Peacekeepers (1988) (16 page)

He stopped before his father and met the older man's gaze. Jon Jr.'s gray eyes were level with his father's, unswerving, unafraid.

He made a bitter little smile. "I still don't agree with you," he said without preamble. "I don't think the IPF is workable—and it's certainly not in the best interests of the United States."

"But you threw your lot in with us when it counted,"

Hazard said.

"The hell I did!" Jon Jr. looked genuinely aggrieved. "I just didn't see any sense in dying for a lost cause."

"Really?"

"Cardillo and Buckbee and the rest of them were a bunch of idiots. If I had known how stupid they are, I wouldn't . . ." He stopped himself, grinned ruefully and shrugged his shoulders. "This isn't over, you know. You won the battle, but the war's not ended yet."

"I'll do what I can to get them to lighten your sentence,"

Hazard said.

"Don't stick your neck out for me! I'm still dead set against you on this."

Hazard smiled wanly at the youngster. "And you're still my son."

Jon Jr. blinked, looked away, then ducked through the hatch and made for a seat in the shuttle.

Hazard formally turned the station over to its new commander, saluted one last time, then went into the shuttle's passenger compartment. He hung there weightlessly a moment as the hatch behind him was swung shut and sealed. Most of the seats were already filled. There was an empty one beside Yang, but after their little scene at the hatch. Hazard was hesitant about sitting next to her. He glided down the aisle and picked a seat that had no one next to it. Not one of his crew. Not Jon Jr.

There's a certain amount of loneliness involved in command, he told himself. It's not wise to get too familiar with people you have to order into battle.

He felt, rather than heard, a thump as the shuttle disengaged from the station's air lock. He sensed the winged hypersonic spaceplane turning and angling its nose for reentry into the atmosphere.

Back to . . . Hazard realized that home, for him, was no longer on Earth. For almost all of his adult life, home had been where his command was. Now his home was in space.

The time he spent on Earth would be merely waiting time, suspended animation until his new command was ready.

"Sir, may I intrude?"

He looked up and saw Stromsen floating in the aisle by his seat.

"What is it. Miss Stromsen?"

She pulled herself down into the seat next to him but did not bother to latch the safety harness. From a breast pocket in her sweat-stained fatigues she pulled a tiny flat tin. It was marked with a red cross and some printing, hidden by her thumb.

Stromsen opened the tin. "You lost your medication patch," she said. "I thought you might want a fresh one."

She was smiling at him shyly, almost like a daughter might.

Hazard reached up and felt behind his left ear. She was right, the patch was gone.

"I wonder how long ago . . ."

"It's been hours, at least," said Stromsen.

"Never noticed."

Her smile brightened. "Perhaps you don't need it anymore."

He smiled back at her. "Miss Stromsen, I think you're absolutely right. My stomach feels fine. I believe I have finally become adapted to weightlessness."

"It's rather a shame that we're on our way back to Earth. You'll have to adapt all over again the next time out."

Hazard nodded. "Somehow I don't think that's going to be much of a problem for me anymore."

He let his head float back against the seat cushion and closed his eyes, enjoying for the first time the exhilarating sensation of weightlessness.

After such heroics it was inevitable that

Hazard would eventually head the IPF, and

once he took over, the Peacekeepers began

to shape up into a reliable, well-disciplined

organization. But neither Hazard nor Red

Eagle could track down the missing nuclear

weapons until Shamar showed up in South

America and Cole Alexander went after

him.

ALEXANDER looked up from the lighted map table at the faces of his closest aides.

"That's what Castanada told me. I know it's tricky," he admitted, "and damned dangerous. Trouble is, either we go in and get Shamar up there in the mountains or he takes over the whole damned country."

Four men and two women huddled over the computerized map table. Its lighted display threw eerie shadows up from its screen and across their faces. They sat bunched around the table in the wardroom of the jet seaplane that had served as Alexander's flying home, office and headquarters for more than five years.

