In the Muzzle Flash of Roland's Thompson Gun Quiz

Answer: Norway

His namesake was a Frankish warrior who died fighting in the Pyrenean pass at Roncesvalles in 778, but Zevon's Roland is a mercenary who hails from Norway, "The Land of the Midnight Sun."

Answer: Denmark

The alliteration sounds good, but other recruiting grounds were more significant -- especially South Africa, where in 1964 the mercenary impresario "Major" Mike Hoare recruited several hundred hired guns to fight for the anti-Communist government of President Joseph Kasa-Vubu in the Congo's civil wars.

Answer: Biafra

In May 1967 the oil-rich Eastern Region of Nigeria declared its independence under the name of Biafra. By early 1970, the outnumbered and outgunned Igbo people of Biafra had been overwhelmed by the Nigerian Federal Army. More than a million people died in the conflict, most of them civilians.

Biafra received some assistance from mercenaries during its struggle. Its small air force, for example, depended heavily on a handful of Swedish and Polish pilots.

Answer: Congo

In 1966 and again in 1967, supporters of the ousted prime minister Moise Tshombe, including white mercenaries, rose against the government of President Joseph-Desiré Mobutu at Kisangani (Stanleyville) in the eastern Congo. The key figure leading the mercenaries in 1967 was a Belgian, Jean Schramme.

Roland appears to be moving backward rather than forward in time, since much of this happened before the secession of Biafra.

Answer: the Bantu

The Bantu are the dominant ethnolinguistic group throughout most of central and southern Africa, so Roland would have been fighting both beside and against them.

The mercenaries led by Schramme were eventually besieged at Bukavu by Mobutu's Congolese National Army (ANC). After the failure of a rescue attempt by fellow mercenary Bob Denard, Schramme and his men retreated across the border to Rwanda where they were disarmed in November 1967.

Answer: United States - CIA

This makes sense in the larger Cold War context, with the United States backing the dictatorial but anti-Communist Mobutu (who would in 1971-72 rename himself as Mobutu Sese Seko and his country as Zaire).

The hit is carried out by Roland's comrade Van Owen, who is characterized as something of an SOB.

Answer: Mombasa

"He found him in Mombassa in a barroom drinking gin."

Mombasa (usually spelled with just one s) is a major seaport and the second largest city in Kenya.

Answer: Johannesburg

Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and the country's business and financial center, but not one of its three capitals.

I was originally planning to provide the distance from Mombasa to Johannesburg, but it's already mentioned in another Zevon quiz.

Answer: Afghanistan

The headless Roland, gun still blazing, achieves a sort of apotheosis as the spirit of political violence 1970s-style. His gun is heard in Ireland, Lebanon, Palestine, and Berkeley.

Answer: Patty Hearst

Did she buy the gun? Or buy into the concept?

The newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing urban guerrilla group, and then was persuaded to join the SLA under the name of "Tania." She used an M1 carbine, not a Thompson gun, when she participated in a bank robbery in San Francisco on April 15, 1974.