would be able to identify the missiles and the veracity of the bunker’s contents with no trouble at all.
And they would be all over the teenage metal band like a rash of the worst kind.
A sense of foreboding came over Bolan. So much so that, for a moment, he did not register that YouTube had brought up a menu of associated clips on the screen. Most of them were of the same band and were clips that he had already dismissed. There was, however, one that he had not seen before: burning a church with Count Arsneth. He looked at the date. The video had been uploaded only the day before.
Bolan set the clip to Play and watched the bombing of the Norwegian church that had taken place less than thirty-six hours before. He recognized Arsneth and the giant who had thrown food in the bunker and played guitar. Their other two band members didn’t seem to be there.
Of more concern was the fact that another group, the members of a Norwegian band, instrumental in attacking the church, seemed a whole lot more businesslike. They spoke to the camera forcefully yet calmly. Their rant differed little from that of the previous band, except that it was somewhat better reasoned and a tad more mature in that it lacked the juvenile chip on the shoulder.
Bolan watched their exultation as the church went up in flames and smoke, and noted that, although the giant seemed happy to join them, there was something about Arsneth that was subdued and nervous.
Was he regretting getting in that deep? Posturing was one thing; taking your actions onto the battlefield and into combat was quite another.
Hitting the back button, Bolan ignored the clip of the bunker as it played again. Instead, he looked at how many hits the clip had received and at the comments below. Already it had racked up ten thousand hits, and there were over two hundred comments.
Ignoring the sound track, he read through them. Some were unintelligible, either because they were in Finnish or Norwegian, or because their English was so poor that it was hard to work out what they were trying to say. But some were chillingly comprehensible, messages of white power, of Aryan culture, and of support and even offers of assistance or to buy the weapons from the band.
Bolan put down the smartphone, the clip still reeling, and stood up, walking away from the fire and feeling the chill night air pluck at his skin. The dark outlines of the distant mountains and outcrops were black against the wine-dark sky, its stars distant beacons of light in the wan glow of a crescent moon.
In the name of their supposed freedom, the men who had appended those messages would take away the freedoms and even the lives of others. Bolan believed in freedom and democracy, but not at the expense of someone riding roughshod over others because they didn’t fit Bolan’s view.
Democracy was a funny thing. The rage and hate against others he had just seen was allowed to go unchecked in that name. Didn’t anyone moderate that kind of crap? He guessed they would eventually, but by then, it would be too late. It might already be. How many terrorist groups were after Abaddon Relix, whether the band sought them or not?
Bolan thought about it. Kurtzman had had a hunch, and his hunches were usually informed by a little more than just intuition. He had picked up something and was ahead of the wave, as usual.
The Executioner allowed himself a chuckle. The whole point of being out here was to train and acclimatize for those climates most likely to be points of duty.
It looked like he might be doing a 180 on that and sooner than he would have thought.
CHAPTER THREE
“This is a very nice place. You’re not from here, are you? You must be pretty well loaded.”
Count Arsneth nodded. His mouth was dry, and he felt unable to actually speak in the presence of the two short-haired men. Every word seemed to carry an undertone of threat, to be loaded with a number of meanings. Maybe he was just overthinking things. That was driven from his mind by Jari’s response.
“The Count, his parents, are plenty loaded, man. That’s why he’s in the band—we couldn’t afford shit without his parents.”
Arsneth could have hit him, hard, except Jari was a hell of a lot bigger and would have hit back harder. That wasn’t the only reason Arsneth was angry. He wanted these people to know as little about him as possible. He also didn’t want them to think he was some kind of dilettante—though he was, frankly—as it would put him at a disadvantage in what was to come.
Which, to judge from the way Ripper, Milan and Seb were looking at him, was not going to be good.
“You rent this in your own name then?” Milan asked as he went to the fridge and took out two beers, tossing one to Seb with an implied assumption of ownership that made his point well.
Arsneth nodded. He couldn’t think of himself as Mauno. Mauno was a scared kid; Arsneth was a rock star with a cause.
“Your real name?” Ripper asked, astonished. “You used that? What kind of a idiot are you? You know how easy it will be to trace you back to us?”
“Chill, Rip,” Milan said easily, taking another beer from the fridge and tossing it to the Norwegian musician. “You guys are a lot more careful. The trail stops with a band that doesn’t officially exist. This guy’s a dead end, in more ways than one.”
Jari had thrown himself over the couch into a seated position and had hit the remote for the big-screen TV. He was already in another place, watching a porn channel. But even he could catch the drift of the conversation and was torn away from the grinding on-screen.
“Hey, what did you say to Mauno?” he asked, anger flashing in his eyes. “You screw with him, you screw with me, asswipe.”
Seb grinned. “You can chill, too, big man,” he said, handing Jari a tumbler of Jägermeister poured directly from the bottle. “We just mean that he needs to show us the goods, or we won’t believe him. Anyone can fake a movie set, right?”
Jari took the glass and polished off half of it, before saying, “Hey, Mauno doesn’t lie, and neither do I. Listen, dude, you can come with us to Karelia and see it for yourselves. That’s what we’re here for, right?” Then he finished off the rest of his drink.
“Shut up, Jari,” Mauno snapped in a tight voice.
“What?” Jari queried, his eyes glazing and his brow furrowing. “It is, isn’t it?”
Mauno gave him a look that veered from withering to pitying and back again. It was wasted, a little like Jari. Even as he stared at Mauno, Jari’s eyes rolled, and he began to pass out.
“A little something extra in the drink, just to make sure,” Seb said with some satisfaction. “When he comes around, he won’t remember what happened, which will be useful in more ways than one.”
“You drugged him?” Ripper asked. “Why? He’s supposed to be—”
“He seems like a good soldier,” Milan interrupted, “and he’s a strong enough guy. But he’s loyal to this one—” he indicated Arsneth “—and that makes him dangerous right now. We need answers. We need them quick, and we need to move before we’re beaten to it.”
“Now wait,” Ripper said, stepping between Arsneth and the two terrorists. “Listen, man, he came to us, right? He wants what we want.”
