Peacekeepers (1988)

by Ben Bova

  Shamar used Castanada to lure me up here. The only fight between them is over how big a cut of the money Castanada's entitled to!

  And I walked into it. Like a fucking lamb going to the slaughter. I got Hazard and the Russian kid killed. And Kelly—what have they done to Kelly?

  He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. If his arms had been free he might have tried to kill himself.

  It's my fault. It's all my own stupid, blind, arrogant fault.

  As they hustled him along the dark endless passageway, Alexander knew that he had been beaten and nothing awaited him but death.

  If I can get Kelly out of this, that's all I can hope for. To get her away from here. To see her safe. That's the most I can do. That's all I can do.

  The little procession finally stopped. Alexander peered into the darkness and saw that they were at a tightly bolted wooden door.

  "Your daughter is in here." Shamar's voice was strangely tight, low.

  The guards released their grip on Alexander's arms. One of them unbolted the door and swung it open. The room inside was small, but lit by a narrow slit of a window. Late afternoon sunlight slanted in, blood red.

  Kelly lay on the floor, unmoving.

  We know about Shamar's plan to attack

  Geneva and the other IPF centers from

  interrogations of suspects arrested in Bogota

  and elsewhere in the wake of the Valledupar

  fiasco. The dead-man's switch that Shamar

  wore around his neck was actually

  constructed by a Pakistani electronics

  technician who was picked up in London on

  a narcotics charge. We got the story on

  Alexander from Alma Steiner and Barker,

  the crippled pilot. It took months to sort

  out all the details, of course. More than a

  year, as a matter of fact. We are still not

  certain of exactly every point, and there is

  considerable pressure from several sources

  not to investigate it further. I pursue

  whatever leads I can lay my hand on, for

  reasons of personal curiosity and

  professional pride. The complete story will

  never get into the official IFF history. But I

  can tell it here as completely and honestly

  as I can, if you will continue to grant me a

  modicum of artistic license.

  MONTESOL

  Year 8

  She lay on the stone floor in that awkward grotesque sprawl of death, beyond dignity, beyond shame, beyond help.

  Alexander sagged to his knees, bile burning in his throat.

  Alongside Kelly's body lay Jay Hazard and Pavel, riddled with bullets, crusted with blood. Their eyes stared sightlessly at the stone ceiling of the sunlit chamber. Buzzing flies and other insects crawled over them.

  Someone had closed Kelly's eyes. Most of her clothing was torn off. Welts made by men's strong fingers purpled her thighs, her arms, her face.

  She's so little! Alexander sobbed to himself. So tiny and frail. My baby ... my baby.

  "I wanted you to see this," Shamar said. Alexander heard him as if from a long distance away. His voice echoed hollowly, like someone calling from far down a narrow stone tunnel. "This is your fault. Cole Alexander, not mine."

  Alexander turned his head slightly. "My fault?"

  "If you had not pursued me, if you had not made yourself dangerous to me, this would never have happened. You killed these people. You caused your daughter's death."

  Alexander said nothing. He remained on his knees beside Kelly's crumpled body, as if there was no strength left in him.

  "And now you must die," said Shamar.

  Running a hand through his white hair, Alexander muttered, "Go ahead. You've killed everyone I care for. Killing me will be a relief."

  Shamar turned and spoke to the guards at the open doorway. One of them nodded and left. The other remained at the door, his face as cold and immobile as the stones of the walls.

  "The natives of these hills make a poison that they use in hunting. It comes from the same plant that produces the cocaine."

  "I know," said Alexander. "It kills you quickly, while the cocaine can take years to do it."

  With a grim smile, Shamar said, "It is painless, I am told."

  "That's what I've been told, too."

  Alexander brushed at his hair again. This time he reached back for the slim glass blade taped to his spine just below the collar of his shirt. Yanking it free, he lunged with every ounce of strength left in him at his surprised enemy.

  Shamar's eyes went wide and his arm automatically went up to block Alexander's feeble blow. But Alexander slashed with the glass knife and opened a cut in the meaty part of the man's forearm, through the sleeve of his fatigues.

  With his other hand Shamar slapped Alexander a stinging blow on the side of the face that sent him toppling to the floor. The knife dropped and shattered against the stones into dozens of fragments of green glittering glass.

  His head reeling, ears ringing, Alexander looked up to see the guard leveling his rifle at him. Shamar held his left arm up, peering at the bleeding scratch.

  "That was stupid, Cole Alexander. You are no fighter. Even when you work up the passion to try to kill, you botch the job."

  Alexander slowly, painfully sat up and clutched his knees with both arms. "Botched it, did I? How long does it take for the natives' poison to work?"

  Shamar stared at him, mouth agape.

  "I told you I knew about it. It's painless. A nerve poison. Starts at the area of the wound and works its way through the nervous system, from what the professors at the university told me."

  "You're mad!"

  Alexander laughed at him. "You've got about a minute to live, friend. Maybe less."

  "But—the bombs!" Shamar's voice was a terrified rat's squeak. He clutched at the oblong black box hanging on the chain around his neck. Clutched at it with his unwounded arm.

