by Peter Nealen
I did see one of the men in the black sedan talking on what looked like a phone, though.
The Mercedes left the parking lot and headed north on Svidhavnsgade. Chris glanced at me, but I shook my head slightly, still watching the black sedan, which still hadn’t moved.
Fortunately, the parking lot and campus were still relatively crowded. We blended in with the other parked cars in the lot. Otherwise, we would have already been made.
Stenberg had gotten quiet. That was a blessing; I had been about to snap at him to shut up. This was about to get tricky enough without the amateur freaking out in the back seat.
The Mercedes was out of sight, but the black sedan was still sitting there. “Weeb, Deacon. Merc is headed north with the package.”
“Roger. I have eyes on.” Scott paused for a moment. “The blue Kia is following the Merc. Van appears to be in a loose trail.”
At that moment, the black sedan pulled out of its parking spot and started out. “Roger. Black sedan is moving, too. We are entering a loose follow. Don’t lose the Merc.”
“Copy that.”
Chris already had us moving. Stenberg was leaning forward from the back. “What’s going on?”
“Hang on,” I said. “This ain’t over yet.”
We couldn’t see Landau’s Mercedes, but I’d already figured out the broad strokes of what was happening. The guys in the black sedan had been the initial spotters, with eyes on Landau here in the parking lot, and they had passed surveillance on to the blue Kia as the Merc had left. By handing off the shadow to different vehicles, they lessened the chance that they’d be spotted before they decided it was time to move.
The fact that the van wasn’t conducting active surveillance didn’t necessarily mean it was a snatch vehicle. In fact, the possibility still existed that we were, in fact, watching more of Landau’s security, possibly provided by the Danish government. The black sedan and the Kia might have been countersurveillance units, and the van might be the electronic surveillance rig, scooping up any phone or other electronic signals in the vicinity.
But somehow, given Landau’s relationship with the EDC—and while the bulk of her opprobrium had been leveled at the Poles and at us for fighting back, she hadn’t had anything good to say about the Council, either—I doubted it. Denmark was trying very hard to stay out of the mix, and protecting someone on the Council’s shit list probably wasn’t a great way to do that.
We stayed on the black sedan as it turned west toward Valby, drove through the suburb and then turned north again. Chris was doing a pretty good job of staying well back and keeping at least one vehicle between us and the target. It got a little harder as we passed through several more blocks of row houses—there were a lot more bicycles on the street than cars. But while we had to speed a little to catch up a couple of times, we maintained contact, without any seeing any indication that they’d detected us.
“Where are we going?” Chris wondered.
“My guess is, where they think they can get a shot at Landau.” I still didn’t have any more information than before, but my hunch was getting stronger. “I wonder if seeing Stenberg talk to her moved up a timeline or something.”
“Or, again, somebody already knows that we’re interested in her.” So, Chris was thinking along similar lines. As usual, the American chain of command was as tight as a sieve when it came to information. “I’d be willing to bet they already know the broad strokes of the plan.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to get into any details with Stenberg in the back of the car. He was an asset, but he was just that—an asset. He wasn’t fully read-in, and it sure as hell wasn’t our job to read him in. Obviously, he knew the broad strokes, but the less he knew about the nitty gritty details, the better if things went south.
We were approaching Damhussoen, the lake smack dab in the middle of Copenhagen, and a few moments later, we were following the sedan north along the eastern shore of the lake.
The sedan didn’t cross the dam that bordered the southeastern dogleg, but pulled into a parking lot inside a U-shaped, two-story gray-brick apartment building just at the corner. We pulled over across the street, trying to stay low-key while we watched.
The long-haired man in the passenger seat was on the phone. A moment later, he hung up, and the two of them got out, locked the doors, and headed into the building. We lost sight of them a moment later.
“Deacon, Weeb. We just saw the Mercedes park at a house on the lakeshore and Landau went inside.” Scott’s voice was low, as if he was talking into the radio in his lap, while trying to appear nonchalant. “It’s on the fourth lot west of the Alekistevej. The blue Kia is parked on the median across the highway, facing away. No eyes on the van at the moment.”
“Roger.” I thought for a moment. “They’re setting up surveillance on Landau’s house. Which means we need to set up surveillance on them.”
“There’s a barber shop across the highway, just south of the Kia. We can park there for a little while.”
I nodded, though he obviously couldn’t see it. “Do it. We’ll clear off, then start rotating teams in as needed so we don’t heat the place up too much. If something’s going to go down, I suspect it’ll happen here, tonight.”
If agencies and factions were already assassinating people in Copenhagen—and I didn’t believe that Magnussen’s death had been an accident—then it was only a matter of time before somebody made a try at Landau.
And I intended to be in position to stop it…and to take advantage of it.
***
The sun set slowly, turning the scattered clouds over the lake pink as the sky above darkened. We’d all switched out a couple times already, and it was starting to get risky. We only had so many vehicles, and it was only a matter of time before somebody noticed that the same three cars kept coming around and parking in the barbershop parking lot, long after the barbershop had closed up for the evening.
