Death Metal

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?”

Seb looked up from the laptop, which displayed maps of the northern Karelia region.

“We need to pick up another vehicle, plus additional men and brief them,” he said shortly. “More than that, we need to make sure no one is following us.”

“We didn’t see anyone,” Visigoth continued in a whining tone.

“Yeah, and now you know they were there when we left the warehouse,” Seb said, sneering. “These people are professionals. You’re not likely to spot them.”

“So we wait and see if they attack us here?” Hades interjected. “Where we’re in a position of strength and not in the open? Then move on?” He looked at Seb like an eager puppy, keen to prove his ability to think tactically.

“You know, you could learn a lot from your friend,” Seb said, directing the comment at Visigoth. “He picks things up quickly.”

Hades looked pathetically pleased at these words of praise, and Visigoth shot him a look of pure loathing, feeling as though he had obscurely been condemned.

Seb left them to their petty jealousies and returned to the maps. Milan had already planned their route, but he was dead and things had changed. If there were alternatives, then it would be good to have them as backup. And while Seb had understood the reasoning behind using the Norwegians for the pickup, that too had changed. Now there were only two of them and one professional. More bodies were needed for logistics, and the possibility of combat had made it essential that they were trained and experienced.

If anything Seb now felt that they would be carrying the Norwegians, rather than using them effectively. If only he could dispose of them without causing some ripples of discontent. Unfortunately the black metal scene in Norway was close-knit, and their disappearance without explanation would endanger links and lines of communication that were invaluable to Seb’s group in their current situation. The brief given to Milan and himself had been simple: secure the ordnance, keep the locals sweet, but never lose sight of the bigger picture.

As they were in the house of Erik Manus, who owned and produced for the largest black metal specialist recording company, Seb was in exactly the wrong place to attend to that bigger picture.

Moreover, Manus—who was currently preparing a meal for them—was a relatively well-known figure in what was otherwise an underground and secretive scene. His status made him a key link in the chain, but his profile made him the most risky in circumstances like this.

Seb checked his watch. Thirty-three minutes had passed since he had called for backup. How long did it take them, for Christ’s sake?

* * *

BOLAN DROVE PAST twice to get a good look at the place. This was a fairly affluent suburb, and the houses were spaced widely apart. Circling the block he could see that the houses had large yards and gardens that were not easily accessible. If he had to go in through the back, it would take time he could ill afford. However, that very space gave them a great deal of privacy. By now it was almost midmorning, and on each pass he noticed that there were few people about. So few that he was a little concerned that his car would be noticed on its second pass. He had chosen a nondescript vehicle in order to blend in as much as possible, but when there was nothing to blend with, then that became irrelevant.

The black truck was off to one side of the house, by itself. Bolan parked a couple hundred yards back and got out of his car, appearing to check an imaginary fender dent while he took a good look up and down the street.

Under his coat he had the micro Uzi SMG, Beretta 93R and grenades that he had carried the previous night. He also carried a Benelli M3T combat shotgun with folding stock that he had stashed in his case, and which fit nicely beneath the heavy overcoat covering his blacksuit. With seven rounds in the tube magazine and one in the chamber, its double O buckshot .33 caliber pellets, with twenty-seven in each round, made it a weapon that was less than subtle but extremely useful in enclosed spaces where he may be outnumbered.

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