Three of the people were a generation younger than Alexander. Barker, the English pilot who wore motorized braces on his lower legs, was Alexander's own age. So was Steiner, the blond logistics specialist. In any other group of mercenaries, one would assume that the willowy Austrian was Alexander's bed partner. The idea had never even been hinted at aboard the seaplane.

The younger woman was the former IPF teleoperator, Kelly, a pert freckled little redhead. She looked almost like a child except when she was in front of a computer. Any computer. Any software. Plain of face and figure, reserved and shy with people, she became a radiant little princess when her fingertips touched an activated computer program.

Sitting next to her, shoulders hunched and leaning on his elbows, was another ex-Peacekeeper, Jonathan Hazard, Jr.

The years since the abortive military coup had matured him. The baby fat was gone: his face was lean now, the same spadelike nose and stormy blue-gray eyes that his illustrious father bore. Jay, as he called himself, had the kind of cowboy good looks and quiet charm that made him virtually irresistible to women. Especially when he smiled.

But he smiled very little.

Pavel Zhakarov was the youngest of the group, a small, slightly built Russian with dark hair, intensely deep dark eyes, and a ballet dancer's lean ascetic face. He openly admitted to being an agent of the KGB. No one knew where his true loyalties lay; especially Pavel himself. But everyone took great pains to avoid placing him in a situation where his conflicting loyalties could cause disaster.

The seaplane rocked gently at its mooring in the Cesar River, an hour's drive downstream from Valledupar and the handsome hacienda of Sebastiano Miguel de Castanada. From this site Alexander could take off and be out of Colombian airspace in half an hour, if necessary. He always prepared his lines of retreat before starting an operation. Always, since his first experience in Indonesia.

"What's Shamar doing mixed up with Latin American dope dealers?" asked Barker in his languid, almost bored Oxford accent.

"It gives him a firm base of operations," Steiner guessed.

Alexander grinned crookedly. "The way I read it, there's a sort of nasty quid pro quo going on between Shamar and the drug guys. The official government can't attack the drug dealers because Shamar's nukes threaten their cities —or even other cities in other countries."

"Like Miami," Pavel muttered.

"Or Leningrad, Red," countered Alexander. He went on, "And Shamar must be getting a hefty cut of the drug money in return."

"But what does he want?" Kelly asked. "What's in it for him?"

"As I said," replied Steiner, "a base of operations."

"A whole country," Alexander said.

Jay shook his head. "He can't possibly expect to take over the whole nation."

"Can't he?" Alexander shot back. "How do you think the Castanada family got to be the el supremos?"

The American stared blankly at him.

"The way things work down here for the past fifty years or so is this: The drug dealers start operating in the hills and sooner or later take over the whole damned government and make themselves legitimate. Then some other gang starts cooking up cocaine for themselves and selling it outside the official government channels . . ."

Barker objected, "But cocaine and all the other hard drugs have been illegal since . . ."

"Sure they have," snapped Alexander. "That's what makes them so profitable. Why do you think the Castanadas are so pissed at these guys? They're cutting into the Castanada family's personal drug trade!"

"Despicable," Zhakarov hissed.

"Damn right it is."

"And that town they wiped out?" Hazard asked.

"Castanada told me they did it to keep the grave robbers away from the mountains," said Alexander, his smile turning malicious. "Way I see it, though, is this: the villagers grow coca for the Castanada family. The guys in the hills eliminated some competition."

"The whole village?" Steiner's voice was an uncomprehending whisper. "Everyone in it?"

With a grim nod, Alexander answered, "They're a bunch of murdering bastards. We're not going after pushovers."

Her round face wrinkled into a freckled frown, Kelly asked, "Let me get this straight: we're going to help the Castanada family to keep the drug trade to themselves?"

"Nooo," Alexander said with exaggerated patience.

"We're going after Shamar and his nukes."

Barker objected, "But if Shamar can threaten to wipe out Bogota and God knows what else if the government attacks him, why doesn't that threat also apply to our attacking him?"