But the Politiet hadn’t showed themselves so far. From some of the sporadic radio reports we picked up—and the local media didn’t seem to be particularly eager to publish those, either—the majority of the cops seemed to be concentrated up by Nørrebro and Freetown Christiania. While many of the reports were brief, vague, and rarely repeated—just like they hadn’t mentioned Magnussen’s murder again since that afternoon—I gathered that somebody was stirring things up in Copenhagen.
The list of suspects was a pretty long one, but orchestrated chaos was always going to work to somebody’s advantage. And I suspected that our friends in the Kia and the black sedan were already aware of it, if not coordinating it.
Not everything is coordinated. But there is such a phenomenon as “converging methods and interests.” I’d seen it before. One actor moves, and then the dogpile starts in the aftermath, because all the other predators are circling, watching, and waiting. And if you’re the target, it doesn’t matter if they’re all coordinating or acting on their own. The end result is often the same.
Chris and I had moved into position about half an hour before. I checked my watch. It should be fully dark in another hour. Lights were already starting to come on in windows and on street corners. Copenhagen, at least, still had plenty of electrical power, though how long that was going to last as the chaos spread was anyone’s guess.
“Heads up.” Chris pointed. We had the car shut off, and the sunset would be glaring off the windshield, making it difficult to see us.
I looked over to where he was pointing. “Is that the van?”
He squinted. “I can’t quite make out the license plate, but it fits the description.” Not that the description was much to go on—there were dozens of white sprinter vans floating around. They were ubiquitous commercial vehicles.
But the locale, the appearance, and the timing didn’t feel like it was coincidence. I keyed the radio. “This is Deacon. Golf Lima Ten, converge on my position. It might be go time.”
“Roger. Moving.” Scott didn’t waste words.
The rest hadn’t staged very far away, but had been driving racetracks around the lake for the last couple of hours. It was grindingly boring, not to mention that none of us were getting any younger, and sitting in a car for that long starts to hurt after a while.
I hadn’t called it a moment too soon. Less than ten minutes after the sun had fully set, they were moving.
The van, which had been parked just across the street from us, around the corner from Landau’s house, started moving. The blue Kia turned out onto the same street behind it, coming from around the corner to our north, where we hadn’t had eyes on it, but the last few times one of our vehicles had driven by, we’d gotten confirmation that it was still there. A moment later, the black sedan appeared, coming up from the south.
“What is happening?” I hadn’t been sure about the wisdom of keeping Stenberg with us, but at the same time, I hadn’t wanted to divert a vehicle down south to drop him off. We needed to be ready whenever these guys made their move, and while it had been several hours—so, we probably could have done it easily—now it was far too late. He was along for the ride.
“Golf Lima Ten, Deacon. Move to the objective, time now.” I reached down and pulled the Rattler out, snapping the buttstock open and press-checking the chamber. Chris had already started the car—which was fortunately very quiet—and was pulling out of the parking lot, the headlights still switched off.
We watched as the three vehicles turned down Damstien, slowly moving toward the driveway less than a block away. The two cars stopped on the street, while the van turned into the driveway.
I pointed. “Get us down to the lakeshore trail. We’re going to have to move fast.”
“If we go in first, her security’s going to flip out when they see weapons.” Chris took less than thirty seconds to get us to the trail, but we couldn’t fit the Audi down there. There were trees and concrete pylons to block the way. I opened the door as soon as he put the car in park.
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take.” There was no low-risk way to do this, not in a city that was desperately trying to keep itself clear of the war. But I hesitated, then slid the Rattler back into the pack and slung it over one shoulder. The stock was sticking out the top, but it was still less obvious. Chris did the same as he climbed out.
“Stay with the vehicle.” He looked in at Stenberg in the back. “In fact, get up here in the driver’s seat, just in case. We might be coming back a little fast.”
Stenberg looked a little shell-shocked, but he did as he was told.
I keyed my radio. “Golf Lima Ten, Deacon. Hostiles are on the north side. Redball and I are moving in to the south. We’ll try to get the objective out the back.” I was already moving as I spoke, stepping it out down the path, though I kept myself from running flat-out.
We walked quickly down the path as one of our other vehicles pulled up behind ours. Glancing back, I could just make out Jordan and Tony. I recognized them by build and gait, more than anything else. There were lights placed along the path, but they were far apart, and they weren’t bright. With those two moving up, Greg would still be in the vehicle.
Scott, Reuben, and David would be closing in up north, unless they came south, too, and then had to re-route around. Nobody had said anything else over the radio yet, so I didn’t know. I hoped they’d figure it out quickly. We were too close to the target building for me to start trying to play coordinator.
We had less than a hundred yards to go. It was fairly quiet in that neighborhood that evening, so we heard the van door opening out front as we pushed through the hedge alongside the path and clambered over the low fence.
The yard was small but neat, with a small greenhouse set against the side of the house. The door was next to it, in front of a small veranda. The lights were on inside, and we could see into the kitchen. Landau and her husband were visible through the window, watching the front of the house. One of their security goons was standing nearby, his back also to the window.
None of them saw the two of us closing on the door. If we’d been there to kill Landau, they’d have been screwed.
