The Council of Ten (36 page)

“The point,” said Ellie, “is that he’s alive.”

“Not for long, unless we do something.”

“Any ideas?”

The Timber Wolf turned his attention to the binoculars and began to think. There were at least a dozen guards outside and probably a similar number within the house where Drew Jordan had been led.

“I’ve got to get him out,” Wayman said for the second time minutes later despite Ellie’s admonition.

“I agree,” she relented. “So long as we get Corbano as well. He’s the key to the operation. Powderkeg is scheduled to start tomorrow on the East Coast. He’s the only chance we’ve got to stop it.”

“Maybe. But the Council’s pulling his strings. They don’t impress me as the sort who’d give up any more control than they absolutely had to. That means the signals will come from their headquarters, not here.”

“Interesting point. Except we don’t know where their headquarters is, and Corbano must. We’ve got to get to him.”

“Nightfall,” the Timber Wolf said suddenly, his thoughts seeming to jell.

“We’ve got your pistol and mine. Hardly enough firepower.”

“Then we’ll have to get some more.”

“Now? How?”

“You stay here,” Wayman told her, moving to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Shopping.”

“How good to see you awake,” the all-white man told Drew as he finally came around. His eyes struggled to focus. His head pounded.

“Yes,” the man went on, “you’re probably uncomfortable. We gave you something to make the ride down here from Virginia easier.” Corbano stood up and moved between Drew and a raging fire that one of several men in the room with them had lit and was now tending. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“Water,” Drew managed.

“Yes, of course.”

Corbano motioned for a glass to be brought to him immediately. Another of the men handed it to him. Corbano stepped forward and started to offer it to Drew, pulling back at the last instant and tossing the contents into his face.

“Oh, I am sorry. How clumsy of me… .”

Drew licked at his face to find as much stray moisture as he could.

Across the floor, the flames in the fireplace roared higher.

“Unusually cold for fall in the back country,” Corbano said to no one in particular. “A splendid night to sit by the fire.” Then, to Drew, “You know all about fire, don’t you? Sunday night that laboratory was destroyed by fire. I understand your girl friend was burned rather badly and you narrowly escaped the same fate. What a shame, she was such a pretty girl… .”

Drew felt himself tremble with rage. He looked up hatefully at the all-white man.

“You should have died then,” Corbano told him. “Now you’ve gone and complicated things for yourself … and me.” He paused. “It was not hard for us to trace your fat friend’s hideout. He died alone, Drew, just like you’re going to.”

Drew gritted his teeth.

“You will answer my questions, won’t you?”

Drew just looked up at him.

“I could give you truth serum and in your present condition it would almost certainly kill you by the time we’d finished. But then you wouldn’t feel enough pain and we can’t have that now, can we?”

Corbano motioned to one of the men behind him by the fire. The man pulled a poker from the hearth and brought it forward, holding it high for safety. Its tip glowed fiery orange. Corbano grasped it at the handle and waved it before Drew’s face.

“What’s happened to the powder?” he asked.

“Left, left in the lab,” Drew replied.

“Then you found out what it was, found out what it can do?”

Drew looked away.

Corbano grabbed his chin and forced it back forward. “And you told your friend in Virginia about it, didn’t you?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

“But I don’t know if
he
told anyone.”

“The president. He should be arriving here any minute.”

Corbano smiled. He patted Drew’s cheek tenderly but made sure he could see the poker.

“I should ask you where the fat man took your girl friend. No, that would take too long to get out of you and I can probably find her quite easily by myself.” Corbano knelt into a crouch. “You’d like that, Drew, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to bring her here so you can be together.”

“Fuck you,” Drew said, more out of anger than bravado.

“No, it’s her you’d like to fuck. Just say the word and I’ll arrange it. Or perhaps you would prefer a trade. Tell me where we can find Trelana and I won’t bother looking for her.”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is Trelana?”

“I was blindfolded!” Drew lied. “I never knew where I was when we met.”

Corbano smiled and shook his head. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where can we find Arthur Trelana?”

