The sound of empty magazines hitting the floor, followed by a short metallic rattle as the gunmen quickly replaced them with new ones.
The targets turned forward again.
Single shots this time, then all the weapons clicked more or less simultaneously. But none of the six bodyguards seemed at all surprised. Rapid bolt actions slid the green blanks that Rebecca had slipped into their magazines onto the ground.
Then more shots, until the clock ticked and turned the targets away again.
‘Cease fire and unload!’ Rebecca ordered as she removed her ear defenders.
The expensive ventilation system was doing its job, she noted. Even though sixty shots had been fired in the past minute down in the firing range, the smell of gunpowder was scarcely noticeable.
She pressed a button on the remote and the targets turned forward. Six figures made of brown card, the size and shape of real people.
But instead of a drawing of a threatening gunman, these targets merely had a round circle the size of a saucer drawn on the front. In the middle of the chest – heart, lungs, spine.
One shot in that circle on an unprotected body would in all likelihood be fatal. Two would guarantee it.
She didn’t need to go up to the targets to check the results.
None of her team needed to retake the test.
All ten shots were within the circles, direct hits in the death zone, and not even the interruption to their firing towards the end had made them lose their focus.
‘Nice shooting, all of you!’ she said curtly as she noted the results in her file.
‘Practice makes perfect, boss,’ Mrsic grinned at her. ‘Nice to know it wasn’t wasted …’
She let the comment pass. She really ought to be pleased. She had designed everything down here herself, everything from the layout of the range to the demands made of each marksman.
The whole thing had cost upwards of two million kronor, and if she hadn’t managed to secure the licence, that money would basically have been wasted. But Uncle Tage had come to her rescue again.
‘Do you want to get your own test done, Rebecca? I can look after the targets.’ Kjellgren held out his hand for the remote.
‘No thanks,’ she said, slightly too quickly. ‘It’s getting late, I’ll do it early tomorrow morning,’ she added, pretending to look at her watch.
‘But thanks anyway, Kjellgren.’ She forced herself to smile.
‘Right, then,’ she said, turning quickly towards the other five bodyguards. ‘You’ve all passed, well done!’ She ticked the file demonstratively, making sure it was angled in such a way that no-one could see her right hand shaking.
It took him a few seconds to realize where the smell was coming from.
Terrariums.
Large terrariums lined up on wooden frames along the walls, with heat lamps above them. Five lamps in total, one above each tank. Only one of them was lit, but he could feel the heat from several metres away.
In the middle of the room stood a large work-table piled high with clutter.
He aimed the torch around the room, then took a couple of tentative steps forward. The door closed silently behind him, but he hardly noticed.
He was wondering what sort of creatures were lurking behind the panes of glass …
He directed the beam of light towards the terrariums, but they all seemed to be empty.
Good!
A sudden rattling sound from off to the right made him jump and drop the torch on the floor.
Shit!
He bent down quickly to get it, and when he straightened up again found himself looking straight into the eyes of a rat that was so fucking enormous it made the hair on his arms stand up.
It was only a metre or so away, shut inside a cramped metal cage hanging over the side of one of the terrariums, and he could see the animal’s whiskers twitch as it caught his scent.
He hated rats. Vile little bacteria motels with yellow teeth and bald tails …
This one obviously wasn’t your average disgusting sewer rat, but one of those black and white ones you could only get from the pet shop.
Bollocks!
So what the hell was the rat doing in there?
And the terrariums?
He couldn’t see any sign of microphones or reel-to-reel tape-recorders. The only thing that came close to a technical gadget was something that looked like a small radio on the corner of the large work-table.
The display was on, and when curiosity got the better of him and he touched one of the buttons, he heard voices on the radio muttering to each other in a language he didn’t understand. Probably just a perfectly ordinary radio tuned into some AM frequency … He moved the beam of the torch around the room a few more times, but couldn’t see any trace of the surveillance control room he had been expecting.
Weird …
A loud plastic click followed by a faint whirring sound made him jump again, but this time he managed to hold onto the torch. He caught a glimpse of movement over by the rat cage and aimed the beam of light at it. One side of the cage was missing, and in its place was a sheet of wood that also formed one side of the terrarium. A small hatch between the cage and terrarium was slowly sliding up, presumably lifted by some sort of electric motor. He leaned down to look under the terrarium and saw a little dark box connected to a timer.
The hatch was almost completely open now, and the rat, which must be seriously pissed off with sitting in that cramped cage, was already exploring the opening to the spacious terrarium.
It hesitated for a moment, its whiskers twitching, but evidently something in there smelled good seeing as it quickly scampered inside.
HP leaned forward to see better. The heat lamp may have been on, but the terrarium still seemed to be empty. All he could see was some sort of climbing frame in one corner, a bowl of water and a thick layer of sawdust. The rat took a couple of cautious steps through the sawdust, lifted its head and sniffed at its new surroundings. Behind it the motor began to whirr again and the hatch slowly closed, but neither the rat nor HP noticed it.
