Authors: Jon Land
The Omega Command (44 page)
The boatman’s face lost all its color. He pulled his frame to the dock and sat down on the edge.
“How’d you know?” was all he said.
“I didn’t. At least, I wasn’t sure. But I did a little research on the car crash that supposedly took your life five years ago in New York. Fire made identifying the bodies impossible, and one was actually unaccounted for.”
Randall Krayman’s gaze grew distant. “They came out in a helicopter to make sure they’d finished the job.”
“Dolorman’s men?”
“Or Hollins’s. It didn’t much matter.”
“And you hid from them by burying yourself in the snow just like you did two nights ago on the island, correct?”
Krayman nodded.
“That woman with us Christmas Eve was a reporter,” Blaine said by way of explanation. “She’s been researching you for months. She told me about your brave enlistment in the army and subsequent training in which you learned how to use an M-16. You saved our lives by emptying a clip into Wells’s men. That was obviously no fluke.”
“Ayuh,” acknowledged Krayman softly. “I enjoyed it too.”
“Revenge, Mr. Krayman?”
“Justice, friend, something you should know about better than most if I read you right.”
“I wasn’t criticizing.”
“What else did that reporter lady tell you ’bout me?”
“General features like height, the color of your eyes, and, of course, the fact that you were born in Maine. You came back here to hide from them, but you wanted to watch, to monitor their actions. An inlet across from Horse Neck Island couldn’t have been a random choice.”
Krayman’s blank expression confirmed all of Blaine’s words. “At first all I wanted was to stay dead. I thought maybe Dolorman and Hollins had done me a favor. I didn’t know about Hollins at first, but I had my suspicions and over the years, well, I had plenty of time to figure everything out. Thing of it was, here I sat with everything behind me. …” Suddenly his eyes sharpened. “But I couldn’t let go, friend, not then.”
“And what about now?”
“You want me to go back to civilization with you?”
Blaine nodded. “You’re the only man who can expose Omega’s existence once and for all and begin the process of destroying its remnants. You’re the only man no one can argue with on the subject … since the operation was yours originally.”
“Not the way Dolorman and Hollins envisioned it. I realized that in time. But they decided to get me out of the way ’fore I could do anything about it.”
“Dolorman’s dead. Hollins too.”
“So am I, friend, and that’s still the way I want to keep it. Don’t you think I coulda gone back and told the world the truth if I’d wanted? Well, I didn’t. I just wanted to stay dead. I’d had enough.” A pause. “I still have.”
“I’m not going to argue the merits of society with you, Mr. Krayman. I’ve seen enough to know that your position is justified. But speaking of the world, it would be a hell of a lot worse off with Omega still threatening it.”
“Do you really believe that, friend?”
“Absolutely. The world’s not perfect and neither is the country. As a matter of fact, lots of it stinks. But we can’t let the Dolormans and the Hollinses feed off the rot.”
“I guess you’ll expose me if I don’t turn myself in,” Krayman said, scratching at his beard stubble.
Blaine shook his head. “No, Mr. Krayman, the decision’s yours. You saved my life and I owe you for that.”
“Lord in heaven, an honorable man. … Where were you fifteen years ago?”
“Killing people somewhere in Indochina. Things haven’t changed much since.”
“No,” Krayman said reflectively, “I suppose they haven’t. You’ve been fighting a lot of wars, friend.”
“No, just one big one. A lot of people say it’s futile. I say, what isn’t? The world’s a lousy place by nature, but things tend to get even worse when men like Hollins gain control. It’s out there for them to grab and there aren’t many of us left to keep their fingers off it.”
Randall Krayman slapped his thighs and stood up. He gazed at the sun, treating his leathery flesh to its warmth.
“You got a car, friend?”
“Gassed up and ready.”
“You think I oughta shave?”
McCracken shook his head slowly. “The stubble becomes you.”
“Well,” said Randall Krayman, “just give me a few minutes to pack my things.” Then, with his stare fixed on nothing in particular, “I don’t suppose I’ll be coming back here again.” They started walking toward the shack. The snow on the roof was beginning to melt. “Tell me, friend, what have I missed these past five years?”
“Not much,” Blaine smiled, “not much at all.”
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He wrote techno thrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel,
The Doomsday Spiral
, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain our security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent,
The Last Prophecy
, was released in 2004.
Recently,
RT Book Reviews
gave Land a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction. Land is currently writing his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong—a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The first three books in the series—
Strong Enough to Die
(2009),
Strong Justice
(2010), and
Strong at the Break
(2011)—have all garnered critical praise with
Strong Justice
being named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book,
Betrayal
, tells the story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will be released in 2011.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
Land (left) interviewing then–teen idol Leif Garrett (center) in April of 1978 at the dawn of Land’s writing career.
Land (second from left) at Maine’s Ogunquit Beach during the summer of 1984, while he was a counselor at Camp Samoset II. He spent a total of twenty-six summers at the camp.
Land with street kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he visited in 1987 as part of his research for
The Omicron Legion
(1991).
Land on the beach in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in 2003.
In front of the “process trailer” on the set of
Dirty Deeds
, the first movie that he scripted, which was released in 2005. The film starred Milo Ventimiglia and Lacey Chabert.
Land pictured in 2007 with Fabrizio Boccardi, the Italian investor and entrepreneur who was the inspiration for his book
The Seven Sins
, which was published in 2008.
