Death Merchant #39: The Fourth Reich

This volume begins six weeks after the previous book, The Burning Blue Death, ended. Richard "Death Merchant" Camellion has destroyed the Transmutationizer, the human combustion weapon developed by the neo-Nazi group, The Brotherhood, that could turn a person into a small pile of ashes in mere minutes. Camellion also smashed the West German chapter of the Brotherhood.

When The Fourth Reich starts, Camellion is in Scotland. trying to rescue agent Loren Korsey from a ruined abbey. Korsey has infiltrated another segment of the Brotherhood, but has not reported in as scheduled. (This portion of the Brotherhood is led by a fanatic named Sir Hugh Kilsyth MacLean, who believes that the people of Scotland were also part of the Aryan race.)

After the Death Merchant rescues him, we learn about the Brotherhood's latest plans: triggering an atom bomb (twice as powerful as that used on Hiroshima) in Cairo, a blast which will be blamed on Israel. They also plan on assassinating the president of the United States using three Cuban pasties to implicate both Castro and the Soviet Union.

Right away, in the first five pages, we get several turns of phrase and asides that could only come from the mind of Joseph Rosenberger:

"Korsey reported that arms and ammo are hidden beneath the ruins of the abbey. Unless they are buried, that means some kind of room. And I'll wager that's where they're holding Korsey - if they haven't already killed him. Damn, it's quiet. I can almost hear my toenails growing."

"Kingman? He's a natural-born killer and a ten-carat survivor. He could take care of himself in the middle of south Chicago!"

"In spite of all the preposterous rubbish about the human species being gregarious, an individual was born alone and died alone - and if he has the sense God gives to retarded frogs, he'll realize that he lives alone."

The main plot of the book - Camellion hunts down MacLean and his henchmen (which includes a super-wealthy ex-SS officer who is bankrolling the plot) - unfolds like most Death Merchant books. Camellion assembles an attacking force of three other men and invades MacLean's mansion. This time, they are captured, but Camellion leads a wild escape that begins when he removes his handcuffs with the tools of the lock-picking Plan he keeps lodged in his rectum. The shootout throughout the mansion is one of the better action sequences from Rosenberger in the last few books. However, as they emerge into the sunlight, they see MacLean flying off into the distance in his private plane.

That simply necessitates another assault, this time on Bracadale Manor, a secluded castle that MacLean inherited from his late ex-wife. This is also the location of the bomb shelter where MacLean and his trusted aides will stay when the Cairo A-bomb goes off. (How many castles and/or manors has Camellion attacked/destroyed so far in this series? It seems like five or six by now!)

What is more interesting to me than the battle scenes - though the description of the gore is often darkly humorous and the hand-to-hand fighting is mind-numbingly detailed - are the unique asides that Rosenberger throws into his manuscript.

Camellion muses - as he did in the last book - that "the United States, along with the rest of civilization is doomed":

The 6,000 year old era was coming to a close. It was all a matter of cycles. Time cycles repeat because human nature does not change. That is why wars occur at regular intervals. For the same reasons, civilizations rise and fall.

Already the United States was in the Indian Summer of its culture, a "summer" that would be of very short duration. The time was drawing near for mobocracy, to be followed by dictatorship, by Caesarism.

All the elements were present, but Americans would never recognize them - of course, the human species is self-destructive. We can expect no less from Americans, who are emotional about petty things, addicted to hero worship, and are used to bosses and regimentation in their daily lives. Without realizing it, they permit themselves to be conditioned by government and corporate bureaucracies and indoctrinated by the standardized mass media. Gregarious, they join clubs, councils, leagues, associations, lodges, fraternities and societies. They follow but seldom lead. They do not realize that there is no deadlier form of self-deception that forcing the worthy elements of a civilization to become the servants of the drones ...

There were other signs of the approaching fall of democracy the savage class wars that would erupt between 1980 and 1985! A leader who was a naive idealist, who had convinced himself that only he knew what was good for the nation.

Equally dangerous was the growing role of women that had led to many changes in public opinion. The desire for freedom had been replaced by a desire for security. As if freedom were compatible with security. Security can best be maintained in a prison. Or a hospital. There was the tendency to focus on the child; there was the youth worship syndrome, the desire to avoid risks at all costs, and the emotional personalization of issues and the high suspicion of individualism. The same as in ancient Rome, mused the Death Merchant.

I wish I knew how much of this was Rosenberger's actual opinion/outlook. Since slight variations of it appear in multiple books, I have to assume a lot of it is the author's belief.

Rosenberger also uses the gathering of nine agents to present some discussions on gun control, jail sentences, and idiotic liberals, with the German BND agents being "verbally outgunned" (as everyone eventually is!) by Camellion's iron logic and common sense. ... The Death Merchant eats a box of dried figs while he lectures the group.

Etc:

"The TNT impact blew a hole in him the size of a Florida Sunkist orange."

"... stitched him from tailbone to tonsils"

"By ourselves, we'd have as much chance on the first floor as worm-eaten apples hanging in a high wind."

"The explosion made Camellion and the other four feel like they were locked in a metal drum while a dozen midgets pounded on the sides and each end with sledge hammers."

"... ten .45 caliber projectiles blew out Woofs stomach, leaving a hole big enough to stuff in a football!"

"Camellion muttered, "Your father passed out blindfolds when you were born!" and took out the German with a left legged Mae Geri Kekomi ..."

"The swarm of 9mm Parabellum missiles stabbed into Hahn's throat and chest, the tremendous impact spinning him around. The windmills of his mind turned to a billion splinters. Life and all reality became plastic models and the delusion ended."

"Today we learned again what the human race has known since recorded history, that every battle must have its dead. (And only the Cosmic Lord of Death is always the real winner!)"

Also: Some of the Scottish enemy are labelled "bagpipe boobs", while the Germans are referred to as "Hitlerheads" and "Nazi halfwits"; Rosenberger has done far better than this in the past. ... Camellion calls someone's Blackberry brandy "giggle-water".

