Death Metal

“Out. Now. Facedown,” he yelled in English, which was one of the main languages of the nation.

In the relative silence, now that the engine had coughed and died, he could hear moaning from within the truck. There was no faking the sounds he heard. The impact of the crash and the results of his gunfire had disabled the threat within.

Weapon still leveled, he yanked open the driver’s door and stepped back quickly as the driver’s unconscious body spilled out onto the ground. He was covered in blood from wounds that were superficial and caused by glass. Somehow the burst of gunfire had miraculously missed his head and torso, but he was still out of the game.

Stepping over the musician and vaulting into the cab, Bolan found a figure lying across the back of the vehicle. He was the only other person in the truck. Bolan had a slim penlight in one of the slit pockets of the blacksuit, and with its aid he could see that the long-haired man lay at an odd angle, his arm twisted beneath him where the impact had dislocated his shoulder. His eyes were half-closed, unfocused.

There was no way he could get any intel from this man, either, not in the time Bolan would have. He pushed at the far side door; it was jammed solid. No chance of making an escape into the shadows then. He would have to risk the open road.

As the Executioner scrambled out of the truck, he was aware of approaching footsteps and turned to find some of the young men from the warehouse party, armed with wooden pallet stakes and chains. They stood at the head of the alley. Bolan could see that they had taken the women away from the area of conflict before arming themselves and, despite their obvious nerves, were sticking together.

He had to admire their courage, which he wouldn’t have expected, but there was no time for explanations or niceties.

“You speak English, right?” he barked as he leveled his weapon at them. “If I set this on rapid fire, you all go down before you take two steps. You back off, and you’re fine.”

He waited, muscles tense and straining to move as he heard the sirens grow nearer. The young men did not answer him; glances among them betrayed their fear.

Bolan stepped forward slowly, allowing them time to react. For a moment he thought he would have to fire a warning burst to convince them, but as he got closer, they melted away, backing off.

“Wise move, guys. They’re alive back there. Get the police to ask them about Count Arsneth.”

Moving backward so that he could keep his face to them, the soldier moved down the road. He was heading toward the sirens, but he was banking on his words having an effect on the group.

Curiosity, bewilderment and the subconscious desire not to risk death held sway. The group of young metalheads moved toward the truck.

With relief that he hadn’t needed any more punitive measures, Bolan turned and ran, angling toward the next narrow alley leading onto the main drag. His progress was not being watched, and the authorities were not yet within sight. With luck—something that had treated him erratically this night—he could melt into the dark and effect an escape.

It was risky trying to direct the police to Arsneth’s real murderer but inevitable. He was sure that once the authorities found the corpse of the merc Bolan had taken down, then the dead guy’s true identity would open up a whole can of worms.

Time was getting tighter.

* * *

BOLAN MADE IT BACK to his hotel room without further incident. The gates to the docks had been manned by the authorities on their arrival, but the rest of the perimeter fence had been ignored. Weaving his way through the dark side roads until he was as far from the gates as he could get, he had easily scaled the fence. There was a risk it was wired to set off an alarm, but the area was so quiet that he could take that chance. Police patrols had not spread out, allowing the soldier time to blend into the town without being observed.

Now he showered. There was little point in hurrying. He had no vehicle and would have to wait until morning before hiring a car. If the truck that had escaped carried the GPS, then Kurtzman would be on it. If not, Bolan was back to where he had started.

That could get complicated, and he might have to pull some strings. If he was going to get necessary rest before starting the next phase, then he needed to know. Once out of the shower, he hit a speed-dial number on his smartphone.

“Striker, you’re in Trondheim, and your tracker isn’t. What went wrong?”

Bolan filled him in on the evening’s events. Bolan was already relieved, as Kurtzman’s first words had determined Bolan’s course of action.

A course that would be made easier by the fact that the target truck was headed for Oslo, and not on the main highway to the north and the Finnish border. Why? That was the question. It could be that the enemy knew they had suffered casualties and sought additional men for the raid on the bunker. If so, that might give the soldier a lead. He asked Kurtzman to send him any intel on far-right groups and black metal bands within the city, particularly those with some link to Count Arsneth’s band.

It was a place to start. As Bolan settled to the complete blackout that was sleep, a fleeting thought crossed his mind: if the band needed that much manpower, then who were they expecting to meet on the way?

