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  DEATH TRACK

  When a Scandinavian heavy-metal band claims to possess the ordnance to wage a war, no one takes them seriously...despite their ties to right-wing extremists. But then a band member is murdered, and the weapons stash proves authentic. A remote, deserted military base on the Norwegian border with Finland harbors a stockpile of firearms and nuclear devices from the Soviet era. With news of the cache spreading, rabid political and paramilitary groups vie to seize the weaponry. The U.S. has just one good move: send in Mack Bolan.

  Tracking his enemies across the unforgiving Nordic landscape, Bolan blazes a hot path of destruction, even when the trail runs cold. But with so many competing interests, eliminating one threat gives rise to another. The frigid North is about to be blown off the map, unless Bolan can force the warmongers to face the music. And the Executioner’s tune is almost always deadly.

  The grenades detonated almost simultaneously

  The ground shook with the force of the blasts as Mack Bolan and his partner raced from cover, crouching and firing at the terrorists’ positions, spraying the areas where the grenades had landed.

  The two Estonians in the blast range had been silenced, either dead or too injured to return fire. That left just one man, who was forced from his position by the hail of gunfire that peppered his cover. He tried to run, but there was nowhere to hide and he was mowed down quickly.

  Knowing that they had to claim the truck and clear the area before the Russian military on-site closed in, Bolan jogged to the vehicle and wrenched open its back doors.

  For one moment the world seemed to lurch to a sickening stop. Several of the nuclear devices were stacked inside, the trigger mechanisms attached and the weapons armed….

  Other titles available in this series:

  Pressure Point

  Silent Running

  Stolen Arrows

  Zero Option

  Predator Paradise

  Circle of Deception

  Devil’s Bargain

  False Front

  Lethal Tribute

  Season of Slaughter

  Point of Betrayal

  Ballistic Force

  Renegade

  Survival Reflex

  Path to War

  Blood Dynasty

  Ultimate Stakes

  State of Evil

  Force Lines

  Contagion Option

  Hellfire Code

  War Drums

  Ripple Effect

  Devil’s Playground

  The Killing Rule

  Patriot Play

  Appointment in Baghdad

  Havana Five

  The Judas Project

  Plains of Fire

  Colony of Evil

  Hard Passage

  Interception

  Cold War Reprise

  Mission: Apocalypse

  Altered State

  Killing Game

  Diplomacy Directive

  Betrayed

  Sabotage

  Conflict Zone

  Blood Play

  Desert Fallout

  Extraordinary Rendition

  Devil’s Mark

  Savage Rule

  Infiltration

  Resurgence

  Kill Shot

  Stealth Sweep

  Grave Mercy

  Treason Play

  Assassin’s Code

  Shadow Strike

  Decision Point

  Road of Bones

  Radical Edge

  Fireburst

  Oblivion Pact

  Enemy Arsenal

  State of War

  Ballistic

  Escalation Tactic

  Crisis Diplomacy

  Apocalypse Ark

  Lethal Stakes

  Illicit Supply

  Explosive Demand

  Jungle Firestorm

  Terror Ballot

  Death Metal

  I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

  —Ronald Reagan,

  1911–2004

  No question the world would be a better place if nuclear weapons were rendered impotent. But they aren’t and, until they are, when called upon, I’ll lay my life on the line to keep them out of the hands of madmen.

  —Mack Bolan

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shale rolled and slipped beneath the soles of Mack Bolan’s boots as he half ran, half slid down the red dust and rock slope, leaning back against the incline so that he could keep an easy balance. Despite the speed at which he moved, he was breathing easily, hardly working up a sweat. That would come later, when the terrain became really hostile.

  Cones and firs littered the surface of the ravine as he reached the shallow dip at the bottom, the creek showing a bed nearly dried by a long drought, the waters reduced to a narrow channel that Bolan traversed with one step. On the far side the rock rose sharply, the gradient harsher than the one he had just run. His pace slowed as he began something that was less of a run, more of a climb. In places he was almost vertical to the rock, using handholds to aid his progress.

  His breathing came harder now, the lightweight tent and provision pack on his back starting to register where it had been insignificant just a few minutes before. His ordnance was stripped down: a Beretta 93R pistol holstered in the small of his back and a Lee-Enfield rifle slung across his shoulders.

  The soldier felt a pool of sweat gather in the hollow beneath the holster, and his black T-shirt felt clammy. Despite the increased effort, he grinned; this was what he wanted, to push himself a little. The strain and burn in his thigh muscles felt good, and the relief when he reached the summit and was on level ground again was sweet.