Death Merchant #38: The Burning Blue Death

The Burning Blue Death's back cover states: "When U.S. Senator James Franklin Wilder is burned to death; when several months later a scientist goes up in smoke, with no explanation; when a key government employee in West Germany bursts into flames, and there is no official comment; when in eight months, twelve people, all connected to high government posts spontaneously combust, the Scientific Research Division of the CIA becomes concerned."

The Company hires Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant, to investigate. Posing as a scientist named Justin O. Bystrom, Camellion places ads in newspapers around the world, soliciting information about the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Combustion. (It is thought that some nefarious group (or nation) has figured out how to induce SHC and direct it at a specific person and these ads are merely a ploy to draw whoever is responsible for these fiery assassinations to Camellion.)

Thus begins a rather meandering story of tracking down the group with the SHC machine (later called a Transmutationizer). After we read about some Dutch goons attempting to kidnap Camellion in Amsterdam and watching the Death Merchant busts in on some IRA members being held in the basement of a tobacco shop, the story finally settles in on a neo-Nazi group known as the Brotherhood. In some underground rooms on the estate of Baron Fredrich von Hammerstein-Equord, a Nazi doctor is continuing work on a weapon he initially devised during Hitler's days that can turn a human being into a small pile of ashes within minutes.

While the overall story is somewhat flat, author Joseph Rosenberger (thankfully) is still Rosenberger.

After that aborted kidnapping effort, in which Camellion lays waste to seven of the Dutch goons, their deaths are reported in the newspaper as "murders", a description which irks the Death Merchant.

Killing another human being in the pursuit of preserving freedom for one's nation was not murder. Somebody had to protect American freedom and the nation's position in the world community. The jelly-backboned liars in Washington weren't doing the job. ... Washington was an expert at saddling people with more and more taxes and more and more invasion of personal privacy, not to mention giving the rich all sorts of tax breaks.

Besides the statement about the job of protecting American freedom being the exact opposite of what Camellion usually claims - he accepts jobs solely for the big bucks - the bit about rich people getting tax breaks is extremely amusing, because only 11 pages later, Rosenberger writes (in the mind of the CIA's Director of Operations): "Camellion made a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year from the Company - all of it tax free, since IRS wasn't aware of his services for the CIA; he earned another 100 Gs or so playing the stock market; using legal loopholes and reinvestment techniques, the clever son of a bitch payed damned little taxes on that."

Inconsistencies aside, Rosenberger is just getting warmed up, rant-wise:

There was a lot wrong in the United States, much of it due to stupidity, the power of payoffs, and hypocrisy. But how does one talk to people with closed minds, with millions who insist on treating certain subjects as sacred cows? All too often, honest criticism of the legitimate religions met with screaming accusations of religious "bigotry." To ask what church-owned motels, hotels and other numerous businesses had to do with religion, and why these businesses should not pay taxes was to invite fanatics to scream "Atheist!"

Camellion knew the real truth: The concept of religious tolerance had been stretched to the outer limits of stupidity, implying freedom from any criticism and from the payment of honest taxes. The right to worship can never be a justification for the suspension of all reason, he thought. The American people must stop equating religion with nonpayment of taxes, normalcy with numbers, sanity with conformity and individual eccentricity with craziness. Yet none of this is going to help me solve the riddle of the burning blue death.

(Yet none of this ... is going to be cut from the manuscript!)

Early on, Camellion also discourses on the dangers of smoking versus alcohol, gun control, Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, the rights of criminals, liberals ("a lot of them tinged with a commie pink"), and the death penalty - all in one page-long rant. "The way American society is falling apart, I seriously doubt whether we'll have a working nation twenty years from now." (This book was published in 1980.) ... After Camellion makes a bloody mess of the would-be kidnappers, Rosenberger says that Bystrom (i.e., the DM) "was about to vanish quicker than Carter's campaign promises".

About one-third of the way through the book, we get - completely out of the blue - some more of Rosenberger's weirdness regarding human auras, complete with a footnote:

By no means was the Death Merchant the risk-taking oddball that Reeder suspected he might be. Camellion had charged the trapdoor opening for two very good reasons. Earlier in the afternoon, psychic conditions had been just right and he had caught sight of Reeder's aura.1 The bioelectric emanations had been a pale blue, tinged with deep green and some yellow, this type of radiation indicating that Reeder would not die in the near future. Since Camellion would be with Reeder, he reasoned that hem, too, would be safe.

1 Invisible electrobiochemical radiation, sometimes called the Od, Odyle or Odic Force. Although the human aura can be detected by sensitives and some clairvoyants, it was not until 1911 that W.R. Kilner devised ways of showing it experimentally: First by looking at the human body through a dilute solution of a dye called dicyanin; second, by looking at a very bright light through a strong alcoholic solution. The aura must not be confused with the etheric double, which is a part of the physical body, or with the astral body - the inner you.

The action stops a bit later so Camellion can have a pages-long discussion with Dr. Cottier of the CIA about SHC, "biorhythms", human auras, and various metaphysical thoughts. To wit:

The Death Merchant [said], "Would you agree that each human being is related to all life and, through the earth's magnetic field, influenced by changes in the electrical fields of the sun and moon?"

Dr. Cottier nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Definitely. We are indeed a part of the universal whole and are constantly being influenced by the ceaseless ebb and flow of the various energies of the infinite all."

And during the copious amounts of violence, we get a few anatomy lessons:

An eye blink later, Steinhauser was well on his way toward being turned into a dead man from Camellion's two bullets. One had bored into his upper chest, severed the left innominate vein and lodged against his backbone. ... the Death merchant had not missed the targets with his right browning. A bullet had slammed into Max Weill's right hip, shattered the ilium, then plowed its way through the descending colon and the jejunum, stopping only when it hit the inner side of his left hipbone. ... Weill lost his grip and started to fall backward, along with Fisher who had taken a Browning hollow-point in the right buttock. The high velocity projectile had passed through the large gluteus maximus and lodged in the ischium ... It had all happened in eight seconds!

