Firewall by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online

hoped that Sergei was doing the same.
    I headed east out of Helsinki, toward the highway. The RV was at Vaalimaa, over one hundred miles away.
    I hit the seek button on the radio and turned up the volume to drown out the noise of the heater. I drove, thinking about everything and nothing. Twice I saw the flashing lights of a heli.
    Eventually I passed the Vaalimaa service station. This was truckers' heaven, the final stop before Russia. They used it as a meeting point so that they could move on in convoy. Hijacking was rife in the Motherland. In among them, somewhere, was our vehicle, with welded compartments for us all to play Us.
    Vaalimaa was just a few miles from Sergei's tame checkpoint. Six miles north of the town was the lakeside house.
    I turned off the radio and reached into the glove compartment for the digital scanner, which Sergei had tuned into the police channel. It was about the size of a cell phone. The plan had been to use it from the time we exited Helsinki. That was another reason I needed Sergei: He spoke Finnish.
    I tried to make sense of the squelchy radio traffic, but didn't have a clue what I was listening to. What I was hoping not to hear was, "Volvo, Volvo, Volvo," because then it would be odds on that I had a one-way ticket to havoc.
    I checked every turnout and minor gravel road for any hint of activity.
    There was nothing.
    My lights hit the marker I was looking for, Mailbox 183, a red plastic pedal bin on a white pole. I turned right, onto a deeply rutted track that led into the forest.
    It was only a few hours since we'd last driven up it. About thirty feet in, a white-painted chain, suspended between two poles, barred the way. Attached to it was a wooden sign saying, in Finnish, Fuck Off, Private Property.
    I left the engine running and got out of the car, checking in the headlights for recent sign of another vehicle. The compacted ice was giving very little away.
    I looked carefully at the point where the last link of the chain was looped over a hook screwed into the right-hand pole, but could see nothing in the shadow cast by the Volvo's headlights. I took the weight of the chain so the first links came loose and pulled gently. I could feel the pressure of the cotton that still fastened it to the hook, and then the sudden pressure release as it broke. No one had been through here who shouldn't have.
    I drove over the chain, then jumped out and replaced it. To the side, under a pile of stones, the reel of cotton thread was just where I'd left it. I tied the first link to the hook again, replaced the reel and got back in the car.
    The pines were so tall and close to the track it was like driving through a tunnel. After a thousand feet the trees retreated, leaving a stretch of open ground about the size of four football fields. I knew that in the summer it was all grass and tree stumps because there were framed pictures of it in the house, but now everything was covered by a three-foot-deep blanket of snow.
    The driveway dipped slightly and the two-story house was caught in the beam of my headlights. There were no lights on inside, no vehicles outside.
    The driveway led to a wooden garage with enough room for three cars.
    Both buildings were made of timber and painted dark red with white window frames, and wouldn't have looked out of place in the Yukon during the Gold Rush.
    I drove into the garage. A huge stack of firewood filled the whole of the back wall. A door on the far left led to the other side of the house and the lake.
    I killed the engine, and for the first time in hours there was almost total silence. No gunfire, shouts, sirens, helos, or car heaters, just low-volume hiss and mush as Finnish police talked Finnish police stuff on the scanner. I didn't really want to move.
    The entrance was in the gable end of the main building, and the key was hidden in the log pile-very original. I went inside and was hit by wonderful warmth. The heaters worked off the electrical supply and we'd left