Death Metal

by Don Pendleton

  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.

  Bolan didn’t want to engage this enemy; he wanted to tail them to the bunker. Somehow though he doubted they would be that obliging if they knew he was here.

  He strolled past the house on the opposite side of the street. At a distance the large glass windows on the ground and upper floor seemed opaque, and as he couldn’t see in, so he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t observed.

  The Executioner turned and headed back to the rental car.

  He would have to sit and wait.

  * * *

  “I DON’T LIKE THE LOOK of that guy,” Hades murmured as he watched Bolan walk away. The Norwegian stood up and walked to the window, looking out from one side so that he could not be observed. Bolan had walked just out of his sight line, but not enough so that he could not see the soldier get back into his car.

  “What is it?” Seb frowned, looking up. Hades beckoned him over and explained what he had just seen.

  The mercenary nodded. “Good job. Might be nothing, but we can’t be too sure.” He took out his cell phone and dialed a number. After the monosyllabic answer, he said, “Dark blue sedan a couple hundred meters from objective, parked opposite sidewalk. No other vehicles within a hundred meters in either direction. Prejudicial action required.”

  * * *

  BOLAN WAS WATCHING the house. Minutes dragged by, but he was prepared for that. A stakeout was sometimes a tedious task but necessary. If he was to obtain his objective, he had to stay focused on the long-term goal.

  The locale was quiet enough that he heard the truck approach the end of the road before he saw it in the rearview mirror. It turned the corner, and he could see that it was another black truck with tinted windshield, an obvious replacement for the one eliminated in Trondheim.

  What it did next was not so obvious. As it traveled down the road, the gears suddenly ground and whined as it notched up and gathered speed, angling across the road so it was unmistakably heading for the soldier’s vehicle.

  He could jump out, but that would leave him exposed and also without transport. There was only one thing he could do: he hit the ignition and cursed as the engine took forever to fire up. He cursed again at the stick shifts in Norway as he had to throw it into gear before the vehicle pulled itself away from the curb with agonizing slowness. The truck on his tail slewed around to catch him as he moved, its back wheels bumping up on the curb, causing the driver to lose control and skid, the tail of the truck spinning through sixty degrees.

  It bought the soldier just enough time to get his vehicle fired up to pick up speed. He was able to put several hundred yards between himself and the black truck by the time the driver had gained control of the vehicle and was gunning for his tail. Bolan took the corner on two wheels, pulling hard to keep it tight and gain valuable distance.

  He would need to put enough space between himself and the house so that he did not engage the men in the house. Allowing them to continue was paramount. If they used this as cover for their own exit, then at least he still had the tracker on them.

  The truck on his tail had been their backup; he had no doubt about that, but he had been spotted. Now he was marked, and he had to either throw them off or engage in a firefight.

  Neither option would be easy. Bolan was headed toward the center of Oslo, and the traffic—both vehicular and pedestrian—was starting to build up around him as he began to weave in and out of other cars to keep the necessary distance between his vehicle and his pursuer.

  Bolan had no real knowledge of the city layout—like any city in Scandinavia, it was more the size of an American small town than a city—but knew that space would be at a premium. And space was what he would need to shake off his pursuers.

  The surrounding buildings seemed to hem in Bolan as the streets of the older parts of the city became narrower, and the wooden and stone structures with their ornate decoration became more prevalent. He took a left, cutting off a Škoda sedan whose driver honked the horn angrily at him. The truck had to slow to take the narrower space without taking itself out of the game and that bought Bolan a few more precious yards.

  Right now he could have done with a street map on the seat beside him or at least on his smartphone. The navigation system was useless without a reference to feed in, and he couldn’t afford the split-second break in concentration to pull the cell from his pocket. He could do with a turn in his luck once again.

  The Executioner grinned mirthlessly as he got the break he needed. The traffic flow took him into a newer section of Oslo, and to his right there was a multistory parking garage. It was a desperate maneuver, but the only one he could make. Bolan swung the sedan into a turn that took him across traffic, which squealed to a sudden halt, leaving a pile up behind that blocked portion of the road. He went through the barrier without stopping, the front of the rental car taking a battering from the automatic plastic barrier as it broke across the vehicle’s frame.

  As he slowed fractionally to take the curve that led up to the first level, he could see the truck weave its way around the carnage and follow in his wake.

  This was a dead end in many ways. When he reached the top, Bolan would have to face off with whoever was in the truck; the manner in which they had reached this point would have attracted police attention to the parking garage. His rental car was as useless as the one he had stolen the night before, identified at the house and now marked by the battering it had taken.

