by Jon Land
The Prudence II’s single mate tied the ferry down against the dock and slid part of the railing out of the way to permit the seven passengers to exit. The wooden pier was bent and wharped. Wayman and Drew hurried ahead of the others, Drew feeling every step in his tortured bones and muscles. His wounds were too numerous to categorize, but his anger and determination gave him the strength to keep going. They headed toward a small dockside store featuring a pay phone and a single gas pump. A fiftyish woman wearing faded, baggy jeans and sporting pigtails sat on a bench by the entrance watching the two strangers approach.
“I help either of ya any?” she wondered suspiciously.
“We need a boat,” Wayman told her.
“This time of year? Selection ain’t exactly favorable.”
“Anything with an engine will do.”
She stood up and pointed to the right. “Walk that way about a third of a mile. That’s the major pier, called Potter’s Wharf. Not much to choose from these days, though. Find Captain Jack.”
“How will we know him?”
“He’ll be the only one around.”
Captain Jack turned out to be a grizzled, partly toothless sort who smelled of the morning’s fish catch. He was filleting the latest selection for the local market when Wayman and Drew found him in a shack.
“I do somethin’ for ya city boys?” he asked when he saw them, pulling off his thick rubber gloves but leaving his ruddy rubber apron in place.
Wayman stepped toward him, Drew looking at Captain Jack with vague recognition probably because the man might have been a twin of the crusty shark hunter from the film Jaws.
“We need to rent a boat,” the Timber Wolf told him.
Captain Jack slapped his hands together. “Well, you come to the right place. Plannin’ to do some night fishin’?”
“Sort of.”
“Got a few coves I can recommend. Trouble is, on account of we don’t get much business this time of year, I got most of my boats pulled out of the water. Should be able to fix ya up good enough, though.”
They followed the captain out of the shack and down a pier where the boards seemed to move at whim. They stopped before five boats in various stages of disrepair, the best of the lot being a small cabin cruiser with attached dinghy.
“Any of these’ll do just fine,” Captain Jack told them.
“We’ll take that one,” Wayman said, pointing to the cabin cruiser. “How much?”
“Hundred bucks a day.”
“Sign outside said fifty.”
“I’m the only game in town, friend,” Captain Jack said, smiling. “Take it or leave it.”
After they had cast off, Drew stood in the cruiser’s stern. Other than a few fishing boats, they had the bay to themselves.
“Anything?” Drew asked.
Wayman let the binoculars dangle at his chest. He had given the fishing boats only a cursory glance.
“Corbano will need something bigger with lots more power,” he explained.
Wayman returned to the wheel and headed the cruiser around the island farther out into the bay. It handled sluggishly, sputtering and nearly stalling when he asked for more speed. The dinghy clacked up against the side as the waves picked up in the deeper water. The seas around them were virtually deserted. Perhaps Corbano had been here already and set farther out to sea. It was possible, although Wayman expected him to hug the coastline as close as possible to assure a quick and maximum spread of the death cloud created by the powder being dumped into the sea.
Wayman’s eyes contined to scan as he steered the boat through the currents. They would become increasingly difficult to negotiate as high tide approached, forty-five minutes away now.
The tach needle jumped crazily, then flopped to zero. The engine sputtered and died. Wayman turned the key. There was a slight cough, then nothing.
“Damn!”
“What happened?” Drew wondered.
Wayman was climbing down from the bridge. “Know anything about boat engines?”
“Not a thing.”
“Likewise. Without being too pessimistic, I’d say we were stuck.”
They hadn’t had time to consider the prospects of that when a Coast Guard cutter appeared on the horizon circling the bay on routine patrol.
“At last, a break,” the Timber Wolf mumbled.
“You going to contact them?”
“In person, kid. Don’t see that we’ve got much choice. We’ll drop anchor here and I’ll go over in the dinghy. I’ll make up a good story that’ll convince them they have to help us. This may even turn out to be a blessing,” he continued. “The cutter will have radar and whatever Corbano’s on won’t be able to hide from it.”
“What about Trelana?”
“If he’s not here yet, he’s not coming. You’ll be safe until I get back. Now give me a hand with the dinghy… .”
Wayman fought the small dinghy through the strengthening currents, reminding him that high tide was fast approaching. He cut a diagonal path across to the cutter so it would not run him down. It was truly a majestic sight at this point, its twenty-five-man crew and several guns surely a match for anything Corbano had brought with him. Only convincing the captain to use the ship’s firepower remained… .
Wayman saw activity on the cutter’s main deck and knew he had been spotted. He waved to indicate he was coming in and saw hand signals flashed in return to beckon him on. He continued steering the dinghy for the cutter’s side, wondering what story might go the furthest with the captain. The truth, perhaps? The large boat had slowed to drifting speed and a rope ladder had been hurled down for him to climb up to the deck.
The hands kept directing him forward. Wayman’s path was angular and he timed the approach with near perfection, grazing the thick steel of the cutter only slightly as he reached out and grabbed the rope ladder. After making the dinghy fast, he began to climb.
