Death Metal

by Don Pendleton

  His hesitancy was a spell broken when Andrus cursed loudly and dropped out of sight into the trash area so thoughtfully—and inadvertently—cleared by Igor just a short while before. Even over the chatter of gunfire behind Velio, he could hear his chief’s footsteps as Andrus ran across the carport. There was no point in being caught in a no-man’s land here, where Velio was of no use to anyone. Pushing his doubts to one side, he scrambled up and over the wall, hitting the ground running as he followed Andrus.

  Unlike the truck bound for Oslo, which had been left in the carport for easy access, the truck containing the bulk of material taken from the bunker had been parked in a garage a half block away.

  By the time that the firefight in the house had been resolved—one way or another—the Freedom Right chief and his right-hand man would be well away from the scene and on their way to link up with another cell on the road to Moscow.

  * * *

  BOLAN THREW A SPRAY of gunfire into the darkness to drive back any lurking enemies. There were no cries or sounds of movement to indicate that he had hit anyone. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see that the passage and the unlit stairwell were deserted.

  He indicated to the Russian that they should clear the ground floor first. Smoke from the grenade on the top story was drifting down the stairs, which would incapacitate any troops left above. Those coming up from the basement would be at a disadvantage and so give the upper hand to Bolan and Dostoyevsky. A cleanup on this level was therefore the pressing task.

  There were three doors. Bolan took the first, kicking it open with his heavy combat boot and going low while the Russian laid down suppressing fire.

  Two men were in the room. They had been detailed to the front window but had been too late to stop Bolan and Dostoyevsky’s entry. Now they were trapped. They had waited for a chance to take Bolan and the Russian from the rear but had been unlucky.

  Their only way out was the shattered front window, but as one of them dove through, he caught himself on a jagged shard of glass—unnoticed in the commotion—which pierced his abdomen. He screamed as it bit then ripped, a keening sound heard above the chatter of SMG fire as his companion threw himself to one side to avoid the full stream of gunfire from the Russian. He was still hit in several places, his own fire erratic as a result. The bullets streamed harmlessly wide of both men as Bolan took him out for good with one short blast.

  The terrorist impaled on the glass turned and tried to fire, but shock and the sudden blood loss made him weak, and his shooting was poor. Dostoyevsky ended him with a short burst.

  Down the hallway one of the two remaining doors opened and a man swung out of a room, firing wildly before withdrawing. The Russian had not thought to cover the hallway and was nearly stitched by the shots. He cursed loudly as he swung around and returned fire.

  Bolan had one ear listening to what was going on outside. They were in the middle of a city, and it wouldn’t be long before the area was swarming with the authorities, all no doubt armed. This was no time for subtlety. He used another explosive grenade, rolling it along the floor and pulling Dostoyevsky into the now secured front room. Both men crouched, mouths open to equalize pressure, as the house rocked from the impact, plaster dust shooting into the air.

  Before it could settle, they were on the move. Bolan took the lead, swinging himself to face the shattered doorway of the first room they came to, a clearing burst of fire preceding him. The terrorists in the room were neutralized. One of the three men inside had taken the blast full-on and lay bleeding on the floor. Another had been impaled in the eye by a large splinter of wood ripped from the door by the blast. The third slumped against the far wall, clutching his ribs with one arm while he cradled an HK with the other. His attempt to raise and fire was cut short by the soldier’s own burst.

  Dostoyevsky, meanwhile, had moved past the Executioner and had focused on the end room, his covering fire taking out one man while another was injured as he exited through a back window. He limped down the yard toward the far wall but only made a couple of steps before the Russian finished the job.

  Bolan waited for him at the foot of the stairs as he strode back. “You take the basement, I’ll clear the upper floor.”

  The Russian nodded. Without a word he ventured down the stairs, the SMG crooked in his elbow.

  Leaving him to his task, Bolan moved carefully up the stairs, balancing the need for caution with the need for speed. He could hear nothing from inside the house other than the creaking of floorboards and joists put under pressure by grenade damage. He figured that the top floor had been mostly taken out, and this was confirmed by the gaping hole in the ceiling that was visible as he mounted the stairs.

  It was deathly quiet as he reached the second-floor landing. Outside he could hear the approaching sound of sirens and the screeching of tires as the authorities negotiated a city block panicked into gridlock.

  Four rooms were on this level. Part of the hallway was obstructed by a chunk of the floor above, and the remains of the staircase leading upward. From the basement he heard the brief conversation of two SMGs chattering at each other until one gunner extinguished the other. He hoped it was Dostoyevsky.

  Of the rooms on this level, three had no doors left on them. In each, he could see at least one corpse. He picked his way over the rubble and checked the rooms fully, beginning with the nearest.

  There was only one dead guy here, tied to a chair that had been thrown onto its side. The body showed signs of contusions and lacerations that spoke of a beating before the 9 mm hole in his temple had finished him off. Igor stared sightlessly at the toes of Bolan’s combat boots. The soldier cursed to himself. The bodyguard hadn’t been as smart as he had thought, or as Bolan had hoped...unless he had been betrayed by his boss. If that was so, then Bulganin would be due a visit when this was wrapped up.

