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The suppressor couldn’t completely silence the gunshot, but it did an excellent job of diminishing the loudness.
CRACK.
The first snowman’s ‘head’ exploded into a shower of white chunks.
I ejected the brass casing and put it in my pocket so I wouldn’t leave it behind for some nosy policeman to find. Then I walked another 300 feet so I was 600 feet away from my targets. I lay down and made my adjustments –
CRACK!
The second snowman disintegrated.
I repeated the process at 1000 and 2500 feet. At those distances, I had to use the range finder.
Both snowmen exploded on my first shot.
Once I was satisfied with the rifle’s accuracy, I shot off a few rounds with the Glock just to make sure it was functioning properly. The suppressor worked nicely, muffling the gunshots to a dull POP.
After I was finished, I gathered all the brass casings and trudged back to the BMW, where I hid the casings under a floor mat. I carefully stowed the guns and replaced the cargo cover. My guess was that the guns weren’t licensed to ‘Lars Kinberg,’ so if the police caught me with them, I would be in big trouble. Best to keep everything out of sight.
It was starting to get dark. This far north, the light began to fade around 1PM, and the overcast sky wasn’t helping matters – so I called it a day and drove 30 minutes north to Kirkenes.
The town was small, with maybe a hundred houses almost identical in construction: two stories with symmetrical sloped roofs. They all appeared to be at least 50 years old and varied in color, from white to red to bright yellow.
Everything sat on a bay, with snowy mountains and pine forests flanking the water. The best part about it, though, was how the lights glowed in the windows of the houses like beacons of warmth in the twilight.
It would have been pretty as a postcard…
If I weren’t there to kill someone.
I checked into my hotel – one of the town’s few modern buildings, all glass and boxy lines – and left the guns in the SUV. I doubted anyone would break in and steal them. I also figured I would attract far more attention by trying to transport the rifle bag, which looked very much like a gun was inside it.
After I dropped off my duffel bag in my room, I walked down the street to find a restaurant. After freezing my ass off for five minutes, I chose a mom-and-pop diner and enjoyed a meal of hearty stew.
If you weren’t in Kirkenes to ice fish, there were only a couple of other attractions: the Northern Lights and ice hotels. The Northern Lights were only visible when the weather was clear, so the overcast sky ruled that out.
Ice hotels were entire buildings built from blocks of ice, with elaborate ice sculptures in the lobby and luxurious furs to sleep on in the rooms. Since ice hotels were a tourist attraction – and not really conducive to keeping a low profile – I could see why Alistair hadn’t booked me a room in one.
Instead, I retired early to my hotel room, where I stared at my cell phone and wished I could talk to Rachel. I watched a bad action movie on TV and fell asleep around 10.
I woke at 5 AM, did my calisthenics, and showered. Then I walked through the cold and dark to the same restaurant from the night before and loaded up on a breakfast of porridge and fried eggs.
Back in the hotel room, I packed my clothes in case I got lucky and finished the job on the first day. Then I carried my bag to the BMW, checked the guns were still there, and headed out.
According to the dossier, Hans Solberg had a vacation home on the outskirts of Kirkenes. The mansion sat on 100 acres of land and was bordered by a dense forest of pine trees.
Rather than attack the house and face God knows how many armed bodyguards, I decided to lie in wait.
I parked on a service road that bordered the property, dressed in the white snow gear, and pulled out the rifle bag and Glock. Then I trudged through the snowy woods until I reached the frozen shore.
Kirkenes was about ten miles inland from the Barents Sea, the last major body of water before you reached the Arctic Ocean. The area around Kirkenes included a series of fjords – long, deep, narrow bodies of water that extended far inland from the coast. In the winter and early spring, the surface of the fjords froze to a depth of 5 to 7 inches. That much ice was considered safe for snowmobiles, so I wasn’t worried about it supporting my weight.
I walked along the frozen shore until I saw the mansion in the distance. Then I lay down in a snowbank, arranged my rifle, and settled in to wait.
I looked through my scope at the three-story house. A long wooden walkway led from the rear doors down to the frozen lake.
About 50 feet from the shore stood a large plastic hut to shelter fishermen from the worst of the cold. A lot of people used portable heaters to warm up the interior.
Though I had zero interest in ice fishing, I could vaguely understand the appeal. It was a meditative experience… calming… a way to disconnect from the stress of everyday life.