When the Death Merchant's force finds the main entrance to the underground rooms in which the Transmutationizer is being developed, Camellion uses tetryl and termate to blow the metal doors off their hinges, and follows that by tossing in various types of grenades. Once Camellion and his forces are in the same large room as the Nazis, the usual violence ensues, pages and pages of gunplay and (when everyone's guns run out of ammo - all around the same time, oddly enough) hand-to-hand combat. Rosenberger notes that Camellion, in the heat of battle, thanks to his mastery of Oriental martial arts and Eastern Indian yoga techniques in breathing, remains "as tranquil as a sleeping oyster".

In the end, Koerber is killed and Camellion and Klaus Hahn of German intelligence have drawn weapons on each other, both wanting to claim an intact portable Transmutationizer for his government. However, Hahn realizes that there are times when a man must think beyond loyalty to his country and he and Camellion agree to destroy the machine.

At the book's end, Camellion remarks (again) that mankind will not survive another 20 years:

[In] the long scheme of things, you and I are going to live to see the end of civilization as we know it. This six-thousand-year era in history will close in less than twenty years, and there isn't anything that anyone, anywhere, can do about it. The destiny of the US, all of Europe, all of the Middle East and the Soviet Union is to become a radioactive wasteland.

***

"I'd just as soon put in a bullet in your belly as bounce a bedbug off a baseball."

"Balls of blazing bumbrush!"

"The Director had to talk like an Israeli trying to set up a bagel factory in Yassir Arafat's home town."

"Another big brrrooommm, and Barry Huttas got the perfect gift for the man who has nothing. His head exploded, and skin, bone, blood and scrambled gray brain matter went flying in every direction of the compass. Camellion pumped the Savage so fast it was a miracle the 12-gauge didn't jam. Brrooommmmm. 'Chuckie' Blomquest's head vanished like a pumpkin hit by a grenade."

"Both Auto Mags roared with all the crashing sound of two small cannons. A flat-nosed .41 bullet hit Koster in the chest and blew away his entire breastbone before it zipped through his torso, pulverized several vertebrae and tore a hole in his back the size of a Golden Delicious apple."

(The cool artwork on these books is by Dean Cate, about whom the internet knows absolutely nothing.)

Death Merchant #37: The Bermuda Triangle Action

This may be the first Death Merchant book that doesn't begin with whatever Richard Camellion is doing. In Chapter One, we meet some Russians/Cubans working on a construction project off the U.S. coast in the general vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle.

Camellion first appears on page nine, doing some reconnaissance work related to the Russians' project. The pig farmers are up to something in the Atlantic Ocean and the U.S. has called on the Death Merchant to find out what it is. Along with CIA man Josh Forran, Camellion scuba-dives up to the Russian installation, killing four Ruskies along the way. There is a gigantic domed structure, as well as nine buildings/modules connected by huge pipes.

It seems clear that Camellion's earlier guess about the purpose of this activity was totally on the mark: the Russians are drilling along a fault line, and a few well-placed hydrogen bombs could cause catastrophic floods and damage along the U.S. east and south coasts. (Non-Spoiler Alert: The undersea complex is eventually destroyed.)

The Bermuda Triangle was more of a cultural phenomenon in the late 70s, so I was wondering how Rosenberger would play it (this book was published in early 1980). It is taken for granted by both the American and Russian forces that something mysterious and deadly is happening in this part of the world. Rosenberger recounts the disappearance of various ships (including a US sub with a crew of 320 men that vanished three months only earlier) and airplanes in the area also known as the Devil's Triangle. Camellion expands on this topic, talking about the disappearance of large groups of people from other parts of the world.

The Death Merchant explains his beliefs regarding the Bermuda Triangle:

"We're crawling around on a speck of dust that's revolving around a middle of the road star in the boondocks of our galaxy; yet we still have the nerve to think we're 'special.' It's that kind of stupidity that forces scientists - most of them - to close their eyes to the true secret of the Bermuda Triangle. ...

"My own hypothesis is that the Bermuda Triangle and other maritime areas are 'points of entry' into a different reality, probes controlled by aliens that employ techniques involving manipulation of space and time. ...

"This world appears real to us because we can sense only one microscopic slice of this underlying reality at any particular time. This mode of reality would also explain the mechanism operating behind telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and other paranormal activity. ...

"The problem is that we don't have the right kind of instruments to detect these alien energy forms."

So: (1) What is "the true secret" of the Bermuda Triangle to which science has thus far been blind? (2) And how will Rosenberger treat this possible entry point "into a different reality"?

Answers: (1) We are given absolutely no idea. (2) He won't. It's yet another instance of the author introducing and then ignoring an alien/supernatural subplot.

On their way in a small sub to initially check out the Russian underwater construction, Camellion and three others encounter a huge craft in the water, which turns slightly to face them before zipping away at a high rate of speed. The men immediately assume it must be otherworldly life, but once the craft leaves, Camellion immediately forgets about it, and is focused only on getting the job done. Upon returning from his mission, Camellion finds a strange pyramid and a box in the sub, two items apparently left by the aliens. I was wondering how the aliens (or the large craft) would figure into the final clash with the Russians, but Rosenberger never mentions the craft (or the two objects) again.

***

Various snips: "The average pig farmer is so dumb he runs around his bed to catch up with his sleep." ... "Our schedule is tighter right now than the tail feathers on the rump of a prairie chicken." ... "Richard Camellion was not only the most cold-blooded man he had ever seen, but he was the twin brother of catastrophe, a man whose natural habitat was the bleak and dark landscape of Death." ... "Whoever or whatever Richard Camellion was, he didn't need anyone. Nor did he seem to feel anything. And one always had the impression that there was something alien about him ... another kind of presence staring out through his eyes."

