Trophy

by Steffen Jacobsen

  They loaded the carbines and one of them – whom Lene recognized as Kenneth Enderlein – went back to the Humvee. He opened the door and flashed a broad, white grin at the camera before pushing his way past the cameraman. You could see his legs and boots. A bolt was pulled back and released with a bang.

  ‘He’s standing in the gun turret,’ Michael informed her. ‘And he has just loaded his machine gun.’

  The white dot grew larger and turned into a Toyota pick-up that seemed to sail across the road in the shimmering, metallic heat.

  None of the soldiers spoke to each other. Everything seemed practised, unhurried and routine. The man with the scorpion on his neck raised his hand and waved to the pick-up, which was approaching at high speed. His muscles rippled under the tattoo when he called out something incomprehensible by way of greeting. An arm came out of the Toyota’s side window and waved back. The arm stayed outside and a brown hand tapped the warm, white car door in time to the music from the car radio. The car skidded to a halt on squealing, worn tyres. The white column of dust travelled on, overtook the car and dispersed.

  ‘They’re nervous, but don’t want to show it,’ Michael said, pointing to the two people in the pick-up.

  ‘They have my sympathy,’ Lene said in a hollow voice. There was something ominous and inevitable about the soldier’s movements. They were natural born killers, she thought, and no longer of this world.

  Allan Lundkvist also greeted the new arrivals and in the same movement pulled his red chequered scarf over his mouth and nose and tightened it. His sunglasses were silver and reflected the surroundings. He looked at his partner for a moment and then he nodded.

  They walked up to the pick-up, which had no registration plates or other identifying features. The two middle-aged men in the Toyota were dressed in traditional, loose-fitting and baggy Afghan clothes. They got out with the engine running and the atonal music continued to blare out from inside the car. White turbans, black waistcoats, Kalashnikovs strapped across their shoulders, broad smiles. The smaller but sturdier of them wore black sunglasses. The men embraced each other. The four of them appeared to communicate without difficulty in a mixture of English, Farsi and gestures. The taller of the two Afghans had a short, black beard, a sharp, birdlike face and narrow, dark eyes. He looked at the Humvee, spotted the camera and the man holding it inside the vehicle and started gesticulating while a stream of angry words poured from his mouth which had only three teeth. He covered the lower half of his face with one end of his turban. Allan Lundkvist placated him with smiles and gestures. The smaller of the two Afghans didn’t seem to mind being filmed. He waved to the camera and took out his own mobile to photograph the Humvee. The two Danish private first class soldiers watched him. Their smiles had frozen.

  ‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ Michael said.

  ‘Taken the picture?’

  ‘He’s mad. What an amateur.’

  ‘What are they doing?’ Lene whispered, and wondered why she was whispering, but somehow it seemed appropriate.

  ‘Raw opium. Afghanistan is the world’s biggest exporter. How do you think it gets out of the country? They fly it out with damaged equipment, with the wounded or in sealed coffins with dead soldiers.’

  Michael was whispering as well.

  ‘Are those goats at the back of the truck?’ she asked.

  They could hear a faint, tremulous braying from the densely packed, long-haired animals behind the barred sides of the pick-up.

  ‘Camouflage.’

  The Afghan with the bird-of-prey face pointed to the back of the pick-up and his stocky companion leaped with remarkable agility over the side, forced his way through the noisy, skinny and filthy goats and started passing down small brown bags. Allan Lundkvist and the man they knew as Thomas Berg took the hessian sacks and stacked them in a pyramid on the ground. The man on the pick-up lifted up an animal by its horns and threw it to the back to make room.

  ‘Poor creature,’ Lene muttered.

  ‘Twenty-four sacks,’ Michael said.

  The short, stocky Afghan jumped down from the pick-up, and his Kalashnikov swung round in its shoulder strap and hit him in the face. For the first time his companion let his guard down. He threw back his head, laughed out loud and slapped his thighs.