“Am I glad to see you,” he told the host of uniformed faces as he neared the top. The Timber Wolf reached the gunwale and felt hands stretching to help him over. “I was trying to—”
He cut his words off when the familiar clicking of automatic rifle bolts sent a shiver up his spine. He turned right and then left and saw he was enclosed on both sides by Coast Guardsmen grasping guns.
“There must be some mistake,” was all he could manage.
“I don’t think so,” a voice countered, and Wayman swung toward it, realizing already the mistake had been his.
“Welcome aboard,” Corbano added.
Her contact had proved most cooperative and helpful, although Elliana couldn’t help but wonder if both their efforts were for naught. She was about to go up against an incredibly well fortified castle alone instead of with a Mossad strike force. Instead of bemoaning that fact, she had to make it work for her, and her contact had helped by providing certain indispensable supplies. The Council of Ten would never have expected an attack by an individual. All their defenses would be geared for much larger assaults, and there lay Ellie’s only advantage and the basis of her entire plan.
It was nine-thirty P.M. Lisbon time when she finally arrived on a hillside looking down over the Castle of the Moors. Her plan hung on several assumptions: First and foremost, since the Council could not risk lighting the supposedly deserted castle, the base of their operations had to be contained beneath it. More, for similar reasons regular patrols of guards were out of the question, although sophisticated electronic surveillance systems and carefully hidden trip wires would make a direct ground approach suicide. This left her with approach by air, with her options severely limited. Her first thought was to utilize a hang glider as she had several times in the past. But obtaining one on such short notice proved impossible and left her with the next best thing, currently stored in the second of her two packs.
The first pack contained eight slabs of exceptionally potent plastic explosives, along with several grenades of both the fragmentary variety for destruction and smoke for camouflage. In add
ition, her contact had supplied her with flashlights, a pair of handguns, and an Uzi complete with five spare clips.
Three hundred yards away the Castle of the Moors made a fearsome, imposing sight. Its natural stone ramparts were all but swallowed by the slithering night fog, the entire structure absorbed by it at times. A slight wind poured through the empty cisterns, sounding like wild cries of warning not to approach.
Elliana had already resolved not to heed them. Breathing heavy, both packs and the Uzi slung over her shoulders, she started moving again. For her plan of entry to work, she needed to get another hundred yards closer to the castle while remaining no less than one hundred feet higher than its battlements. She moved down the hillside, walking horizontally at the same time with eyes already searching out her first requirement.
She found it at as close to a perfect position as she could have hoped for: a huge tree stump growing out of the steep hillside looking down over the Castle of the Moors. It was near enough to two hundred yards in distance and at least one hundred feet in height away.
Ellie pulled both her packs from her shoulders and slid the contents out of the larger. First emerged a huge rolled packet of thick steel cable. She located its bracketed end and attached it to three separate driving spikes, which she hammered deep into the tree stump until only their ends protruded. Next she attached the other end of the steel cable to what looked like, and for all intents and purposes was, a short, squat version of an underwater spear with dual heads and a toggle bolt assembly in the front. Then she pulled out a riflelike object that might have been a hand-held mortar and snapped the spear mechanism with attached cable snugly into the slot tailored for it down the barrel.
Ellie checked her target first with her binoculars, focusing on the tallest of the castle’s ominous battlements. The breeze was slight, a nonfactor, but the night had a way of playing tricks on your eyes, distorting distance and throwing aim off. She’d have to consider that. Ellie let the binoculars dangle and raised the firing mechanism to her shoulder. Its propellant was an air canister, which would jet the spear forward at a speed approaching three hundred miles per hour. But after two hundred yards or so depending on the wind, the pace slowed and accuracy was lost. She could only hope for the best.
Ellie checked her aim a dozen more times before finally reaching for the trigger. There would be no second shots. This was it. She felt herself start to tremble and knew she had to fire now before hesitation stole her confidence. She squeezed one eye closed and sighted down the barrel, then squeezed the trigger.
The spear lunged out with a poof, the thick steel cable unspooling in its dark wake. As she watched it, Ellie realized with terror that in her haste she had neglected to make sure she was safe from the fleeting cable. Such a careless mistake could easily lead to decapitation at such a speed, but she had been lucky.
The cable would travel for barely five seconds, just enough time for her to raise the binoculars again to her eyes to focus once more on the battlement. The whining sound of the cable unspooling stopped just as she found her target in the lenses. The spear had sliced through the ancient stone with little problem at all, the tungsten toggle ends of both heads shooting out and sideways at impact to create a firm hold.
The zip line was in place.
The principle of the zip line was based in simple aerodynamics. Attach yourself by cylindrical hook onto the cable and jump off for the ride down. Of course, the key was that the center of the weighted cable had a natural sag to it, which had the effect of slowing the rider down and ensuring that the rest of the ride would be uphill to prevent what would otherwise have been an unavoidable collision at the other end. As of now, thirty yards of cable remained unspooled and she went about the chore of slicing off the extra, refitting the end, and then rebolting it into the stump using fresh holes. Before doing so she slid the bracket connected to the rope soon to be joined to her harness over the line and tested it for play.
Perfect. So far.
