The Council of Ten

by Jon Land

  So many questions and no answers she could find… .

  Feeling it was finally safe, Elliana rose from her crouch and walked the rest of the way to the subway entrance. The steps descended into the bowels of Prague. The cold became less fierce, then vanished in the modest heat of the underground. She purchased a number of tokens and pushed through the turnstyle. The clock on the wall read two A.M. Ellie hadn’t worn a watch because few Czech women did and she wanted to blend in. Two A.M. It would be virtually deserted in the subway, which was good and bad. Ellie made her way to the platform to wait for the next train.

  It didn’t matter where it was going. Anywhere would do. The key was to keep on the move and make a slow but direct path to Prague airport before the opposing forces had a chance to regroup. She reached the platform and found she was alone.

  Then footsteps sounded behind her. Ellie swung, feeling instinctively for a pistol she didn’t possess. A pair of teenage boys slid down the railing of the steps toward the platform. They were dressed almost identically in dark slacks and leather jackets. Both were smiling beneath their sandy-blond hair. They seemed drunk. Neither paid any attention to Ellie. She felt relieved.

  Other people gathered slowly. A businessman, a pair of well made up women with tight skirts who might have been prostitutes, an older lady clutching her handbag tight, two younger men with caps tilted low toward their dark, Slavic eyes. A group of strangers with nothing more in common than awaiting the next train. A Czech security policeman joined them on the platform as a train thundered down the tunnel. The teenage boys kept up their banter.

  The Prague underground, like its cousin in Moscow, was spankingly clean. No litter, no derelicts or bag ladies loitering about, and absolutely no graffiti.

  The train lights flashed in the tunnel. The tile flooring shook slightly and now Ellie was especially careful. For the next few seconds, without her ears to warn her and all sounds of violence drowned out by the roar, she was especially vulnerable. She backed up against a cement beam and rested her shoulders against it, eyes sweeping from one direction to the other.

  The train squealed to a slow halt. It was long, with many cars, but most were darkened and locked at this time. All those waiting stepped into a car directly before them. Ellie entered after the policeman. Somehow his presence made her feel safer, even though he could have been part of the opposition just as easily as the others, easier in fact. He wore a Kalishnikov assault rifle slung from his shoulder and his boots made him look considerably taller than he was.

  Ellie had briefly considered waiting until all the others had entered the car to leave it and return to the platform. She had no way of knowing, however, when the next train would come or when more of her pursuers might show up at the station. This way at least she had the benefit of safety in numbers. No professional would act in the presence of so many witnesses, especially a Czech policeman with an ominous Kalishnikov draped around his shoulder.

  The train rumbled away, picking up speed. Ellie chose a seat on a bench across from the businessman and probable prostitutes, and between the teenage boys and two young men. The older woman sat the farthest away against the wall, still clutching her handbag.

  The train thundered on.

  Ellie had no conception of when it was going to stop. Many stations would be skipped at this time of night. She shifted positions and a bolt of agony surged through the shoulder that the Mossad man’s knife had nicked. The cold had numbed it so that she had forgotten about it. But the cold was gone now and she could feel a trickle of blood dripping down her arm. She grimaced but refused to reach up to the shoulder with a squeeze of comfort. She could handle the pain and the blood easily enough, but allowing herself a distraction was out of the question.

  She reasoned that one of these people in the train was here to kill her, a pair if any of three duos were involved. Eight people besides herself were here, no, nine including the policeman. Who was it? Ellie had to make her determination before he or she or they made their move. Otherwise the advantage would be too great to overcome. Her best chance would probably be to place her trust in the Czech security man and exit the train when he did. That might be just what he was hoping for, however, and even if that wasn’t the case, it wouldn’t stop the real stalkers from leaving the train at the same time.

  Madness! She had to know!

  Without a weapon, she felt ridiculously vulnerable. Even all her training with creating a weapon where none existed was useless since she could make no move out of the ordinary here. Darkness was a possibility, of course, the absence of light a reliable ally when one was placed in an inferior position.

