The Council of Ten (25 page)

Elliana lunged, the men never hearing her. She went for the one closest to her first, looping an arm around his throat to shut off his wind as he crouched slightly. The other man swung and responded just as she had expected. Instead of using his gun right away, he came forward first, enough for Ellie to thrust her knife hard into his midsection with her free hand. As he crumbled, gasping, Ellie joined her second arm to the other man’s neck and twisted violently.

The snap seemed as loud as a gunshot. The man stiffened in her grasp and she let him drop to the ground, already in motion to grab the knifed man’s machine gun, which was lying on the ground. Scooping it up, she headed off the path and into the brush, keeping low and cutting diagonally across the thick woods toward one of the gulleys. She could probably escape now if she chose such a perilous descent, but that would leave Terry and the old woman totally vulnerable, and this she could not accept.

The rest of the troops appeared over the lip quicker than she had expected. Their precise number was impossible to gauge in the darkness, but there were at least ten and they were well spread out. She could never hope to get all of them with a single burst from her machine gun. Possibly from the rear, though, she would have a chance. Kill them all and then flee down the mountain, eventually to Germany and Heinrich Goltz.

A sudden drop-off on the jagged ground stripped her of her balance. As she was falling, the noise that she created frightened her most of all. Suddenly gunshots split the night air. Orders were shouted, then more shots, closing on her now.
Damn!

Ellie rolled onto her stomach and fired a burst in the direction of the loudest concentration of rushing footsteps. Screams and thuds sounded as some of her bullets found their mark. But movement was the key now. She had to keep her position a mystery to them, never staying in the same place long enough for them to find her.

Ellie pulled herself back to her feet. One of her ankles, twisted and sore, started to give way and she bit her lip against the pain. The lack of mobility was the last thing she could afford. The fast motions certain to be required of her would now be impossible. In the darkness she had no way of telling how many her initial burst had felled. Probably two at most. That left at least eight, probably more.

Bullets cascaded into a tree just above her head. Ellie ducked and felt her back showered with bark. She ducked behind the trunk and fired a blind series. Again came the sounds of groans and thuds. The night was her ally, always had been. Years ago, so much of her training had been concerned with firing at sounds, rather than sights. It was paying off.

There was a burst of pain to her shoulder and Ellie gasped in agony as she hit the dirt and rolled. More bullets chewed up the ground around her, coming from the side of the tree behind which she had taken refuge. They had her surrounded, boxed in. Her shoulder burned with agony, already stiffening, her fingers soon to be useless. She fired a quick barrage in the direction she was facing. But the shots were errant, one arm not enough to control the gun’s powerful kick. She fired another burst behind her and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.

Then she was in motion, a combination of crawling, running, and dragging herself along through the darkness as the enemy bullets struggled for a bead on her. The pistol was grasped in her hand now, but she didn’t dare use it for fear of giving her position away.

It didn’t matter. A pair of black boots flashed before her as a man lunged with rifle in hand. She tried to roll, trying for a shot she knew was hopeless, when an ear-wrenching blast stung the night. The black boots were thrust backward through the air. Another man rushed her and before Ellie could get her gun up, his midsection ruptured with another blast and he, too, was airborne.

Ellie swung to her rear. Terry was standing between a pair of trees, shotgun snapped open. Their eyes met and Terry fumbled for another pair of shells to load in the chambers.

Ellie saw the shape appear behind the woman who had saved her life and raised her gun. A bullet stung her wrist from another direction and she watched her pistol go flying as Terry stumbled forward with shots pounding her back, making scarlet exit wounds through her chest and stomach. She pitched over finally as Maria Carvera’s dogs rushed into the brush and attacked the man who had killed her.

Elliana felt her wrist join her shoulder in numbness and did her best to flee. She had no gun now and looking for it in the darkness was futile. Escape was her only concern.

There were more shots and horrible wails as the killers descended on the dogs, and still more as another set found the old woman’s shack. Ellie had underestimated their number. There were probably dozens more spread through the woods, circling in on her and making escape impossible.

