They passed him some papers with signatures. “The boss has given you clearance.” There were dozens of bosses in the building, but Grip didn’t ask questions. He saw it as a simple matter: they were shorthanded and needed extra muscle. Besides, a Sunday afternoon alone in his apartment wasn’t something he looked forward to. “Can’t just rely on SWAT for this.” Someone winked at him. A forced entry apparently, but then what? People were so stressed that they were dropping things. Someone spoke nonstop in English on an encrypted phone, mostly obedient strings of: “Yes, yes,” and “Please say again.” Body armor and firearms began to appear on a large table. An apartment blueprint was taped to one wall.
And then SWAT sauntered in.
Already dressed for action, they sat down, while the security police officers quickly took their equipment from the table and improvised a briefing. Stress and loose ends, sure, that’s what they had to deal with at times, Grip had seen it before. But it was during the briefing that Grip felt his first wave of uneasiness. The thing with the lock, for one. Not so much the battering ram itself, as the sense that they were going in full force. A piece of the larger world would play itself out in an immigrant neighborhood of Stockholm on a Sunday. They were facing a suspected terrorist cell linked to ISIS, and they had to strike now.
Obviously, they were acting on foreign intelligence, though no one said that out loud. The jargon always sounded a certain way, whenever Washington and Paris were involved. There was talk of weapons caches and suicide bombers. Sweden had long been dismissed as a backwater that didn’t take matters seriously enough. A safe haven for the naive. No one could remember the name of the guy who blew himself up a few years before near Queen Street, and there’d been some change in attitudes afterward, but still. They’d never gotten wind of something big, always been relegated to the B team. Then suddenly, this active cell. Apparently, there were people in that apartment right now. Hands in jam jars: money, weapons, bombs. It was like a perfect hand in poker. You could take the whole pot. “Now, you little fuckers!” There was no limit to ambition, and that was precisely what gave Grip the sense that something was wrong.
Two seconds to go. Grip pressed the button on the little voice recorder in the pocket of his bulletproof vest.
The battering ram was swung back, on the second, like a freight train picking up speed toward a pile of boards … “Now, you fuckers!”
The entire door collapsed in a shower of splinters. And then they went at it.
Two dark men were in the first room—at the briefing, someone had said Somalis—and a third ran back through the apartment as the wave of police and weapons swept in. When one of the overtaken men raised his arm, probably just for protection, the blow that followed knocked him flat on his back. The officers yelled, nonstop, and one drove his knee into the back of the other man who was already down on his stomach. Grip looked for weapons or suspicious devices with electrical wires. As he moved past, he noticed a table with a few stacks of foreign bills. He hadn’t lost speed, hadn’t stopped for a second. He and two of the SWAT officers rushed ahead to find the third man. A bedroom door slammed shut in front of them, but it was ripped right off its hinges by two flying shoulders. The Somali, if that’s what he was, had been pushing from behind and was thrown back into the room. The two SWAT guys dressed in black were on him in an instant. Grip saw a trail of blood spatter on the carpet. It was impossible to determine if the man on the floor was just whimpering in pain or still resisting.
“I got this,” Grip said, moving in quickly between them. He’d already holstered his pistol; the other two struggled to hold the man while they fumbled with their equipment. Grip approached, taking control. He was bigger than the two police officers, despite wearing only body armor, while they were dressed for two weeks of rioting.
“You check the bathroom.”
No one would be in there, he was certain of it. He trusted his instincts. He thought it was enough now, with all the punches, knees, and shouting. There were only three, and their hands were under control. No one would be able to press a detonator. The SWAT men left to check. The man beneath Grip had a bad nosebleed, dark blood running over dark skin, and stared at him wide-eyed and confused. Grip hadn’t even brought along handcuffs, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He pulled the skinny young man to his feet with a single move, the man’s arms hanging like fragile pendulums.
The two SWAT officers came out of the bathroom, the first giving a quick shake of his head, and then they hurried out with heavy steps. There was another bedroom somewhere. Grip heard loud voices and commotion behind him—they were ransacking every inch of the place. Just a few more seconds, before the others would also realize that they’d gotten all of the men. Then it all would wind down. Grip held the African with one hand wrapped in the front of his loose shirt. Blood was dripping on his fist—at least he’d brought gloves. With his other hand, Grip reached for a hand towel slung over a chair and gave it to the young man for his nosebleed. He took the towel but left it dangling from his hand.
Grip was alone in the room at the back of the apartment. Still all that noise and struggle behind him. What the hell were they doing? Everything in the operation had gone as it should, and now they were done. A feeling of vulnerability came over him. He looked around, both ways, but no one else was there. The man in his hold gasped and trembled. A creeping sense of unease. Something was going on. Grip scanned the face of the man standing in front of him but got back only a blank stare. No, the world could not be read so easily. Matchstick arms and frightened eyes revealed nothing about the people they were facing: petty criminals or hardened terrorists. But wasn’t it enough now? What the hell were they doing? Just a few more seconds, then it would all wind down.
The HMS Sveaborg had docked a few hours before in Djibouti, home base during her mission in Africa. The sun had passed its peak, but still no one moved, not if they could help it. The ship’s dock guards suffered in their desert hats, kept to short shifts, and drank huge quantities of water. When sailors hauled garbage bags from a cargo door and threw them into an empty dumpster, it instantly began to stink in the heat.
A white Toyota Land Cruiser drove onto the loading dock, which was the size of two football fields, with huge cranes on rails guarding either end. The car, with Swedish military plates, pulled right up to the dock guards’ table. A lone sergeant stepped out, wearing the same desert uniform as the watch officer on the dock, but a more pleasant expression. As if he’d sat in an air-conditioned office all day and knew that within half a minute, he’d be inside again. Or possibly because, even though he was Swedish, he’d spent much of his adult life in this climate and knew how much everyone else suffered.
“Hi,” he said, nodding to the watch officer, who raised his head just enough to see under the brim. The sergeant walked around the car and opened the tailgate. “Jönsson, make sure you come ashore for real this time. There’s plenty to do here in town. Whatever you want.” He took out two metal suitcases covered with baggage tags, slung a small cooler bag across his back, and slammed the door. “Damn it, all you have to do is ask, while you’re out on the boat, you’ve always got MovCon here. We know all the places.” He stopped in front of the desk, slightly raising up both bags. “Just some spare parts, arrived by plane this morning while you were out at sea.”
The watch officer nodded and the sergeant went up the gangway.
The helicopter stood on the flight deck, as pampered and fragile as a patient in intensive care. A tarp draped over the rotor blades gave some shade to the men working below, naked from the waist up. The fuselage panels were stripped off, exposing the engine and the gearbox, while a few pairs of arms reached inside.
The sergeant nodded as he came up to the last ladder on deck, but he said nothing until he was under the shade of the tarp. “Where is …?”
“I’m here.” An older technician looked out from behind a door into the cockpit. “And both of them made