  "You made a couple of serious mistakes," Alexander said, his smile twisting viciously. "You were so fucking convinced I'm a gutless coward that you didn't think I'd try to kill you, even after you showed me what you did to my daughter."

  "The bombs will explode if I die! You will be killing yourself!" Shamar pawed at Alexander's shirt front with one hand, trying to lift him to his feet. But his own legs collapsed and he was suddenly on the floor, too, eye-to-eye with Alexander.

  "And you also thought," Alexander went on, ignoring his frenzied bleating, "that you and your kind are the only ones willing to die for their cause. You depended on that little piece of ego-inflation too much, pal. There are plenty of men like me who'd gladly die to rid the world of the likes of you."

  "You've killed us all!" Shamar whimpered. He was choking now, gasping for air. He ripped the electronic medallion from his chest and stared at it with fear-crazed eyes.

  "So you're afraid to die, after all," Alexander said calmly. His smile was a terrible thing to see.

  "You . . . madman . . ."

  "Think of this as an environmental action. I'm cleaning up a source of pollution."

  A few hundred meters away a radio receiver lost the signal that had been steadily beamed to it for more than forty-eight hours. The simple electronic switch attached to the receiver clicked, and the equally simple trigger controlling five nuclear weapons fired. Hemispherical shells of Plutonium were slammed together. In less than a microsecond they achieved criticality and underwent five simultaneous chain reactions. The incredible power of the strong nuclear force was liberated in an explosion that shook seismographs as far away as Boston and Buenos Aires.

  The explosion took off the entire top of the

  mountain. The ancient Incan city was

  simply vaporized. It was a particularly dirty

  mushroom cloud: millions of tons of

  radioactive rock and soil were lifted into the

  stratosphere and wafted ac
ross the

  mountainous forests where the natives eked

  out their meager incomes by cultivating the

  particular species of coca bush from which

  cocaine is derived.

  With the help of the Peacekeepers most of

  those poor families were evacuated and

  saved from the fallout. Their crops did not

  fare so well. The area is still a desert today,

  and will be for many years to come. The

  farmers were resettled in safer areas, under

  careful supervision. Satellite sensors watch

  for the signature of Erythroxylon coca, and

  IPF inspectors make frequent tours of areas

  where it might be grown—as well as parts

  of the world where the opium poppy grows.

  Cole Alexander's final act accomplished

  his goal: the Peacekeepers now actively

  pursue international narcotics dealers and

  have the reluctant approval of the world's

  national governments to strike at the source

  of the drug trade: the fields where the plants

  are grown. Satellites search for them;

  genetically specific biological agents sprayed

  from IPF planes destroy them.

  The Castanada government, deprived of

  its prime source of cash income, collapsed

  within months. President Alfonso Jorje de

  Castanada suffered a fatal heart attack just

  after he was thrown out of office. His

  friends say the loss of his son at Montesol

  left him bereft and led to his demise; his

  enemies say it was the loss of political

  power and privilege; cynics say it was the

  loss of money from the drug trade that

  stopped his heart.

  All that happened four years ago. Which

  brings us to the morning trek up from the

  steaming jungle base of the International

  Peacekeeping Force to the glassy crater of

  what was once Montesol.

  MONTESOL CRATER,

  Year 12

  I have never been to the Moon, but the crater makes me think of what that airless, waterless ball of rock must look like.

  It was a scene of utter desolation. There was nothing before us except bare stone glazed and glittering under the bright cloudless sky. The wind rushed by, keening softly almost like a mourner's dirge, without a tree or a shrub or even a blade of grass to be moved by it. There was absolutely nothing on what was left of this mountaintop except the hard lifeless rock, still so radioactive four years after the explosion that our time here was limited to one hour.

  Thirty-one of us, panting with exertion and altitude, the officers' uniforms and cadets' fatigues equally darkened with great pools of sweat, stood at the lip of the glass-smooth crater and stared at whatever private demons haunted us.

  I thought of my lost hand and felt bitterly glad that the Indians and Pakistanis had not attacked our little Peacekeeping task force with nuclear weapons. I had my life, my family, my new work as archivist. The prosthetic hand had become almost natural to me. And new models with improved sensitivity were being developed.

  Then I looked across the lip of the crater at Director-General Hazard. The old man stood motionless, his back stiff and shoulders squared away. The bright sun was forcing him to squint as he stared into the crater, but the cool mountain wind could not ruffle his short-cropped iron-gray hair.

  A man can sense when someone is staring at him, and I stared hard at Hazard. He did not look up. He did not move. His son had died here, and he stood alone amongst the thirty of us, squinting against the sunlight and the pain.

  I heard a foreign sound carried by the softly wailing breeze. A mechanical sound. A motor purring from some distance away. Looking up, I saw a dark speck against the clean blue sky. It quickly grew to recognizable size: a small helicopter, painted in the sky-blue and gold of the IPF.

  The cadets and other officers turned their eyes skyward.

  All except Hazard, who still stared blindly into the crater.

