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  He heard the exchange between the Norwegian and the merc, and could picture their relative positions. He had seen two men in the front of the truck that had passed him. That meant one, maybe two more at most beside the pair he had heard.

  Bolan stepped out across the line of the alley, snapping off three short bursts of fire before stepping back.

  * * *

  MILAN WAS DISTRACTED for one full second, yet it was enough. He knew that the enemy was close, but when he had heard Hellhammer mutter to Ripper, he turned back to silence him. It was an instinctive move and an error.

  The merc’s head was turned away when Bolan appeared behind him. Milan had time to register Ripper’s expression, but no more, before the first short burst stitched him across the ribs and spine. By the time the second and third bursts had shattered the truck’s headlights and damaged the fender and open door, he was out of the game.

  The return fire had panicked the two musicians. Hellhammer was yelling at Ripper to get the truck in gear and out of there. In his panicked state, the driver was grinding the gears, the truck jolting forward with a sickening lurch and crunching into the rear fender of the car before hitting Reverse and screeching backward with rubber burning smoke on the concrete.

  Bolan moved down the alley, hurrying past the car and the prone mercenary, needing only the most cursory of glances to see that he was no threat. He snapped off another burst at the dark shape that the truck had become as it reversed and skidded sideways. He wanted to take out the windshield, maybe take down the driver. A burst of glass signaled that he had taken out the side window on the driver’s door, but the Norwegian must have ducked and got lucky as the truck continued on, skidding wildly across the confined space and smacking into the warehouse on each side, the front fender screeching and buckling under the impact.

  The vehicle slowed, the agonizing sound of scraping metal betraying that the wheel well had closed in on at least one of the front wheels. But still it moved forward. The soldier could come out behind it and take out the tires, or he could go for a frontal assault, if he was fast enough.

  He gambled that he was. Running back past the now useless car, he came out onto the main ribbon of concrete at the dock and ran hard. In his mind’s eye he could see the layout of the warehouses and the narrow alleys between the open squares as they were clustered.

  The mercs were headed for the sole exit, and there was only one way they could get there. If Bolan was quick enough, he could get there before the enemy.

  He cursed as he ran full-out into a straggling group of drunk and stoned metalheads who had wandered from their warehouse, attracted by the noise of the firefight. They were spread over the road, and Bolan would have to take evasive action to avoid running into them. That was rendered unnecessary when one of the women realized through her stupor that he was carrying a gun and screamed in fear. It had the effect of making them scatter, some of the young men grabbing women and pulling them away, sheltering them with their bodies.

  The Executioner was past them, cutting across and down an unlit passage, when he heard an angry voice raised above the confusion. The owner of the car he had hot-wired had discovered its final resting place.

  No time to worry about that now. The soldier had cut across an angle in the wide road as it took a curve at the dock and was now at a point where the crippled truck would have to come out if it was to head for the dock entrance.

  In the gloom of the overhanging warehouse walls, Bolan could hear rather than see his prey as it approached. He could also hear distant sirens. One of the partygoers obviously had had sense enough to use his or her cell phone. He took a moment to reload his Uzi SMG.

  It was time to bring this to a close, Bolan decided. As the dark shape of the truck closed on him, the shrieking of metal setting his teeth on edge, he aimed low and with two short bursts took out the front tires. Whatever control the driver had over the damaged vehicle was gone now, and it swerved wildly within the narrow gap, cannoning off the walls with showers of sparks where metal scraped concrete and more metal.

  Bolan wanted to advance and finish the confrontation quickly, aware of the rapidly closing authorities, but he was stymied by the erratic progress of the truck. He didn’t want to risk being caught and pinned in a confined area.

  The truck slewed to a halt, sliding around so that it became jammed at an angle between the two walls of the alley. It prevented anyone from exiting the back doors as they were constrained by one wall, but it did leave Bolan on the wrong side of one cab door if a person chose to run.

  The soldier snapped off another burst, shattering the window of the driver’s door. He had wanted to take alive the men inside, so that he could question them, but circumstances altered that plan.

  He closed in on the truck, micro Uzi SMG held at shoulder level.

  “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 risk
y 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.