  Bolan, aka the Executioner, stopped and looked around him, drawing great gulps of air into his lungs. His gaze went back over the ravine and across the plain that he had run since pitching camp that morning. Ten, twelve klicks? Not bad. It was still before noon, judging by the blazing sun that had not yet reached the summit of the sky. He checked his watch and nodded to himself.

  He had chosen this part of Colorado because the climactic conditions at this time of year were not that far removed from sections of North Africa and the Middle East. A lot of his work had taken him there in the past few years, and he figured he could use some conditioning for future missions.

  Bolan shrugged the Lee-Enfield and the backpack off his shoulders. He had kept his water in the pack as a test of endurance. On his belt it would have been too
easy to take in when his dry throat demanded. Secreted in the pack, to yield to temptation would have meant a break in his progress, and that was enough to keep that lure at a distance.

  As he took out the water and swallowed a long drink to quench the burning in his throat, he amused himself with the thought that Walt Whitman was getting to him. The soldier rarely found himself with downtime to read anything other than documents and books that were mission related.

  So when Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, cyberwizard at Stony Man Farm, had downloaded Leaves of Grass to the soldier’s smartphone with the recommendation that he should break training each evening with a few stanzas appropriate to the landscape he had chosen, Bolan had been skeptical. He had to admit, however, that the nineteenth-century poet had tapped into something eternal about the American landscape. Bolan had been able to push his body and rest his mind.

  Choosing this place had given him that luxury. Secluded, isolated and well off the beaten track for any military or civilian activity, he was unlikely to be interrupted. A quick satellite scan from Stony Man before he arrived had confirmed that. It was exactly what he had wanted. Usually Bolan spent his entire life as taut as a wire—something that could not continue indefinitely without that wire snapping. He needed to rest that part of himself, from time to time, even while he pushed his body.

  Throughout the morning, unconsciously as he ran, his ears had been tuned to the sounds of nature around him. Each snap of a branch beneath his feet, each tumble of shale, the distant call of circling birds and the rustling of mammals shying away from his intrusive presence. All of that had registered and had been processed by his mind, analyzed and dismissed as nonthreatening as he had passed by.

  He needed to switch off a little. It was time to play with the present that Barbara Price, mission controller at the Farm and his sometime lover, had given him the last time he had seen her.

  “It’s not my birthday,” he had murmured when she had handed him the package.

  “It’ll be a long time before it’s your birthday again,” she had replied knowingly. “Just trying to get a little culture into you,” she had added.

  “You’ve been talking to Bear...” he had said cryptically, not bothering to explain as he had unwrapped the MP3 player.

  “It’s been loaded with a whole lot of stuff. Put it on Shuffle—you’ll find out there’s more to life than Springsteen, Sinatra and Mellencamp,” she had stated.

  Now, out in the wilds, he did as Price had asked, and slipped the buds into his ears before setting the MP3 playlist mode and looking at the vast deserted expanse around him. His grin broadened as the first piece of music swelled in his head, seeming to fill the very air around him, even though the forest’s perfect stillness and silence remained, should he choose to pull the buds from their resting place. He recognized the piece as being by Copland, one of his mother’s favorites, and there was nothing—and no one—who he could think of as more appropriate to his surroundings.

  Bolan stood perfectly rigid against the sky as the music took him on a journey that relaxed his mind so that he could feel the tension slip from his body, only the loose elasticity of his easy-but-still-animal-alert muscles betraying anything other than complete relaxation.

  Suddenly a charging surge of bilious, overamplified and distorted guitar chords blurred into a white noise punctuated by a barrage of bass drums shot through with a bass guitar so low that it was barely audible—more felt than heard. Smashing through this, like an insistent pickax to the head, a snare drum beat a rhythm that had all the swing of a boot camp parade ground and threatened to spear Bolan’s frontal lobe with a viciousness that felt like a migraine.

  As the rhythm became more disjointed and jerky, something that might have been a human voice—but only by association—joined the mix. It sounded for the world as though someone was either belching or hurling or maybe both. Singing was hardly the description Bolan would have used for it, but as there seemed to be syllables that were vaguely related to words somewhere in there, he could only guess that this was the purpose.

  “What the—” Bolan pulled the buds from his ears and looked at the face of the MP3 player. It told him that this shapeless and formless mess had a title—so was presumably intended to be a song—and even had a band that was prepared to hold up its hands and claim ownership.

  The “song” was appropriately entitled “To the Gates of Oblivion,” and the group claiming credit for this little masterpiece—and on reflection he guessed it probably was in its own way—was named Abaddon Relix. Which was what? A reference to some old demonic mythological figure? Bolan had a vague recollection of the name Abaddon from somewhere, but the Relix bit? Who knew?

