The Council of Ten

by Jon Land

  Ellie’s eyes dimmed, a curtain starting to draw before them. Out of the hopelessness of it all, she knew the madman before her had to be stopped. She had the means, but now, once again, she had found the desire and resolve to perform the final act of what suddenly seemed a meaningless life.

  “I love you, David,” she said weakly.

  He just looked at her.

  He nodded, satisfied, and kneeled down in her blood to move his pistol against her breast.

  “Kiss me, David. Let me feel you one last time.” And with that Ellie freed the cyanide capsule from her rear molar.

  His mouth moved emotionlessly forward and met hers. She tried for passion amidst the blood still pumping from inside her. She could feel him starting to squeeze the trigger and bit down hard on the capsule now between her rear teeth. As the gas hissed out, she poured her breath into his mouth, feeling him pull back as the bitter almond taste reached his senses.

  The gun slipped from his hand. David pulled away, gasping only once before he fell backward, horribly aware of his own death and seeking out his killer through fading eyes as guards rushed to his aid.

  Ellie used her last bit of life to press the face to her watch. Above her the explosions sounded as sparks in unison, followed by a rumbling as the medieval castle began to crumble from above. She was dead long before the ceiling began to shower downward, covering the dead and soon-to-be-dead with the rubble of twelve centuries. But her face remained placid and calm, more at peace than it had been in life for years.

  Meanwhile, the people of Sintra and the surrounding towns were awakened by what surely must have been an earthquake. The ground for miles seemed to tremble and the great rumbling disturbed both animals and sleeping infants. People poured out of their homes in fear and dread, desperate gazes locking on a shower of dust and debris, a thickening cloud that seemed to be rising out of the mist for the night sky. Only at sunrise would they understand what had happened. Only then would they see what had caused the rude and terrifying interruption of their sleep.

  The Castle of the Moors was no more.

  Epilogue

  DREW DID NOT KNOW the name of the island and didn’t much care. He knew only that it belonged to Arthur Trelana, and that was enough since in the end it had been Trelana who saved his life.

  Mostly all he remembered was the pain. His sleep was interrupted constantly in the early days here by dreams of being trapped by walls of flame. He would wake up screaming, sweating, tearing the sheets off himself as the air conditioner hummed softly from the window.

  Weeks had passed now, but Drew had lost too much track of time to know precisely how many. He measured its passing simply by the visits of his doctors, the increasing length between them telling him that he was getting better. Despite this the amount of pain was still enormous, along with an arm and leg that were basically useless. Pills had numbed it and him for quite some time, but now the pills were issued less frequently and Drew learned to expect the pain and tolerate it reasonably well. Slowly his mind began to clear and more memories returned.

  Strangely, most came back in reverse order. He remembered waking one morning to find the Timber Wolf standing over him. He, too, was a mess, with a bandaged face, one arm in a sling, and a crutch held under his armpit. On another earlier occasion, Trelana himself had hovered over Drew’s bedside with an explanation of where he was and an assurance that he was safe. Last he remembered the plunge into the frigid waters off Prudence Island. He regained consciousness only after being lifted into one of Trelana’s boats and placed in a cabin next to the Timber Wolf.

  Trelana had returned this morning and informed him that it was exactly four weeks since that day. They sat together beneath the warm Caribbean sun, parting after Trelana announced that the Timber Wolf was due in that afternoon.

  Actually, it was early evening when Wayman arrived at the villa, the sky darkening but still colored amber by the majestic glow of the setting sun. They sat on the veranda in chairs across from each other, neither speaking for a few minutes. The Timber Wolf had shed his bandages, but sudden motions brought a painful grimace to his face.

  “You surprised them, Drew,” he stated finally. “For a while nobody thought you were going to pull through.”

  Reflexively, Drew’s hands swept across the still-bandaged areas of his thigh and chest. “Trelana was here today,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Do you know what he came about?”

  “He gave me a rough idea when I spoke with him this morning.”

  “Let me fill you in on the details.” Drew eased himself forward. “He says he can arrange a new identity for me: new name, new social security number, a whole new lease on life. A fresh start, in other words, and he’ll throw one in for Pam, too, once she gets better.”

  “I’m told her prognosis is favorable.”

  “Oh, she’ll live all right, just like I will.”

  “I’m also told you’ve only spoken to her once.”

  Drew didn’t respond right away, as if he were searching for an excuse. “The guy she loved and who loved her doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t go back to just being myself because he’s gone, good as dead and there’s this stranger in his place.” Drew looked down, then up again. “Trelana’s offering me a whole new lease on life,” he repeated. “The problem is finding a reason to live.”