Undaunted, fueled by the incredible reserves called upon by desperation, Ellie found her legs and ran. She kept her head as low as she could, but speed was of the essence now. She would have to rely on the darkness to shield her.

Bullets split the air, tracing her flight, trying to angle themselves with her pace. Ellie changed to a zigzag, confusing the shooters and buying herself as much time as she could.

Suddenly her feet went out from under her. She felt herself falling, realizing she had lost track of her position and the gulley had claimed her. She braced but there was no hard impact, just a continuous roll as she plummeted downward. Pain racked her body and she felt consciousness struggling from her as she finally came to a halt, sprawled on her back beneath the night sky, unable to move.

A pair of twin figures in black appeared over her and Ellie closed her dimming eyes, resigned to death now and just hoping it would come fast.

Then hands were reaching down, probing, as the darkness enveloped her and she submitted to it.

Chapter 22

THE TIMBER WOLF WAS
baffled. Through the Riveros, the grandmothers’ cocaine had been distributed literally all over the country, thirty different drop points from coast to coast. Such a precise, repetitive pattern could be nothing else but by design, which meant that the powder brought in by the grandmothers received totally different treatment from the rest of Trelana’s vast supplies. Apparently, a complete network had been set up just to handle it, with Lantos and the Riveros as key elements.

Yet, none of the points, or few anyway, would normally be associated with cocaine trafficking. Many of the drops were located in small, out-of-the-way towns, which didn’t fit the expected profile in the least. The points were so randomly spread across the country that it didn’t seem to matter at which one he started. Wayman purchased a portable road atlas and circled all thirty of the drop points on the respective state maps, finding the geographic distribution to be incredible. Something stuck in his head, something that held all thirty together through a common thread, but what was it? He stored the question temporarily and turned his attention to Wapello, Iowa, which he had chosen as his starting point mostly because it seemed the least appropriate of all the ones circled. He headed for Des Moines on Wednesday where he picked up a rental car to take him the rest of the way into Wapello, and hopefully some answers.

The trip was comforting only in that it felt good to be active again, to have purpose. Nagging at him always, though, was the final sequence of events that had set into motion his inevitable withdrawal from the field.

Corbano … the White Snake, one of the most successful terrorists for hire anywhere. A man with no delusions of patriotism, cause, or morality whatsoever. He was simply a hired hand. Corbano’s trademark was that he was always at the scene of the violent deeds he perpetrated, never trusting the work to subordinates. He was also one of the most elusive men in the world.

The Timber Wolf had followed a string of leads and had traced Corbano to Corsica, specifically to a small inn nestled in the Corsican hills overlooking the sea. He made base at a nearby hotel and waited for his opportunity to get close enough to complete the assignment. He had ample time to call for a backup strike force, but he wanted the White Snake for himself.

It took the Timber Wolf a day and a half to figure out that Corbano was in Corsica to meet with a radical cell of the Red Brigades. That meant something big was being planned and a lot of innocent people would die if it were carried out. The principals met regularly in a cabin located farther up the mountains. Since the Timber Wolf would be working alone, outnumbered, he would have to strike at night.

Wiring the cabin with explosives was not feasible without risking exposure. But going in at night would allow the Timber Wolf to use a portable rocket launcher to obliterate the cabin. Of course, there would be guards posted around the perimeter, and he dispatched four neatly without fuss.

Everything was going like clockwork. The Timber Wolf had been after Corbano for years and savored the moment of releasing the first rocket. He hit the trigger and the rocket sped out from the launcher’s barrel with a great
whoooooossssssh
. As it turned out, the second rocket was not needed, but he fired it anyway. Chips of wood splattered everywhere and flames engulfed what was left of the cabin.

The Timber Wolf knew something was wrong right away. There had been no screams, no flaming bodies projected outward. His heart thudding with uncertainty, he approached the clearing.

The bullets were at once everywhere. The Timber Wolf hit the ground, grasping his Uzi. He sprayed it in the direction of the enemy fire but kept moving. He realized he’d been had, tricked, fallen into a trap like a novice. It was all a setup. Corbano had lured him here. The cabin obviously had a tunnel beneath it that led back into the woods somewhere.