  The second room showed two men who had been injured by falling masonry and pummeled by debris. The last room was empty.

  Bolan was aware that his recon had taken him farther and farther from the stairs and an escape route. He was also aware that the one closed door that needed investigating now stood invitingly in front of him.

  He raised his SMG, aware that this front-facing room could harbor a deadly enemy. There was no time for careful checks.

  The soldier stopped and listened. There was just the slightest shuffle—foot on bare board, disturbed rubble, an ill-fitting door being leaned on—to betray a presence of someone still alive on the other side of the wood. Bolan smiled grimly and bent to pick up a chunk of plaster that lay on the floor. Carefully, making sure that his footfalls were audible, he took steps that carried him to the doorway of the room where Igor remained.

  Timing it with the last footfall outside the room, he threw the chunk of plaster over the stairwell, aiming down so that it would hit a stair, bounce and hit another, with at least some resemblance to footsteps. As he did, he darted into the relative cover of the open doorway.

  It didn’t sound much like a footstep to him, but to a panicked and trigger-happy terrorist, it was close enough. The closed door was swung inward, and a wild-eyed man—barely out of his teens—stepped forward and rained SMG fire into an empty stairwell, his eyes registering surprise before the tension relaxed on his trigger finger.

  Bolan doubted that the young man even noticed that the Executioner was actually standing in the doorway. The guy didn’t appear to even look up as the soldier stepped out and stitched him across the torso, throwing him back into the room. Following, Bolan sprayed an arc before stepping inside.

  Apart from the fresh corpse, it was empty. Like all the rooms on this level, it had been heavily damaged. Given time, Bolan would have liked to root through the debris to see if he could find anything that would be useful intel. The sounds from outside told him that that luxury was to be denied him.

  He hurried down
the stairs to the ground floor, taking a look through the smashed front door at the street outside—still deserted with the desperate sound of wailing sirens and belligerent car horns betraying a face-off between those seeking to access the area and those seeking to escape it.

  Bolan could see through to the back of the house—now that it had been cleared—and the best access to the open yard might be through the basement. That, at least, would hide them for most of the way as they escaped.

  He took the stairs to the basement, yelling the Russian’s name into the silence.

  “There is no need to shout, Cooper. I have not been deafened by the gunfire. Not yet,” Dostoyevsky said as he stepped into view. Motioning to Bolan to follow him, the Russian walked through the low-ceilinged corridor linking the basement rooms, indicating one with a corpse and another that was empty as they walked. “Only one man down here. I suspect that discretion formed the far better part of valor, and they ran. They did leave this, though,” he said as they came to the end room.

  Bolan looked in: it was the armory, and in it were cases and boxes of ordnance, some of which were marked with Russian or German stamps. These were undoubtedly the merchandise from Bulganin that Igor had delivered, which allowed him to manufacture an entrance.

  There were other cases, which had much older, Soviet markings. Bolan went straight to those, opening them and examining the contents.

  “Are they what we’re looking for?” the Russian queried. “Because if they are, we’re going to have to think very swiftly about how we move them out of here.”

  Bolan shook his head. “They’re from that cache but not the serious ordnance. They must have stashed that somewhere else.”

  “Maybe not stashed—maybe on the move?”

  Bolan’s brow furrowed. “It’d be a hell of a lot to take out Oslo alone. Unless...”

  “Unless they have more than one target, or they really hate Norwegians. But who doesn’t?”

  “Funny... We can worry about that later. We need to move fast,” Bolan stated, one ear on the noise outside. “How do we get out of here?”

  “As you happen to ask, you just need to follow me.”

  Dostoyevsky led Bolan through the corridor and past the door through which Igor had hoped to infiltrate the house before his betrayal. After a few moments they emerged through the old coal cellar and at the far end of the yard.

  “It looks like this was no secret, no matter what Igor thought. Half of Tallinn has been using it by the look of it,” the Russian remarked as they followed what was now a well-trodden trail that led to the carport on the far side of the wall.

  “I suggest that we get the hell out of the area in a hurry. The local police are stupid, but not so stupid that even they couldn’t follow that trail.”

  The streets on the far side of the apartment building were empty, attention diverted elsewhere, and they were far enough ahead of the authorities to have made it back to the Russian’s bar before the police had even discovered the route to the carport.

  “We may have to neutralize Dimitri before he causes more problems,” the Russian remarked as they stripped out of their combat gear.

  “He can wait. We’ve got more pressing matters—if you’re with me,” Bolan added.

  “I haven’t had this much fun in ages. Just don’t tell Lana I said that,” Dostoyevsky replied with a dismal expression that belied his words.

  “Good. I’ll need someone I can rely on,” Bolan said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  “I don’t get why we left that much hardware behind,” the Russian continued after a pause.

  “It’s out of Freedom Right’s hands,” Bolan answered. “Let the Estonian authorities deal with it. They’ll be baffled by the Soviet markings, but they can puzzle over that. The hardware we’re really after is still missing, and that’s serious.”