Rosenberger goes overboard on describing the mayhem with food metaphors:

"The other Cuban, Andres Fonseca, took the .357 Magnum slug from the right AMP just below the hollow of the throat, the impact of the dynamite-powered slug opening a hole in him the size of a lemon ..."

"Calcines' head exploded, parts and portions of skin, skull and brain making like shooting stars."

"The PPS in his hands roared, the muzzle flashing fire. Koloviev jumped on the driver's seat, and his hands left the steering wheel of the fork lift as his head exploded like a melon hit by buckshot."

"The 150-pound hook, swinging from the end of the boom on 4 feet of steel cable, pulverized their heads the way a sledgehammer would splatter an egg. Skull bones exploded, and gray-white brain matter shot in every direction, at the same time the bottom girders made pulp of their shoulders, backs, and chests."

"In a low crouch, the Death Merchant fired the AMP and the Ingram. A swarm of 9mm Ingram projectiles erased Jose Matar's face and popped open his skull like a lemon hit by a blast from a double-barrelled shotgun."

"Camellion had shot Chevsky; at the same time he had kicked in the scrotum of the cockroach who had tried to smash him with the butt of a Stechkin, the toe of the Death Merchant's weighted Neoruperine boot flattening the man's testicles like a pancake."

Also, in the aftermath of a battle in which Camellion used several incendiary grenades, the dead bodies "gave off the strong odor of a barbeque at a family get-together."

Rosenberger was not a big fan of Jimmy Carter, referring to the former U.S. president as stupid, "weak and an unrealist", and accusing him of taking the side of Communist revolutionaries in Rhodesia (an actual issue back in 1979) "to obtain the good will of American blacks". This is an obvious sore point with Rosenberger, as he has in previous books criticized U.S. politicians for basing their decisions on how to best appease blacks in America.

Rosenberger/Camellion ridiculed Nixon in the early books (towards the end of his second term and mostly over his resignation from office) and now Carter gets slammed. I'm curious what Rosenberger will make of Reagan as this series moves into the 1980s.

Death Merchant #36: The Cosmic Reality Kill

Is Hannibal Nigel Frimm, the founder and leader of a religious cult called The Church of the Cosmic Reality, responsible for the murder of Everett Padden, a "deprogrammer" of young people who have managed to break away from the cult?

Padden was a close friend of Richard Camellion, so the Death Merchant is going to do everything he can to find out the answer to that question. And it should come as no surprise that the Church of the Cosmic Reality will soon have a rendez-vous with the Cosmic Lord of Death!

The 58-year-old Frimm - referred to as "His Oneness and His Onlyness" - lives in a modest frame house in the New Earth Community, at the church's national headquarters outside of Colorado Springs. His Cosmic Truth magazine has more than one million subscribers, due in part to his unstinting patriotism and the fact that many Americans agree with his views: "Namely, that the morals of the United States were more debased than those of Ancient Rome. Obscene books, motion pictures, and especially televisions were corrupting the minds of millions of American children!" Frimm tells his followers (known as "Frimmies") there is only one country on earth more morally evil that the U.S., and that is the Soviet Union (of course!), diseased by Satan with "the moral cancer of communism".

Camellion cases the Haven of Truth camp in Colorado Springs, one of roughly 70 communities established by Frimm throughout the United States, because it was the specific camp targeted by Padden. Camellion's initial attempt to infiltrate the camp goes awry and he ends up killing 8-10 guards during his escape. For the next three weeks, Camellion chills at the nearby Warm Rest Trailer Park waiting for a CIA contact. But Frimm's goons have somehow located him and they attempt to run him off the road while Camellion is driving his car. Although he has no weapons, the Death Merchant manages to survive the attack (while several of the goons perish). The local cops are highly suspicious of this event, but Camellion insists it must have been a case of mistaken identity.

Eventually, Camellion - relaxing in a "white gabardine jumpsuit" - meets up with CIA man Russell Linders and his girlfriend, an ex-cop named Janet Minnick. (Janet is very attractive, as Rosenberger writes: "Just looking at her was distracting, making [Camellion] think of creating life instead of destroying it." !!) Linders has a motorhome and they agree to take a tour of the New Earth compound, with Camellion in disguise, posing as Linders's elderly father.

Camellion stays behind after the day's final tour, hiding in a bathroom closet. At 3 AM, he goes into action, but is captured and questioned by Frimm himself. Camellion jabbers a lot of nonsense and makes a bunch of strange noises - causing Frimm believe he is possessed by Satan! Locked in a basement cell, the Death Merchant then uses some explosives and blasting caps hidden in the heel of his shoe. He blows the cell door, rushes out and surprises the guard, stealing his gun. Camellion shoots some Frimmies, steals a jeep, blows a hole in the fence, and drives away.

The overall mission seems to be a bust, but the Death Merchant has more more plan up his sleeve. (Janet: "Camellion's plan is so fantastic and ridiculous, it might work!") The plan is certainly ridiculous, as it involves projecting holographs of a UFO and a giant fly in the sky above the compound. This is meant to terrify Frimm and his armed followers. (We are told that Beelzebub is often portrayed as a fly.)

After the theatrics, the helicopters drop the DM and 13 fighters into the compound and the final battle is on. During the raid, Camellion dumps LSD into the compound's water supply, but not much is made of this tactic, though afterwards, we hear that hundreds of Frimmies were hospitalized after suffering mass hallucinations. (I guess this rendered them unable to fight.) In the end, Camellion learns that Padden was indeed killed by the cult and his body destroyed by being thrown into a pond of acid. (However, in the early pages of the book, Padden's body was found by the authorities, which was what got the Death Merchant involved in the first place.)

