Peacekeepers (1988)

by Ben Bova

  "Those are my orders," Pavel insisted.

  "And how do you propose to take these prisoners away from here?"

  Speaking as the ideas formed themselves in his mind, Pavel replied, "You will provide a pilot to fly this aircraft to Tripoli. I will present the prisoners to the Soviet embassy there. The KGB will know what to do with them."

  Hassan snorted. "Impossible! Tripoli is a battlefield now. My brother is fighting for his life against my army contingents."

  So they are brothers, Pavel said to himself.

  "Then fly us to Tunis or Cairo. There are Soviet embassies in both capitals."

  Hassan hesitated.

  "You may keep the hoverjet as proof that foreign agents tampered with the aquifer system, if you like," Pavel said.

  With a sudden inspiration he added, "Or destroy it so that no one will be able to link you to the sabotage."

  "There must be no trace of these foreigners," Hassan insisted. "No word of this operation must ever leak out."

  Pavel made himself laugh. "The only thing that leaks out of the KGB is the blood of capitalist dogs."

  "I have no pilot here," Hassan said.

  "Call for a helicopter from the aquifer complex," said Pavel, recognizing a stall. "We will remain here."

  "You would be more comfortable outside that cramped vehicle."

  "We will remain inside." Pavel nudged the guns the final few millimeters so that they were pointing directly at Hassan. "And I suggest that you remain where you are, also."

  The colonel paled momentarily, whether from sudden fear or anger, Pavel could not tell. But then he put on his smile again and reached inside his tunic for his gold cigar case. This time he had to light his own cigar; none of the soldiers or bedouins stirred from where they stood.

  "Very well," Hassan said at last, exhaling thin gray smoke, "I will send for a helicopter."

  He turned to the lieutenant nearest him and spoke swiftly in Arabic.

  For nearly fifteen minutes they all waited: Pavel with his fingers on the triggers of the machine cannon; Mavroulis and Kelly sweating down inside the APV cab; Hassan smiling and puffing and chatting with the sycophants around him; the Libyan soldiers grouped around the APV, ready to fire into it at a word from their leader.

  Barker lay on the sand, unmoving, his legs crusted with blood, his eyes swollen shut.

  The sun sank lower. Shadows lengthened. The desert wind sighed.

  And Pavel heard, far in the distance, the faint throbbing sound of a helicopter.

  None of us can fly a helicopter, he knew. Perhaps Barker could, but he is in no condition to try. We will have to let the pilot actually fly us to Tunis and try to make a rendezvous with Alexander there.

  The pilot is actually going to fly us to Tunis, he added fearfully. If Hassan has not cooked up some deal of his own to land us in his own territory. Even if he believes my fairy tale about Moscow, he could easily claim that our helicopter crashed in the desert and we were all killed. Moscow will never question him.

  The helicopter materialized in the yellow desert sky, a massive ungainly metal pterodactyl hovering overhead, its engines shrieking, rotors thrumming, blowing up a miniature sandstorm as it settled slowly on its wheels. It was huge, one of the giant heavy cargo lifters built in the Soviet Union. Pavel almost smiled at the irony.

  It took several tense minutes for them to get Barker aboard and strap themselves into the bucket seats lined along one wall of the helicopter's barn-sized cargo bay.

  Hassan watched carefully, puffing his slim cigar, a satisfied little smile on his lips.

  We're not going to Tunis, Pavel realized as the ship lifted off the ground. All I've done is delayed Hassan's fun by a couple of hours.

  But as the helicopter rose into the brazen sky two women in white nurse's uniforms came down from the flight deck and began tending to Barker. Neither of them looked Arabic; one was a blonde.

  Then Cole Alexander clambered down the metal ladder from the flight deck, grinning his crooked sardonic grin at them. Kelly leaped out of her seat and wrapped her arms around her father.

  "Ohmygod, am I glad to see you!" she gasped.

  "Likewise," Alexander said. "Good work, all of you.

  "Specially you, Red. You used your head back there."

  Pavel was speechless. Mavroulis leaned his head back and laughed maniacally.

  "I knew it!" the Greek roared. "I knew you had a backup for us!"

