Two Soldiers (17 page)

He had made a hole in the bars that was big enough. He had
boiled water in the coffee machine, which was the last thing he’d grabbed with him as he ran back to his cell, to avoid the exploding door. He’d scratched a cross on the reinforced glass window with a five-kronor coin.

Now he threw the hot water at it and then smashed it with a chair leg at the point where the two lines met, and when the glass reinforced with plastic crumpled, he punched the next pure glass pane with his fist.

It was open.

The wind was really blowing.

The forklift truck wasn’t running anymore.
Searches
. The heavy footsteps had disappeared.
One cell at a time
.

There were other footsteps now, lighter, more determined.
Come out and show us your hands
. He heard the first door, the one opposite, opening.

The next door, the next one would be him.

He loosened the extension cord that was biting into his back, fresh blood on his hands,
come out of your cell, I said
, then tiptoed over to the door to listen,
don’t touch me you fucking pig bastard
; they weren’t done yet, opposite.

Leon wanted to rest for a moment, his back to the cell door, he looked at the window with a hole in it and the wind blowing through.

They would change walls.

He knew what was needed,
the other wall
, he knew it.

He smashed the two bottles on the concrete floor, unwound the rings of copper wire, and broke the plastic felt-tip pen tubes and the brittle carbon rods and knotted together the meters of vacuum cleaner cord.

No clues that anyone might understand.

Then he went slowly over to the window, as if he wanted to draw out those few meters, the wood and porcelain under his feet, and, as he got closer, more glass.

The wind got stronger and when he felt it against his face it was much warmer than he’d imagined.

now

part two

(ninety minutes)

The warm wind in his face.

A strange feeling, an open window in a locked cell.

———

He got snagged as he pressed his torso through a hole in the bars that he’d cut with tips of two carbon rods and the window he’d broken with boiling water. He had to bend his knees so he could stand on the ledge, half in, half out the window, that made it easier. He was sweating, shaking from his feet to his heart, which was thumping, but the prison yard below him was empty so he had to wait a bit longer.

———

They had carried out the final wreckage from the cell opposite. The rattle as they undid the handcuffs and then the loud voice that ordered the prisoner back into his cell. They would lock it again any minute now and open the next one.

———

Footsteps.

Just what he was waiting for.

Someone walking across the asphalt below, gravel dust.

He was sure of it, just around the corner of the building and coming closer, he would see a head and uniformed shoulders only a few meters below.

———

A woman. The guard bitch. The one that wasn’t much older than him, who’d opened his cell door every fucking day and wouldn’t leave until she’d got a good morning, the one he knew was named Julia.

She had no idea.

It was easy to jump. Leon landed just behind her, she didn’t even have time to turn around before he was up again and had hit her hard on the back of the head with his hand. She fell to the ground, he pulled her up again by the hair, the sharp piece of metal against her throat.

“Three steps forward.”

She didn’t move. She’d heard him, he knew. He pressed the hard sharpness against her skin, a superficial cut that started to bleed.

“Three steps forward!”

They were in exactly the right place. A bit farther down, a bit farther away, right in front of the cell window. The bastard guards would be able to see her clearly.

He pressed the piece of metal harder again, she had to feel it and do what he wanted her to do.

He whispered in her ear.

“You’re not going die. Not yet.”

They both looked up at a cell window on the first floor, D1 Left, that didn’t look like the others as it had a big hole in it.

A few minutes. Maybe one more.

Then they heard it, the voice that screamed
search
at them, followed by the rattling of keys and the creaking of the cell door being opened.

A few seconds of silence.

“Come out with your hands up!”

Silence again and
come out, for Christ’s sake
feet running in and stopping and then going over to the window.

“You up there! Stand fucking still!”

Two faces framed by the hole in the window, he took another step forward, pushing her in front of him, pulling back her head so they could see the sharp metal against the delicate skin.

“Cell 9!”

More feet on their way into the cell, heavier than before.

“Get him to come here.”