  And yet, as the soldier continued to ascend, he knew that this was the only way he could isolate the enemy from the innocent populace so there would be no collateral damage, and also the only way he could isolate the enemy from the authorities—who Bolan wanted to be in the dark as much as possible until his mission had been completed.

  Under the low roof of the parking garage, despite the sides being open to the air, the sound of the sedan’s engine as it protested against the treatment it received sounded deafeningly loud, even within the confines of the car itself. Bolan could not hear the truck at his rear, and cast glances into the rearview mirror to track how close it was to him. He was maintaining enough of a distance to prevent the enemy firing on him, but they
were still too close for him to maneuver how he wanted as he gained each level. Looking back, he could see a swarthy, squat figure leaning from the shotgun seat, an MP5 waving erratically as the merc tried to roll with the incline of the building and the shifting balance of the truck’s suspension as it cornered too tightly for its size.

  Bolan had to admit that the truck driver was good, too much so for Bolan’s liking. He could have done with an edge, as there were probably four men in the truck. When he reached the top level, the soldier would need precious seconds to take a defensive position.

  All the while he kept his peripheral vision alert for anyone else in the parking garage. Blaring car horns and blazing headlights flashing angrily told him of drivers who had either thrown their cars into Reverse or had braked sharply to prevent collisions. Those people who were out of their cars—on the way to or from the elevators to each level—had the sense to scatter and take cover as the low ceiling of each level amplified the sound, hanging like an oppressive blanket over them.

  And then, when the neon horizon had become a narrowing presence before him, it was gone. The cold, slate-gray sky was above him and the sound of his car roared into empty space. He was on the uppermost level, open to the elements.

  Open and with nowhere else to run...

  There was a smattering of cars on the top level, spread across a surface area that seemed to be as large as a football field. Unlike the levels under cover, few wished to leave their vehicles to the mercy of the elements. There was nowhere he could use as effective cover, but by the same token there were no civilians to get caught in the firefight to come.

  The open concrete floor was bordered by a low wall buffered in plastic fenders, about five feet high, hiding from view the sheer drop to the road below. It was a model of safety and with no little irony gave him no area of cover.

  He gunned the engine, headed for the far corner of the concrete expanse. Those few vehicles on the top level were clustered toward down ramps, and so he would be completely isolated. But it was the only way to gain the necessary time and ground to execute his single chance.

  As he approached the wall at speed, the plastic fender filling his vision, he put the sedan into a skid that slewed it on sideways, with the driver’s door toward the wall. The engine stalled, coughed and died, but before the last echo had faded, he was out of the vehicle and using the hood as both cover and a rest for his firing arm.

  The truck roared out of the tunnel formed by the up ramp, headed for him without seeming to kill its speed. If they rammed him, they would inevitably pin the soldier against the wall. It would be quick and effective, but probably total their vehicle and hamper their escape.

  No, this was to scare him. It wouldn’t work; you didn’t play chicken with Bolan and expect him to blink.

  The soldier had racked the Benelli shotgun, which sat on the ground beside him, and had the micro Uzi SMG cradled in one arm. Judging the distance, he took one of the frag grenades from his web belt and pulled the pin, lobbing the bomb overhand in an arc that was high and short.

  It had to be; he didn’t want it to detonate in front of the truck and the shrapnel to come back on him. He ducked with satisfaction as he saw it loop over the top of the oncoming truck.

  The explosion was loud and concussive, even in the open, with a wrenching sound that told him his aim had been true. The rear of the truck had taken the brunt of the blast, the rear doors and side paneling torn apart by the explosion, the interior peppered with metal shards.

  The truck slid sideways, partly from the blast and partly from the sudden jerk of the driver’s startled reflexes, the rear tires blown and the steering shot. Its engine stalled in the silence that engulfed them following the detonation.

  Bolan looked up, to be greeted by a burst of SMG fire that he returned before ducking out of sight.

  The gunners in the rear of the truck had been eliminated by the blast. There were two points of fire, as the driver and the swarthy merc in the shotgun seat had left the remains of the truck. The smell of diesel drifted across to Bolan, and he realized why they had scattered. A crackling and the smell of burning told him that a fire had already broken out.

  There was no cover for the two men, but as they ran in opposite directions they at least had the advantage of splitting his gunfire. He could take one down, but leave himself open to the other.

  Bolan still had the advantage. He had some cover, and he used it as he looked up to sight the two men. Fire came from each direction, pounding into the bodywork and shattering the sedan’s glass. He had enough time to see that the squat figure from the shotgun seat was limping, slowed by injury. The driver was faster and was hugging the wall, hoping that his speed would bring him around to a position where Bolan was exposed faster than the soldier could react.