I slung my bag around in front of me, drew out the Rattler, now that we were concealed by the hedge, and flipped the bag back onto my back. Chris did the same, as a boom sounded from the front door. That hadn’t been an explosion. It had sounded more like a battering ram. Through the window, I saw Landau and her husband both flinch.
We were going to have to split them up to get them in the cars. I hadn’t considered that before. But we’d cross that bridge once we got them out.
Chris and I split and stacked on the door, while Jordan and Tony vaulted the fence and moved to the corners of the house. Both of them stayed in the shadows along the fence and under the tree in the backyard, so they couldn’t be seen from the window.
Another boom sounded from the front. So, at least Landau’s security had reinforced the front door. That was good. I reached up and knocked on the back door, hard.
Chris had stepped back slightly, forced away from the door by the wall of the greenhouse right next to it. He had a limited view in through the kitchen window. “That did not make them any less nervous.”
“Just as long as they don’t start shooting through the door.” I knocked again. I really wished we had Landau’s phone number, but even Stenberg didn’t have that. It wasn’t something she handed out much, and Denmark’s privacy laws were stringent enough that trying to find it online was essentially impossible. So, we had to do this the hard way, risking a firefight with her security in the attempt to rescue her from a kidnapping attempt.
I knocked a third time, putting my face close to the seam of the door to yell, “Frau Landau, we are here to get you out! Those men are going to kill you if you don’t come with us!” I didn’t know that for sure, but under the circumstances it was probably worth assuming. And if it got Landau to stir her stumps and get moving…
“Got a security goon coming. Gun’s up.” Chris leveled his Rattler, though he didn’t point it at the window and the security man approaching it.
The big guy cracked the door open, his SIG P320X held at the ready, held tight to his sternum, the muzzle not quite covering us but close enough that he could engage easily. I kept my Rattler pointed at the ground. It was a risk. He could easily shoot me before I got the short-barreled rifle into play. But it wasn’t the first time I’d done this, either. I’d walked out to meet the Slovak Nationalists without any weapon at all.
That memory didn’t actually make me any more comfortable right at that moment. The man with the gun was about my height and whip-lean. His blond hair was slightly longish, and he was clean-shaven. He was also not screwing around. He stared hard at both of us, stepping back out of the line of the door, his weapon still held at the ready. He wasn’t ready to trust either of us, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. I probably wouldn’t in his shoes, either.
Ironically, it was the bad guys who made his decision for him.
The next blow of the ram splintered the jamb, and we heard the door smash inward from the back of the house. Suppressed gunfire chattered, and a body crashed to the floor as Landau screamed.
The security man who’d opened the back door spun around, but he was a fraction of a second too late. The long-haired man from the black sedan drove his MP7 forward and smashed Landau’s security guard off his feet with a stuttering barrage of 4.6x30mm rounds.
But I’d gotten the split second I needed to bring my own weapon into play.
Snapping the Rattler up to my shoulder, even as Chris stepped to the door beside me, I drove through and thumped two rounds into the long-haired man’s chest before quickly transitioning to the second man, half a step behind him, and giving him a trio that walked up his torso, the third round smashing through his clavicle. He screamed but he wasn’t out of the fight.
Neither was the first man I’d shot—he was wearing body armor. I switched back as he recovered and blew his brains into his buddy’s eyes from about six feet
away. Even as he crumpled, I switched back to the screaming man, who had started to make less noise as his mouth was suddenly filled with gore, and gave him the same treatment.
Chris had sidestepped to get clear of me and cleaned up a third man as he came through the door. Blood was splashed on the white trim and the corpse was lying across the threshold.
I turned to a visibly shocked Landau. Her husband looked every bit as faint as she did; I half expected him to pass out right then and there.
“We have to go. Now. We only accounted for six of them, but they might have backup. In fact, I suspect they do. We might be in trouble getting out of here.” I kept my voice as level and calm as possible, but there was still an adrenaline-charged edge to it.
Given that I was obviously an American, with my rusty, scruffy goatee, I didn’t exactly look all that friendly, and I had just smoked two people in her living room, that wasn’t necessarily a plus in Landau’s book. And it was abundantly obvious that however much faith the newcomers from Washington had in her as a new leader, she was not prepared to deal with this kind of an emergency. She was frozen where she stood, staring in horror at the dead bodies strewn across her house.
“Dammit.” I moved fast, grabbing her by the arm. She started, as if she’d just noticed I was there, but she didn’t resist as I propelled her toward the back door. Chris was still posted by the kitchen island, his Rattler pointed at the front. I thought I heard suppressed gunfire from outside, but if it was one of ours, the subsonic .300 Blackout hardly made any noise at all.
“Chris, grab him.” I kept Landau close to me, my Rattler pointed at the ceiling. It meant I didn’t have a free hand to key the radio, so I bellowed, “Friendlies coming out!”
We plunged out into the backyard. Tony was already falling back toward the hedge. I heard Jordan fire three more fast shots, then he was coming around the corner, sprinting to the hedge and taking a knee just before the fence, aimed back at the corner of the house he’d just come from.