick decision.

  “We can’t let them split up. Throw!”

  Olle propped the rifle against the wall and took a grenade out of his pocket. Keeping well out of the way, he lifted the hasp, opened the window, removed the pin, counted to three, and hurled the grenade.

  They both covered their ears and pressed themselves back against the wall. Even though they were prepared this time, the explosion was equally terrifying. The ground shook as snow, stones, and gravel slammed against the wall; shattered the window; and rained in. Tore raised his head and began to howl; the noise must have hurt his sensitive ears.

  After a while—it could have been seconds or minutes—they dared to move. Tore alternated between barking and howling; he’d obviously had enough.

  Cautiously they peered out through the space where the window had been. In the middle of the dirt road a man lay motionless on his back, with one leg sticking out at an odd angle. There was a rapidly growing pool of blood around his head, and a pistol a couple of meters away from him. He looked like the guy who’d been driving the Range Rover.

  There was no sign of his companion.

  “He’s thrown himself over the bank of snow,” Olle said grimly.

  “Exactly. Can you make Tore shut up?”

  Without questioning her order, he crawled over to the dog. Apart from the odd faint whimper, Tore fell silent as soon as he heard his master’s reassuring voice.

  Embla’s ears were still ringing, but fortunately it wasn’t as bad as it had
been after the first explosion; she had to listen hard now. She pressed one ear to the wall, and after a little while she was able to pick up faint sounds from outside, the crunch of approaching footsteps.

  The plan would work if she fired first. She had the advantage; she was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, while her opponent had a pistol. She assumed he was trying to reach the window. If he was smart he would try to hit the boxes containing the grenades, but she suspected that he would attempt to kill both her and Olle first. The desire for revenge tends to stop people from thinking logically.

  She stepped back and edged over to the corner of the building closest to the pile of snow. She needed every scrap of concentration now. She dropped to her knees, adopted the firing position, and aimed at a point a short distance away from the corner, about a meter above floor level.

  She heard a loud crunching noise as the man got closer. It’s impossible to move silently across hard-packed snow.

  Stillness descended; he was clearly listening, trying to work out where they were. Embla counted to two, then she fired. Thirty bullets went straight through the wall. The velocity of a semiautomatic rifle is usually just above seven hundred meters per second, and a wooden wall is no hindrance. With lightning speed, she changed the magazine and fired again, aiming slightly lower this time.

  If he made a sound when he was hit, she didn’t hear it, but as the echoing shots died away, he began to bellow.

  Before Embla could stop him, Olle rushed over to the window and stuck his head out.

  “No!” she yelled.

  At that moment, a shot was fired.

  Sometimes people have a guardian angel watching over them; Olle certainly did on this occasion. As he looked out he placed both hands on the window frame, the left at the bottom and the right on a level with his face. The bullet whizzed past his nose and straight through his right hand, embedding itself in the wood.

  Now Embla heard two men screaming with pain. The only consolation was that the man who’d emerged from the house and the driver of the Range Rover were quiet. Dead quiet.

  She quickly dragged Olle away from the window and pulled off her scarf. The wound was bleeding profusely, but it would soon ease and hopefully stop. He needed to go to the hospital to have it cleaned and sutured.

  “Keep your hand up.”

  He grimaced as she wrapped the scarf tightly around it. Tore understood that something had happened to his master and started barking again. Without much expectation of success, Embla turned to him and said: “Tore! Quiet!”

  To her surprise he fell silent, but remained on full alert with his eyes fixed on her.

  “He knows who the boss is,” Olle said.

  She didn’t know how he could joke in a situation like this, but he’d made her smile. She composed herself and turned back to him. “Just keep Tore quiet.”

  She went back to the window, took out her phone and clicked on the camera icon, then held it so that she could see where the man was.

  He was on his back in the snow, less than a meter from the shed. He was bleeding heavily from both legs and possibly from an injury to his midriff. His right forearm was also covered in blood and lay limply by his side, but he was holding the pistol in a firm grip in his left hand. His injuries looked severe enough that he wouldn’t be able to move from his spot.

  She checked for a signal again; nothing. She sat down beside Olle and whispered: “The guy who shot you has a pistol in his left hand. He’s probably right-handed, but we don’t know for sure. He’s still conscious, which means he’s a danger. The guy from the Mercedes isn’t going anywhere, but we don’t know who else is in the cottage. Any ideas?”

  Olle looked her in the eye. “We shoot the bastard holding the gun. One less to worry about.”

  There it was again, the desire for revenge. It was only human, of course.

  “No. We need as many of them alive for questioning as possible.”

  “Good luck with that. Exactly how are you planning to get us out of here?”

  She forced herself to sound positive. “Let’s not give up. We’ve done pretty well so far—we can do this.”

  Three shots were fired in quick succession, making them both jump.

  “Shit! He’s shooting through the fucking wall!” Olle exclaimed.