  Ellie gazed around her. There were too many lights in the car to hope for darkness, even in the tunnels. It had to be something else… .

  Her rotating stare caught the teenage boys in their path. The boys turned away quickly. Ellie’s heart began to thump. Something was wrong. They shouldn’t have turned away so fast. Looking at her would have been an expected response under the circumstances for a pair of boys. Unless …

  Ellie buried her shudder by switching positions on the bench. What if they hadn’t been looking at her? What if they had been looking at the two young men to her right?

  Now Ellie gazed at the prostitutes. Their skirts showed barely a wrinkle, the soles of their shoes hardly wet from the soaking they should have taken in the slushy streets. Unless they were just going out to work, this couldn’t be.

  The train thundered through a darkened tunnel and Ellie held her breath. All the lights returned quickly. No eyes were on her.

  It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be! Not one or two of them, but all of them!

  The impossibility of the premise made it plausible. They would have taken her out on the platform or perhaps as soon as they were on the train, if it hadn’t been for the untimely arrival of the security policeman, now standing in the center of the floor, gripping a ceiling rail with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other.

  Ellie’s mind worked frantically. Eight against one—incredible odds, but it might well be the odds that had kept her alive this long. The hit team had no reason to rush. She had to make sure that situation continued, make sure she did nothing to give away the fact that she was on to them.

  Eight against one … bad odds, yes, but there might be a way to equalize them, perhaps even tilt them in her favor. Ellie’s eyes fixed briefly on the policeman’s Kalishnikov. If she could somehow get it away from him and turn it on the hit team members, she could take them all by surprise.

  The problem was timing. Grabbing the gun, stripping it from the security policeman, swinging around to fire—all of that would take many seconds. The hit team’s weapons would be within easy reach; under a jacket, fastened to the thigh beneath a skirt, within a handbag. Ellie’s strike would have to be more than fast; it would have to be immediate.

  She could feel the killers trade glances again. The boys were laughing, joking, trying to provide cover. She pretended that the ploy worked. Then she was on her feet, moving so suddenly that she surprised even herself.

  The policeman was still smoking his cigarette as she stepped up to him.

  “Excuse me,” she said in Czech. “Might I have one of those?”

  “Da,” he answered and started to reach inside his overcoat to his uniform jacket. To do so, he had to lower the Kalishnikov from his shoulder to his hand, and that was when Ellie acted.

  She was on him, going for the gun before the policeman had located his cigarettes, before the others could respond. The problem for a team of killers is that often each will wait for another to make the first move. Such was the case here.

  Ellie had gained control of the assault rifle and shoved the policeman out of the way to the floor before any of the team’s weapons appeared. She fired the Kalishnikov in a semicircular arc, starting with the bench she had been seated on because it held four of the team members in a narrow space. The young men had their pistols out, but the boys were still reaching for th
eirs when the powerful assault bullets sliced into their heads and midsections.

  Ellie kept her finger on the trigger as she swung the rifle around in the direction of the prostitutes and the businessman. All three had scattered, diving in separate directions, their responses professional. Ellie felt the heat of their bullets surge past her, shattering glass as she plunged and roiled, firing the Kalishnikov in midair, her aim remarkably on target. Both prostitutes fell victim to head shots, the businessman losing most of his throat to a single bullet that sent him rolling crazily across the floor, gasping and praying for death. Kneeling now, Ellie held her fire and twisted the Kalishnikov in the direction of the policeman and old woman.

  The old woman was screaming, hiding her face.

  The policeman had his pistol out and held it within a trembling hand.

  “Don’t!” Ellie ordered, Kalishnikov barrel leveled toward him.

  The policeman let the pistol drop to the floor and raised his arms in surrender from his half-prone position in the center of the car. Ellie could hear the train’s brakes being applied now. The next station stop was approaching.

