by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
The buzzing of her cell phone is transmitted through the thick cushions in the alcove. Caroline Thurn can’t hear anything, but she can feel the vibrations. She pulls off her headphones, Zoran Petrovic’s droning stops and she glances down at the display. It’s the national police commissioner, Therese Olsson.
Thurn feels her adrenaline levels spike as she answers.
“Good morning,” she says.
“They pushed it back a week,” she hears Therese Olsson’s dogged voice say. “It’s happening as we speak.”
Thurn understands immediately. She can still hear the echo of Petrovic’s voice in her ears.
The fifteenth of September. That was why he slipped up. That was why he planted that particular date several times. It was the only mistake he made.
Only, it wasn’t a mistake.
He had tricked them.
“The situation is ongoing,” Olsson repeats. “Get out to G4S in Västberga. Call me from the car.”
Caroline Thurn is on her way out.
“Wait!” she shouts down the line.
“What?”
“Is our helicopter airborne?” Thurn asks as she opens the door into the stairwell.
The silence on the other end tells her everything she needs to know.
“Get it in the air!” Thurn shouts at her boss. “Now!”
76
5:22 a.m.
It went better than he expected.
On the way from Frescati to Västberga, there had been two moments when he’d had to blink, concentrate and fight back the sense of panic he could feel welling, ready to spread through his body as quickly and easily as a drop of blood in a glass of water.
Both times had worked.
Since then, everything has been calm.
After dropping off the robbers and the equipment, Jack Kluger takes the helicopter up to a high altitude again. Bands of thin clouds float across the sky, their edges sharply defined by the moonlight. Far below him, to the northwest, the Essingen Islands and southern Alvik glitter at the far edge of the dark waters of Lake Mälaren. To the northeast, he can see the Liljeholmen industrial area and the deserted office buildings that have been plastered with brightly lit company logos.
Kluger has no goal other than to save fuel. They have agreed to be back on the roof in ten to fifteen minutes, and though he set off with less than a full tank, that gives him good margins.
He lowers the helicopter slightly when he spots the first police car. Its flashing blue lights seem to glide forward over the ground.
Just as Maloof and Sami predicted, the car is approaching from the station on Västberga Gårdsväg. It swings up onto Västberga Allé, followed closely by another car. Kluger watches them from the heavens, two blue will-o’-the-wisps in an otherwise black night. When the first car suddenly skids, spins sideways and comes to a stop, Kluger knows why. Petrovic had told him about the chains, about the caltrops. The American watches the second car slow down, but he can’t tell whether its tires have also been ripped to shreds.
Just then, he spots a string of blue lights approaching on the highway from Stockholm. They’ll take the exit by Midsommarkransen and drive straight into the chains stretched across the road.
* * *
—
Once nine minutes have passed since the drop-off, Kluger allows the helicopter to sink farther, meaning he is now hovering right alongside the building. The chains with the caltrops have delayed the police, but judging by the stream of new cars and blue lights flickering in the darkness, they’ve dealt with the problem. The cars are coming from the north, from the south. He’s lost count. They’re keeping their distance from the building, and it seems to Kluger as though they’re forming some kind of base over by the gas station on the hill, three hundred or so feet away from the entrance to the building.
He feels comfortable in the helicopter, behind the controls. He can’t understand why he was so nervous about it now. It’s like riding a bike. He hasn’t forgotten a thing; in fact, he’s forgotten too little. Flying with the dark sky as a backdrop, it’s as though he never left Afghanistan.
And then he notices the sinking feeling his stomach.
He blinks it away. Once. Once more.
He doesn’t want to remember.
He flies a loop around the building, just for something to do.
He feels a vague sense of unease that the police will open fire. After almost two years in Sweden, he knows that weapons and force are the exception, but he’s still an easy target. That’s why he’s keeping close to the building. He assumes they won’t dare shoot if there’s a risk of him crashing into the cash depot.
* * *
—
The next time he glances at his watch, it’s 5:23. Jack Kluger feels relieved. It’ll soon be over. He peers down at the roof and expects to catch sight of them any moment now. He’s aware that they said ten to fifteen minutes, and it hasn’t even been ten yet, but he just wants to get away. The pulsing blue lights on the ground are making him nervous, but it’s toward the horizon that he keeps glancing anxiously.
If he catches sight of another helicopter, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Landing on the roof to pick up the robbers would be pointless if that happened. He’d never be able to take off again. The police helicopter would make sure of that. Nothing is stopping him from simply flying off. He decides that if he sees anything coming toward him in the sky, he’ll have to make a run for it.
77
5:23 a.m.
It’s exactly twenty-three minutes past five when Caroline Thurn pulls out of the garage on Väpnargatan in her Volvo. A white layer of frost covers the ground on Strandvägen, and as she drives toward the red lights on Hamngatan, she grabs her phone, pushes the white headphone into her ear and dials Berggren’s number.
He answers immediately.
“They shifted it back a week.”