The animal took a step forward, then another. A sudden twitch of its whiskers and it stopped. Its little pink nose was quivering …
The snake appeared out of nowhere. It leaped out of the sawdust like a coiled spring and bit the rat in the middle of its back with such force that both creatures slammed into the glass right in front of HP’s face.
He tumbled backwards onto the floor and the torch rolled away as his heart turned somersaults in his chest.
But instead of following his initial instinct to run away in panic, he sat there almost paralysed in front of the terrarium.
The snake was lying there quite still with its jaws clamped to the back of the struggling rat. Its dead reptilian eyes seemed to be staring right at him through the glass wall.
HP realized that he was holding his breath …
The rat’s fight was short-lived: the wriggling stopped and was replaced by a feeble twitching that soon died away. Then a couple of jerks in its legs and bald tail. And with that it was completely still.
The snake lay there for a while before it let go. Then it twisted round, slowly put its jaws over the rat’s head, and, with jerky movements, set about swallowing the rodent whole.
HP shuddered.
Seriously fucking disgusting. What kind of sick mind would come up with that business with the timer? Live food … What the hell was wrong with a tin of Whiskas?
He scrambled up from the floor, grabbed hold of the torch and looked round at the other glass cases. But they all seemed to be empty. No rat-cages on their sides, the lamps were all off and the hatches were all open. Presumably waiting for new tenants.
He went back to the work-table and after a bit of searching found the switch of an old angle-poise lamp that was attached to one side. There were various tools on the table: small screwdrivers, some unfamiliar-looking tongs, and several electronic gizmos and cables. For a moment he wondered if he had been right
after all, that all this was something to do with the surveillance of his flat, and that all the little measuring instruments and resistors were actually microphones and cameras. But when he had checked the drawings piled up on one side of the table he realized he had been wrong.
Seriously fucking wrong …
What was being constructed in there was considerably more serious than that.
Hands by her sides.
Deep breaths.
In …
Out …
Focus now, Normén!
In …
The target spun round with a bang. Her hands moved like lightning. One hand clawed to pull back her jacket, then draw, bolt action, double shot. The target turned away. She released the trigger, lowered the gun to waist-height and took a step forward.
Then another.
The target spun round again. She raised the gun, fired two rapid shots. Then lowered it, released the trigger and took out the spent cartridges.
The target carried on through its pre-programmed routine, but she didn’t bother completing the round. She already knew the result.
The two first shots had felt shaky, and the following two with the hammer uncocked and a harder recoil had probably not even hit the target, let alone the death zone in the middle of the chest.
Shit!
Good job she’d had the sense to send the others home.
Shooting had always been her thing, something she’d almost always been top of the class for. Ever since she got over her fear of guns at Police Academy, by practising with a replica until her fingers ached.
But now she wouldn’t even get a pass. Partly it was her own fault, of course. She’d designed the test herself, making it harder than the one for the Security Police.
And now she was going to fail her own test …
Ironic.
She held the gun up in front of her, both hands clasped round the handle. Right arm held out straight, the left slightly bent so that it pulled the gun back towards her body. Usually the Weaver stance meant that the gun was aimed almost perfectly still at the target. But right now the barrel was bobbing all over the place and she had to fight hard to get the sights and the target to line up for more than half a second.
More practice, she tried to convince herself.
She spent too long sitting behind her desk, a few more hours on the firing range were bound to solve the problem. But she could hear how hollow the excuse sounded. Her trembling hands had nothing to do with a lack of practice.
Nothing at all.
A bomb.
He was absolutely certain of it. He was a long way from understanding all the strange drawings and symbols on the plans, but that didn’t matter. Whoever owned that work-table, the tools and the snakes, was busy designing a bomb – a big one. For some reason he didn’t understand it was also going to be round. A perfect circle, 1106.1 millimetres in diameter, and 224.3 millimetres thick, with a black grille on the base. Judging by all the electronic gadgetry, this wasn’t going to be any ordinary bomb, if there was such a thing. No fuse or mobile phone to detonate it remotely, like the one he had set off out in Kista.
The batteries, processor and the little hard drive he thought he could see on the plans could only mean one thing. This little fucker was going to have its own AI, and would be able to make its own decisions depending on circumstances. A bomb with a brain …
There was a pattern in the corner of the plans. Orange-pink, 3D shapes with blue edges, linked together in a row.
Luttern labyrinth, someone had scrawled down one side.
So he’d almost heard right through the wall. Luttern, not gluten.
But what the fuck did it mean, and who the hell was the Carer?
Of course it could just be a codename for the bomb-maker with the snake fetish who usually hung out in there …
He couldn’t help jumping at another noise behind him, even though by now he knew what was going on. The snake must have been starving, because the rat was more than halfway down its throat now, and it was slowly rolling back and forth in order to squeeze the rest in.
Did snakes actually have throats?
Unless that was pretty much all they had?
He couldn’t help giggling out loud.
Shit, he was seriously strung out.