  The two Danes didn’t move a muscle.

  Lene held her breath. She expected that blood would be spilled at any moment, but the clumsy opium smuggler merely rubbed his bearded cheek and joined in the laughter. She remembered reading that the ordinary Afghan was the most hospitable, humorous and lovable person you could hope to meet. Hospitality was a sacred duty and whoever showed a stranger the door or turned his back on him was the lowest creature on Earth.

  Michael put his hand on her forearm.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ he muttered. ‘Who the hell is that?’

  A fifth soldier had appeared on the scene. He was carrying two aluminium boxes that looked heavy. He put down the boxes in front of the group and greeted the smugglers, who appeared to know him since a round of fresh handshakes and brief embraces followed, and they showed no surprise at seeing him. The new arrival positioned himself next to Allan Lundkvist while Thomas Berg, as usual, stood slightly apart from the others.

  The man turned around. Long hair, desert hat, long beard, the usual sunglasses, but his naked upper body was covered with easily recognizable tattoos. The camera swept across the tableau and zoomed in on the opium sacks.

  ‘Kim Andersen,’ Lene said.

  ‘Yes. So who the hell is inside the Humvee operating the camera?’

  ‘No idea. The fifth man, it would seem,’ she said.

  ‘The sixth.’

  ‘Yes. Thomas Berg, Kenneth Enderlein, Kim Andersen, Allan Lundkvist, Robert Olsen and …? How many were there in Norway?’

  ‘Seven, including the client. If we presume that Flemming Caspersen was the client at Porsanger Fjord, I’m missing a sixth man. We’re one short.’

  ‘Jakob Schmidt?’

  ‘Good question,’ Michael said, and pointed at the screen. ‘By the way, I think they’re nearly done, poor fools.’

  Kim Andersen unlocked the boxes and flipped open the lids. The two Afghans looked inside and grinned to each other. Again they shook hands with the private first class who closed the lids and helped them carry the boxes to the pick-up. He passed them up to the stocky smuggler who had jumped up on the back of the pick-up again.

  ‘What’s in the boxes?’ Lene wanted to know.

  ‘Some kind of military hardware. Plastic explosives, hand grenades, rocket equipment, night vision goggles … stuff like that. Stingers.’

  ‘And it’ll end up with the Taliban?’

  ‘I can’t think of any other buyers, can you?’

  She looked Michael in disbelief.

  ‘So they sell weapons and get paid in opium? Weapons that will end up being used against themselves or other Danes? Or their allies?’

  He let out a weary sigh.

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to get that far, Lene. Either they’ll get mowed down in ten seconds or the Danes have agreed with the CIA or MI6 to hide an electronic tracker in the boxes which can lead Special Forces up through the food chain. Or they’ll detonate the explosives in the boxes remotely when they have got away. My money is on the latter.’

  ‘My money’s on the first,’ Lene said, looking at the screen. ‘Look at Thomas. And how the hell do you know that?’

  ‘Military Police. I was a captain. I’m not a complete amateur, Lene.’

  The tall, sturdy soldier scanned the sky through his binoculars as the white pick-up started driving back to the road. Once again the passenger’s brown hand beat the side of the car rhythmically and the music from the car radio mingled with the braying of the goats. Thomas Berg turned to the armoured vehicle and ran the edge of his hand across his throat.

  Michael gulped.

  Twenty metres. Thirty. Dust started rising from the wheels of the Toyota, the hand
in the white sleeve waved goodbye and they could hear an electric hum close to the camera’s microphone.

  ‘The machine gun,’ Michael said, and Lene jumped when the salvo exploded from the laptop’s speakers. They saw the individual bullets hit the white road. They caught up with the back of the pick-up, went through the animals and reached the driver’s cabin. The shells ate the car. The frame wobbled and shook in time to the long machine-gun salvo. The Toyota keeled over; for a moment its rear end seemed to hover above the road, before the car skidded diagonally down the high verge and slowly, tragically slowly, turned onto its side.