Next she climbed into her line harness and fastened it about her waist while inhaling to ensure a properly snug fit. Then she slung both packs and her Uzi back over her shoulders before bolting the bracketed rope into a pair of dual slots at her front. As she rose, the cable buckled slightly from her weight. The hillside lowered into a ninety-degree incline for a time just five yards away and Ellie dragged herself for it, on the very tips of her toes when she got there. There was no going back now, even if she had considered it.
Ellie leaped.
A shrill squeal from the steel bracket grazing the cable followed her descent. Ellie closed her eyes to the incredible pace she was making, opening them only when the expected sag came in the middle and she found herself sliding uphill. The most difficult part was coming up, for if she had not sufficient momentum left to last her, she would begin to slide back down the line toward the middle before reaching the end of the zip line at the battlement. Ellie pulled her knees up cannonball style, using her body as a rudder through the night air. It worked brilliantly. A few hefty shifts of her weight at the last brought her square to the battlement, and she managed to find a good enough ledge on it for foothold while she plotted her next move.
Access to the castle could be achieved only through one of its many windows, a misnomer of sorts since it had been constructed long before glass was in use, and thus the windows were either of wooden shutters or iron bars. She had hoped to find one sufficiently weathered through the years to provide easy access, but a quick inspection of those accessible from her vantage point showed rusted steel to be the best she could hope for.
Ellie resigned herself to the next task. Still balanced precariously on the ledge, she felt in one of her packs for the climbing rope. Working agilely with one arm, she was able to loop it over the cable and, shifting her body weight, succeeded with both hands in tying down a knot.
Rappelling was the next order of business, rappelling both down and to her left where the window ledge she had chosen as a target lay. She unbuckled the rope attaching her to the zip line and slid to the farthest edge of her perch before shoving gently off, controlling the flow of her descent with her feet against the castle’s exterior. The zip line wavered under the pressure of her weight and nearly stripped her of balance on several occasions. But Ellie held fast and inside of thirty seconds found the window ledge with her feet. The steel bars forming a grate over the opening were set in enough from the outer structure to allow her crouched containment, preferable to another toehold perch at this point.
Ellie tried the steel bars with her hands. They gave slightly but nowhere near enough to hope that she might be able to free them by hand. Again her hand slid into her pack, this time emerging with an object that looked like a long, fat fountain pen. In reality it was a touch stick activated by pressure on its point, which then released a concentrated acid onto whatever it came in contact with. Ellie snapped off the protective cover and went to work.
A hissing sound and the sharp smell of melting metal followed her every move. Ellie only bothered with the edges of the steel bars where they were attached into the castle structure. But there were four of these on each side so the process became understandably nerve-racking, especially when the foul odor became too much for her nostrils. Still, Ellie forced herself to be patient until the last. She removed the bars one or two sections at a time and lowered them to the ledge near her in case ultrasonic security sensors were listening for an unexplainable and sudden clang. She had to expect anything here. This was, after all, the Council of Ten she was dealing with.
Then why am I still alive?
Ellie had asked herself that question yet again, but she was saved further consideration of it when the last of the steel bars came free and she climbed softly into the Castle of the Moors.
Chapter 33
“SEARCH HIM!” CORBANO ordered, and the Timber Wolf was shoved brutally against a wall on the deck and frisked.
One of the men masquerading as a guardsman found his pistol and tossed it
over the side. Wayman was then yanked harshly around where he could lock stares with Corbano.
“Going for a cruise?”
“Yes, Timber Wolf, a most comfortable one that will permit me to bring about the death of millions,” he boasted, a twisted smile drawn over his face. Wayman could barely stand to look at it. The left side was its usual milky white, but the right was lined with bandages and puffy red flesh from exposure to the flames back at his Georgia fortress. “It would have been easier for you if you had died in the woods,” he continued.
And Corbano came forward in his captain’s uniform and laced a backhand across Wayman’s face. A thin trickle of blood ran from one of the Timber Wolf’s nostrils.
“I watched you in that damn boat, couldn’t believe it was you. I was about to send a party out to greet you when you decided to make it easy for me. But rest assured,” Corbano taunted. “Divers are preparing even now to take care of your young friend once and for all.”
“You bastard!” Wayman raged without bothering to try pulling from the powerful grasps of the men restraining him.
“I think not, Timber Wolf. I’m doing the young man a favor. Either he dies quick … or slow like the rest of your nation. I’ve seen the powder in action. It’s remarkable.” A pause. “If you’d had something as effective in Corsica, this conversation would never have taken place.
This time Wayman did try to pull free and felt Corbano’s fist slam into his solar plexus. He doubled over, gasping for breath.
“Back then, Timber Wolf, you never would have felt such a blow. But I suppose the signs were there even that night.”
Wayman straightened up and looked into Corbano’s mad, pale eyes.
“Bring him this way,” the White Snake ordered, and the two uniformed giants dragged Wayman toward the gunwale. “It will be amusing to have you witness the beginning of our operation. In fifteen minutes all hands will be issued breathing apparatus and soon after we will begin to drop our allocation of powder. The winds are very favorable this time of the day from what I’m told, moving in a southwesterly direction.”