Jonas Bonnier - The Helicopter Heist - A Novel Based on True Events

“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 September.

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.”

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.

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.