The snake was still staring at him with its dead eyes, and he gave it the finger before going back to the plans. The bomb fascinated him. The Carer, or whoever it was who was putting it together, was no idiot …
He leafed through the pile of papers, leaning forward to see better. His foot hit something under the table. A thick, long object, and for a moment he thought it was a large rope.
The rattling soon made him change his mind …
He leaned back cautiously and peered under the table.
The snake was large, its zigzag-patterned body had to be ten centimetres across at its thickest point. It was lying curled up right next to his sock-clad right foot. The arrow-shaped head was raised and the creature was flicking its tongue irritably as the sound from the rattle at the end of its tail got louder and louder.
The hair on the back of HP’s neck was standing to attention, his heart pounding against his ribcage, and for a moment he thought he was going to wet himself. But at the last moment he got control of his bladder.
Run, you fool!
But the bastard snake was in the way. It was between him and the door, and he had no desire whatsoever to go any further into the room.
He had assumed that the four open and unlit glass cases were empty, but there was every chance that their occupants were somewhere in the room, hiding in the darkness under the terrariums where the light didn’t reach. He began to move his right foot backwards extremely slowly. The rattling sound got even louder.
Fuck!
How poisonous was a rattlesnake, on a scale of one to ten?
Presumably poisonous enough to have had to develop its own audible fucking warning system …
Don’tcomenearmebecauseifyoudoyou’refuckingdeadssss!!!
He needed a weapon of some sort, something to hit it with. But the work-table didn’t have much to offer. Not one of the tools on there was any bigger than his own pathetic little torch. He needed something serious, like a hammer, or the crowbar he’d left next to the front door …
Oh … Fucking great!
But there was a drawer just under the tabletop.
He gently moved one hand towards it, a centimetre at a time. The rattling continued unabated as the snake stared at his filthy sock.
Good snake.
Nice and eeeasy …
His fingers reached the drawer and closed around the handle. The snake still seemed to be concentrating on his foot.
Carefully he pulled the drawer out a few centimetres.
Then a few more …
It took him several seconds before he realized what he was staring at. He’d been hoping for some sort of tool.
But this was better.
MUCH better!
He put his hand inside the drawer, closed his fingers slowly around the handle and felt the mesh pattern against his palm. He had to make a serious effort not to snatch his hand back.
Nice and eeeasy …
The snake was still rattling, but didn’t seem to have made up its mind yet. He glanced at it from the corner of his eye, and saw it move its head a bit closer. His right foot was only fifteen, twenty centimetres away from its mouth. Its tongue was flicking in and out, faster now.
HP twisted his hand carefully and then pulled it back towards him. The rattling was getting louder, and the snake had drawn its head back. Getting ready …
He shifted his weight to his left leg, and turned his body slightly. Five more seconds, just five fucking seconds, that was all he needed …
Suddenly the snake’s head shot forward.
HP yanked his foot back, yanked his hand out of the drawer and squeezed. The bang was so loud it jarred his ears and he shut his eyes instinctively, turned his head
away and screamed out loud in terror. But in spite of all that he carried on pulling the trigger of the revolver.
Once.
Twice.
Splinters and dust flew up from the floor, and an angry ricochet buzzed off somewhere to his right. Then a dry, dull sound of wood breaking, and suddenly the whole work-table collapsed. A cloud of dust and gunpowder smoke hit him in the face and he took a couple of steps back as he tried to swallow to clear the whistling sound from his ears.
His heart was speeding on adrenalin, his diaphragm pumping his lungs so hard that his ribs creaked.
Fucking hell …
Warily he peered at where the snake had been. The collapsed table was covering most of the floor, but there were signs of blood and sticky black snake entrails among the wreckage. Part of the tail had broken off and lay on its own in the middle of the floor. It was still twitching spasmodically, but the sound was no longer threatening. It sounded more like broken maracas.
YES!
Eat shit and die, snake bastard!!
EAT SHIT AND FUCKING DIE!!!
It looked like he’d scored a direct hit with the revolver, and then the collapsing table had taken care of the rest. But had Sir Hiss managed to bite him?
The next moment the pain broke through the adrenalin rush in his brain and he looked down in horror.
Two tiny red marks were clearly visible on his right sock, right in the hollow between his foot and shinbone.
The Cyprus book had been waiting in an anonymous parcel on the doormat when she got home. She had already glanced through it, but wasn’t really much the wiser. The arms smuggling story was dealt with summarily, as a minor and regrettable incident in an otherwise successful mission. The details were relatively thin. Just as Uncle Tage had said, it looked like a couple of Swedish officers hadn’t been prepared to sit by and passively watch while superior forces from one side crushed the surrounded and badly equipped group on the other.
The whole thing looked like an impulsive act rather that a political statement, and in all likelihood the few weapons they tried to smuggle wouldn’t actually have made any difference at all, apart from salving the Swedes’ consciences. But the consequences of the impulsive act had been dramatic. The two officers were both dismissed immediately, and were sent home on the first plane while the rest of the battalion was hastily redeployed to southern Cyprus, away from the danger zone. She couldn’t find any information about the names of the officers, but then she hadn’t really expected to.
The Game Trilogy Page 76