  ‘Jesus,’ Michael said while Lene instinctively covered her ears with her hands. Her bad ear was ringing. The film was shocking, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

  The man with the scorpion tattoo walked through the dust cloud, jumped across the ditch and approached the upturned car. A couple of metres behind him, Kim Andersen appeared with his service gun at the ready. They instinctively avoided each other’s firing lines.

  By some miracle the car radio was still working somewhere inside the wreckage. A few fortunate goats scarpered noisily across the bare fields; others lay still next to the Toyota or had been crushed under it. One animal with a broken front leg hobbled towards the soldiers. Small flames from the engine started to lick the car. Kim Andersen aimed his gun and shot the goat through its head. He said something to his colleague, who laughed.

  There was movement on the driver’s side of the car and the lean opium smuggler elbowed his way up through the side window with considerable effort. He cut his hands on the window frame and they started bleeding. His turban was gone and his long, blood-stained hair had come loose and was falling across his face. He said nothing, but fought gravity with silent, grim determination. He had managed to free his upper body and twist, so that he could pull himself out by holding on to the undercarriage, when Thomas Berg reached him. The Afghan turned his face towards the Dane and hung without moving, half in and half out of the car. No expression.

  Thomas Berg stopped a few paces from the smuggler, took out his pistol from his hip holster, flicked aside the safety catch and assumed the classic shooting position with legs astride and his arm fully outstretched. He sent a bullet through the smuggler’s head at close range. The man’s head was flung backwards; his body straightened out like a rubber band before flopping down, while the glass in the window frame held it in place. The Dane looked inside the car and fired two shots in quick succession – probably at the trapped passenger, the fat, cheerful one.

  Kim Andersen recovered the two aluminium boxes some distance from the crashed Toyota, tucked one under each arm and walked back to the Humvee and the camera.

  ‘You were right,’ Michael said.

  Lene shook her head: ‘I don’t understand how that can happen. That they’re prepared to run the risk. I thought the sky was packed with drones, planes and satellites scanning every corner?’

  ‘It’s a bloody big country,’ Michael said slowly. ‘Firstly, the soldiers probably know the flight plan and positions of the drones and the satellites, secondly … well, secondly, it’s a bloody big country. If it really was possible to watch every inch of it from the sky, the Taliban wouldn’t be able to plant a single roadside bomb.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ she asked.

  ‘Covering his tracks. With a shock grenade.’

  Thomas Berg had unscrewed the cap on the Toyota’s listing petrol tank, which was gulping its contents down on the ground. He walked away from the wreckage and tossed something that looked like a white beer can in a lazy arc towards the boot of the car. Then he covered his ears and closed his eyes.

  They heard a sharp bang followed by a blinding white light and the Toyota was engulfed in flames.

  The film ended and Lene wanted to throw up.

  ‘He’s unbelievably inhuman and callous,’ she mumbled. ‘I thought I’d met my fair share of psychos, but that one … Thomas.’

  ‘He’s bordering on unique,’ Michael conceded.

  ‘Have you ever met anyone like him?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do to them?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Either I worked for them or I fought them. One or the other.’

  ‘I feel sick,’ she said.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He went over to the kitchen sink and opened a couple of wall cupboards before he found a water glass. Lost in thought, he held his finger under the tap, waiting for it to get very cold. Lene studied his profile. He was gazing out of the window when he suddenly straightened up. His eyes narrowed and he leaned forwards. Something luminous and white like a shooting star flew past the window and crashed into the outside wall.

  Michael spun around and opened his mouth, but Lene never heard his warning. He placed a hand on the kitchen table and scaled its entire width. Lene had never seen anyone move so quickly and with such coordination. He hit her mid-chest as she was about to get up and they fell to the floor, tangled up in each other. Michael’s face was a few centimetres from hers. He looked down at her, opened his mouth and shouted something about the gas canisters outside, a fraction of a second before everything exploded, the kitchen became a bell jar of fire, and a big, hot hand flung them against the wall.