* * *

IT WAS EARLY MORNING when the black truck hit Oslo. The three men inside had made the journey in silence. No one in the second truck was answering cell phone calls, and the guys in the black truck had received no communication as to why.

Seb knew that Milan had been right. Someone had been spying on them, and whomever it was had in some way stopped the truck. Milan was good. Whoever had taken him out had to be a professional. It was imperative that they pick up more men.

It was only when they pulled up at a neat and tidy suburban house on the outskirts of the city that Seb finally spoke.

“We need another truck. Men, too. You need to know that, if they have stopped Milan and your bandmates, then they are good. You must be ready to fight.”

Visigoth sniffed hard. “Maybe they will not be at the bunker. Maybe they need to follow us to find it.”

Seb nodded. “That would make sense. In which case, we have lost them for now. At least we will be prepared.”

The three men got out of the truck and walked across the deserted street to the front of the house. They were expected; the door opened before they were halfway up the drive. They were greeted by a shaved-headed man in black, with Celtic tattoos showing beneath his black T-shirt.

“Good. You are here. There’s something you need to see,” he said without preamble.

Seb realized what he meant when he saw the news channel tuned to on the flat-screen TV.

* * *

BOLAN SLEPT FOR a few hours, then rose and checked out of his hotel before renting a vehicle with a credit card under his Matthew Cooper alias. He tuned the car radio to a station that broadcast in English, but the altercation in Trondheim was not big enough news, so he selected a Norwegian station and struggled with the language before giving up and driving for a while in silence.

As he traveled, he thought about what he had heard in the warehouse before the firefight had kicked off. It was pretty clear that the mercs and at least one of the band members had been to the bunker. He thought it likely that the two remaining members of Abaddon Relix had been there and had joined their dead friends in Valhalla. In which case, why train the Norwegians for a firefight? Were they actually expecting opposition when they went back to the bunker to transport the ordnance, or was it precautionary?

The Russians were keen to get their weapons back. The fact that they hadn’t gone straight in as soon as the first video had appeared on YouTube suggested that any record of its location had been destroyed—either accidentally or with force—when glasnost had happened. So they would be in the same position as the soldier: reliant on piecing together clues from what had appeared online, or else identifying and following the Norwegians.

He had been unaware of anyone else in Trondheim who could be following his line of thinking but could only preclude it at his own risk.

There were a lot of unknown factors at present: Who, if anyone, was following? What were the Russians planning? Who were the terrorist groups vying for the ordnance? Was the bunker manned or deserted? And if manned, then by whom? The big question hanging over all of this was simple: what did they want the ordnance for?

This made planning difficult. Covering all possibilities for an offensive or defensive battle when the circumstances, the motives, were so ill defined was almost impossible. The only thing he could do was to keep it simple: follow and intercept at the point of pickup, dealing with eventualities if and when they arose.

Bolan would have been happier with a larger armory at his disposal than the one he currently carried. If possible, he would gather more along the way.

He stopped for coffee and to call Stony Man when he neared Oslo. Researching for the mission, he had found that 90 percent of the population growth in Norway over the last decade was due to immigration, and that the city with the largest portion of immigrants was Oslo. This would explain the resurgence of fascism in black metal activism and in general. Coming from America—a land built on immigrants in search of a better way of life—it seemed a strange attitude. But Europe had always had pockets of insular thinking, and when times were hard, that thinking became more hard-line.

Kurtzman was businesslike this morning. There was no time for the usual pleasantries. He gave Bolan a GPS setting to put in the rental car’s navigation system that would take him to where the black truck was parked. Bear also informed the soldier that the Trondheim authorities were holding two men recovered from the scene in connection with the death of Count Arsneth.

Bolan nodded to himself. The partygoers had understood Bolan, and his gamble had paid off. The warehouse used by Asmodeus had not been identified, but the dead man had: Milan Millevich, a Bosnian by birth who had long-standing right-wing affiliations, and was linked to an Estonian group called Freedom Right.

“Any intel on them?” Bolan queried.

“We found out some small-scale bombings and bank raids in their homeland have been attributed to the group, but more recently they’ve been forging links in Scandinavia. Nothing big up to now.”

“But this could be their entry into the big leagues,” Bolan mused. “Not if I can help it, Bear.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Why have we come here?” Visigoth asked. “Why not just head out and meet up along the way?”