The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [116]
“We have hostages to consider,” he said, “and we are faced with an armed opponent who is probably capable of anything.”
In the next moment he swore at a driver who apparently hadn’t noticed the patrol car’s flashing lights and sirens. Andersson swerved expertly and drove on the wrong side of a highway divider in order to advance more quickly.
They spotted the Scania at a parking lot approximately one kilometer from the prison. Kristian Andersson braked, turned off his siren, and passed the truck slowly but could not see a person inside. One hundred meters on he made a U-turn while Bark contacted central dispatch.
They knew that when an inmate facing a long incarceration escaped, he was usually nervous. Inmates serving ten years who saw a chance to escape were not afraid to use any means when in a tight situation. But after two or three days on the run, hunted by police and with their faces in every newspaper, hungry, thirsty, and cold, they tended to become more cooperative. So the initial phase of an escape was often the most critical.
Kristian Andersson instructed Bark to remain in the car and stay in touch with the team at headquarters, which had hastily been assembled, then he stepped out of the car and took out his weapon.
The tarp on the back of the truck fluttered. A red Amazon drove up at slow speed. The driver, an older man, stared at him and swerved in the direction of the ditch for a moment before he regained control of the car.
“Make sure to close the road to traffic!” Andersson shouted, before he carefully approached the truck. He kept to the side of the road, came to a bus shelter and stayed there for several seconds. Nothing was happening at the truck.
He jumped a low fence into a private garden, crossed a raspberry patch where the occasionally berry could still be seen, stepped into the adjacent lot and came increasingly closer to the truck.
Partly obscured by a bush, he stared through an open door into the empty cab. A shoe lay on the asphalt. The truck was abandoned. The inmates and their rescuer had fled. Kristian Andersson looked around and discovered two faces in the window of a house some fifteen meters back on the lot. He instinctively fell down on one knee and raised his gun.
Kristian Andersson let out a curse. The thorns of a gooseberry bush scraped his hands and for a moment he was transported to the garden of his childhood home at the foot of Kinnekulle hill. Harvest time. Currents, gooseberries, and raspberries. White plastic bins and buckets, insects and thorns.
The couple in the window were staring intently at him as if they were waiting for him to act. He could make out the woman’s gray hair, and the dark frames of her glasses made her look like an owl. They probably had nothing to do with the escape. They were simply afraid.
Andersson rose up and ran doubled-over up to the door of the house and felt the handle. It was unlocked. He entered and called out that they should remain calm and move away from the window.
“Have you seen anything?” he shouted and walked into the hall. The woman appeared. She looked much younger than his initial impression, perhaps around forty-five.
“They jumped into a car,” she said.
“What kind of a car?”
“A van,” the man said, who had now joined them in the hall.
“Color and make?”
“Blue,” the man said. “Maybe American. What is going on? Has there been a burglary?”
Kristian Andersson left the house and the couple’s questions and ran back to the patrol car. Sune Bark was talking agitatedly into the dispatch. Andersson grabbed the microphone from him.
Forty-Seven
The fugitives abandoned their blue van at the edge of a forest just west of Norrtälje. Two cars were waiting for them there: a Volvo that looked to be in bad shape, and a newer Audi. Björnsson and Brügger jumped into the Audi, while José Franco