  Detaching himself from Kelly, Alexander squatted cross-legged on the cargo bay's metal flooring. His daughter sat beside him, facing Pavel and Mavroulis.

  "I knew Hassan was a double-dealing sumbitch," Alexander said almost apologetically, "but he was the only sumbitch we had to work with. Like my dear Uncle Max used to tell me, 'When they stick you with a lemon, make lemonade.'"

  "You expected him to try to kill us?"

  "No, he surprised me there. I expected him to take you prisoner and hold you hostage until his fight with Rayyid was settled."

  "His brother," Pavel said.

  "Yep, they're siblings." Alexander made a sour face at the thought, then went on, "The way I figured it was this: We screw up Rayyid's aquifer project. Hassan and his army people pull their coup d'etat while the Libyan people are still stunned at Rayyid's flop with the water project. Hassan holds you four as his trump card. If he wins, you go free. If he loses, he can offer you to Rayyid in return for his own life."

  Kelly said, "But instead he decided to remove all evidence of sabotage."

  "He must be damned confident he'll beat Rayyid,"

  Mavroulis muttered.

  "He's probably right," Alexander said.

  "But you had a backup plan for us, nevertheless," said the Greek.

  Alexander's sardonic smile came out again. He looked down at his daughter, then his gray eyes locked onto Pavel's.

  "Wish I'd really been that smart," he admitted. "I did have this old Russkie chopper and a medivac team ready, just in case. And when I got Kelly's message—Pavel's warning, actually—I flew this bird as close to Hassan's camp in the desert as I could."

  "Damned good thing you did," Kelly said.

  "Yeah, but then I was stuck. I couldn't go flying in there with the four of you surrounded by trigger-happy Moslem fundamentalists. I needed some excuse to come chugging into their camp. Pavel provided the excuse. When Hassan radioed for a chopper to take you guys to Tunis, I got my chance."

  "You see?" Mavroulis said, thrusting a blunt finger under Kelly's nose. "I told you to keep quiet and not interfere! I was right!"

  Kelly nodded glumly. "You were right, Nicco."

  "She wanted to shoot you when you said you were going to turn us over to the KGB," Mavroulis said to Pavel. "I had to hold her down."

  "You thought I would really do that?" Pavel's voice was weak with shock. He felt betrayed.

  Kelly blushed, even under her dark makeup. "You were damned convincing."

  "I had to be."

  Alexander interrupted, "Damned good thing you were, Red. Otherwise my little girl here . . ." His voice choked off. He put an arm around Kelly's shoulders and hugged her to him, as if to make absolutely certain that she was with him and safe.

  "Hassan was actually going to fly us to Tunis?" Pavel asked.

  "Those were the orders he radioed," Alexander said.

  "Course, they could always be countermanded once you were in the air."

  "Pavel," said Kelly, from the protection of her father's embrace, "I'm sorry. You saved our lives, and I didn't trust you. I was wrong, and I'm sorry."

  Pavel nodded, his thoughts churning: I had told her that I love her, but that made no difference to her. No difference.

  She did not believe me.

  "Well," said Alexander happily, "all's well that ends well."

  "Except for Barker," said Mavroulis.

  "He won't be able to walk for some time," Alexander admitted. "But he'll be okay. If I have to donate a few tendons myself, we'll get him back on his feet."
>
  "What about Shamar?" Pavel asked. His voice sounded harsh and hard, even to himself.

  The others stared at him, their self-congratulatory smiles fading.

  "Hassan claimed Shamar left Libya weeks ago," said Alexander tightly.

  "With the bombs?"

  Alexander slowly shook his head. "The bombs were not with him. He's got them stashed somewhere, but we don't know where."

  "We'll find them," Kelly said.

  "We'll find him," her father growled.

  Pavel looked into their faces. He saw smoldering hatred in Alexander's gunmetal eyes. In Kelly's he saw gratitude, perhaps even affection—but not love.

  "I must return to Moscow now," he said. It is better, he told himself. I do not belong among these people.

  But Alexander shook his head. "You can't do that. Red. You haven't accomplished your mission. You're supposed to assassinate me, remember?"

  Pavel shook his head. "No jokes, please. I will return . . ."

