The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

officers and then the second escort troop, this too consisting of two officers and twenty soldiers.

      Usually the route would follow Nybroplan, Hamngatan, Regeringsgatan, reaching Norrbro bridge via Gustav Adolfs torg, then Skeppsbron to the Palace. But because the bridge is closed for repairs an alternative route was chosen, via Kungsträdgårdsgatan and crossing the water by Strömbron instead.

      When HP had finally received his instructions, he knew at once that this assignment was more difficult by an order of magnitude than any he had carried out before. There was a risk of him getting caught, and if he did he would have considerably more trouble with the judicial system than for switching off a clock, spray-painting a door or removing a few wheel nuts. This here was some serious shit, and he didn’t exactly have an unblemished criminal record to fall back on. He’d end up behind bars for this if anything went wrong …

      Really he should have turned it down, but he could already feel the excitement bubbling inside him. This would provide fucking good pictures. World class stuff, maybe clip of the week material! He’d never heard of anyone doing anything like it, so he’d be the first. And he couldn’t just back out of a challenge like that.

       An offer you can’t refuse …

      It would be important to plan the operation carefully. Complete the assignment, get good pictures and find some way of getting away without anyone working out who he was. He thought he had a pretty good idea of how it could work but he needed to get a few things together.

       When the first escort troop was level with Wahrendorffsgatan, Wolff noted from his position in the procession that an object was rolled out towards them from somewhere in the crowd of onlookers along the left-hand pavement. The object appeared to be some sort of metal cylinder, somewhat reminiscent of a can of spray-paint, and it stopped in the middle of the front part of the troop, whereupon a number of horses jerked and caused some anxiety in the ranks.

      The Goat’s moped was a stroke of genius. HP had borrowed it before and his amiable neighbour and court supplier had never been interested in what he wanted it for.

      ‘Just take it, no problem, here’s the key,’ was as usual the response he got, and half an hour later he nicked a decent black helmet with a dark visor from a motorbike parked in the square down at Medborgarplatsen.

      He’d checked the route of the cortège on the net, then he went down to do a recce and came to the conclusion that the end of Wahrendorffsgatan was the best place to carry out the assignment.

      The whole cortège would have made it into Kungsträdgårdsgatan by then, and with a bit of luck both the Kong and Her Mayonnaise the Queen would get to enjoy a proper funfair ride when his new M84 friend went off. Then he could head back up Wahrendorff, be at Nybroplan before you knew it, then up Birger Jarlsgatan and hard left into the Klara Tunnel, and from there he’d have plenty of options.

      He’d be back on safe territory on Södermalm before the suspect’s details had even got out, and by then he’d have ditched the black helmet in the water, and would have taken off his jacket and just be wearing a white t-shirt and the Goat’s basic red moped-helmet.

      No chance of anyone connecting him to the description of the suspect, and even if they did, so what?

      How much evidence would they have?

       Suddenly there was a powerful explosion and a flash of blinding light which together caused total chaos in the cortège. Most of the horses in the first troop, including Wolff’s, bolted at once, either along Kungsträdgårdsgatan or directly into Kungsträdgården itself.

       Wolff describes himself as a very capable rider, but the flash of light and explosion left him so stunned that he, along with the majority of the dragoons, was thrown off his horse at once and left lying on the pavement by Kungsträdgården.

       When he came to his senses a few moments later he observed that the horses pulling the carriage of His Majesty the King had reared up and were about to bolt. Instinctively he grabbed hold of the snaffle of one of the horses to help the driver calm them. This however did not succeed at first, and the carriage raced some twenty metres down Kungsträdgårdsgatan with Wolff hanging from the harness.

      Jesus what a fucking massive great explosion! Even though he’d thrown loads of flashbangs in Counterstrike and read about the effects on the net and even seen YouTube clips of the M84 in action, none of that came close to doing the little fucker full justice.

      Up with the switch, out with the pin and then just roll it in among the horses. Okay, a bit harder IRL than Online, but not that bad. Even though he had earplugs, sunglasses, and the visor pulled down, the blast and the flash of light still took his breath away. It was a bit like pressing pause on television, and the image freezes while the programme and the sound roll on behind it.

      He had to blink hard several times to shake the effect from his retinas and get his eyes back to real time. And what he saw exceeded all his expectations! The street was a fucking warzone! Beaten up riders everywhere, horses bolting, rearing up and generally going crazy. One horse went through the glass of one of the outdoor cafés, a couple of others mowed down one of the newly planted trees in the avenue in Kungsträdgården and carried on blindly into the park through a cluster of parked bicycles. People taking a Saturday stroll in the park had to leap out of the way of the panicked creatures to avoid getting run down or having their heads kicked in. People screaming, horses whinnying, kids crying and in the middle of all that one of the royal carriages came racing down the street with some bloke hanging off the side of one of the horses. It was like a Hollywood film, only better.

      Much, much better!

      HP couldn’t stop staring at the destruction, and it must have taken a good thirty seconds before he remembered that he had caused it and that it was probably high time to leave.

       After several minutes of chaos among wounded dragoons, horses and onlookers, it was ascertained that the explosion had been caused by a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’ and the royal and presidential couples were all uninjured, albeit shaken, and that there didn’t appear to have been any attack aimed at them specifically.

       See separate witness statement from Wolff for further details.

       When patrol 1054 arrived on the scene a dozen horses were still running loose in the area. At least fifteen members of the escorting troop and another seven onlookers were deemed by the paramedics to have injuries requiring immediate medical treatment, so Kungsträdgårdsgatan was blocked off in both directions and an evacuation operation with extra resources was put into action.

       Superintendent Nilsson assumed the role of head of the police operation at 12:04. On the advice of the Security Police vehicles were called from the Royal Stables and these, under escort from patrol cars 1920 and 1917, as well as members of the personal protection unit, took care of the onward transport of the royal party to Stockholm Palace.

      The pictures were brilliant! As well as his own, which were now almost razor-sharp and hardly moved at all, thanks largely to the new strap he had fashioned from an old rucksack, the Game Master had placed no fewer than two other cameramen in Kungsträdgården.

      How the hell they knew exactly where HP was going to strike he had no idea, but by this point he had ceased to be surprised at the reach of the Game. Maybe someone had followed him when he did his recce, or perhaps the mobile had a built-in GPS tracker? Whatever, the results exceeded all expectations and just a few hours later he was Mr Clip of the Week, Mr A Number One, and the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla.

      Television and the papers would be busy for at least a week and he laughed himself almost hare-lipped at all the so-called experts who pontificated about the perpetrator and the motives behind what had quickly become known as ‘the Kungsträdgården incident’.

      According to one of the evening tabloids he was a rightwing extremist, according to the other he was a leftwing activist, all depending on the ideological position of the paper in question.

      The