The Timber Wolf had never fought better. Calling upon every skill he knew and plenty he didn’t kept him alive against odds that should have been insurmountable. By all reports twenty men had surrounded him—Red Brigades or Corbano’s, it didn’t matter. It was one of the most incredible battles of its kind ever, adding to and confirming his legend. But the legend didn’t mention that it occurred after the fact, meaningless in and of itself.

Wounded and battered, Wayman made it back to his hotel an hour before dawn, collapsing with his wounds until a knock on the door came several hours later. The desk clerk handed him a just-delivered letter. Its contents were simple:
Al Forno school in Rome. Nine this morning. Fuck you, Corbano
.

Wayman had checked his watch. It was nine on the button. Frantically he rushed for the phone, his call reaching Rome seconds too late. The Al Forno School had been leveled to the ground with the ringing of the nine o’clock first period bell. Three hundred students, none over fourteen years of age, would die. Another five hundred injured.

All because he had played right into Corbano’s hands, let something become personal when by all definitions it couldn’t be. The White Snake had used him from the beginning, used him to keep other authorities off the job because the Timber Wolf was on it, while he planned his latest atrocity.

So, the Timber Wolf pulled out, resigned two weeks later. His blunder had cost too much, and it should have cost him his life as well. Wayman did not feel fortunate to be alive. Everything he was, everything he had been, was over. He knew it wasn’t just the one incident, not just Corsica. It was a culmination of all the years he had fought the enemy on his own terms. He had only asked all along that he be allowed to know when he couldn’t cut it anymore, limits of the body easily compensated for but limits of the mind not so swiftly made up. It had become personal for him, and the personal was a sign of weakness that created other weaknesses, like predictability, and this he could not afford. So, he withdrew to Florida and did his best to forget that the Timber Wolf ever existed.

But time had caught up with him.
He
had caught up with himself. The legend of Corsica, Wayman reflected. Things were seldom as they seemed.

There was little traffic on the interstate leading from Des Moines to Wapello and the only scenery along the way was rows and fields of grain ripe for harvest. Wapello itself was a small town carved out of simple Americana with three main roads forming a small business center on the outskirts of a classic Iowa farming community, which boasted corn as its major crop.

Wayman picked up a local map at the small post office and followed Route 61 for ten miles before turning west onto a nameless, numberless road that would lead him to the drop address. He was in deep farm country now, even deeper as he turned off onto a dirt road. His car kicked clouds of dust up thick enough almost to obscure the mailbox with the address in question stenciled on it beneath a single name:
TUMBLEFIG
. The name of the farm’s owner obviously. Wayman pulled his car over to the side. There was a white farmhouse set back a bit and beyond it lay a modest farm, six hundred acres perhaps lined with what Wayman judged to be corn. A pair of tractors and other heavy farm machinery were parked before a bam. Cows grazed in the fields beyond.

The Timber Wolf climbed out of the car to stretch. His back ached and his muscles felt stiff.

As he stretched, Wayman looked down and noticed the huge ruts carved into the dirt and rock road. A lot of heavy machinery had been down here for quite a while and not too long ago either. Certainly these impressions were too deep to be explained by the inventory of farm equipment present in the yard, the treadmarks obviously those of massive front loaders and back-hoes. But what would so much heavy machinery be doing in farm country?

His thoughts were interrupted by the emergence of a husky man in denim overalls from the house. A screen door slammed behind him. He was wearing a straw hat and made straight for the largest of the two tractors. Tumblefig, Wayman assumed, ready for his afternoon chores.

The tractor’s frame sagged as Tumblefig settled into the seat and gunned the engine, backing up a bit to angle the machine for a direct approach to his fields, plow teeth at the rear ready to be lowered and churned. Wayman kept watching, following the tractor’s progress. On two occasions it swerved to avoid something rising out of the ground. Without binoculars Wayman couldn’t tell exactly what the things were, but his eyes were sharp enough to identify steel extensions, something like baffles.