The Council of Ten by Jon Land

feet over the ground while being marked by machine-gun tracer fire. He remembered his first two forays into the jungle on individual wargames maneuvers, comic adventures in which he had “died” first on each occasion.
    Mace took him aside after the second.
    “You’re thinking too much, son,” the death machine advised. “Thinking about living, dying, and what your goddamn next move is supposed to be. What you gotta do, you gotta learn to hate… .”
    Mace had gone on to explain that this hate was for no one individual, but just for the idea of defeat, of failure. Refined, the hate could become a weapon that could help you achieve the impossible, overcome any odds. The hate taught you to accept nothing and stop at nothing. It was the great equalizer.
    “Take the Timber Wolf that time in Corsica,” Mace had related. “Ambushed by twenty shiteaters with automatic weapons, and he stayed alive. Killed most and the rest ran for the hills with fudge stains in their undies. He couldn’t have done it without the hate.”
    “But he’s a professional, you’re a professional,” Drew returned. “I thought professionals weren’t supposed to feel anything.”
    “That’s crap mostly. When you’re out there alone, on your own, with shiteaters ready to rip your gut out, you’ve got to feel something. I’ve known men who were like ice, but they’re few and far between. So, you find something to hate and you don’t stop hating until you’ve won, which in this case means at the end you’re still alive and the shiteaters are dead. Stop hating and you got no edge. No man, not me or even the Timber Wolf, can be better than everyone else. It’s the hate that makes you better.”
    Drew took Mace’s words to heart. He had been looking at mercenary camp as merely a violent extension of his own life, had tried to apply the same rules. It hadn’t worked because different rules applied. In the next session, the same obstacles remained to be overcome, but Drew’s hesitance and desperation were gone. The hate had replaced them, hate for anything that threatened to trip him up. The hate gave him focus when he took to the woods, a singular purpose of survival, which made him feel more alive than ever. He slept in trees or buried under layers of dirt or squeezed between two large rocks. His concentration never wavered. The mere consideration of failure had been stricken, of success as well. There was only the moment immediately before him. Survive that one and he could move on to the next. The short term was the key. One step at a time. He was among the last surviving five two sessions previous, and in the most recent it had come down to just him and Mace. The hate had served him well.
    Now it had returned. His state of mind was that of the woods. A man had murdered his grandmother and would try to kill him. That man had to die. The hate required it. Mace always said you came into the world kicking, screaming, and alone, and that was the way it might as well stay with everyone else being shiteaters anyway.
    Masterson had called him back early Saturday evening.
    “There’s a disco in Palm Beach called Chauncey’s. Meet me there at ten.”
    Chauncey’s was located on the first floor of the NCNB Building on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. It was packed by ten o’clock and featured a marble dance floor and striking art deco design. Masterson had a table off to the side within sight of the door. He was working on a drink that had a soggy lemon peel floating on its surface when Drew took the chair across from him.
    “Forget it, kid,” were his first words. “It can’t be done.”
    “We wouldn’t be meeting here if that’s all you had to say.”
    “Just trying to do you a favor, that’s all.”
    “Just tell me what you found out.”
    “You wanna whack Trelana? No sweat. He eats lunch every Sunday at a Palm Beach deli called Too-Jay’s—him and a pair of bodyguards who could pass for the Incredible Hulk’s