This Land is no Stranger Sarah Hollister (best biographies to read .txt) 📖

a very big dog, while you are unarmed, so I’d say the balance of power tips in his direction.”

Brand shook her head in frustration. “Why don’t Sami immigration lawyers carry firearms? Aren’t you guys natural targets for extremists and nut jobs?”

“The person most likely to be shot by your own gun is yourself,” Hammar said primly. “Besides I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

“You’re always attempting to provide evidence of that, yeah.”

“My hunting rifles are secured in a gun locker in my home.”

“Well, fuck,” Brand said, primarily because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She had not allowed her eyes to stray from the binoculars, still focused on the turnout where the Scania had pulled off the highway. The light had become too dim to see much of anything with the naked eye.

“They’re moving,” she said.

Brand had parked the Saab on a logging lane that ran up a small rise a couple of hundred meters to the east of the chalet. Without further discussion she and Hammar moved together down the slope through a snow-locked stand of graceful fir trees. They closed in on the chalet from the east. Moro and his blond beast handler, Dollar Boy, were approaching from the west.

As she slipped and slid down the slope towards the river, Brand’s mind raced, doubts dunning her at an insistent pitch. They were coming at it all wrong, she was convinced. Hammar shared a priority with Moro and Dollar Boy, to extract Varzha from the clutches of the traffickers. But the two Roma men would not stop there. They were bent on revenge, employing Fenrir as their method of terror.

“Krister,” she said, breathing hard from the exertion of plowing through the deep drifts. They halted beside the icy water edge, part frozen, part roiling with deathly rushing current beneath. A large crack threatened to split the river in two, a natural parting of the seas. The water looked black deep, making Brand shiver just to look at it.

“We have to split up,” she said. “You head off Moro and the kid. I’ll get into the chalet for the girl.”

“I have to confess I’m a little hesitant about confronting demon-dogs from Norse mythology,” Hammar said.

“It’ll be all right,” Brand responded. “Fenrir’s chained and wearing his muzzle.”

She pushed Hammar in an upriver direction while she turned toward the woods between the riverbank and the chalet. The strategy prompted more questions than it answered. Splitting forces in the face of the enemy was always portrayed as an ultimate mistake in warfare.

And what was the plan if she somehow managed to slip into the chalet without being detected? Scoop up the girl and run? They had been forced into one of the single worst decisions in any situation: well, we have to do something. Wouldn’t it be better if they just waited for everyone else to battle it out and then step in and pick up the pieces?

Brand half turned back toward the river to call out to Hammar when what she witnessed stopped her cold.

A black-masked figure materialized in the fading light. It seemed to levitate out of the woods to land on the river ice. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. An additional actor in the drama had appeared out of nowhere, on skis, wearing snow camouflage and hefting a sleek-looking battle axe.

The action went down in dead silence, Brand’s scream dying in her throat. A quick, monstrous swipe of the weapon, and the newcomer dropped Hammar where he stood. Brand felt the hit herself, falling to her knees in the snow, her breath knocked out of her. It had clearly been a death blow.

As if the first figure had magically cloned itself, a second identical one appeared, also flying through the air and landing expertly on skis.

It happened in an instant. With a single horrible, dismissive movement, the two commandos kick-shoved Hammar’s crumpled body into the river, dumping him as casually as if disposing of a bag of garbage between the sheets of ice. Brand heard the faint splash and saw the body disappear. The two figures whirled around and vanished back into the woods.

40.

Dr. Hira Nur examined the tiny cell phone carefully, before dropping it and smashing it with her foot. The sight of the device sent everyone’s head in a spin.

“You didn’t search her?” screamed the heavy-set Turkish man at Jarl Voss. He sounded panicked. “We’ve been set up!”

“No, Fevzi, no. It’s nothing. I’ll take care of this,” Voss said.

“We need to leave,” Hira Nur said to her partner.

The pair headed down the hallway to the chalet’s front room, leaving Jarl Voss behind to deal with the captive.

“The face,” Fevzi snarled back at Voss. “Mind the girl’s face!”

Jarl pushed Varzha back into the tiny bedroom, shoving her roughly onto the bed. He will kill me, she thought. The idea felt curiously irrelevant. She thought of Vago, and, oddly, of Luri, the Romani beggar who always took up a post near Varzha and her brother.

Her captor retrieved a plastic zip-cuff from his pocket and bound Varzha's hands tightly behind her back. “You’re still goods,” Jarl hissed at her furiously. The girl’s eyes seemed to show contempt, not fear, enraging him further. He tied her further and left her lying on the bed.

In the main room the Turks rushed to pack up. The handsome driver now avoided Jarl’s gaze.

“It’s not over,” protested Jarl.

“Do you think the little bitch didn’t use that fucking phone to contact the police?” Fevzi demanded. “They’re on their way here right now.”

“Bring out the girl,” Hira Nur said briskly. “We’re taking her with us. You can go to hell.”

“I checked that idiotic phone,” Jarl said. “There was no signal.”

Hira Nur pulled a handgun from her voluminous purse.

“Okay, okay,” Jarl said, raising his hands in surrender. He cursed himself for leaving his little automatic in the SUV.

As he turned down the hall to the bedroom he stopped short. A strange cackling noise erupted from some kind animal in the woods outside