She doesn’t need to be any clearer than that.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“It wasn’t Bromma, it was Västberga.”
“Where are you?” he asks for a second time.
“The situation’s ongoing. County police are involved. Local are outside the building with the lights flashing.”
“Where the hell are you, Caroline?” Berggren shouts.
By now, Thurn has made it to the Gallerian shopping center, and she turns left.
“Excuse me,” she says into the earpiece.
She comes close to hitting a homeless woman pulling a shopping cart across a crosswalk.
“I’m on the way,” she says. “To Västberga. Five, ten minutes. Might make it before it’s all over.”
“What the hell’re you going to do there, Caroline?”
She doesn’t have a good answer to that, she’s just obeying orders.
“Get hold of Hertz, Mats,” she says. “Tell him to get in touch with the military.”
Berggren doesn’t know what to say. The military? The robbery is ongoing? Had Bromma never been the target, or did the plans change?
“The military?” he repeats.
“They wanted to sabotage the police helicopters,” Thurn says as she passes city hall. “I don’t know if they stuck to their original plan, but…the military has helicopters out in Berga, doesn’t it? Or up at the Air Combat Training School in Uppsala?”
“Uppsala? I have no idea…”
“Ask Hertz to requisition the military helicopters. Make sure they get airborne.”
Thurn ends the call before her colleague has time to protest. Norr Mälarstrand is narrow, and she’s driving at almost sixty miles an hour. If she passes any newspaper delivery boys on bikes, or retirees out walking their dogs, she’s going to have difficulty avoiding them. Her fingertips are on the wheel, ready to make the maneuver that could save a life.
But when she reaches Rålambshovsparken, she still hasn’t seen another soul.
And in her head, she can hear Petrovic saying that he has something big planned for the fifteenth of Sep
tember.
That bastard.
* * *
—
Caroline Thurn has made it onto the highway when her phone rings. Olsson again. She accepts the call by pressing the button on her earpiece’s microphone, whose white cable is hanging next to her face. There still aren’t many cars around.
“Where the hell are you?” asks Therese Olsson.
“Arriving in Västberga in four minutes.”
“What the hell are you doing there? You should be here.”
“You said to…” but she doesn’t finish the sentence.
Olsson has forgotten asking her to go out to the cash depot.
“I’m no use in Kungsholmen,” Thurn says instead. “But I need to talk to our helicopter pilot. Can you get someone to patch the call through to my cell? And I want to talk to whoever’s in charge out in Västberga.”
Olsson takes a few seconds to think.
“OK,” she says, and hangs up to avoid wasting any more time.
Thurn can see the exit for Västberga when the phone rings again. She glances at the time. Only eight minutes have passed since she left home.
“Thurn,” she says into the microphone.
“Hello?”
“This is Caroline Thurn. Who is this?”
“Jakob. The pilot. I…We’re on the way to Myttinge.”
“We’ve got an ongoing robbery,” Thurn explains. “There are reports of a helicopter, a Bell Jet…being used to…”
“A JetRanger,” the pilot corrects her. “A 206. We know, we heard about it last week.”
Thurn doesn’t know whether she should feel pleased or annoyed. She is on the line with an unknown person who knew about the robbery a week ago. Is this a case of another damn leak from police headquarters, or is the pilot one of those who was on standby in Solna last week?
She makes an irritated mental note.
“If I understand correctly,” she says, “the robbery is happening right now. So you need to hurry.”
“We’ve got the coordinates,” the pilot answers. His voice sounds like a young boy’s. “But this isn’t Bromma?”
“Västberga.”
The pilot takes a moment to think.
“Good,” he says. “That’s better. We’ll fly over the park in Årsta. We’ll be in the air in ten minutes.”
Thurn checks the time. It’s 5:31. The helicopters will be in the air by twenty to six.
“If they’re still inside when you arrive, you need to stop them from taking off,” Thurn tells him, slowing down to turn into the industrial area via Västberga Allé. “You shouldn’t intervene. If they still manage to take off, just follow them and let us know where they land.”
“Intervene?” the pilot repeats with a brief laugh. “Do you think we’ll be flying some kind of assault helicopter?”
“Did you understand the instructions?”
The pilot mumbles a yes as a new call flashes up on Thurn’s display.
“Report back once you’re in the air,” she says, switching her conversation partner.
“Månsson.” Thurn suddenly hears a deep, calm voice in her ear. It doesn’t tell her anything about the police officer’s decision-making abilities, of course, but it still sounds reassuring.
“Task Force Leader Caroline Thurn,” she says. “Give me an update.”
“Well, nothing’s happening right now. Maybe that’s why the helicopter flew off?”
“It’s gone?”
Thurn is confused. She had always assumed that the robbers were planning to get away in the helicopter.
“We can still hear it,” says Dag Månsson, “but we can’t see it. Wait…is that you?”
At that very moment, Thurn catches sight of the police van parked by the gas station, and she ends the call, leaving the earpiece in her ear.