“
I don’t know!
”

“Suit yourself,” said Corbano.

And drove the hot poker straight for Drew’s face.

The Timber Wolf returned an hour before nightfall, a pair of shopping bags in his arms.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he said, placing the bags down between himself and Ellie.

“What did you—”

“Napalm, grenades, tear gas, and a few assorted extras.”

“In the
general store?
”

Wayman nodded and emptied the varied contents of the bags on the ground, explaining as he did. “Ammonia and bleach. Seal the bleach in a baby food jar and seal that in a larger jar filled with ammonia. When they shatter and the liquids mix, you’ve got homemade tear gas.” Next, he pulled out a bag of kitty litter and a two-gallon drum of gasoline. “Napalm.” The largest assortment came out last and included galvanized plastic piping, black powder, nails, candles, and assorted ropes, cloth, and jars. “These grenades will pack quite a wallop.”

“If we don’t blow ourselves up making them.”

“I’ve had plenty of experience. Many of my assignments years ago required that I enter a country without any weapons,” he told her. “I learned how to make them from scratch after arriving. I could even whip us up some pretty good nitro given the time.”

“We might need some to penetrate Corbano’s defenses.”

“This will come close enough.”

For the next ninety minutes, Ellie followed Wayman’s instructions precisely, mixing compounds in exact measures in the bowls he had provided. The most dangerous work he saved for himself, and occasionally she drew far enough ahead to watch the sweat pouring from his brow as he sealed exceptionally volatile contents within ordinary glass jars. They both hurried through their work as night began to fall, knowing that darkness would signal the definitive end to their labors. Still, they continued well past the point when sufficient light had faded from the sky and their eyes began to deceive them.

The Timber Wolf was dividing their homemade arsenal into piles of pipe bombs, nail grenades made from Coke bottles, large napalm jars, and smaller tear gas ones—when the scream came. It pierced the night with an agonizing shrill that forced both him and Ellie to shudder.

“We’ve got to move,” he told her.

“It’s not dark yet.”

“It’s dark enough.”

Drew lay on the cot motionless, hovering in different stages of consciousness. He was awake enough to think but not awake enough to move no matter how much he coaxed his muscles. He remembered the red-tipped poker coming at him, an involuntary shift of his head, and then the pain.

Oh God, the pain
…

When the scream came, he was already detached from himself, so it seemed that he could hear it even as the sound left him on his breath.

The poker had missed his eye and pierced the flesh over his cheekbone. He remembered the sizzling hiss and thought even as he screamed of steaks barbecuing over an open grill. He would have vomited if his stomach had anything in it. The eye had swollen shut immediately and hadn’t reopened since. The body had worked fast to numb the incredible agony, which returned now one throb at a time as he lay on the cot hearing himself breathe as if it were someone else.

He wanted to die. When you came right down to it, there was nothing else to hope for. Jabba was dead, his grandmother was dead, and who knew about Pam. There was no one left to turn to, no one left to save him. Strangely, death no longer scared him, but seemed a welcome alternative to the further pain promised at the hands of the all-white man.

Drew inhaled deeply and prayed for sleep.

“We each have three pipe bombs, two nail grenades, and three containers each of napalm and tear gas,” the Timber Wolf told Ellie. “Be careful with the napalm and tear gas. They’re useful to us only from a distance.”

“What about matches?”

Wayman reached into his pocket and produced two lighters. “One for each of us, but in this wind they might not prove reliable, so I also brought some cigarettes. The best way to light the fuses is to light a cigarette first and then hold it up to them. The wind’s no problem that way. Takes a little longer, though.”

Ellie looked satisfied.

They had dragged their arsenal to the very edge of the clearing. Rising would bring them into the range of the complex’s heavy duty lighting, in addition to the guards’ rifles. There was no other choice at this point. They would have to rely on darkness and distraction to shield them.

The Timber Wolf held a lighter to a cigarette, handed it over to Ellie, and then lit one for himself.

“We’ll start with the nail grenades and pipe bombs,” he explained. “Those should draw their attention and force the troops out where the napalm and tear gas will be most effective. The idea is to forge a tunnel for ourselves right through their ranks direct for the front door.”