  The pistol’s velocity was significantly weaker, but it was still dangerous. The bullets hadn’t landed anywhere near Olle or Embla, fortunately.

  Embla looked around and her gaze fell on the snow-blower. She went to check it out and discovered that it was a Husqvarna and looked brand-new. Uncle Nisse had a similar one, although his was a much older model. This machine was bigger and had several refinements, but its basic function was the same. She pushed it over to where Olle and Tore were sitting and parked it in front of them.

  “Okay, so this will shield you. I’ll bring some boxes over, too.”

  Quickly she gathered up the machine parts that were strewn across the floor and threw them back into the boxes that had contained the guns, then stacked the boxes next to the snow blower. She positioned the boxes of hand grenades so that they couldn’t be hit by a random bullet fired through the windows or the wooden wall. On the other side of the snow blower she placed the boxes that contained drugs, according to Tore. When she’d finished she’d constructed a protective barrier that was better than nothing.

  “I think our police-dog-in-training is right. There might be machine parts in these boxes, but they’re a lot lighter than the ones containing weapons,” she said.

  The next task was to find out if there was anyone left in the house. Sticking her head out the window wasn’t an option. If someone was at the bathroom window, they would fire as soon as they saw any sign of movement.

  The tools and work clothes hanging on the wall caught her attention.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  Before she explained, she again used her phone to check on the man who was bleeding. The snow around him was sodden with blood; he needed medical attention very soon if he was going to survive. The main thing was that he couldn’t move or shoot.

  She took down a rake, then searched through the clothes until she found a pair of overalls. With some difficulty she managed to dress the rake in the overalls, pushing the shaft down one leg. “Give me your hat,” she said quietly to Olle.

  With a sigh he took it off and threw it across the floor. There was no point in asking why.

  She noticed his resigned expression and tried to jolly him along.

  “Showtime,” she whispered.

  He merely raised an eyebrow.

  With the rake in one hand and the hat in the other, Embla made her way over to the window. She managed to balance the hat on the tines of the rake, sticking up above the collar. Carefully she turned her creation so that its back was facing the window, then took a firm hold of the shaft and allowed the puppet to appear briefly.

  Twang! A direct hit on the tines. She let go of the shaft and the rake fell to the floor. If it had been a real person, the bullet would have hit the back of the neck.

  A sharpshooter.

  The ricochet sent the bullet flying sideways. It slammed into the pillar Tore was tied to—at least a meter above the heads of both the dog and his master, but it wasn’t good.

  “Okay, so now we know,” she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt.

  Their eyes met and Olle nodded. Now they knew. Whoever was inside the house was a crack shot. Fuck. They both realized what that meant. This gang had made it clear from the start that they were ready to kill anyone who got in their way. Somehow Embla and Olle had to put the shooter at the window out of commission, but how?

  She looked around but didn’t find any inspiration. She pushed one hand into her pocket to warm it up; she didn’t dare put on her gloves in case she had to start shooting again. Her fingers touched the grenade; she’
d forgotten it was there.

  Suddenly she had a strategy.

  “Cover your ears,” she whispered to Olle. Once again he didn’t ask questions, but simply did as he was told.

  With the grenade in her right hand, she went to the window overlooking the dirt road. She quickly confirmed with her phone that the man lying on his back hadn’t moved. The pistol had fallen from his grasp and was lying next to his limp hand. Was he dead? Possibly.

  She removed the pin and flung the grenade as far toward the side of the road as she could. In a second she was at the other window, facing the house. As the explosion shook the ground, she picked up the semiautomatic rifle, aimed at the bathroom window, and fired off a round of thirty shots.

  An unnatural stillness followed, except inside her head, where there was a cacophony of ringing noises. War without earplugs is horrific, as poor Tore loudly informed everyone. In spite of Olle’s attempts to calm him, he wouldn’t stop howling and barking. The brave dog had had enough of shooting and explosions. A glance at his master told Embla that he’d had enough, too.

  She hoped it was over now. The question was whether she’d managed to hit the sniper; if not, they still had a major problem. There was also a risk that he wasn’t the only one in the house.

  She crawled across the floor and picked up the rake. Olle’s hat was in tatters; her puppet would have to manage without it. As before, she allowed it to appear briefly at the window. There was no answering shot this time. That didn’t necessarily mean the gunman was gone; he might have realized it was a trick and was simply sitting there, biding his time.

  She padded back to Olle and Tore. The dog had stopped barking and was whimpering quietly as his master stroked him and attempted to reassure him. She could see that Olle was even paler now, and his hand was obviously causing him pain. He needed medical attention as soon as possible.

  She pointed to the window overlooking the road.

  “I’m going to climb out and go around the back of the shed; the sniper won’t be able to see me. The critical point will be when I cross the yard. Do you think you can throw one more grenade?”