The Cosmic Realty Kill began as Camellion avenging a murder, then evolved into putting the Frimm cult out of business. Either way, the reasons for the mission are pretty thin. But the subject matter gives Rosenberger the opportunity to have Camellion discourse on the nature of reality, the past, present, and future, and the idea of good and bad being only illusions.

"Standards of moral conduct are all relative, like time and space. The Inquisition, or the systematic pursuit of heresy, was not only 'moral' and 'ethical' in the 15th century, it was considered the 'will of God.'"

When Camellion is hiding in the closet, waiting for the Frimm camp to empty out, he has plenty of time to think about "man's illusion of time":

Nature does not advance in a line - it happens simultaneously, everywhere-at-once. And because nature does not proceed in a line, it does not proceed in time, but has the whole of its existence simultaneously, and that is the nature of Eternity.

Actually, Camellion thought, the whole notion of succession, of one "thing" succeeding another "thing" in time, depends entirely and directly upon our precesses of memory, for it is quite obvious that without memory we would have absolutely no idea of time, either of the past or of the future. Okay. The question, then, is whether memory represents a real phenomenon which we call time, or whether memory creates an illusion of time. Yet in remembering any "past event", we are not really aware of the actual past at all. I remember what I ate in the tent hours ago, but this memory won't let me see the meal, or touch it, or taste it. The truth is, we are never aware of any actual past at all, but rather only dim mental images of the past, and those pictures exist only as present experience.

The same holds for the "future" as well, for any thought of tomorrow is nonetheless a present thought. Inescapably, we know the "past" and "future" only in the present and as part of the present. The only time we are ever aware of is now. Mind is always now. There is really no before and no after for the mind. There is only a now, this instant. The past is literally nothing but a memory and the future nothing but an expectation, with both memory and expectation being a present fact. Think of the past - that is a present act. Anticipate the future - also a present act. All done with the mind - a state of ever-present non-dual awareness wherein the observer is the observed! The mind and the now-moment, the only true reality for man. ...

Although Rosenberger has never shown Camellion smoking dope at his Texas ranch, I have to believe the Death Merchant does inhale.

There is an amusing typo concerning Frimm's prophecy about the end of the world. On page 3, Rosenberger writes: "The end of all Time, of all Matter and Space, would occur the first second of the year 2000 A.D." Nothing wrong with that; many stories envisioned the end of the world coming as the calendar clicked over to 2000. But then, two pages later, Rosenberger pinpoints the time of destruction as "a microsecond after midnight of January 31, 1999"!

"Richard J. Camellion" contributes a two-page introduction to the book in which he defines a cult and explains how they differ from more established religions. "Cults are nothing more than big business, enriching their founders and making saps out of thousands of men and women who should know better, but haven't the guts to stand on their own two feet and fight the battle of life."

Rosenberger's story is only 167 pages. It is followed by an eight-page readers' survey.

Now that you've finished reading this volume in The Death Merchant series, we'd like to find out what you liked, or didn't like, about this story. We'll share your opinions with the author and discuss them as we plan future books. This will result in books that you will find more to your liking. ...

Some of the 40+ questions: Are you glad you bought this book, and did it live up to your expectations? ... What seems to be the major factor that persuades you to buy a certain book? ... What do you do with your paperbacks after you've read them?

Respondents are asked if they have read (or watched on TV) Taylor Caldwell's Captains and the Kings, John Jakes' The Bastard, James Michener's Centennial, or Irwin Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man.

They are also asked to rate the "sexuality" and "romance" portions of the Death Merchant books - Excellent / Okay / Poor - which is amusing, since, outside of a stray sentence like the one quoted above, those portions don't apply to Camellion at all. ... I also wonder how "A sense of reality" fared in the survey.

Death Merchant #35: Massacre In Rome

The reclusive Maria Angelina Gondozatti is "one of the world's greatest mystics". Since the age of thirteen, she has been able to predict world events with 100% accuracy, and has been "an enigma to the scientific world for over fifty years". While her predictions have never been made public, they have been transmitted to the Vatican, and picked up by the CIA's "many ears".

Now Gondozatti has been kidnapped by the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), an Italian terrorist organization demanding its imprisoned and on-trial members be released or she will be executed. The Italian government has a month to make its decision. "The CIA made its decision in fifteen minutes. It called in the world's deadliest master of controlled violence - the Death Merchant." As the back cover of Massacre In Rome explains, Richard Camellion's job is: "Find Maria Gondozatti, and settle the Red Brigade's [sic] hash once and for all - at any cost!"

The big question is why is the CIA's Scientific Division of the CIA so interested in Gondozatti. Is there another, more exciting subplot to this story? Is this an excuse for Joseph Rosenberger to explore his thoughts on the supernatural? No and no. While the reasons the Death Merchant is hired to go to extreme lengths to rescue Gondozatti are not really explained, that's the book's plot. It's a pretty thin idea.

Gondozatti seems to be the real deal. She predicted - in 1924 - the series of events that would lead to World War II and she predicted as far back as 1969 that a man named Carter would become President of the United States. Her latest prognostication? "The end of the world before the end of this century." (Note: MiR was published in August 1979. However, one character mentions that they have only about one decade's amount of time left?!?)

Camellion and his companions work step-by-step until they can rescue her. Camellion first stalks a villa outside of Rome, hoping to grab Vito Camerini, who supposedly has contacts in the Red Brigades and could provide some valuable intel. However, after icing three lookouts outside the villa, Camellion discovers that he's a bit tardy. He sees five Russian goons escorting Camerini down the stairs of his home. (Are the "pig farmers" also on the trail of Gondozatti?) In the gunfight that follows, Camellion kills all of the Russians - and Camerini, too, unfortunately - before high-tailing it back to CIA man George McAulay II, who is waiting in a getaway car. On their way back into Rome,  the men are forced to kill three cops at a roadblock.

