Peacekeepers (1988) (20 page)

Strong sunlight poured through the wide windows of the flight deck. Pavel winced and, squinting, saw that the stations for the navigator and electronics operator were unmanned, their chairs empty even though the display screens of their consoles glowed with data. He had expected the noise from the engines to be louder up here, but if it was, it was so marginal that Pavel could discern no real difference from the rest of the plane.

"Come on up here. Red," came Alexander's voice. From the pilot's seat.

Making his way past the unoccupied crew stations, Pavel saw that Alexander was indeed piloting the plane. He was smiling happily in the pilot's seat, wearing aviator's polarized sunglasses tinted a light blue.

"Don't look so surprised, kid," Alexander said, grinning at him. "Flying this beautiful lady is most of the fun of having her. Sit down, make yourself comfortable."

Pavel slid into the copilot's chair.

"Want to try the controls?"

He knew he was wide-eyed with astonishment, despite his efforts to rein in his emotions. All that Pavel could reply was a half-strangled "Yes" and a vigorous bobbing of his head.

"Take 'em!" Alexander removed his hands from the U-shaped control yoke. The plane ploughed along steadily.

Pavel gripped the yoke in front of him and felt the enormous solidity of this huge plane. Alexander began explaining the instruments on the bewildering panels that surrounded Pavel's chair on three sides: altimeter, air speed indicator, radios, throttles, trim tabs, radar display, turn-and-bank indicator, artificial horizon, compass, fuel gauges . . . there were hundreds of displays that could be called up through the plane's flight computer.

"In about ten seconds we have to make a twelve-degree turn southward. That's to our left. Ready?"

"Me?" Pavel heard his voice squeak excitedly.

"You're the man with his hands on the controls, aren't you?"

His mouth suddenly dry, Pavel swallowed once, then nodded. "I am ready."

"Okay . . . now."

Both of them watched the compass as Pavel started to turn the yoke leftward.

"Rudder!" Alexander yelled. "The pedal beneath your left foot. Easy!"

The plane responded smoothly, although Pavel overcontrolled and had to turn slightly back toward the right before the compass heading satisfied Alexander. He was sweating by the time he took his hands off the yoke and let Alexander resume control.

"Not bad for the first time," Alexander said, smiling his sardonic smile. Pavel could not tell if he was being honest or sarcastic.

Alexander flicked his fingers across a few buttons, then let go of the controls.

"Okay, she's on autopilot now until we reach Cape Verde airspace."

Wiping his palms on his jeans, Pavel said, "I have never flown an airplane before."

"Uh-huh." Alexander studied his face for a moment, then asked, "Okay, Red, what have you learned about us so far?"

Pavel searched for the older man's eyes, saw only the blue-tinted glasses. "You mean, what will I report back to Moscow?" he asked, stalling for time to think.

Alexander nodded. His grin was gone. He was completely serious now.

"You are planning to attack Libya, a nation that has friendly ties to the Soviet Union. Your plan involves destroying the Libyan aquifer project, a project that could bring precious water to farmers and herders along the Mediterranean coast—water that legally belongs to Libya, since it now lies under Libyan soil."

"Go on," Alexander said.

"You are conducting this attack for money paid to you by those six men who came aboard this plane in Corsica. One of them I recognized as an Egyptian; two of them were blacks, presumably from Chad and Niger, two neighbors with whom Libya has been at war, off and on, for many years."

"Not bad," Alexander said. "The other three were from Algeria, Tunisia and France."

"France?"

"The Frogs have had their troubles with Libyan terrorists, over the years."

"So they are paying you to get rid of Rayyid."

"Not exactly."

Pavel snorted. "Not exactly? Come, now."

Alexander laughed. "Ah, the righteous defender of the poor."

"Well, is it not so?" Pavel shot back. "Aren't you taking money from the rich? Won't your schemes hurt the poor farmers and herdsmen of Libya?"

Tapping a finger against his lips for a moment, Alexander seemed to be debating how much he should tell. Finally he said, "Chad is a helluva lot poorer than Libya. And the Chadian you saw at our little conference represented several nations of the Sahel area. They're damned worried about Libya draining that aquifer."

