Death Metal. Don Pendleton

we have enemies we need to guard against?”

      Severance looked at his friend. Funny, he had always looked at the Baron as a pain in the ass, but now he realized that the drummer was the only friend he had in the room. The only friend he had in the world, now that Mauno and Jari were gone.

      “It’s too late to guard against them, Arvo,” he murmured. “They’re already here.”

      “You’re a bright boy,” Milan commented. “Pity your friend had a big mouth. He was a liability. He put you all in the firing line. Maybe you could have been educated and trained, like Ripper’s men.”

      “Who says we can’t be?” Severance said desperately.

      “Me,” Milan replied simply. “It’s too late. But what you have here will be removed and put to good use before anyone else can get to it. Letting the world know by YouTube was stupid. That kind of idiocy can’t be justified.”

      Severance felt his bowels turn to jelly as Milan added a final statement.

      “It’ll be quick.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The chopper picked up Bolan from the Colorado Desert, then dropped him in D.C. A waiting unmarked sedan whisked him to the Mall for a meeting with a grim-faced Brognola and Aaron Kurtzman via a conference call on a scrambled line.

      After the briefing Bolan had hitched a ride to Bremen with a U.S. troop transport. From there another U.S. service flight had brought him to Oslo on a routine NATO business mission. One thing was for sure. The continued U.S. military presence—even though the Cold War was long dead and buried—was a useful cover for him in hopping around Europe.

      The Norges Statsbaner train had taken him from Oslo Airport to Trondheim, this water-surrounded city, the fourth most populated in Norway. Bolan got off the train and felt invigorated by the cold air blowing on his face. After the central heating of the train and the flight that had preceded it, he was glad to feel something sharp on his skin. It refreshed him and reminded him that he was alive.

      The hotel he had been booked into was only a short walk from the station, and he took the opportunity to get some air and a feel for the city as he made the journey on foot.

      The buildings were a mix of old and new—some clean lines and little exterior decoration with a functionalism that made it of less interest to the tourist than Oslo; plus the city was quieter than Oslo. Maybe that was why the black metal activists preferred to live here rather than the capital.

      Even going about their everyday business and keeping their heads down, anyone who looked like the guys Bolan had seen in the videos would be noticeable. Long-haired metal fans were a minority; even without their face paint, these guys would have the tattoos and piercings that would set them apart.

      As Bolan checked in and went up to his room, settling in, he went over the briefing he had received before leaving the States.

      * * *

      “IT’S STRANGE HOW I suddenly became an expert because of tastes that got me laughed at the rest of the time,” Kurtzman had remarked. “Black metal is a strange beast, Striker. For such a macho and posturing music, its protagonists can be surprisingly mild mannered. Either because they’re kids compensating for adolescent feelings of inferiority, or because they realize all their aggressive tendencies through their chosen art form—”

      “Like Polynesian traditional theater or Japanese Noh theater,” Bolan interjected.

      “Hey, you do read some of those books I leave in your quarters,” Kurtzman commented.

      “It’s interesting how people work out their aggressions,” Bolan said. “If more people did that, there would be a whole lot less work for me to do.”

      “You’re not about to become redundant,” Brognola growled, cutting across the conversation. “Can we stick to the point?”

      “Of course,” Kurtzman said. “My point, in the middle of that discourse, was that the minority of people in these bands—and it’s primarily a male preserve, as you might expect—are committed or obsessive enough to follow through on their beliefs, to take action to realize the aims they profess. But when they do, they can be incredibly destructive.”

      “I saw the clip of the burning church,” Bolan commented, keeping the disgust out of his voice. “It’s been a while since they were doing that.”

      “Yes, but sadly that’s not the only instance in recent times. However distasteful we find that, though, it’s not the real problem. Since the pendulum started to swing right in Eastern Europe, the bands and followers who take their views seriously have found a lot of people who are willing to help them realize their fantasies and in turn enlist their help.”

      “What do the locals have to say about this?” Bolan asked, turning to Brognola.

      “The police in Trondheim are attributing the murder to the dead guitarist, who apparently died from acute alcohol poisoning.”

      “If he could kill someone with the force and direction indicated by the medical report you emailed to me, then he can’t have been that drunk when he did it. Why keep on drinking? Why not try to get away?”

      “Indeed,” Kurtzman said with a sardonic edge. “Particularly as an inventory of the apartment doesn’t seem to indicate there was enough booze there to actually induce the condition. Let alone account for the evidence that at least two other people were there around the estimated time of death.”

      “So the locals are happy to tie it up regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Nice.”

      “They’re embarrassed about the churches, and it took a long time to recover from the damage the black metal deaths caused back in the nineties.”

      “There were links to far-right groups in Trondheim?” Bolan queried.

      “Only after that nut-job metalhead—what’s his name—was banged up,” Aaron Kurtzman replied. “And the Norwegian security services have no evidence of any real links between far-right groups and the bands beyond a few messages of support between the two on websites. There are no documented meetings between the factions, and no communications that can be traced.”

      “That says more about the Norwegian security services than anything else,” Bolan remarked.

      “You were never the most diplomatic of men, Striker,” Brognola murmured, “but I can’t fault your logic. These rogue groups get smarter all the time.”

      Bolan sat in silence for a moment, then said, “I guess there’s no point in relying on any local liaison to fill me in. On the other hand, there’s no one to get in my way, and I won’t be interfering with any official lines of inquiry, as there aren’t any. A clear field...it could be a hell of a lot worse.”

      * * *

      BOLAN WENT OVER this intel to date as he showered and changed before hitting the streets. He had brought with him currencies for both Norway and Finland. The trail began here in Trondheim, but he figured that it would rapidly take him across the border to the lost bunker. The last thing he wanted was to waste time on logistics.

      He carried his favored Beretta 93R handgun in an underarm holster, and a micro Uzi SMG clipped to the belt of his blacksuit. Some spare magazines and a couple grenades—smoke and fragmentation— completed his immediate armory, though he had some in reserve in his case. The convenience of using USAF transport was that he could ferry ordnance across borders with no problems.

      Stashing his case, he left the hotel, the blacksuit covered by a winter jacket and baggy ski pants, his combat boots not appearing out of place in this cold environment.

      Searches by various intelligence services—those of the U.S. and Finland, plus Stony Man’s own resources—had yielded no background on the band Asmodeus, whose members had been at the root of the church burning, and who were known contacts for the dead Finns.

      The