  “It’s easier to find one not to die.”

  “Very profound.”

  “Just necessary.”

  Drew struggled up from his chair and moved to the veranda railing. “It all comes down to hate, doesn’t it, Peter? Back in mercenary camp, Mace told me that it was hate that kept you going, kept you alive. I didn’t really understand what he meant until now. It’s not so much hate as the absence of love. I just can’t feel love anymore. I think back to the person I was before all this started and I don’t even know him.” Drew’s tone became more businesslike. “Trelana said my future might depend on how much is left of the Council. He said to talk to you about what you found at the castle before I … make my decision. You found it, didn’t you?”

  The Timber Wolf nodded. “I found what was left of it. It’s just rubble now with some parapets and towers lingering for effect.”

  “Elliana?”

  Wayman shook his head sadly. “She knocked out the Council headquarters, which explains why the go-signal was never given for the rest of Powderkeg. She knocked it out so completely that she must have been trapped inside with the rest of them. A waste. She was the best.”

  “Including you?”

  “Including anyone in this god-forsaken line of work. Things never stopped mattering to her. That made her special.”

  “Then she finished it… .”

  The Timber Wolf rose and joined Drew at the railing. “Not quite. There are still twenty-eight drop points out there with their deadly supplies of powder ready and waiting. The Council’s central command is gone and with it they’ve lost the number one thing they had going for them—organization. But they can get that back. Somebody will start the ball rolling again. It’s inevitable.” Wayman gazed out over the water. “I’ve been at this for more than fifteen years now. I’ve seen a dozen councils and a hundred Corbanos. All obsessed with power and all convinced they’re the only ones who really know how the world should be run. Trouble is, to get it running that way lots of people have to die first—more each time.”

  “Then it’s good that people like you … and Elliana … are out there to stop them.”

  Wayman smiled reflectively. “Save your praise, kid. We’re not gunfighters saving the innocent farmers from the murderous ranchers. We’re just hired hands caught in the middle. I gave up trying to figure out what was right a long time ago. All I know for sure is what’s wrong.” He hesitated. “Like Powderkeg.”

  “It’s still out there, you said, still functional.”

  “But only temporarily. We’ve got the drop point locations, and Trelana’s lending me the manpower I’ll need to
destroy them and all the powder.”

  Drew looked at the Timber Wolf closely before speaking. “What about me?”

  “Walk away. Take Trelana’s offer, pick up your girl friend, and build a new life. Forget all this crap about loving and hating—none of it means a thing. The world’s not a very pleasant place, and it was your lot to find that out a little more blatantly than most. I used to think I tried to quit five years ago because my standards were too high. Truth was I realized there was no such thing as standards at all. It’s a treadmill, Drew, and when the track speeds up you do your best to keep up with it. You survive—that’s the object, the only object.”

  Drew shook his head. “I don’t buy that. You’re probably right about surviving, but I can’t build a new life based on the person I used to be. My past started seven weeks ago and I don’t have a present at all. All I’ve got is a future and I’m not really sure what’s best for me, but I know a new name and social security number don’t even come close.”

  “Drew—”

  “No, let me finish. You’re going to tell me to go back to Pam, that she needs me, but it’s not like that, believe me it’s not. If I take Trelana’s offer, it won’t be so much that I’m on a treadmill that’s moving too fast as one that’s not moving at all. I can’t look back; I can only look ahead.” His eyes became pleading. “But I need a target, something to focus on.”

  Wayman hesitated. “What does Pam say about all this?”

  “We didn’t quite … discuss it. We didn’t discuss much of anything.” Drew smiled sadly. “She did say she never could stomach my macho act in your typical Georgetown bar or my adventures at mercenary camp, but she was proud of what I’ve done these past few weeks when it was for real and lives depended on it.”

  “And what did you say?” When Drew stayed silent, Wayman seized the advantage. “You didn’t say anything because it’s your fault she’s where she is. You got her involved. You don’t want to face that so you turn your back on her. Get used to it, kid. In the world you’re so determined to enter, people get hurt and you just block it out because otherwise it eats you up, tears you apart.”

  “I’ve already entered, Peter, and nobody gave me much choice about it. I’d like to choose on my own to stay in.”

  But Wayman wasn’t giving up the fight yet. “No, it all comes down to what you just said, except you left something out. You can’t look back because you’re afraid to. But that’s the way it always is in this business. You don’t ever look back because there’s too much pain there. It’s called a one-dimensional existence. Hell, even Shane never looked back when the kid stood there on the edge of town screaming his name.”