  "The hell you will! You think we went through all this crap just to send you back to shoveling snow?"

  "I don't understand . . ."

  Alexander took his arm from his daughter and reached out to clasp Pavel's shoulder. "Red, my dear old Uncle Max used to tell me, 'Only a fool does something for just one reason.' You could have fucked up this aquifer mission. You could have made Moscow very happy and gotten three of my best people killed. But you didn't."

  Pavel stared at the older man. "You were testing me. My loyalty . . ."

  "Damned right," Alexander said, grinning wider than ever. "You did okay, and Moscow isn't gonna be very happy if you go home now."

  "I would be considered a failure," Pavel admitted.

  "So stay with us! We can use a man with your skills and your smarts."

  "But Moscow . . ."

  "Moscow wants you to keep an eye on me, right? I'll bet they're just as glad that Rayyid's on his way out. Hassan's the saner of the two. Besides, there's still Shamar and those damned nukes of his."

  "You want me to stay?"

  Mavroulis grumbled, "For a Russian, you're not so bad."

  But Pavel was looking at Kelly. She glanced at her father, then turned to face Pavel.

  "We want you to stay," she said, so low it was almost a whisper. "Like I told you back in the computer room—we have a lot to talk about."

  Pavel would have preferred that she fling herself into his arms, but he nodded slowly at Kelly and her father. This was better than nothing. Moscow would be suspicious, he knew. I will be playing a very dangerous game; practically a double agent.

  Kelly was smiling at him now. From the protection of her father's embrace.

  "Very well," Pavel heard himself say. "I will stay."

  "Great," said Alexander. "Now that that's settled, the next thing we tackle is these poachers in Rwanda. The bastards have nearly wiped out the last remaining freeliving gorillas in the world. And Shamar was heading in that direction, according to my information . . ."

  So Zhakarov, nicknamed "Red," became a

  reluctant member of Alexander's little

  group, his loyalties divided at least three

  ways among Moscow, Kelly, and a growing

  admiration for Cole Alexander and his

  work. Jonathan Hazard, Jr., was not

  recruited until nearly a year later, and even

  then it was mostly an unfortunate accident.

  I had been a member of the court-martial

  at the younger Hazard's trial, shortly after

  the officers' coup had been thwarted by

  Hazard, Sr. I still had both my hands then.

  The young man refused every offer of help

  that his father made. That did not, of

  course, altogether prevent the older man

  from helping his son.

  J. W. Hazard, Jr., received a much lighter

  sentence than his fellow conspirators.

  Cardillo and most of the others went to jail

  for life. Jay Hazard was merely banished to

  the Moon for ten years.

  MOONBASE,

  Year 7

  "FOUR minutes 'til the nuke goes off!"

  The words rasped in Jay's earphones. He knew that the woman was nearly exhausted. Inside his pressure suit he was soaked with sweat and bone-tired himself. The adrenaline had run out hours ago. Now all they were going on was sheer dogged determination.

  And the fear of death.

  "It's got to be here someplace. " Desperation edged her voice. Four minutes and counting.

  Long months of training guided Jay's movements. He halted in the midst of the weird machinery, took the last of the antistatic pads from his leg pouch and carefully cleared his helmet visor of the dust that had accumulated there.

  Then immediately wished he hadn't.

  Six other pressure-suited figures had entered the factory complex. Each of them carried a flechette gun in his gloved hands.

  Jay tried as best as he could to duck behind the lumbering conveyor belt to his right. He motioned for the woman to do the same. She had seen them too, and squatted awkwardly in her suit like a little kid playing hide-and-seek.

  No radio now. They would pick up any transmission and home in on it. Actually, Jay realized, all they have to do is keep us here for another three minutes and some, then the nuke will do the rest. They don't care if they go with us.

  That's their real strength: they're willing to die for their cause.

  The woman duck walked to Jay and leaned her helmet against his.

  "What do we do now?" she asked. Her voice, carried by conduction through the metal and padding of the helmets, sounded muffled and muted, as if she had a bad cold.

  He knew shrugging his shoulders inside the pressure suit would be useless. But he did it anyway. There was nothing else he could think of.

