The Other Son by Alexander Söderberg Read Free Book Online Page A

experience new things. But it wasn’t as good as it used to be. He no longer gained the same satisfaction from it. The excitement didn’t give him the same rush, and the life he had chosen as a smuggler had started to seem repetitive, uninteresting, even dull.
    It shouldn’t be like that. But that was how it felt, which made him feel rather sad. What was he going to do after this? Nothing could match the life he had lived over the past twenty years.
    The copilot offered him a roll-up. Jens took it, even though he’d given up a while back. He lit the cigarette with the copilot’s gold lighter, then slid into the glazed nose section.
    It was pitch-black outside and the cigarette tasted of hay and caught angrily in his throat. The plane was lurching in the wind, the roar of the engines rose and fell, the paneling rattled and clattered, and the rivets creaked. But Jens was used to it, and trusted in God and a bit of goodwill to hold the plane together.
    They had left Dushanbe two days before, crossing Turkmenistan and Turkey, then following a southwesterly arc across Africa, flying the last stretch on fumes before refueling and spending the night in western Algeria. Then an unsteady and turbulent flight across the Atlantic to Central America.
    It was solid night outside. Jens rolled with the pitch of the plane and tried to see any landmarks but could make out nothing but the weak flash of the plane’s navigation lights and clouds drifting past.
    Eventually they approached the ground with all lights extinguished. He could see a few lights on the ground below them, but otherwise everything was dark. That was good. They were arriving without clearance—the plan was to come down on a landing strip without being noticed, then take off again.
    The wheels unfolded from the body of the plane. There was a creaking, banging sound before they locked into position. The increased air resistance was noticeable as the machine forced its way forward with its engines roaring at top speed.
    Jens could see the contours of the ground, mountains on either side etched against the dark sky, narrow roads, trees, small villages. Occasionally a few houses clustered together, vanishing quickly beneath him. The Mexican countryside, nothing more, nothing less.
    The ground leveled out and the copilot opened the flaps to maximum. The air resistance increased still further and the plane seemed to just hang in midair. There was a makeshift barely lit landing strip beneath them. The Antonov tilted forward slightly. Suddenly it dived thirty meters and then leveled out again. The noise of the engines disappeared as the copilot eased off the gas. They hovered silently for a few seconds before the wheels hit the ground. There was a hard thud, then another brief, soundless period of flight before another thud, then gravity kicked in and held the plane to the ground. The machine raced across the uneven surface and the roaring sound came back as the pilot reversed the engines and the plane braked in a cloud of sand and dust. They came to a halt, slightly askew, and the engines were switched off. Silence, except for a whining tinnitus sound in Jens’s head.
    When the plane came to a halt, Jens crept out of the nose. The copilot was already standing by the loading ramp, and he pressed a button on the side of the plane. The entire rear section of the plane opened up like a massive jaw.
    The air that streamed in was warm, soft, and dry.
    Mexico, he’d never been to Mexico before….
    The headlights of three vehicles approached along the landing strip. He glanced at his watch. The Americans were clearly early. Time to get going. Jens and the copilot loosened the straps from the large crates.
    The vehicles stopped abruptly below the ramp. A gang of armed Mexicans in modern military uniform stormed into the plane. The copilot was hit first. Before he could come up with anything practical, Jens was struck on the cheek by the butt of a rifle, then again on the side of