  “He was good at what he did. That got him through.”

  Wayman moved forward and squeezed Drew’s good shoulder tenderly. “I’ll come back in two weeks. If you still feel this way, we’ll talk. I owe you too much not to accept your decision, but I owe you too much not to make you think about it. Make sense?”

  “Not really.”

  “Get used to it.”

  They stood together at the railing in silence. Wayman had expected Drew’s request and planned for it. So had Trelana. He would spend much of the next two weeks praying the kid would change his mind, knowing all the time that he wouldn’t.

  They both gazed out over the sea where the fading light caught a tern swooning down from the sky to sweep up a fish that had wandered too close to the surface.

  “Things don’t change much, do they?” Drew asked softly.

  “No,” the Timber Wolf said. “I suppose they don’t.”

  A Biography of Jon Land

  Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He wrote techno thrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.

  Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain our security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.

  In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.

  Recently, RT Book Reviews gave Land a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction. Land is currently writing his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong—a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The first three books in the series—Strong Enough to Die (2009), Strong Justice (2010), and Strong at the Break (2011)—have all garnered critical praise with Strong Justice being named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, tells the story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will be released in 2011.

  Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.

  Land (left) interviewing then–teen idol Leif Garrett (center) in April of 1978 at the dawn of Land’s writing career.

  Land (second from left) at Maine’s Ogunquit Beach during the summer of 1984, while he was a counselor at Camp Samoset II. He spent a total of twenty-six summers at the camp.

  Land with street kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he visited in 1987 as part of his research for The Omicron Legion (1991).

  Land on the beach in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in 2003.

  In front of the “process trailer” on the set of Dirty Deeds, the first movie that he scripted, which was released in 2005. The film starred Milo Ventimiglia and Lacey Chabert.

  Land pictured in 2007 with Fabrizio Boccardi, the Italian investor and entrepreneur who was the inspiration for his book The Seven Sins, which was published in 2008.

  Land emceeing the Brunch and Bullets Luncheon to benefit Reading Is Fundamental at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in the spring of 2007.

  Land and his classmates and fraternity brothers celebrating their thirtieth class reunion during Brown University’s Commencement Weekend in 2009. He was a member of the Delta Phi fraternity.

  In the fall of 2010, Land attended the first ever Brown University night football game, which he coordinated in his position as Vice President of the Brown Football Association. Brown beat rival Harvard 29-14.

  Land’s most recent publicity shot, taken in late 2010, when he was having, he says, a good hair day.

  A Sneak Peek at Strong at the Break

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at Jon Land’s new book Strong at the Break, coming in 2011

  Chapter 1

  Quebec; the present

  FROM THE STREET THE house looked like any other nestled around it in the suburban neighborhood dominated by snow cover that had at last started to melt. A McMansion with gables, faux brick and lots of fancy windows that could have been lifted up and dropped just about anywhere. The leaves had long deserted the tree branches, eliminating any privacy for each two-acre spread had the typical neighbors been around to notice. Problem was the neighborhood, part of a new plot of palatial-style homes, had been erected at the peak of a housing boom now gone bust, so less than a third were occupied.

  Caitlin Strong and a Royal Canadian Mountie named Pierre Beauchamp were part of a six-person squad rotating shifts in teams of two inside an unsold h
ome diagonally across from the designated 18 Specter, the marijuana grow house they’d been eyeballing for three weeks now. She’d come up here after being selected for a joint U.S. and Canadian Drug Task Force looking into the ever-increasing rash of drug smuggling across a fifteen-mile stretch of St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation land that straddled the border.

  Beauchamp lowered his binoculars and made some notes on his pad, while Caitlin looked at him instead of raising hers back up.

  “Something wrong, Ranger?”

  “Not unless you count the fact I got no idea what we’re trying to accomplish here.”

  “Get the lay of the land. Isn’t that it?”

  “Seems to me,” Caitlin told the Mountie, “that the DEA got that in hand already. You boys too.”

  “It’s Task Force business now. We need to build a case for a full-on strike.”

  “You telling me the Mounties couldn’t have done that already, on their own?”

  “Not without alerting parties on the other side of border who’d respond by dropping their game off the radar, eh? When we hit them, the effort’s got to be coordinated and sudden. That doesn’t mean two law enforcement bodies working in tandem, it means two countries. And that, Ranger Strong, is never a simple prospect.”

  “So we’ve got to tell both sides what they know already.”

  Beauchamp shrugged. “Put simply, yes.”

  “I guess I’m just not cut out for this sort of game,” Caitlin said and sighed.