Camellion next tries to nab Alfredo Bertini, the alleged paymaster for many of the Red Brigades cells in Rome. They wait for him in a tratorria, as per Bertini's usual schedule, but when he doesn't show, they head to his apartment. There, they find another group of goons escorting him down the stairs. Gunfire erupts, but this time, the Death Merchant leaves with Bertini - who tells Camellion that he gets the money from Angelina Moretti, wife of a dentist named Bernard Moretti.

So it's off to the Morettis' house. The DM has a cunning plan to dress as Gypsies but after buying a used car, colourful clothes and whatnot, they decided to simply storm the place without any pretense. They drive a 1968 Dodge through a big picture window and the assault is on. They eventually corner Dr. Moretti and he tells Camellion that Gondozatti is being held at a farm southwest of Anzio.

So it's off to the farm owned by Vittorio Salvi Duse. The Death Merchant and four others are dressed as priests, disguises which enable them to safely get through two roadblocks. Grenade launchers come in extremely handy as they wreck the hell out of the farm house and the barn. ("It beats pushing a plow through a turnip patch.") Gondozatti is being held in an underground room beneath the barn, but Camellion et al. are too late. It turns out she died in her sleep of a heart attack the day before the big raid. Oh, well. Camellion and his forces escape in waiting helicopters just before the cops arrive. The end.

During the final assault, the antitank grenades are flying and suddenly the action skids to a halt as Rosenberger decides to spend nearly an entire page explaining exactly how the grenades work.

The enormity of the explosion did not surprise the Death Merchant. A high explosive antitank rifle grenade, the M31 had an explosive filler of 9.92 ounces of Composition-B, and the capability of penetrating 25 centimeters (10 inches) of homogeneous steel armor or 50 centimeters (20 inches) of reinforced concrete. What made the M31 so very deadly was that the antitank grenade achieved penetration by means of the Munroe Principle of the shaped charge. The Munroe Principle is governed by the following three principles of explosive reactions: (1) An explosive force reacts against the weakest force containing it. In the M31, this containing force was a thin sheet of copper which forms an inverted cone liner. This cone gives the filler its shaped effect. The grenade's hollow nose provides the proper standoff distance for the explosive forces to converge. (2) An explosive force reacts against the force containing it at right angels. In the case of the M31, the forces reacted against the copper cone at right angels and moved toward each other. (3) Converging explosive forces combine to form a third and greater force known as the explosive jet. In the M31, the jet is a combination of heat and force which will melt a path through armor and carry pieces of molten armor through it. These molten chunks then rapidly return to solid form. In the case of an armored vehicle, the jet penetrates the vehicle's body armor and also flakes off pieces of the inner side of the armored hull. This fragmented armor ricochets about the interior of the vehicle's body, killing personnel and detonating sensitive ammunition.

When the shell burns through concrete, it is the jagged chunks of concrete that act as fragments; and since concrete is much softer than armor plate, the radius of destruction is always four to five times larger.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ....

In two footnotes, Rosenberger gives some advice on the most effective way to shoot someone in the head and describes a technique known as "fanning":

Don't believe all the nonsense that the "victim was shot between the eyes and died instantly." It is not wise to shoot between the eyes unless one is using a very powerful cartridge, such as a magnum bullet, in which case the brain will be destroyed by hydrostatic shock. A target can be shot in the head with a bullet of moderate power and still survive long enough to get off several shots. ...

This technique is very useful when you are facing several opponents at once and works best with an autoloader which has a large magazine capacity. Brace your hand against the hip and wiggle the index finger of your other hand against the trigger. the technique - also called the "Alley Broom" technique - can be mastered with practice. But it is only useful close up, as it is a very inaccurate method of shooting.

Massacre In Rome has two epigraphs: one by Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, and this one from Richard J. Camellion:

Intelligent people do not try to reason with sadists who slaughter the innocent, with terrorists who murder in the name of "freedom". Intelligent people kill them!

This is an odd quote for Rosenberger to invent and highlight, since Camellion quite clearly murders innocent people - the three Italian cops at the beginning of the book being the most recent example - and he certainly does his job in the name of "freedom". At one point in Massacre in Rome, an agent named Lola Presswood, having assisted Camellion in one gunfight, is somewhat sickened by "the violent side of international intelligence operations". Still ...

She supposed that men like Richard Camellion - and even that vulgar Ferro - were necessary in a world that was only a sugar-coated slaughter house ... men who were self-contained, men who needed nothing or no one and who would always be alone, even in a crowd. Without such men - would there be a United States of America?

Death Merchant #34: Operation Mind-Murder

After doing battle in northern Alaska in #33, it's more cold weather for the Death Merchant. Richard Camellion and three Chinese-Americans (including the awesomely-named Dionysius Woo) are sent on a re-con mission to Wrangel Island, a Russian island located a little north of Siberia. Camellion has been tasked with taking secret photographs and video of a Soviet installation in which the Russians conducted medical experiments on still-held prisoners of World War II.

In a footnote, author Joseph Rosenberger writes that the reports of Russian torture are "fact", and not invented for Operation Mind-Murder. He cites a February 20, 1978, article in The Spotlight, a far right-wing publication of the Liberty Lobby. (Through the wonder of Google, I found a copy of both the original article and a follow-up on February 27.)

The February 20, 1978, article begins:

An Alaskan island in the Arctic Ocean is the site of three super-secret Russian concentration camps where KGB agents carry out incredible human experiments on thousands of prisoners held captive there.

And the United States government has known about this gross violation of human rights on American territory since 1973 but continues to ignore the deplorable situation. ...

Thousands of prisoners of war - including high-ranking German, Spanish and Italian officers thought dead since World War II - have been secretly imprisoned on Wrangel Island. ...

Official government maps of Wrangel Island, made for the CIA from satellite photographs and which would confirm or deny the existence of the horror camps, have been classified "secret".

Rosenberger copies quotes from the article from Avraham Shifrin, a former Wrangel Island prisoner, into Operation Mind-Murder. In 1973, Shifrin testified before a U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that was investigating Soviet labor camps. Shifrin later interviewed hundreds of prisoners for his book, The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union (Bantam, 1982).