He held the cigarette up to the first of his pipe bombs, letting the fuse burn down.

“Go!” he instructed.

Ellie touched her cigarette to the first of her nail grenades and hurled it, already lighting the second as Wayman’s toss exploded an instant before hers. The resulting explosions achieved even more than their desired effects. The guards scattered directly into the paths of the second grenades they each hurled. Two tosses later, the chaos total, the Timber Wolf started with the napalm.

The makeshift construction didn’t work as well as he had hoped; the fireballs were not potent enough to link up and create the wall of flame he had been expecting. Yet, several of the infernos captured someone within them. The victims’ screams punctured the night as they rolled hopelessly on the ground, catching the dirt aflame, too.

More lights flooded the courtyard. An alarm began to shriek. Ellie tossed another grenade and then a nail bomb. There were screams and more men fell. Others with rifles and machine guns were rushing from the house now, an instinctive reaction and the worst one since it played right into their enemy’s hands. Confusion became Wayman and Ellie’s ally, the troops unable to ascertain where the attack was coming from. It was time for the tear gas. They each hurled two of their jars, the clear liquid sloshing about. All four crashed open on impact and sent the guards closest to them clawing for their eyes and throats immediately, gagging. The gas spread quickly, forcing the others to stagger away shielding their eyes and mouths.

“Now!”

Ellie followed him. Each had their pistols out, Ellie holding another pipe bomb in her hand with a last stored in her pocket. For his part, Wayman carried several of the homemade weapons in his inside jacket pockets, including a final container of the tear gas compound that he could only hope a quick dive to the ground would not shatter under him.

They hurdled over the fence and rushed down the funnel that their blasts had created between the perimeter guards. Some of the guards had recovered enough to level guns at the intruders charging boldly into the light. Ellie’s and Wayman’s pistols clacked as they ran, at least half their shots being hits.

Even though they moved quickly, they could feel the effects of the tear gas. Ellie felt a dryness in her mouth and the start of burning down her throat. Wayman’s eyes were watering heavily, obscuring his vision. As they neared the front door, each touched a lighter to a pipe bomb and lobbed it through a window. Screams followed the blasts. Smoke and flames coughed out from the shattered glass.

The Timber Wolf reached the porch and ducked as a hail of fire bore down on him from an upstairs window. Ellie tried to return it with her pistol, but the same gunman quickly had her pinned down as well. Corbano’s men inside had reacted better than expected. The second-level windows made the most defensible positions of all and Wayman had feared their use more than anything. He crouched with Ellie in the cover of the high stairs and porch.

“Damn,” he muttered.

Another second-floor window showed a gun, and automatic fire cut through what was left of the windows on the first floor, seeking their position. Meanwhile, the remaining functional guards along the perimeter had regrouped and were firing from beyond the cover of trees in the yard, effectively pinning Ellie and Wayman where they were.

“Trapped,” she muttered.

“Handle the outside shooters,” he told her, as rifle fire coughed wood splinters over them.

Ellie snapped another clip home. “I’ve only got one more after this.”

“Use your last pipe bomb. Use anything! Just distract them!”

Ellie struck her lighter to the fuse of her final pipe bomb and hurled it toward the largest congestion of fire. In the instant after it struck, the Timber Wolf was on his feet challenging the fire from the windows on both floors as he hurled a pipe bomb through the first level and a napalm jar through the second. The screams on the ground floor came first as the last of the windows were blown out. On the second floor there were only screams and the bright orange glow of a room on fire.

The front door crashed open and two men with machine guns charged them. Their rapid spray forced Wayman into a spin that stripped him of his balance and he went down hoping the padding of his jacket would cushion his final container of tear gas.

He struck the ground as softly as he could, Ellie gasping at the sight while she fired at the men whose machine guns were still blaring. Miraculously, the tear gas jar remained whole and Wayman added his fire to Ellie’s immediately. Both men crumbled. Wayman and Ellie sprang to their feet.