Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Stop!” she whispers as she pulls the trigger.

The shot fires and the recoil jerks her arm and shoulder. The gunpowder burns across the back of her hand.

The bullet seems to disappear but Penelope sees him try to run faster.

You never should have touched my sister, she thinks.

The man is running along a path. He stops for a second, grabbing his arm, then he veers off across the grass.

Penelope runs into the open field and the sunshine. She’s getting closer. She crosses the pedestrian path and lifts the weapon again.

“Stop!” she yells.

She fires and she sees a furrow of grass ripped from the ground ten meters in front of the man. Penelope feels adrenaline shoot throughout her body but she’s clearheaded and focused. She aims at his leg and shoots again. She hears the bang again, feels the recoil, and sees the back of his knee punctured with debris blown around his leg from his kneecap. He screams in pain as he falls onto the grass, but he keeps trying to crawl away. She’s coming closer, striding forward while he tries to pull himself upright to lean against a birch tree.

Stop, Penelope thinks. She lifts the pistol again. You killed Viola. You drowned her and you killed Bjorn.

“You killed my baby sister!” she yells out loud. She shoots.

The bullet goes into his left foot and blood spatters over the grass.

As Penelope comes up to him, he slides down, completely still, his head hanging forward with his chin resting on his chest. He’s bleeding heavily and is panting like an animal.

She stops in front of him, the shadow of the birch tree covering them both. She aims the pistol again right at him.

“Why?” she asks. “Why is my sister dead? Why is…”

She falls silent, swallows, and gets on her knees to look directly into his face.

“I want you to look at me when I kill you.”

The man licks his lips and seems to try to raise his head. It’s too heavy. He can’t manage it. He’s about to lose consciousness. She aims the gun again, but she hesitates and pulls his head up with her other hand. She stares right into his face. She clenches her teeth as she sees again the tired features lit up by lightning over Kymmendo. Now she remembers every detail: his calm eyes after he killed people and the deep scar on his lip. He’s just as calm now. Penelope has hardly time to think how strange this is before he attacks. He is so very strong and unbelievably quick. He grabs her hair and pulls her toward him. There is so much power behind his move that she bangs her forehead against his chest. She cannot move fast enough to evade him when he shifts his grip to grab her wrist and wring the gun from her hand. With all her strength, Penelope pushes and kicks her way free, but he already has her gun. She looks up at him as he aims it at her and releases two quick shots.

Only when Joona has left the stairwell and is hurrying through the main floor of the German embassy does he realize how his lungs are heaving and how much his eyes sting. He has to get out for some clear air. He coughs heavily and remains close to the wall as he jogs on. He can hear new explosions above him, and a ceiling lamp falls to the ground. He can hear many sirens. He walks out through the main entrance of the embassy with relief. Six German military policemen are deployed on the asphalt outside the door. They make up the provisional security team. Joona draws fresh, clean air into his lungs, coughing and looking around. Two fire trucks have set up ladders against the wall of the embassy. Outside the fence, there are crowds of police officers and ambulance personnel. Karl Mann lies on the grass and a doctor is leaning over him listening to his lungs. Penelope Fernandez is walking along the fence that separates this building from the Japanese embassy. Her shoulders are covered by a blanket.

At the last minute, Joona had gone back into the men’s bathroom to retrieve this battered backpack. It was an impulse. He couldn’t understand why the hit man had wanted to hide an empty backpack with the pistol and magazine in full sight in the sink.

He has a fit of coughing again. He opens the black nylon and looks inside. The backpack is not empty. It contains three different passports and a short attack knife with fresh blood on the blade.

Who did you cut? Joona wonders.

He peers closely at the knife blade. The blood is just starting to coagulate. He looks out over the busy people and ambulances on the other side of the gate. The woman with the burned dress is now bundled in a blanket and is being helped into an ambulance. She holds another woman’s hand. An older man with a soot streak on his forehead is talking on the phone. His expression is empty.

Joona realizes his mistake. He drops the backpack and the bloody knife to the ground and runs to the fence to yell at the guard to let him out.

He rushes past police and other personnel, jumps the plastic tape barricade, and forces his way past journalists who seem to have sprung up out of the ground like weeds. He stands on the road, blocking a yellow ambulance just ready to leave.

“What wound does he have on his arm?” Joona yells as he holds up his ID.

“What?” the ambulance driver asks in surprise.

“The man injured by the bomb-he has a wound on his forearm and I need-”

“Considering his condition, it’s not that important.”

“I have to see his injury!” Joona yells.

The ambulance driver wants to protest further, but something in Joona’s voice makes him change his mind and he does what Joona asks.

Joona climbs into the back of the ambulance. The man lying on the stretcher has a face totally covered in bandages with only an area free to allow an oxygen mask and an oxygen lead to his nose. A suction tip is hanging from his mouth. One of the ambulance attendants cuts the jacket and shirt wider open. The wound is temporarily bandaged.

But it’s not a bullet wound. It’s a knife cut and it’s deep.

Joona jumps out of the ambulance and looks around the area until he sees Saga. She’s carrying a plastic cup with water, but as soon as she sees his expression, she throws it to the ground and comes running.

He’s getting away again, Joona thinks. We can’t let him get away!

Joona pans the scene, remembering he’d seen Penelope with a blanket over her shoulders heading along the fence between the embassies and turning onto Gardesgatan.

“Bring a gun!” he yells at Saga as he starts running along the fence. He turns to the right but can’t spot Penelope or the hit man anywhere.

As if in their own little world, a woman is watching two beautiful Dalmatians play freely on the grassy lawn of the Italian Cultural Institute.

Joona races past its shining white facade, already pulling his pistol out of its holster. He realizes that the hit man had merged with the stream of people stumbling from the burning building.

Saga is yelling something behind him, but he doesn’t listen. His heart is pounding too loud and there’s a rushing sound in his head.

He runs faster toward a small grove of trees the killer might see as cover. He hears a sudden pistol shot. He stumbles down the slope of a dike and then up the other side, up a hill, and between the trunks of trees in the grove.

More pistol shots. The explosions are short and sharp.

Joona bats aside tree branches and then comes out onto the sunny lawn. He sees Penelope three hundred meters away. She’s underneath a birch tree. A man is sitting against the tree with his head hanging down. Penelope is on the ground in front of him when suddenly she’s pulled forward and then falls back. The man is aiming a gun right at her. While running, Joona throws a shot at the man, but the distance is too great. He stops to take a steady stance and hold his gun in both hands. At that same moment the hit man fires two shots into Penelope’s chest. She flies onto her back. The hit man looks exhausted, but lifts his gun again. Joona shoots and misses. He runs closer and watches Penelope kick at the man to get away. The hit man looks up to see Joona coming but then looks back down at Penelope. He is looking her in the eyes as he aims the gun at her face. A shot is fired… but Joona hears the sound from behind. It whines past his right ear and within the same second a cascade of blood squirts from behind the hit man’s back to cover the white tree trunk. The full metal jacket bullet has torn through his breastbone, into his heart, and on out of his back to bury itself in the tree behind him. Even as Joona keeps running with his gun still aimed, another shot rings out. The already dead body whirls under the impact, the bullet’s entry point just centimeters away from the first one. Joona lowers his gun and turns to see Saga standing in the grove of trees with a high-caliber rifle at her shoulder. Her long hair is dappled by the sunlight breaking through the leaves and her expression is still one of deadly concentration as she slowly lowers the rifle.