Rosenberger writes at one point that the torture and other inhumane experiments are not the main reason for Washington's (and, thus, Camellion's) interest in Wrangel Island. The Russians are rumoured to be building an enormous complex, some sort of weather experimental base. And because the Ruskies cannot be trusted, the U.S. decrees that this complex must be destroyed. Later in the book, though, Rosenberger forgets about this subplot. It's never mentioned again. During the island invasion, all Camellion is concerned about is that the men take pictures of the Russians' documentation of the experiments.

There is a lot of action in Operation Mind-Murder. The book opens with the four men on the island. After Camellion and Woo photograph the Soviet buildings, they travel back to the beach where they have stashed their scuba gear. Woo stays with the equipment and Camellion heads back to their cave to get the other two men and the three of them return to the beach. Each bit of travel across some part of the island includes a run-in with some "pig farmers". And almost half the book (pp. 98-184) is taken up with the climatic invasion of Wrangel Island by Camellion and a 180-man force. It features the usual Rosenberger insanity, with some highly-detailed scenes of karate thrown in for good measure:

Gordon then resorted to a defense that was all karate. He employed a hiza ate knee lift to the groin of one man, ducked another KGB man's straight-in fist-punch, slammed out the fellow with a haito uchi sword-hand ridge-strike to the side of the neck and, with his left hand, stunned into partial unconsciousness an enemy by using a tettsui uchi hammer-hand blow that caught the Russian squarely on the end of the chin. The Russian that Gordon had struck in the side of the neck went down choking and gasping ...

The Death Merchant blocked Roshgin's closed-fist blow with a right hiji uke elbow block and the intended nukite stab with a left sukui uke scooping-hand sweep. ... The Death Merchant's hands and arms moved with such blinding speed that the Russian couldn't realize what was happening. Roshgin could only gag from the agony of Camellion's otoshi hiji ate downward elbow-strike that broke his nose and made blood spurt from both nostrils. Camellion's koko-i tiger-mouth kill-clutch to Roshgin's throat ended his life by crushing his voice box and the upper part of his windpipe. He was choking to death, velvet falling over his mind, by the time the Death Merchant turned and used a right-legged knee shift as a defense against Colonel Milovanov's left-foot stamp that was intended to shatter his knee cap; and a double ko uke arch block to wreck Milovanov's double-piercing-finger strike aimed at the side of his neck.

Milovanov was very fast and very good at sambo. His only flaw was that he wasn't good enough. He jerked back from Camellion, feigned a left foot kick to the groin and a right-handed fist-strike to the side of the neck. With his left hand he attempted the real McCoy, a vicious spear-hand thrust to the Death Merchant's solar plexus.
Camellion, who had fought far better men than Milovanov, wasn't fooled by such tactics. He blocked the spear hand by sweeping aside the Russian's arm. Simultaneously, he used an ippon ken single-knuckle punch to shatter Milovanov's front teeth. A very fast haito ridge-hand to the Russian's left cheek sent him staggering, his senses reeling ...

Rosenberger provides his usual allotment of gore (while tracing the destructive path of numerous slugs):

The LMG roared, but the stream of 7.62mm slugs passed a foot or more to Camellion's right. The Russian couldn't fire again. One of the .357 magnum bullets exploded in his neck, blew apart his throat, and sent his Adam's apple flying like a bloody golf ball. ...

Both KGB men had half executed the swing around when the Death Merchant fired both Auto Mags. One .357 magnum bullet, going in at a steep angle, hit Vilenski in the right chest, exploded, and sent up a tiny cloud of cloth, foam padding, bits of flesh, and pieces of rib bone. The expanded projectile came out the left side of his chest, then smacked Dashkov in the right forearm at the same time that the Death Merchant's second big bullet bored into Dashkov, just above the humerus of his right arm. The bullet exploded, tore the humerus from the scapula, or shoulder blade, then, travelling downward, shattered the end of the right clavicle, broke six ribs on both sides and finally left the Russian's body via his left side.

Etc.:

Camellion "knew that while the Cosmic Lord of Death rules the Universe - He does not rule alone!"

"Like Time, Death was relative and not at all important in the long scheme of one's total development."

"Telling Richard Camellion to be careful was as silly as telling a crocodile to beware of minnows."

"... sweating like an Israeli spy at a PLO meeting ..."

"The big show is getting hotter than the balls of a Gila monster in a New Mexico desert in August!"

"The only thing dumber than an average Russian is two average Russians."

"Although as grimy as two old-time chimney sweeps, the two commandos were as cheerful as two prostitutes who had the sole franchise at a salesman's convention."

After coming up empty in the last few books, Rosenberger gives us a fruit mention: "One of the Death Merchant's Auto Mags roared and the head of the KGB man exploded with the kind of sound a hammer makes when it hits a watermelon."

At the very end of the book, Camellion asks one of the captured Russian scientists about the wide road in the middle of the island. Dr. Agarev says that it leads to an underground installation, where there is a machine known as a "Cosmic Generator". We don't get much of a description of what this machine is or does, but I wonder - considering Camellion's mysterious connection to the Cosmic Lord of Death - if it will turn up in a future volume.

Death Merchant #33: Alaska Conspiracy

Richard Camellion is at the Prudhoe Bay Operations Complex - along the north-central Alaskan coast, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle - only two days when an attempt is made on his life. (Five men attack; he kills three and knocks out the other two.)

The Death Merchant has been sent to look over security operations at several points along the 800-mile Alaskan pipeline, because it has been attacked six or seven times in recent months. If the pipeline becomes inoperable, the U.S. will be more dependent upon foreign oil - which would please OPEC.