  One thing was for sure, it was such a testosterone-fuelled racket that Bolan very much doubted Price was responsible for placing it on the playlist.

  He was pretty sure he knew who, though. He hit a speed-dial number on his smartphone as he killed the noise—now tinny and hollow at a distance—before dropping the MP3 player on top of his pack.

  “Striker, you’re supposed to be chilling out and working that musculature,” Kurtzman said with some surprise. “What’s up?”

  “Barbara’s MP3 player,” Bolan replied flatly.

  “What? Don’t like the tunes?” Kurtzman asked.

  “I’m guessing that you maybe had a say in what she loaded onto it.”

  “Aah,” Kurtzman said followed by a pause. “Which little aural delight has tickled your ears, Striker?”

  “Abaddon Relix,” Bolan said.

  “Interesting little band, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one word for it. I know you all think I have limited tastes, but when I hear something like that, I think that may not be such a bad thing.”

  “I was just trying to broaden your horizons a little. You’d be surprised at what I put on there without her knowing.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bolan replied. “It doesn’t really go with the landscape. Good call on the Whitman, Bear, but I wonder if you may need to get a hearing test.”

  “Admittedly it’s not to everyone’s taste,” Kurtzman conceded. “There is one thing, though. It wasn’t entirely for leisure or for the sake of shaking you up a little that I put that band on there. They were on my mind, as the name has cropped up in some unlikely places of late.”

  Bolan’s interest was piqued. “Unlikely as in work related?”

  “Could be. When you pitch your tent for the night, take a little time to look them up on YouTube.”

  “I’m guessing you’re not expecting me to be drooling at the thought of concert footage?”

  “There’s plenty of that but no—the more recent video uploads have been of a radically different nature. Tell me, Striker, what do you know about black metal and death metal?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Musically, yes, if you like them. If you don’t, then the similarities mirror the closeness that exists in their worldview. Maybe you should surf a little. It’ll while away the twilight hours.”

  “Homework? You think something could be that imminent?”

  “I have a hunch, and you know how that works.”

  Bolan looked at the sun high above him. If he set out now, he could be at his map objective well before dusk. It looked like he needed to be; it may well prove to be a long evening.

  “Oh, yeah, I know how that works,” he eventually replied.

  * * *

  IT WAS A LONG AND DULL drive from Helsinki to Karelia. Baron Kristalnacht—or Arvo, to his mother and father—sat in the rear of the car, slowly sinking the level of his bottle of vodka while his moaning became a lower rumble in his throat.

  He was just the drummer, was he? Everyone made fun of the drummer. Drummers were stupid; they knew nothing; and all they were good for was hitting things. That was what the rest of th
e band thought. He knew that, and he was slowly getting more and more pissed off about it.

  “You think I’m some kind of moron, right?” he slurred in a louder voice.

  Severance—Uhro to his parents, who hadn’t realized he was taking the car when he told them he was going out—frowned through the windshield as he leaned over the wheel, trying to see through the sleet that the wipers were barely touching. Arvo was a prick, but not because he was a drummer. He was a prick because he had a big mouth. Severance didn’t need this kind of hassle. He had enough problems, more pressing concerns.

  “You’re not answering, man,” the Baron admonished him, gesturing with the bottle and cursing when some of the spirit threatened to slop out of the neck. “Who found it in the first place? Why does that idiot Mauno want to take the credit?”

  “Because he has an ego as big as your drinking problem,” Severance replied. “That’s why he went to Norway and we’re here, keeping an eye on things. And that’s why he took Jari with him—because he’s a big lug who hits first and asks questions later.”

  The Baron smiled with the absent humor of a drunk. “Man, that Jari, he really is stupid. He should have been a drummer, if not for the fact he can play a guitar like an angel. A dark one, of course,” he corrected himself.

  He stopped, looked puzzled for a second, then continued. “Sev, you write the words. You can death grunt better than Mauno, and his guitar playing is shit. Jari could do it all in the studio, and it’s not like we gig that much. Why is Mauno in the band anyway?”

  “Because,” Severance said through gritted teeth, “he’s the one with the vision and the drive. That’s what he keeps telling me, anyway. I just wish he’d kept it to the music.”

  “Man, that’s our turnoff,” the Baron interrupted, gesturing recklessly with the bottle as they approached.

  “I know,” Severance growled. “I’m not a drummer. Now just sit back and shut up until we get there. I need to concentrate in this crappy weather.” He wondered briefly if he should get the Baron to check their guns before they arrived on site, just in case, before figuring that asking a drunk drummer to check firearms in the enclosed space of a car was not a good idea.

 
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