Leon grabbed hold of Julia Bozsik’s neck and hair, jolted her back as he moved the piece of metal from her throat to the back of her left thigh, stabbed hard and cut deep and then he put the bloody metal to her throat again.

“Cell 9! Now!”

———

He held the piece of metal to her throat and could feel with his thumb that her pulse was racing. His other hand was on her forehead and hairline and she was already wet with sweat, he felt the intoxication surge through him, the heat that became a flush, the lightness and air in his chest, his cock getting hard.

His hand was shaking and he couldn’t control it even though that’s exactly what he was, in control.

———

The bastard was still standing in the window.

“Now!”

And Leon drew yet another line across the already bloody throat.

“
Now
!”

And another one.

Then he saw it. Alex’s face peering out through the square hole.

“He’s coming out! He’s coming here!”

Leon moved back a couple of steps—the metal still against her throat—so he could see better when Alex climbed up onto the window sill, gathering himself to jump, and then suddenly changed his mind, turned around and went back into the cell, grabbed the coffee pot from the machine, and smashed it against the guard’s face, a horizontal movement to the one cheek that was likely to slice through it. Suddenly you could see teeth and a bit of the tongue through the white slash in the skin and it took a few seconds before it started to bleed.

———

The guard with the gashed cheek was supposed to stand still in the window.

He didn’t.

So Leon pressed the piece of metal harder and it cut from the inside when she gasped and then fainted, fell back head first. He lifted her up by the hair and when he looked up at the guard who was supposed to listen to him, he was sure he could see his cheekbone sticking out through the wound and the white enamel of his back teeth reflecting the light from the bedside lamp.

“Cell 12!”

If life was in danger
.

“Right now.”

The metal deep into the back of her thigh again.

“Cell 12!”

If life was in danger—play along, not against
.

“He’s on his way.”

The prison warden whose cheek was now red with blood moved over and Leon saw Marko’s face in his stead—he jumped, as Alex had just done.

———

“I’ll cut her throat if you even try!”

———

He was about to turn around and take the first steps toward central security when he heard something hammering against another window a few cells down, again and again, hard, desperate. That face. Smackhead and his fucking hands that were now waving around in the air.

And my price
? Leon was reminded of something he intended to forget.
I want my half kilo
. The hands frantically banging on the bars and the window.
You want to be part of this? Or what
? And the lips that were trying to say something.
Two hundred and fifty. If I’m in
.
The hands that hammered and the exaggerated lip movements of that fucking ugly mouth.
Right, you’re in
. He could see it now, at least he thought he could, the lips forming the words, “I’m supposed to be coming with you!”

He pressed the sharp edge harder in the guard bitch’s throat and turned around, pushing her in front of him, Alex and Marko right behind, he could almost hear the fuckers running through the passageway underneath his feet, twenty members of the task force leaving the unit and heading to central security, trying to get there before him.

———

The door in the first inner wall was monitored by a camera at face height and Leon looked up into it, and made sure that the light from the two lamps shone on her throat, so that what was pressed against it would flash.

———

The door in the second internal wall was larger, wider, with a camera installed high up and it was already open by the time they got there, he pushed her in front of him, toward central security and the big main gate.

———

The young prison warden on duty in the central security glass box this afternoon had watched on monitor after monitor the four people move from Block D over the prison yard, through the two doors to the window in front of him, a face pressed up to it, with a throat bleeding from several deep cuts.

If life is in danger
.

Her eyes, they looked straight at him, through him.

If you believe that a hostage-taker is prepared to carry out his threats
.

She was so frightened, she could easily have been him.

If the hostage-taker demands to be released, then you have to open the door, in order to save lives
.

It was hard to press the button, his trembling fingers had no strength and the prisoner standing behind her holding the metal to her throat banged her head against the glass several times until the warden put one hand on top of the other and pressed with both. He pressed and pressed until the main gate, which was several meters wide, slowly started to slide open. Then he sat completely still and watched them disappear out through the gate and across the parking place and along the road to the church, his colleague limping badly, and they pushed and shoved and pulled her, four bodies merging with the shadows, getting smaller and more blurred as they got closer to the other community, the one outside.