In talking to people in charge of keeping the pipeline running smoothly, Camellion feels it is likely that disgruntled local trappers (as opposed to "environmentals and other kooks") are being hired to dynamite sections of the pipeline, but the big question is: Who is the puppet-master that is funding and directing the trappers?

There is more action in Alaska Conspiracy than in the last few DM books. Shortly after Camellion arrives at his second stop, Atigun Camp, the camp is invaded by armed gunmen. After exchanging rounds of gunfire, Camellion suggests to Alaska Fish & Game Department official Jasper Happenset that they go out, grab a snowmobile, and come around behind the attackers, trapping them in a cross-fire. The plan works. At the very end, instead of easily gunning down the final 5-7 attackers from a safe distance, Camellion wants to question one or two of them, so he sneaks in extremely close, shooting a few at near point blank range and knocking out two others. He learns from them that Virgil Spain, a bartender at the New Frontier in Fairbanks, ordered the attack on Atigun to make sure they eliminated "some man named Camellion".

Camellion is then at a camp on the outskirts of Fairbanks, letting the Feds know that he (and he alone) is in charge of the operation. As he is getting some information on Spain and the other men involved in the New Frontier, they hear a large helicopter land nearby. It's yet another attack! Camellion and about 11 others wipe out the attacking force of 40-50 in roughly 15 minutes. Plus, they learn from the leader of this invasion - again, luckily spared until the end of the firing so he can give valuable info - that Spain was behind it and that bar owner Marion Westerhouse and the bar's gambling boss Duane Rhemus are also somehow involved.

A few days later, Camellion decides that he should pay a visit to the New Frontier. The ensuing battle lasts 33 pages - three chapters! The scene begins in near-identical fashion to a scene in Nipponese Nightmare (#28) - with Camellion using the same stink-bombs-detonated-in-the-men's-room-to-create-confusion-while-he-rushes-upstairs-to-where-the-bad-guys-are trick. This time, the stink bomb fizzles and Camellion (in disguise) quickly gets fingered as the guy trying to destroy the place and he is forced to swing into action earlier than planned. Much mayhem ensues and the bar is destroyed by fire, but the Death Merchant never finds Westerhouse and Rhemus. They escape with a sack of dough down the back fire escape. The over-long scene rivals the book's final battle for detail and body count, but since it ends up being a bust for the Death Merchant, it's questionable whether it needs to be in the book at all, let alone at this length.

Around the same time, a missile is launched into the Prudhoe complex, destroying 15 oil wells. This turns out to be a test run for a huge upcoming attack for a conglomerate of European companies known as the Council of Six. They plan to launch another ten missiles from a cargo ship and utterly destroy both the complex and pipeline. Camellion learns about the plot only two days before it is set to occur. He hastily assembles a fighting force and announces: "We attack at dawn ..."

The Council of Six has a base at an abandoned mine in the Wrangell Mountains. The DM and his men parachute out of a plane to points both north and south of the mine. (We learn that Camellion is terrified about leaping out of planes: it "tied his stomach in knots and flooded the corridors of his mind with tidal waves of fear". (Funny how Rosenberger never mentioned that before previous jumps.) Camellion once again eschews quick-killing the last few goons and instead uses some hand-to-hand combat so some of them can remain alive to give up the name and location of the missile-laden ship.

Alaska Conspiracy includes pointless gun info, though Rosenberger confines it to his footnotes:

Both men carried U.S. Army surplus M14* rifles ...
*: A selective-fire weapon, the M14 7.62mm NATO rifle was produced at Harrington & Richardson Arms Co. Production of the M14 ceased in 1964 at which time 1,380,353 rifles had been produced.

[Camellion] shoved a fresh magazine into the left Hi-Power Browning* ...
*: Although the 9mm browning Hi-Power autoloader does not have the punch of a .45 or a Magnum of any caliber, it is one of the finest weapons in the world for close-in combat, primarily because its magazine holds thirteen rounds.

... the Death Merchant was certain that the terrorists were using Israeli Galil G3 automatic rifles*.
*: This weapon was designed by Uziel Gal, who also designed the famous Uzi submachine gun in 1949. The Galil Rifle is assembled in Tel Aviv at Israeli Military Industries from parts imported from the U.S., Belgium, and Finland. The Galil uses the U.S. M16 30-round magazine, as well as a special 50-round magazine manufactured in Israel.

Camellion's knowledge of weaponry knows no limit. At one point, he hears a machine gun chattering in the distance and he immediately identifies it as a "West German Rheinmettal MG 42/49".

Rosenberger footnotes the term "Lower 48", explaining that it's the term Alaskans use for the continental United States. I thought - from taking a wonderful vacation in Alaska in 1996 - the local term was "Outside". Rosenberger actually has a character use "Outside" thirty pages earlier, though he doesn't bother with a footnote.

Part of Happenset's back story is that he was among a group of men who endured a Mount McKinley "wind chill factor the equivalent of a staggering 162° F". (I'm assuming Rosenberger meant -162°! ... The internet tells me that a wind chill factor of -191° was recorded in Vostok, Antarctica, on August 24, 2005. The coldest temperature recorded on Earth (-128.6° F) was also at Vostok, on July 21, 1983.)

The Death Merchant's enemies are rarely attractive: "He had a face that only a blind mother could look at with any kind of affection. ... The third joker had the build of a dump truck and the face of a broken chair."

The Death Merchant kills two jokers, with one slug ripping out a guy's tongue: "Camellion's second soft-lead slug had taken away Corbin's ability to lick stamps. ... Never again would Spain get constipated or have to worry about a sore throat."

More lines: "Happenset looked more serious than a funeral director faced with the problem of how to cram a seven-foot corpse into a six-foot casket." ... "All the while he studied the Death Merchant as if Camellion were the most important clause in a life insurance policy." ... "He would have had more luck going over Niagara Falls on a handkerchief." ... "Whoever this Camellion is, he must eat death on soda crackers!" ... "Sanity is nothing more than sharing the hallucinations of your neighbors."