  Nice idea but it didn’t work. As the runner hit him with a spray’n’pray blanket, Bolan flattened himself, ignored the chips of concrete and plastic that rained on him, and with cool precision loosed three short blasts that stitched the runner across the torso. He stumbled and fell into the third tap, his head split like a ripe melon.

  Before he was even on the concrete, Bolan had turned to face the limping mercenary. He switched from the micro Uzi SMG to the Benelli shotgun, moving across the narrow strip of concrete running between the sedan and the wall, ignoring the splinters of glass that penetrated the tough weave of the blacksuit.

  The mercenary fired as he ran, acutely aware that time and lack of cover was against him. His shambling gait and his panic made his firing erratic, and Bolan rolled to let the overhanging chassis of the sedan provide a little more cover.

  The merc’s fire may have been wild, but it was enough to prevent the soldier from getting a good look at him, and Bolan was running out of distance to fire off a blast before the man was on him. He would have to risk opening himself to enemy fire....

  Fate had other ideas. As he was preparing to roll back out, his senses were almost overwhelmed by a blast of heat and smoke as the diesel in the truck finally caught, and the smoking vehicle exploded in a ball of flame.

  The sedan rocked from the force of the blast, the heat searing the paint and detonating ammunition in the truck, which fired wildly into the air. Bolan felt the sear through the blacksuit, and cast from his mind the fleeting thought that the blast would turn his cover into a firetrap.

  His adversary was thrown sideways into the wall by the force of the blast, the MP5 clattering from his grasp as the impact drove the air from his lungs.

  Bolan stood up, his lungs burnt by the hot air of the blast, sighted in and cut loose with the Benelli shotgun. It caught his adversary as he scrabbled for the SMG and pulled it around, the buckshot hitting him in the face and chest before he had a chance to draw a bead and fire.

  A plume of black smoke spiraled into the air above the parking garage as the truck continued to burn, drifting clouds of smoke obscuring the view between where Bolan stood and the position of the ramps down into the body of the building. He was acutely aware of how close the sirens now were. He had to evacuate and fast.

  His blacksuit was covered with broken glass, but he masked that by taking the heavy overcoat from the backseat of the sedan, shaking off the debris and pulling it around him as he raced toward the elevator. There was an emergency stairwell next to it, and the soldier made for the door. He had stashed the micro Uzi SMG in its holster and put the Benelli shotgun into the suitcase he had dragged from the back of the sedan where it lay with the overcoat.

  He took the stairs three at a time, hoping that he was just in front of the arriving emergency services. He paused by the door to the next level down, inching it open to take a peek. The authorities were just speeding up the ramp, with men on foot in their wake, looking to marshal the bewildered civilians to safety.

  Bolan slipped through the doorway and moved around parked cars, keeping low unti
l he arrived at a cluster of confused civilians, as they headed in the direction indicated by the approaching authorities.

  Moments later he was down the street, weaving through the gathering crowd.

  There was still work to be done.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Striker, you’re really going to have to rein in those rental car bills. Hal’s going to go ballistic when he sees the expenses so far for this one.”

  “Yeah, funny. Did you report the vehicle as stolen?”

  “Of course. And backdated the report on the local system so it looks like it was taken well before the—uh—accident it suffered....”

  Bolan couldn’t resist a grin but refrained from further comment. He had wasted little time renting another car, this one under another credit card with a false-yet-verified identity. He was now headed toward the Finland border, his smartphone on the seat beside him as he caught up on events since his enforced flight.

  The truck with the GPS was en route for the Karelia region, with a two-and-a-half-hour start. He would be able to make that up with the rental car’s greater speed on highways and by taking an occasional catnap instead of hours spent sleeping on the long journey. He figured that the men in the truck ahead would think him out of the game—if not dead, then certainly disabled and unable to track them—and so would not hurry unduly. There was no way of knowing if they were alone or if they had picked up another truck as of yet, but Bolan figured that they would have to call in more bodies and loading space at some point.

  He knew that the enemy had added a man to their main team: Erik Manus, who had not been present when the authorities had raided his home, following an anonymous tip regarding his link to the men killed in the parking garage. Bolan was able to get his picture from a website.

  “It’ll come as no surprise to you that at least two of the dead have so far been identified as being members of Freedom Right,” Kurtzman continued. “If you want my opinion, they won’t want to risk any more of their men being dragged into combat this side of the border. Any extra transport or personnel will head to the bunker location.”