  They flew through the room, along with the furniture, and she couldn’t breathe, didn’t know which way was up or down, if she was dead or alive. She must be dead, she thought and was grateful because everything had turned bright and warm and then all of a sudden it grew black, everything hurt, and the air she inhaled into her lungs was scorching – so blistering that she must still be alive, but even so she longed for the beautiful light.

  Chapter 45

  Michael was blinded and it terrified him. He dug his fingers into his eye sockets and sobbed with relief when he was able to scrape away a sticky mess and see again. He looked at his hands, but couldn’t work out what had covered his eyes. Dust, mortar or blood? Or perhaps a mixture of all three. Lene was soft, hard and warm underneath him.

  He got up on his hands and turned his face in the direction of the garden. The wall was gone. The trees outside were lit up by the flames that were consuming the cottage and he could see stars above the trees. Determined armed figures walked slowly across the lawn, blurred shadows at first, until they turned into two men wearing sophisticated camouflage clothing and ski masks. They carried military carbines in their hands.

  He heard a dry crack from the beams as they gave way above him, and the sky, the trees and the killers were erased by a cloud of embers when the lean-to collapsed in front of the wall that had been blown away. The heat was indescribable and he could feel his eyebrows and eyelashes burning. Lene looked at him with wide-open eyes. Her mouth was also open and he realized that she was talking to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. He got up on his knees and then onto his feet, pulled her upright, put his arm around her and spotted the doorway to the living room in front of them.

  ‘Out!’ he shouted.

  She lashed out at him and he nearly punched her until he realized that she was trying to extinguish the embers on his shoulders and his head. They stumbled through the doorway into the cooler living room, where Lene bent double and coughed and spluttered while Michael got the first mouthful of air into his lungs after what felt like forever. He looked back over his shoulder. The kitchen was an inferno. The glowing mass that was the thatched roof had cascaded into the gap left by the missing wall and was obscuring his view of the killers.

  He grabbed hold of her hand and they staggered through the living room towards the sanctuary of the porch, where the windows overlooking the garden had been blown in. With a strange sense of detachment Michael noted a perforated stripe being drawn across the white wall. Fountains of plaster and brickwork erupted at waist level and came towards them at speed. Glittering shards of glass flew through the room.

  ‘Get dow
n!’ he shouted, and kicked her feet away from under her.

  With deep sighs the bullets passed right above their heads. He covered her with his body and pressed her face against the floor. They were trapped between the fire and the killers’ automatic weapons. Every thought of escaping through the hallway, the children’s bedroom or the bathroom was dead in the water. Lene turned over underneath him. Her face was powdered with tiny glass fragments which he carefully brushed them away from around her eyes with his fingertips. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. The flames changed her irises from green to twinkling gold.

  ‘What do we do?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They threw a stun grenade or a hand grenade at the gas canisters,’ he said. ‘Now they’re waiting for us outside.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ she asked calmly. She tried to get up, but he kept her pinned to the floor.

  Michael ducked as a new salvo was fired from the meadow to the right of the house. The old half-timbered cottage and the wall offered little resistance against the bullets, which tore another dotted line across the living-room wall.

  ‘Back to the kitchen,’ he said and started moving backwards and away from her on his stomach.

  ‘What?! Are you out of your mind!?’

  He crawled back to her and put his mouth right up to her ear.

  ‘If we stay here, we’ll die! The basement. Now!’

  He grabbed her by her jacket collar and dragged her along. The kitchen was a wall of fire and sparks flying in the draught created by the hole in the wall and the broken windows in the living room. The smoke was a thick carpet above their heads and sent tears streaming down their faces. Michael coughed in spasms and couldn’t stop, and yet he continued to make his way to the doorway. Finally, his obstinate companion started working with him rather than against him. He got up on his hands and knees and pulled her level with him.