The Council of Ten (39 page)

“If you want to live, listen to me. We’re in danger. Don’t make any move that stands out. They could be watching. I’ve got to think this out.”

Ellie checked her watch; nearly five o’clock. Time for her to reach the castle but not enough to wait for reinforcements from Mossad. If the Timber Wolf was successful, the Council might well activate the main portion of their plan ahead of schedule. So, it was just her. She’d be dead already if the Council wanted her to be.

“There are a few things I need,” she told the contact, recalling her knowledge of castles in the Lisbon countryside, even then wondering what it was that was keeping her alive.

“When does the ferry reach the island?” Wayman asked the captain anxiously.

“When it docks, friend,” the crusty man replied with a snide wink, “and that much you can count on.” Then, after a short pause, “We should be in about three-thirty, way I figure it.”

The Timber Wolf thanked the man and descended from the bridge back toward the sparse group of people making their way across Narragansett Bay’s east passage to Prudence Island. Drew was standing alone by the railing.

“Well?” he asked.

“It’s going to be close,” Wayman told him.

It had been such the whole day. Drew had told his tale rapidly to Trelana hours earlier, slurring the words and events together. The drug lord grasped enough of the context to pose numerous questions of a technical nature, his own voice quivering. Ultimately, Trelana promised to do his best to get plenty of men and boats to Prudence Island prior to high tide at five-fifteen, which was the expected drop time for Corbano’s powder to assure optimum spread thanks to favorable wind conditions. He made no promises, though. The hours might prove too short to accomplish so much with the drug lord’s resources severely taxed. Drew was to carry some sort of flare with him and use it to signal Trelana’s fleet to attack if they ever did show up.

From the motel, Drew and Wayman reached Atlanta Airport by stolen car where they boarded a nonstop flight for Boston. Then a rental car blazing along Route 95 into Rhode Island eventually brought them to the town of Bristol, where they just caught the two o’clock ferry shuttle on the
Prudence II
. They had no way of knowing whether Trelana’s men would make it to the island in time. All they knew was that Corbano would unquestionably be there.

Elliana would have reached Lisbon by now as well. The Council of Ten would soon be in her sights. Even if she destroyed their stronghold at the Castle of the Moors, she could do nothing about Corbano since he was on his own. He belonged to Drew and the Timber Wolf, and if they failed, the upper East Coast would be wiped out.

The autumn waters were choppy, a stiff wind forcing Drew to wrap his arms about himself. The air was dank and gray, but he savored each breath as the mist played with his mouth, aware suddenly of just how precious even the damp wind was. The Timber Wolf leaned against the railing by his side.

“What do we do once we get there?” Drew asked him.

“Find a pier where we can rent a decent boat complete with flare pistol. There’s no sense looking for Corbano on land. He’ll be on the water by now.”

It was closing in on quarter to four when the
Prudence II
angled itself for docking on a rickety pier that would take them onto the island. The scene looked desolate and dreary in the autumn gray, hardly a picturesque island paradise, which was just the way the one hundred and six full-time residents preferred it. They’d had enough of summer people rolling in and out with their shiny new Volvos, driving property values too high and ruining the season. The locals constantly bemoaned the fact that Prudence had been discovered by the summer tourists, who went as far as to frighten away the near-domesticated deer and darkened the landscape with sprawling antennas and satellite dishes. Let the tourists have the summer, the locals accepted grudgingly, so long as the other three seasons belonged to them.

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 addition, 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.