"Then let them dig their own irrigation systems."

"With what? They don't have oil money. They don't have any money."

"Except a few millions to pay you."

"They're paying me nothing. My money's not coming from the Sahel. And what I am getting for this caper is barely enough to pull it off and keep us from starving. I'm not a rich man. Red. This plane and the people in it are my fortune."

Pavel did not believe that for an instant. But he said nothing.

"Besides, my egalitarian friend, Libya is much richer than most of its neighbors."

"That's not true . . ."

"Yes, it is. Check with the World Bank if you doubt it."

Alexander's crooked smile returned. "Oh, the people of Libya are shit poor. Those farmers and herdsmen you talk about are on the ragged edge of starvation, sure enough. But there's plenty of gold in Tripoli. Rayyid's rolling in money. He could buy fusion desalting plants and string them along his coastline, if he wanted to. Instead, he's using part of his gold to build this monster irrigation project. The rest goes into terrorism."

"So you say."

"Listen, kid"—Alexander pointed a forefinger like a pistol—"a helluva lot of Libyan oil money goes straight to Moscow to buy the guns and explosives that Rayyid terrorist squads use in Paris, Rome, London and Washington."

Pavel leaned back, away fix)m that accusing finger. "So it is all the fault of the Soviet Union, is it?"

"Did I say that?" Alexander put on a look of pained innocence falsely accused. "It's the fault of Qumar al-Rayyid, and we're going to take steps to stop him."

"By destroying his aquifer project."

"Damned right. And letting his own people see that he's been spending their hard-earned money on projects that bring him prestige and leave them penniless."

"Very clever," Pavel admitted. "You stir up his own people against him, so that when they tear him to pieces you can say that you did not assassinate him."

"What the Libyan people—or, more likely, what the Libyan military do to Rayyid is their problem, not mine. My problem is to see to it that the bastard doesn't drain that aquifer dry and cause an ecological disaster that'll kill millions of people over the next generation."

"I could ruin your plans," Pavel said.

Alexander arched an eyebrow.

"I could escape from you and tell all this to the nearest Soviet consulate. Once they knew that Algeria and France were paying you . . ." Pavel let the sentence dangle.

Alexander grinned at him. "First you have to escape."

Pavel bowed his head in acknowledgement.

"Actually, it wouldn't be too tough for a man of your training," Alexander said, leaning back in his chair.

"You're sitting on an ejection seat, you know."

"Really?"

"Just strap yourself into the harness and hit the red button on the end of the armrest and whoosh!" Alexander gestured with both hands, "Off you go, through the overhead hatch and into the wild blue yonder. Parachute opens automatically. Flotation gear inflates. Radio beeps a distress call. You'd be picked up before you got your feet wet, almost."

Pavel said nothing. But he glanced at the red button.

There was a protective guard over it. With his fingertips he tried it and found that it was not locked; Alexander was telling the truth.

"What's more," the man was saying, "if you're really here to knock me off, now's the time for it. Give me a whack in the head or something, knock me unconscious or kill me outright. I'm sure they taught you how to do that, didn't they?"

His lips were smiling cynically, Pavel saw, but his tone was deadly serious.

"Then slam the throttles and the yoke hard forward, put the plane into a power dive and eject. You go floating off safely and the plane rips off its wings and hits the water at six hundred knots. No survivors, and it looks like an accident. You'd get a Hero of the Soviet Union medal for that, wouldn't you?"

"You are joking," Pavel said.

Alexander went on, "You'd kill me and everybody else on board. Wipe out all of us."

Pavel could not fathom Alexander's motives. Is this a test of some sort? he asked himself. A trap? Or is the man absolutely mad?

"You could knock me out, couldn't you? After all, I'm an old man. Old enough to be your father."

Is he actually challenging me to a fight? Pavel wondered.

Here? In the cockpit of this plane?

"She told you I'm her father, didn't she?" Alexander asked.

The sudden shift in subject almost bewildered Pavel. He felt as if he were thrashing around in deep water, unable to catch his breath.

"Kelly's my daughter. She told you that, didn't she?"