  They were hiding in the midst of Moonbase's oxygen factory, out on the broad plain of Mare Nubium, the Sea of Clouds that had seen neither water nor air for more than four billion years. The factory was out in the open vacuum, no walls, covered only by a honeycomb metal meteor screen so thin that it almost seemed to sway in the nonexistent breeze.

  Automated tractors hauled stones and powdery soil scooped from the Moon's regolith and dumped their loads onto the conveyor belts, ignoring the human hunters and their prey. Crushers and separators and ovens squeezed and baked precious oxygen from the rocks, then dumped the residue into piles at the far side of the factory, where Other automated machinery mined metals and minerals from the tailings. Glass filament piping carried the oxygen to huge cryogenic tanks, giant thermos bottles that kept the gas cold enough to remain liquefied.

  The conveyor belts rumbled, the crushers pounded away, in nearly total silence. Jay could feel their throbbing through the concrete pad that formed the base of the factory. In the vacuum of the Moon, though, normal sound was only an Earth-born memory.

  In all the vast complex there were no human workers.

  Only robots, which actually performed better in the clean vacuum than they did in the corrosive air needed by their human owners. No humans set foot in the factory, except for the two cowering behind the main conveyor feed—and the six now spreading out to cover all the perimeter of the factory and make certain that Jay and the woman could not escape.

  Three minutes thirty seconds.

  Jay closed his eyes. Hell of a way to end it. The nuke will wipe out the oxygen factory, and that'll kill Moonbase. We won't go alone, he thought grimly.

  It had started innocently.

  Jay had reported for work as usual, riding the power ladder from his quarters on level four to the main plaza. It was Tuesday, and sure enough, there was a fresh shipload of tourists hopping and tumbling and laughing selfconsciously as they tried to adjust their clumsy Earth stride to the one-sixth gravity of the Moon.

  The tourists wore coveralls, as the Moonbase Tourist Office advised. But while Jay's coveralls were a utilitarian gray with Velcro f
astenings, the Flatland tourists were brilliant with garish Day-Glo oranges and reds and yellows, stylish metal zipper pulls dangling from cuffs and collars and calves. Just the thing to tangle in a pressure suit. Jay thought sourly as he entered the garage office.

  He had expected to spend the day driving a tour bus around Alphonsus, locked away from everyone in his solitary cab while some plastic-smiled guide pointed out the ruins of Ranger 9 and the solar-energy farms with their automated tenders and the robot processors that sucked in regolith soil at one end and deposited new solar cells at the other. The tourists would snap photographs to show the Flatlanders back home and never have to leave the comfort of the bus. Jay would drive the lumbering vehicle back and forth across the crater floor along the well-worn track and never have to speak to anyone.

  But the boss had given him a red ticket, instead.

  "Special job, Hazard," she had said, in that hard tone that meant she would brook no arguments. "Flatland VIP wants to see Copernicus."

  "Christmas on a crutch!" Jay fumed, lapsing back to the euphemism he had used when his father would punish him for profanity. "That's a six-day ride."

  "And it's all yours," the boss retorted. "Got number 301 all set for you. See you in six days."

  Jay knew better than to complain. He snatched the red ticket from the boss's counter and stomped out into the garage. Actually, he thought, a six-day trip up to Copernicus and back might not be so bad. Away from the tourists and the boss and the rest of the world for nearly a week.

  Out in the wilderness, where there isn't a blade of grass or a puff of air or even a sound—alone.

  Except for some Earthside VIP. A part of Jay's mind wondered who he might be. Somebody I used to know?

  The thought sent a wash of sudden terror through him. No, it couldn't be. The boss just picked me out of the computer.

  She knows I like to be left alone. She's trying to do me a favor.

  Still, the thought that this VTP might be someone from his former life, someone from his father, even, scared him so much his stomach felt sick.

  When he saw who it was, he relaxed—then tensed again.

  It was a woman, a petite snub-nosed redhead who looked too young, too tiny and almost childlike, to be a Very Important Person. But when Jay got close enough to see her brown eyes clearly, he recognized the kind of no-nonsense drive and determination he had seen in others: his father, his former commanding officer, the grim-faced men who had led him into treason and disgrace and banishment.