  Its clip exhausted, the Kalishnikov slid from her grip, and Ellie quickly grabbed the policeman’s discarded pistol. It was a miracle that he had survived the barrage. His fallen hat revealed blond hair and a surprisingly young face. There was no reason to kill him, and Ellie walked by without even exchanging a glance.

  “No!” the old woman pleaded. “Don’t kill me! Don’t! I’ve done you no harm!”

  Ellie turned away from her as the subway train ground to a halt. The exit doors slid open. She started to step out. She was halfway out the door when the security policeman saw her swing back around and aim the pistol in his direction. He screamed once, but the gun was already roaring, three times at least, and he looked up to discover he was surprisingly still alive. He gazed behind him.

  Three neat holes had been carved in the midsection of the old woman, her eyes fixed sightlessly forward. A small pistol clanged to the floor from her hand.

  “Tell anyone who asks you the truth!” Ellie shouted at him. “Tell them they made me do it. I didn’t have a choice. Do you understand?”

  The guard nodded and watched the woman disappear into the station, as he fumbled for the walkie-talkie on his belt.

  Elliana ran breathlessly, her chest burning but her mind clear. The Council of Ten was behind this terror-filled night, behind all the guns that had sent bullets toward her. But this time they had left a trail.

  The town of Getaria in the Vizcaya province of Spain. A man named Lefleur.

  Ellie was already on her way.

  Chapter 12

  “IF YOU’RE EVER in the area, stop by.”

  After realizing that his isolation had been compounded by his status as a fugitive, Drew had racked his brain trying to figure out what to do, where to go. Finally, he recalled Mace’s open invitation, along with the fact that the man who was able to best him, and everyone else in mercenary camp for that matter, lived on Hibiscus Island in Miami Beach.

  An hour after seeing himself on television, Drew was in a cab heading onto the McArthur Causeway. The driver swung right onto the private drive leading to Hibiscus and Drew shrank low in the backseat at the sight of a uniformed guard keeping the mechanical rail down until she had a chance to note the cab’s license plate.

  Drew blessed the fact that he remembered Mace’s address. The house turned out to be a brown ranch of typical southern Florida design. He paid the driver, stepped up to the front door, and was about to hit the bell when he heard a splash coming from the backyard. He circled around the side beneath a carport harboring the cloaked, sleek shape of Mace’s latest sports car. Drew moved onto the grass and breathed easier when he saw Mace doing laps in the pool. For all he knew, Mace could have been in South America, a possibility Drew had not let himself consider.

  The pool was small and it took Mace only a few strokes to cover its length. Drew moved forward, uneasy about disturbing his routine, suddenly feeling like a stranger. The backyard bordered Biscayne Bay and several motorboats pulling skiers rolled close enough to kick spray onto Mace’s property.

  Mace caught Drew’s presence on his next lap back. He looked up with no small degree of surprise, shaking the water from his face and hair.

  “Hi,” said Drew lamely.

  Mace looked at him as if struggling for words. “If we were back playing the game in Georgia, I’d say you’d finally beaten me.”

  “It’s no game.”

  Mace started to pull himself from the pool. “Decided to drop in?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Mace was on his feet now heading toward a chaise longue containing a floral beach towel. His shoulder and back muscles rippled with each step. Drew followed behind tentatively. Mace dried himself and looked Drew over.

  “I’m in trouble,” he said, trying not to break down.

  “Pull up a lounge and tell me all about it.”

  Drew slid one closer and sat on its edge. Mace toweled his hair.

  “I killed someone,” Drew said because he could think of no better place to start.

  “You what? For real? No game out in the woods?”

  “For real. In a restaurant called Too-Jay’s.”

  Mace expressed a flash of recognition. “Trelana … Christ, that was you?”

  “No! I didn’t kill Trelana. I had planned to, but I couldn’t and someone else did who then tried to kill me. It was that man I shot.”

  “Wait a minute, slow down… .”