She parks up next to the van and opens the door.
“Where’s Månsson?” she asks as she climbs out of the car.
A tall, well-built officer in uniform jumps out of the van and comes forward to meet her.
“Dag Månsson,” he introduces himself, shaking Thurn’s hand.
“Have you requested backup?” she asks.
There is a sea of blinking lights outside the G4S depot, but Thurn can see only ordinary patrol cars, no specialists.
“Backup?” Månsson asks. “What do you mean?”
“Are the riot squad on the way? Did National confirm?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Månsson replies in his deep voice.
“OK, make sure you check,” Thurn says.
“We haven’t had time,” Månsson mutters, sounding annoyed. “We were clearing crap from the access roads so you’d be able to make it over here with your wheels intact.”
78
5:25 a.m.
Everything has been carried down from the roof to the balcony on the fifth floor, and Nordgren is busy setting up the ladder to the floor above. He leans it against the reinforced glass, but he can barely get any angle, the balcony is too shallow.
Still, up he climbs. He has one of the explosive frames in his hand. Balanced on the ladder, he fixes the frame to the glass, fills it with explosives, pushes in the detonator capsule and attaches the long detonation cable.
Once Maloof and Sami see that Nordgren has everything in place, they start to climb the long ladder back up to the roof. Nordgren has made it down to the balcony, but he holds the ladder steady for the others before he makes the ascent himself.
They won’t need much of a charge to break the glass, but considering the shards will rain down onto the balcony on the fifth floor, the three of them have no choice but to climb out of the way.
* * *
—
Back up on the roof, Nordgren gets to work with his cable and the motorbike battery. As a result, he doesn’t notice what Sami has already seen.
Down on the street, there is a police van and a sea of cars with flashing blue lights. They’re already here. Sami decides to take no notice of it. There’s no other way to handle it.
A second later, the explosion cuts through the atrium.
“Quick now,” says Nordgren.
He’s already on his way back down the long ladder.
79
5:26 a.m.
“What was that, Claude?”
Everyone in Counting hears the explosion, and Ann-Marie isn’t the only one to look questioningly at Tavernier.
But when nothing happens after the first blast, they return to bundling and locking the notes into the cages in the middle of the room.
Everyone but Ann-Marie. She is staring expectantly at Claude Tavernier, demanding an answer.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” says Tavernier.
He dials the number for the guardroom on the second floor, and Valter answers immediately. The guard is following the unfolding events on his CCTV monitors.
“Have the police arrived?” Tavernier asks.
Valter doesn’t know. But he does have around eighty video cameras watching over the majority of areas inside the building, and he tells Tavernier what he knows. That a helicopter landed on the roof, that the robbers have smashed a window in the skylight. He can’t see where they are right now, and he hasn’t heard any explosions from where he is on the second floor.
Valter falls silent, as though he is deliberating with himself, but then he says:
“They’re heavily armed. But the police will probably be getting here any moment,” he adds, in an attempt to dampen the drama.
Tavernier hangs up.
“The police will be here soon,” he tells Ann-Marie, something that has an immediate calming effect on her.
The fear in her wide eyes seems to lessen slightly.
“They got in through the roof, didn’t they?” she asks.
Tavernier nods. It’s something everyone working at G4S in Västberga has discussed. The new information spreads across the room. They knew it. That damn glass skylight is like a be
acon for all the country’s would-be criminals at night.
They get back to work.
“Anyone who’s finished, come over here,” Tavernier says.
He is already standing in the area of the room that could be described as the center. The so-called safety position where they’re meant to gather to wait for the police or guards. All in line with the instructions of Security Chief Palle Lindahl, instructions that he took from one of the international conferences G4S holds for its security chiefs every year. At these events, the combined experiences of over a hundred different countries come together. Stay in the room until help arrives, that’s the message. Don’t start running around a building full of armed criminals. They’ll be searching the corridors and won’t appreciate any surprises in the shape of confused staff members trying to find a way out.
Everyone knows the drill.
One by one, they finish their work and move over to Tavernier and Ann-Marie, who are already standing in position.
All that’s left now is to wait until it’s over.
It seems obvious to Tavernier that the robbers will be making their way toward the vault on the second floor.
80
5:28 a.m.
The hole in the reinforced glass is big enough for Nordgren to use the crowbar to break an opening they can get in through.
On the other side is a room that seems to be used as some kind of storage area, but right now it’s empty. The door is open, meaning they are now wall-to-wall with Counting.
Maloof points to the fire door they were expecting. Nordgren goes over and studies the frame. The door is on a metal runner, meaning it can automatically move to one side if the fire alarm sounds. At the very top right, tucked in beneath the ceiling, he spots the cable controlling the door. He doesn’t have any wire cutters with him, but a powerful tug is all it takes to pull it from its connection. Then they just need to push the door to the side. It moves smoothly in its tracks, revealing a steel-clad security door behind it.