  “Some of it will be bound for Oslo, I’m thinking,” the Russian mused. “But will they take it all there?”

  “I doubt that. But without any kind of intel, we could be looking over half of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe with no idea where the hell to start. We’ve got only two indicators.”

  “Two?”

  “Sure,” Bolan affirmed. “The first is that we know they’re headed for Oslo, and they want to make a big impression.”

  “What about the second?”

  “It’s a long shot, but...” Bolan rooted out his smartphone and hit a speed-dial number. “We might be out here on our own, but it’s always good to have backup,” he added with a grin.

  “If they’re still using that truck, and if the ordnance we want is on it, and if... Cooper, that’s a hell of a lot of ifs.”

  “Maybe it is,” Bolan stated as the connection was made, “but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Striker, you’re always lucky,” Kurtzman’s voice said over the air. “You’re still alive, right?”

  “So far, so good, Bear. Listen...” Bolan explained quickly the events of the evening. Kurtzman listened in silence, until the soldier finished by saying, “Two trucks for sure, but if I’m right, at least one of them in use will be the one I tracked before. Now that GPS tracker is gone, I know, but maybe there was some vehicle identification you can match up from CCTV.”

  “You know what? Miracles take a little time, Striker. It’s one hell of a request, but maybe no more than usual. I’ll drag Akira in. I mean, who needs days off anyway? Between us...”

  Akira was Akira Tokaido, Stony Man Farm’s ace computer hacker.

  “Bear, it’ll be invaluable. If the vehicle we can track is going to Oslo, it’ll make it easier to find. If it isn’t, then we need its heading with the remaining ordnance.”

  “It’ll still leave a big hole in your mission. Hal—”

  “Can worry about it, Bear. I don’t have time. Maybe we can pick up some intel while we mop up one end of the operation.”

  Bolan finished the call and turned to his companion. “Pack a bag, because we’ve got a chance. If we’re really lucky, then they’re taking all the hardware to the same place.”

  “And if we’re not, then I’m thinking that at least it will be easier for us to find them after we clean up the bastards in Oslo. Yes?”

  “Damn right.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As the Russian maneuvered his sedan through the crowded streets, Bolan felt some relief that they had been able to enter and exit from the target area on foot. To have left the Saab behind would have pointed straight at Dostoyevsky and would also have given them the problem of finding transport to take them back to Oslo.

  Negotiating the gridlocked traffic had been difficult—as diversions and panic had caused streams of cars down unfamiliar side streets—but now it was compounded by armed police who had set up a roadblock, and were stopping and questioning every vehicle.

  “Officer, what can I do for you?” Dostoyevsky asked smoothly as they were pulled over.

  The policeman squinted at him before a light of recognition dawned. “I know you,” he said in Russian. “You have the bar that shows English football, right? And the barmaid with the...” His gesture that made his point clear.

  “I am indeed, and that will be my wife you describe so accurately,” Dostoyevsky replied.

  “No offense intended,” the policeman sputtered. “You are a lucky man. Hey, your bar is about ten minutes away from the incident—”

  “That explains it,” the Russian interrupted with mock exasperation. He turned to Bolan, speaking in Russian. “Did I not say it was a slow night? Did I not say I thought I could hear explosions? You said it was on the TV. I told you they only let off flares and fireworks in Italy, not in English games.”

  Bolan had to admire the Russian’s handiwork, especially as it had the desired effect on the policeman.

  “So you only he
ard that? No one came in and said anything to you about what was going on?”

  “If anyone came in tonight, I would be too busy forcing them to buy to listen,” the Russian said sadly. “That is why we are out now—I promised my friend I would find him a bar not like mine, where maybe he could meet a nice, or not so nice, girl while he was on leave.”

  “You are a soldier?” the policeman asked.

  Bolan nodded, but before he could answer, the Russian chipped in again. “Hey, do not ask him too much—we served together, and you know that I cannot talk about that—so imagine what he cannot talk about,” he added with a jerk of his thumb at Bolan.

  The policeman accepted the explanation with surprising alacrity, and it was only when they had been safely waved on their way that he looked to the Russian for an explanation.

  Dostoyevsky shrugged. “Look, they know I have served. I don’t speak about it, but they guess. So they guess wrong, and maybe it suits me to let them keep believing their mistakes.”

  Bolan shrugged. Considering that the false floor in the trunk of the sedan concealed enough hardware to start a small war, anything that prevented the questioning being turned into a search was fine by him.

  Hopefully this luck would hold until they could hit the road to Norway.

  * * *

  HADES, VISIGOTH AND ARVO had a good couple hours’ head start and had driven in silence. Hades took the wheel for the first stint, concentrating on the road ahead in the darkness while his mind raced.

  Too many people had died from among his own group for his liking—Hades included the dead Finns, as metal meant more to Hades than right-wing politics—and now he and Visigoth had to rescue Ripper from a courthouse. Visigoth was also worried about that—Hades could tell from the way Visigoth said nothing and looked blankly ahead all the time. Normally he wouldn’t stop talking.