"Because Shamar doesn't know we're working for the Castanadas. As far as he's concerned, this is a personal vendetta between him and me," Alexander said, then added, "Which it sure as hell really is."

"I don't like it," said Zhakarov. "How do we know we can trust Castanada and his family?"

Alexander laughed. "The KGB man worries about trust?"

"That's not fair," said Kelly.

"Nor constructive," added Steiner.

"So he's won both your hearts," Alexander noted. He scratched briefly at his chin. "Okay, I admit that we can't trust the Castanada clan. But we've got to get Shamar."

"And the bombs," Barker insisted.

"And something else, too," Alexander said.

"What?"

"The drug dealers—all of them. The ones in the mountains and the ones in the capitolio."

The others stared at him.

Leaning forward over the lighted table display screen until the shadows across his face loomed like the mask of an eerie devil, Alexander said slowly, "We are going to make it impossible for anybody—including the thugs who run the government here—to manufacture cocaine. Ever again."

"How?" asked Jay.

"The nukes," replied Alexander. "We're going to wipe out the fields where they grow the coca plants with the fallout from one of Shamar's nuclear bombs."

"That's insane!"

"Is it?" The light from the tabletop cast a strange glint in Alexander's eyes. "Once we get our hands on those nukes we're going to use them. We're going to scrub the world clean of a lot of vermin."

The others stared at him in stunned silence.

I realize that I've jumped slightly ahead of

myself once more. I should explain how the

woman Kelly and Hazard's son happened to

join forces with Alexander's mercenaries.

While I'm at it, I might as well tell about

Pavel Zhakarov, too.

PaveL did not notice them until almost too late.

He had heard of muggers and hooligans in other, more remote outskirts of Moscow, but never near the university, so close to the heart of the city.

Yet there were three young toughs definitely following him as he walked along the river promenade through the darkening evening, his fencing bag slung over one shoulder.

No one else in sight. The towers of the university were brilliantly lit, thousands of students bustling among the many buildings. But here along the riverside all was deserted. Pavel had come for solitude, for a chance to think about the offer he had been given. Was it truly an opportunity to do good for his country? Or was it a scheme by the
apparatchiks
to get him out of the way for a while, perhaps forever?

An offer or a trap? he had been wondering as he strolled in the deepening cold of early evening. An opportunity or an ultimatum?

Then he noticed the three young men in their Westernstyle leather jackets and zany hairdos. Up to no good, obviously.

Across the river was the Lenin Arena and the big sports palace complex. Hundreds of athletes were rehearsing for the November parades. But here on the riverside promenade, no one except Pavel Mikhailovich Zhakarov and three young hoodlums.

Pavel began walking a little more briskly. Sure enough, the trio behind him quickened their pace.

"Hey there, wait up a minute," one of them called.

There was no sense running. They would overtake him long before he got to an area where there were some people walking about. Of course, he could drop his fencing bag and leave the gear inside to them. It wasn't worth much.

But I'll be damned if I give it up to three punks, Pavel said to himself.

So, instead of making a break for it, he turned and smiled at the approaching trio.

They were trying their best to look ferocious: leather jackets covered with metal studs. Wide leather belts and heavy, ornate buckles. Wild hair and faces painted like rock stars. Two of them were big, almost two meters tall and solid muscle from neck to toes. Pavel smiled. Probably solid muscle between the ears, as well. The third one, in the middle, was short and stocky, with an ugly squashed-nose face.

"What are you grinning at, little man?" he asked.

Pavel was not exactly little. True, he was barely 165 centimeters in height, and almost as slim as a girl. His face was delicately handsome, with dark eyes and brows, sculpted cheekbones and a graceful jawline. His hair was dark and naturally curly.

"Pretty man," sneered the big fellow on Pavel's left. The other large oaf giggled.

Pavel said nothing. He simply stood his ground, left hand with its thumb hooked around the shoulder strap of the fencing bag, right hand relaxed at his side. They did not notice that he was up on the balls of his feet, ready to move in any direction circumstances dictated.