  The helicopter circled us at a respectful altitude, then came down and settled onto the bare slope that had once born thick tropical growth. Its whining rotor kicked up dust as it touched the ground lightly and then sank on its shock struts. The rotor slowed until once again the only sound we could hear was the keening mountain wind.

  When the rotor stopped altogether, the oval hatch of the helicopter opened and a huge man stepped stiffly onto the dusty ground.

  Red Eagle. He walked slowly toward us; age had not diminished him, but it had taken its toll of his agility. He wore a fringed tan leather jacket and faded jeans. His feet were shod in a modern variation of moccasins. I almost smiled, despite the somber tone of the occasion. Red Eagle was going native in his latter years. I wondered what he wore beneath his judge's robes in Washington.

  The major at Hazard's elbow leaned slightly toward the director-general and whispered briefly into his ear. Hazard stirred, almost seemed to shake himself, as if trying to throw off an evil dream. He took a deep breath and resolutely turned his back on the crater to march forward and extend his hand to Red Eagle.

  They spoke together for a few moments, and then Hazard waved the cadets to gather around the giant Amerind.

  "I don't really have to tell you who our guest is," Hazard said in his rasping voice. "It is a great honor for me to introduce to you the Honorable Harold Red Eagle, Justice of the United States Supreme Court and spiritual founder of the International Peacekeeping Force."

  If Red Eagle thought Hazard's introduction too fulsome, or not fulsome enough, he gave no indication. He shook hands gravely with each of the cadets and officers, including me. He noticed my prosthesis, of course, and looked deeply into my eyes as he engulfed it in his huge hand. He said not a word, except to murmur my name, yet those eyes of his told me of all the sorrow and understanding that a truly great man can offer to one of his fellow sufferers.

  Once he had met each individual among us. Red Eagle raised his voice to address us all. It was as if the wind had stopped; his deep, majestic voice was all that we could hear.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I did not mean to intrude on your exercise, but I could not resist the temptation of joining you here, at this special place. You are the first class to be graduated from the Peacekeeping Academy. The future safety of the world and all its people will be in your young, strong hands—a heavy responsibility, I know. In my own lifetime I have carried a share of that responsibility. I gladly pass the burden on to you."

  He glanced at their young faces, the variations in skin tone, in eye and hair color, in shape and bone structure. He saw the flags that each cadet wore on his or her shoulder.

  "As Peacekeepers you have only one goal: to protect the peace. No matter what race or nationality you may be, no matter your religion or your politics, your task as a Peacekeeper is to do whatever must be done to preserve and protect world peace. Whatever must be done."

  Red Eagle seemed to look past them for a brief moment, toward the crater. Was he seeing Alexander's face smiling sardonically at him?

  He returned his attention to the young cadets grouped before him.

  "You have come from many different nations, from many different parts of this globe. I ask you now, each and all of you, to stop thinking of yourselves as Koreans, or Brazilians, or Poles, or Ugandans. I ask you to think of yourselves as human beings, as members of the great family of humankind, as Peacekeepers dedicated to protecting our world and our people—all of them. Each of them."

  "The age of nationalism has passed. Nations still exist, I know, as they will continue to exist for many generations to come. But the idea of nationalism is fading. Inside many nations, local ethnic or religious or geographic minorities want autonomy. And modem technology is erasing the very meaning of national borders. The world's economy is an in
tegrated, global interrelationship. The vast funds once spent on armaments are beginning to help the less developed nations to feed and educate and house their poor. We are expanding into space, and bringing new treasures of knowledge and energy to Earth."

  "We are a global family. We will grow and thrive—if we can remain at peace with one another. Yours is the task of preserving and protecting the peace. You must make certain that the devastation that took place on this mountaintop is never repeated—never—anywhere in the world."

  Red Eagle raised both arms and gestured toward the barren crater. The cadets slowly turned and gazed at it with new eyes.

  "Think of this lifeless devastation as the site of your home, your village or town or city. That is your responsibility: to make certain that such inhuman destruction will not take the lives of those you hold dearest."

  I could feel the emotional response from the cadets. Red Eagle was electrifying them, like a shaman of old preparing his clan for battle.

  "I ask you once again, therefore, to stop thinking of yourselves as representatives of a single nation and begin to look upon yourselves as members of the great and unified human race."

  There was a long moment of utter silence. Not even the breeze made a sound. Then one of the women cadets reached up to the flag of her shoulder patch and tugged at one comer of it. It yielded slowly, reluctantly; it had been firmly sewn into place. But with determination that gritted her teeth, she ripped it free.

  One by one, and then all of them together, the cadets removed the emblems of their nations until the entire class of them wore nothing but their identifications as Peacekeepers.

  REFLECTIONS, —Year 12

  THE last nuclear weapons on Earth were destroyed earlier this year. The Peacekeepers have established close ties with the world's scientific organizations and we keep particularly careful eyes on any work that might lead to weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, or biological. The system is far from foolproof, but it seems to be working.

  The scourge of war is receding into history, like other diseases that have been conquered by advancing knowledge and social consciousness.