Don Pendleton: Death Metal

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.