She was missing a word. She tried and tried to find the right
word to make sense of what she was feeling but it didn’t exist. She had never experienced such pain before. A burning, stabbing, breathless pain, at the back of her left thigh, where her uniform pants were torn and bloody.

For so long, she had been frightened of the aggression that might explode at any moment. Now, with the piece of metal making small cuts on her throat, she wasn’t frightened anymore. She was furious. The feeling that she always had to hide in order to avoid seeing and feeling now suddenly turned to rage, she didn’t even notice that her leg no longer held her, that she collapsed.

———

The bitch was suddenly heavier when he tried to straighten her up. She fell to the ground. He screamed
get up you bitch
, and she whispered
never call me bitch again
, and he looked at her leg and kicked her exactly where the metal had cut her.

———

Julia wasn’t sure whether she was awake or asleep, whether someone pulled her by the arms, dragged her over the asphalt road toward the churchyard and the small parking place there, whether someone opened the back door of a car and pushed her down onto the backseat.

If that was the case, then it wasn’t her standing by, watching.

———

Leon opened the trunk and checked that what was supposed to be there was there—the stepladder, the arc torch, the rifle, the replica and the ones they needed now, each wrapped in a towel: a Sig Sauer and a Tokarev. He sat down beside the bitch in the backseat when the first police car sped by—sirens, blue lights, on its way to Aspsås prison—they waited in the seclusion of the church parking lot until it had passed, then started slowly to drive into the small town of Aspsås, finally accelerating when they left the last houses behind.

He’d taken a firm hold of one of her arms and taped it to the other after she managed to reach the handle on the back door and open it. His first blow hit her on the nose and mouth. She let go and he pulled the door shut, grabbed hold of her arms, held them and taped them together, hard. Her wrists and fingers, thighs and feet, and it was when he was going to put the first piece over her mouth that she bit him on the back of his hand, her teeth sinking in deep. He hit her for the second time, across the jaw and ear, a third punch to her forehead, a fourth on her chin, and then he pulled off her shoes and socks, rolled the dark fabric into a ball and forced it into her mouth, taped over her bloody lips bit by bit.

“I’m done.”

A lay-by at the edge of a wood, overlooking a lake, they stopped but left the motor running, carried her around to the trunk, closed it and swapped places, Leon now in the driver’s seat as they set off again at high speed.

———

She lay on her side. Her head hit against the metal every time the car stopped or took a corner or accelerated. Julia kept her eyes closed at first, but opened them again, darkness, there wasn’t any difference. The tape and the socks, but most of all fear, she retched when she tried to breathe in air.

They were all shouting at each other, three youthful voices that had been in the prison for about as long as she had, who had frightened her and made her long to get away. People who were close to her had warned her about what could happen—and now it had. Her mom had given
her a lift on the first morning and still met her in the visitors’ parking lot after every shift. At some point during the week her dad always managed to leave new four-color brochures from universities and colleges on the kitchen table in her apartment. Jocke held her hand a little tighter, lay a little closer when they slept.

The car braked more suddenly than before, lurched more violently and she hit her head against the wall of the trunk; they had left the main road and were driving on a smaller one now.

She tried to see again but saw nothing, tried to smell but smelled nothing, she listened but they weren’t shouting as loudly anymore. The trunk felt like a coffin and she was shaking and lost all feeling, first in her toes, then her feet, then her lower leg.

Her knees had gone to sleep when the car stopped.

She had tried to count, lost it twice when the pain took all her attention, but she figured nineteen right-hand turns, seventeen left-hand turns, and forty-three slowdowns. They didn’t say anything at all when they closed three doors at the same time, hurried footsteps, and her eyes, everything was brilliant white when they opened the trunk, it was hard to see their faces, but she could see something red behind them, she was sure of it, the edge of
another
wall around
another
prison.