Death Metal. Don Pendleton

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      * * *

      BOLAN TOOK OUT his anger by pushing himself harder when the sun came up. The beauty of the Colorado landscape around him did much to take his mind from the idiocy he had seen the night before.

      As a soldier he was used to coming up against ideologies that were opposed to his own in the course of combat. That was fine; that was war. He was used to the venality of the criminal mind that would seek to oppress others for its own end. That was fine; there had always been men like that, always would be, and that was why he kept fighting. But the kind of irrational stupidity that he had seen, shapeless and formless, that could almost by accident threaten the innocent and unsuspecting? That was something that angered him.

      He ran all day, breaking for water, food and rest at regular intervals. His anger spurred him on so that he covered fifty klicks more than on the day before. He used it to drive his body and tried not to think. That was the worst of it. On a mission he was working to an end. With the Abaddon Relix situation, he had no input; although if Kurtzman was right, it might not be that way for long.

      When he settled for the night and made camp, it was still playing on his mind. He waited until he had eaten and was ready to bed down for the night before once more breaking the silence of the Colorado evening with the noise pollution offered by YouTube.

      The clip of the bunker was missing. No amount of searches called it up. Most of the nonmusical Abaddon Relix material had also been taken down. He found references to the clip of the burning church, but that too had been removed.

      Someone had wanted all evidence of the bunker and of Abaddon Relix’s connection with the Norwegian group to be wiped. The question was who?

      Oddly he found this calmed his mind. Something out there was happening, and no way was it good. From frustration he found a sense of purpose flow through him.

      It looked like Kurtzman was on the money again.

      * * *

      BOLAN AWAKENED SHORTLY after dawn. No sooner had he started to rekindle the ashes of his campfire than he was interrupted by his smartphone.

      “Striker,” Hal Brognola said when Bolan accepted the call. “Something’s come up. Something urgent. Bear tells me you might have an inkling.”

      “Scandinavian climes, Hal? Good morning, by the way.”

      “Is it?” the big Fed growled. “I’m not so sure.”

      “I couldn’t see a link to the U.S., Hal—how the hell can we justify getting involved in this one?”

      Brognola chuckled. “Bear told me you weren’t a fan of death metal or black metal.”

      “I wouldn’t have put you down as one, either,” Bolan replied.

      “You’ve never met my nephew,” Brognola said, sighing.

      “A metal fan, obviously, but what has he got to do with this?”

      “Short answer? I buy him stuff, and it’s amazing how much you learn from product description. Florida has been a hotbed of this crap for years. Now they tend not to be the head-case political end of the spectrum down there. More the kind who have just watched too many gore films. But some of them get curious, and there have been tentative links to the far-right bands involved, which kind of links us to the far-right terrorist groups.”

      “That links it to the U.S.A., I’ll buy that. But a bunch of rivetheads and survivalists in the swamps aren’t a real threat.”

      “Of course not. But the Russians are. Word is that the Russian president has been ranting about how that bunker could have gone unrecovered for so long and how he wants that ordnance back where it belongs.”

      “With him, naturally—and we don’t want that, do we?”

      “We certainly don’t, Striker, and we also don’t want this to be official. I’ve had Stony Man GPS your cell phone, and there should be a chopper for you within an hour to bring you to Washington for a briefing. Maybe you should have taken that training schedule up to Alaska.”

      “Yeah, funny, Hal. Don’t give up your day job.”

      * * *

      SEVERANCE AND THE BARON were cold, tired and bored. There had been no word from the Count or from Jari—like everyone, they could never think of the Neanderthal by his band name, no matter what—and they had been expecting to get at least a call. Severance had tried to call them, but their cell phones were switched off. That could be for any reason.

      In truth what had actually gone down had never occurred to them. As they sat and shivered in the bunker, raiding those sections of the kitchen that Jari hadn’t trashed, running over possibilities between themselves, they figured that the silence was due to security and that the first they would see of their bandmates was when they walked through the bunker doors with the Norwegians.

      In between this speculation they moaned at length about how everything else in the bunker seemed to be working except the heating system. Any attempt to get it turned on did nothing more than set the air conditioner to chill the area even more. So they huddled in their blankets, drinking and waiting, hoping that the time would pass quickly and that they would be greeted as heroes by the Count, Jari and the Norwegians.

      It didn’t quite go as planned.

      Thirty-six hours after they had entered the bunker to guard it, they were awakened from a stupor by the signal that the entrance had been breached. They were sleeping in what had been the control room—a small office with a bank of monitors, only some of which were working, showing the interior of the bunker. Those connected to the outside cameras were blank, the weather having long since eroded their efficiency.

      The signal was a regular pulse, accompanied by a flashing red light on the dash. Severance pulled himself to his feet, groaning, and shook the Baron, who was a touch more testy as he awoke.

      “They’re here,” Severance muttered.

      “Shit. I feel like shit,” the Baron remarked with a tenuous grip on comprehension. “You sure it’s them?”

      Severance nodded, wishing as he did that he hadn’t. “They used the right codes.”

      The Baron was on the verge of commenting that they could have read them from the scratch marks in the pad—which was what he had done—but refrained as he remembered how long it had taken him to actually locate them—and even then by chance.

      “Come on,” Severance continued. “Kitchen. Coffee. They’ll need warming. We need it anyway.”

      The two youths made their way to the kitchen area and were in the middle of brewing coffee when Milan, Seb and Ripper entered.

      The Baron tried to look past them, expecting to see the Count and Jari, and the other members of Asmodeus.

      “Ripper, who are these dudes?” he asked thickly, indicating the short-haired terrorists.

      “Where’s Mauno?” Severance added, more to the point. He didn’t have a good feeling about this, though he doubted that his fears had penetrated his companion’s denser brain at this point.

      “The Count is dead,” Ripper replied in a monotone. “So is Jari. The rest of my band won’t be coming. This is more serious than that.”

      Severance said slowly, “What could be more serious? What do you mean Mauno and Jari are dead? What’s been going on?”

      “A lot,” Ripper said as flatly as before.

      Severance and the Baron stood facing the three men in silence for a moment, not knowing what to say. Ripper had offered them no explanation; they didn’t know what to think.

      “What’s going to happen?” Severance asked quietly.

      “I think you know, my friend,” Milan said, speaking for the first time. “What you have found will be invaluable in furthering our cause.