  “I wasn’t alone. A man helped me, set everything up. I thought he was from the DEA. I made him help me. I thought I could do it, but when the time came, I—”

  “Hold on. Did you say DEA, as in Drug Enforcement Agency?”

  “Because of the letter!” Drew’s face sank into his hands. “God, I was such a fool to—”

  “What letter?”

  “I thought it was from my grandmother. But it was just bait to lure me into the setup. You see my grandmother died and …”

  Drew’s voice was breaking by the time he finished telling the story. “It makes no sense to me even as I tell it. So damn elaborate, too elaborate to work, to risk so much on.”

  “Not really,” Mace said, seeming to grasp more essence from the story than Drew himself. “Shiteaters did their homework on you, that’s all. They wanted Trelana dead and you were the perfect pigeon to do it. Course, you needed motivation and a little help, which they were more than happy to provide once you bought their scam.”

  “But it didn’t turn out to be enough to make me finish the job,” Drew said almost dejectedly.

  “So they had that shiteater standing by just in case you fucked up. If you don’t fuck up, he kills you in the confusion after you’re finished and walks out. Like magic. No trace left. End of story.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “Comes with the territory. Trouble was you surprised them. You killed their iceman and took off. When they couldn’t find you easily, they decided to enlist the cops to help them.”

  “But I didn’t kill Trelana!”

  “Doesn’t matter. They merely extended the plan a bit. These shiteaters got power coming out the asshole. Reality’s what they make it. That’s how they suckered you into this in the first place.”

  “And if the cops catch me …”

  “You tell your story, which sounds like the biggest crock of shit ever. They’ll have proof you’re guilty and witnesses to back up the shiteaters’ side of the story. In plain English, you’d be fucked.” A pause. “If they let you talk at all, that is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know squat, kid, but you know too much as far as whoever’s behind this setup is concerned. Right now I haven’t got the foggiest as to why the shiteaters needed to use you to ice Trelana, but they musta had their reasons to go through such an elaborate setup.”

  “So, what can I do about it?”

  It was me
rcenary camp all over again; teacher to student, master to pupil.

  Mace whipped his sun-dried hair off his forehead. “Okay. We’ve got plenty of advantages over them now, but we’ve gotta make them count. So, lesson number one is we make up our own rules… .”

  “Fine. Where do we start?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. We make up our own rules based on the ones we figure the enemy will be using, to counter him. Like your enemy in this case can’t afford to have you circulating. Too much risk involved there to the shiteaters. So, they leaked your name. And on the chance the police don’t find you and make life easy for them, they will have retained a killer to take you out.”

  “He’d have to find me first, too.”

  “This man would also be a hunter. Like me back in the woods. It’s what I do, what their person does. So, our first rule is that after today you stay on the move.”

  “But I’ve got nowhere else to go!” Drew protested.

  “You’ll go where I tell you, do what I say. You should be safe enough here for the rest of the day. Rest up. Grab some chow. But stay inside. By ten tonight you’ll have made your way to the Marriot Marina on Biscayne Bay. There’s a boat there called Jude the Obscure. I’ll see you in the cabin at ten sharp.”

  “What about until then? What will you be doing?”

  “Hitting the road to see a few people. Miami’s really a small town. Not much goes down plenty don’t know about. Our second rule: find them before they find us.”

  “Us?”

  “Just like the woods, only this time we’re on the same side.” Mace slapped Drew’s shoulder. “Hey, against that even the fuckin’ Timber Wolf would have his work cut out for him.”

  “Maybe,” Drew said with a shrug. “But it’s not like I thought it would be. I wanted to kill Trelana more than anything in the world. I even had the gun out, but I couldn’t do it. You told me reality sucks. I didn’t believe you.”

  “You got out of there alive, kid, and that’s all that counts.”

  The night belonged to Selinas because it belonged to death. He preferred working in it because it never betrayed shape or motion. The fact that it was the enemy of most made it his friend.