There was real concern written on the man's face, Pavel saw. And suddenly he realized that all this talk of assassination and destroying the airplane had been a test, after all.

"Yes, she did tell me," he admitted.

"I think the world of her," Alexander said. "She's the only child I've got. The only one I'll ever have."

"She loves you very much," Pavel said.

"If you kill me here and now, you'd be killing her, too."

"Yes, that is true."

For many long, nerve-twisting moments they sat side by side in silence, staring at each other, trying to determine what was going on behind the masks they held up to one another, while the plane droned on high above the glittering gray ocean.

"When you go into Libya on this mission," Alexander said, "Kelly will be with you. She has a tough assignment, a key assignment."

"And I?"

Alexander took in a deep breath, let it out slowly in a sigh that had real pain in it. "I'm asking you to watch out for her. Protect her. I don't care what your government wants you to do to me. I can take care of myself. But my little girl is going to need protection on this job. I'm asking you to be her protector."

He is mad! Pavel thought. Asking me to protect the woman he has assigned to watch me. His own daughter.

Absolutely mad ... or far more clever than even the Kremlin suspects. Yes, devious and extremely clever. He has been watching the two of us together. Now he places her safety in my hands. Extremely clever. And therefore extremely dangerous.

"Hey, look," Alexander exclaimed, pointing past Pavel's shoulder. "The Madeira Islands."

Pavel glanced out the window to his right and saw a large island, green and brown against the steel-gray of the ocean, a rim of whitish clouds building up on its windward side.

He could see no other islands, but puffy clouds dotted the ocean and may have been hiding them.

"There's an example of ecological catastrophe turning into something good," Alexander said, as chipper and pleasant as if they had never spoken of death.

Pavel gave up trying to figure out this strange, many mooded man. He is too subtle for me, he concluded.

"Madeira is the Portuguese word for wood," Alexander was explaining. "The early Spanish and Portuguese explorers working their way down the coast of Africa, looking for a way around to the Indies, they stopped at the islands to cut down trees for lumber and fuel. Masts, too. Cut down so much of it they totally denuded the islands in just about a century."

"A tragedy," Pavel said.

"Yeah. But somebody got the brilliant idea of planting grapevines where the forests used to be. Now the islands produce one of the world's greatest wines. Madeira was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson's, did you know that?"

Pavel shook his head.

Alexander tilted his head back and began singing in a thin, wavering voice that was slightly off-key: "Have some Madeira my dear, You really have nothing to fear . . ."

His mind whirling, Pavel excused himself and left the flight deck.

For two days the plane stayed anchored in the harbor of Sao Vicente, in the Cape Verde Islands. Alexander remained aboard, constantly locked in his office, speaking by coded tight beams to contacts over half the world. He must have his own private network of communications satellites, Pavel thought. Then he realized. Of course! He must have free access to commsats owned by half a dozen nations and private capitalist corporations.

The rest of the crew apparently had nothing to do except guard the plane and replenish its stores. Pavel watched closely, but saw no weapons brought aboard.

There was no way for Pavel to make contact with Moscow. He was watched every moment, and each night the plane was moored far from land.

On the second day, though, Alexander insisted that Pavel take Kelly into the town for an afternoon of relaxation.

"Do you both good to get out and away from here for a few hours," he said.

Pavel wondered what Alexander had planned for the afternoon, that he wanted Pavel out of the way—escorted by his watchdog. Or does he want his daughter to have a free afternoon, escorted by her watchdog? It was too devious for Pavel to unravel.

Kelly had stayed distant from Pavel since the day they had swum together. But now the two of them took one of the inflatable Zodiac boats to the port and spent an afternoon gawking at the town, like any ordinary couple.

They wore inconspicuous cutoff jeans and T-shirts—and generous coverings of sun-block oil over their bare arms and legs.

A big passenger liner was tied to the main pier, and they mingled with the brightly dressed tourists, watching the black-skinned islanders unloading bananas from boats that plied the waters between the Cape Verde Islands and Dakar, nearly a thousand kilometers eastward. Then they climbed the volcanic rocks to the crumbling old Moorish castle that had flown the red and green flag of Portugal for half a millennium.