Buch lesen: «Death Metal»

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 the 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.

They entered the province of Karelia, headed for a spot in the north where the region ran into the border with the old Soviet Union. Severance felt his guts churn. He wondered how Mauno was getting on in Norway.

* * *

FLASH BOMBS EXPLODED on stage and reminded Mauno of the sight he had beheld the previous evening. A small wooden church with a stone foundation, fifty klicks from Trondheim, in a tiny village whose name he couldn’t even remember now.

Five young men had invited Jari and himself along to witness their dedication to the cause. Mauno suspected that it was also to test any nerve that he and Jari might have. He would never have admitted it to anyone, but his bowels turned to water during that night. Jari, now, he was another matter. He was a Neanderthal who knew no fear because he had no sense.

They had driven out of the rehearsal warehouse in Trondheim that Asmodeus used as their base and through the pitch-dark night at frightening speed. The band had played its entire set in practice for this night’s show and had ingested large amounts of whiskey along with fat lines of amphetamine sulfate. That had already pumped them up, long before the anticipation of what they were about to do had increased their adrenaline levels.

“It’s been too long since churches and Christians were put in their rightful place, yes?” Ripper Sodomizer, the bass player, had chuckled.

Just as the rest of the Norwegian band, he was built like a bodybuilder, his face streaked with white and black face paint—they preferred to rehearse as they would play live—that had run with heat and sweat, making him look like a ghostly clown. The band members were known to Mauno only by their stage names, just as he was known to them only as Count Arsneth.

Despite the fact that his identity was also unknown to them, he felt alone and very small as he watched the brawny men—now dressed in black from head to foot with their face paint removed—take explosives from the back of the car, prime them and move in planned formation to plant them. Once they returned to their vehicle, they waited in silence as the timer fuse played out. Then they celebrated with high fives as the night air was shattered and split by the sound of timber and stone being blown into fragments, fire catching on what remained and lighting the night sky.

Jari had joined them, but Mauno had kept his distance under the guise of studying the carnage with approval. When Arvo had told the rest of the band of his discovery, Mauno had seen a way of using this to improve their standing in the underground world of black metal.

For too long, he had told them, there had been bands that only talked and did not follow through on their words. Not like the old days, when the music had been young, and the likes of Count Grisnacht and Euronymous had been willing to walk the walk.

When Arvo pointed out that Grisnacht was serving a life term and Euronymous was dead, Mauno had brushed that aside. He had learned from the mistakes of those pioneers, so they would not be caught.

No one knew their real identities, after all. They did not register their songs; they never signed anything except in their band identities, and even their friends—most of whom had no interest in black metal—didn’t know who they were. They were the four geeks into metal, but that was all. It was like being a superhero and having a secret identity. The secret, hugged close to the chest, was what mattered.

Except that now Mauno was beginning to wonder about that. The Norwegian band had played up a storm, and their fans in the small subterranean club were going nuts. The sound had been deafening, even before the flash bombs. It wasn’t like this in Finland.

Down here, everyone knew who the band members were, called them by real names, not made-up ones. Most of the audience was also part of a band and, from the introductions made earlier in the evening, were also church burners. After a long hiatus, the bands had taken up the attack once more.

It was still small-time enough to be a local phenomenon. As yet it hadn’t been noticed in the rest of the world, though the shell-shocked Norwegians were alert to its implications, and the rest of Scandinavia was catching up. What the metallers wanted was something that would really catch the eye of the world and get them taken seriously.

This was something Abaddon Relix had...and how. That had been their calling card and their bargaining tool to get into the scene.

The problem was that, as the band and the audience drank more and talked more, greeting Mauno and Jari as old friends and new heroes, it struck Mauno that he was getting them all in a hell of a lot deeper than he could cope with.

Eventually the crowd began to disperse and the band collected its meager share of the door money before starting to pack its gear. Jari helped them eagerly, though it didn’t escape the notice of Ripper that Mauno was less than keen.

“You didn’t enjoy yourself, my friend?” he asked.

“Of course I did. It’s just that I have things on my mind,” Mauno hedged.

Ripper eyed him shrewdly. “So have we all. Your discovery and your offer were something that none of us expected. I have to confess, you are not what I expected, but I put that down to you being a thinker rather than doer—a planner and strategist, if you like.

“Now Jari here,” he added with a laugh, clapping the guitarist on the shoulder as he walked by with a Marshall amp in his arms, “he is one of us through and through. If not for him, perhaps I would not have trusted you so quickly. Plus, of course, he plays like a bastard devil.” He shot the guitarist a grin, which was returned.

Ripper left his bandmates and the giant Finn, moving over to Mauno and putting a protective arm around his shoulder as he led him away from the others. He spoke softly but with a firmness that made Mauno’s blood run cold.

“What you offer to us is something that can change the way the world looks at us. They will realize how serious we are about our aims and the purity of our vision. This is not just about music, as you know. We have friends throughout Eastern Europe who were under the Communist heel for far too long and have no wish for liberalism to let that in again by the back door.

“Nor do they wish those same liberal fools to spread miscegenation across lands that have remained true to their own. Like us, they have struggled to be taken seriously. You have given us the tools to make that happen, and for that we will always be grateful, and you will always be heroes of the cause. The name of Abaddon Relix will live on for more than just their excellent music and lyrics.”

“That’s very good of you to say so,” Mauno said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice but wincing as he heard himself and realized that he had not been entirely successful. He was also painfully aware that Ripper had spoken at great length, not just because he wanted Mauno to hear his views, but so Ripper could carefully guide Mauno into a darkened corner of the club, where two men sat at a booth.

They were dressed in black, much as the audience had been, but where those young men had almost prided themselves on their length of hair, these two were proud to sport the cropped version. They had the look of men with a military or paramilitary past. There was a hardness to their chiseled features and defined muscles that spoke of more than being the gym rats the Norwegian band were. These guys were the real deal.

While Ripper introduced them as Milan and Seb, Mauno knew that these were not their real names. They were hiding behind their pseudonyms much as he and his band—and the Norwegian band—hid behind their own more outrageous tags. They shook hands without standing and gestured to Mauno that he should be seated. The firm pressure of Ripper’s arm on his shoulders, pushing him down, allowed him no room for dissent.

“You’re a lucky man,” Milan began without preamble. “You’re in at the start of a glorious revolution. Fate had chosen the four of you to be our figureheads. Of course you’ll need guidance, which we can give you. You rock. We fight. We’ll show you what you need to do. There is just one thing...”

“What’s that?” Mauno asked through a parched throat.

Milan leaned forward. His voice was little more than an impression of a whisper, yet to Mauno it was as loud as the night’s performance.

“You’d better not be lying to us....”