Peacekeepers (1988) (6 page)

The cave was crammed with stacks of fuel drums, cases of ammunition. Be nice to know who they bought all this crap from, Kelly thought. For the briefest flash of an instant she considered trying to pull up and eluding the fighters waiting for her. Maybe the cameras have picked up valuable information on who's supplying this war, she thought.

But she knew that was idle fancy. This mission was terminated. Not by Geneva, but by the gunners who would shoot the plane to pieces once she tried to make it to the border.

So she did not pull up. She leaned on the throttle, hurtling the plane directly into the cave's mouth and a massive stack of fuel drums. She neither heard nor felt the explosion.

For long seconds Kelly sat in the contoured chair of the cockpit, staring at the darkened screen. Her hands were trembling too badly to even try to unlatch the canopy. A technician lifted it open and stared down at her. Usually the techs were grinning and cracking jokes after a mission.

But this one looked solemn.

"You okay?" she asked.

Kelly managed a nod. Sure, she answered silently. For a pilot who's just kamikazed, I'm fine.

Another etch, a swarthy male, appeared on the other side of the cockpit and helped Kelly to her feet. She stepped carefully over the control banks and onto the concrete floor of the Ottawa station's teleoperations chamber. Two other teleoperator cockpits were tightly closed, with teams of technicians huddled over the consoles grouped around them. The fourth cockpit was open and empty.

The captain in charge of the station's teleoperations unit strode from his desk toward Kelly, his face grim. He was a sour-faced, stocky Asian with a vaguely menacing mustache, all formality and spit and polish.

"We lost one RPV due to ground fire," he said in a furious whisper, "and one deliberately destroyed by its operator."

"But I . . ."

"There is no need for you to defend yourself. Lieutenant Kelly. A board of review will examine the tapes of your mission and make its recommendations. Dismissed."

He turned on his polished heel and strode back to his desk.

Anger replaced Kelly's emotional exhaustion. RPV, she fumed to herself. Operator. They're planes, dammit. And I'm a pilot!

But she knew it was not so. They were remotely piloted vehicles, just as the captain had said. And expensive enough so that deliberately crashing one was cause for a review board to be convened. Then Kelly remembered that she had also tossed away her prescribed flight plan. The review board would not go gently, she realized.

She dragged herself tiredly down the corridor toward the locker room, longing now for her bunk and the oblivion of sleep.

Halfway there, Robbie popped out of the monitoring center, his smile dazzling.

"Hi there. Angel Star! Good job!"

Kelly forced the comers of her mouth upward a notch.

From behind Robbie's tall, broad-shouldered form she saw most of the other monitors pushing through the doors and spilling out into the corridor. It can't be a shift change, she thought. Nobody else has gone in.

Robbie caught the puzzlement on her face.

"It's all over," he said brightly. "The Eritreans called it quits a few minutes ago."

"They stopped the invasion?"

"We beat them back. Clobbered the tanks in their first wave and demolished most of their supply dumps."

The rest of the monitor team headed down the corridor toward the locker room, chattering like schoolkids suddenly let loose.

"Somebody," Robbie added archly, "even knocked out their main ammo dump."

"That was me," Kelly said weakly.

Throwing an arm around her slim shoulders, Robbie laughed. "I know! We saw it on the screens. The explosion shook down half the mountain."

"Must have killed a lot of men," she heard herself say.

"Not as many as a full-fledged war would have taken."

Kelly knew the truth of it, but it was scant comfort.

"They started it," Robbie said more softly. "It's not your fault."

"It's my responsibility. So was the plane."

Robbie broke out his dazzling grin again. "Worried about a review board? Don't be. They'll end up pinning a medal on you."

Somehow Kelly could not visualize that.

"Come on. Angel Star," Robbie said with a one-armed hug, "don't be glum, chum. We're going out to celebrate."

"Now?"

"It's Christmas, isn't it? You didn't see a big sleigh pulled by reindeer while you were flinging around out there, did you?"

Kelly grinned. "No, I don't think so."

With his arm still around her shoulders, Robbie started for the locker room. "I'm throwing a party in my quarters. You're invited."

Kelly let him half drag her to the locker room. Van der Meer and Bailey were already there, pulling on their heavy winter coats.

"Hello there, little sister," Bailey called to her. "Nice job."

The whole group trudged up the sloping corridor and past the guards, who still sat close to the electric heater in their little booth. If they were aware that a war had just been started and stopped within the span of the past hour or so, they gave no indication of it.

"You're quite a flier," Robbie said to her. "You'll have to give me lessons; I'd love to learn how to fly."

Kelly gulped and swallowed, glad that it was too dark for him to see the reddening that burned her face. I've never flown a real plane, up in the air, she wanted to confess.

Only simulators and teleoperations. But she kept silent, too afraid of cracking the crystal beauty of this moment.

The sky was still dark and sprinkled with stars, the air bitingly cold. As she followed along beside Robbie and the others, snow crunching under their boots, Kelly dug her fists in her coat pockets and glanced over her shoulder at the sign carved above the base's entrance:

International Peacekeeping Force Nation Shall Not Lift Up Sword Against Nation We stopped a war, she said to herself. It cost some lives, but we protected the peace. Then she remembered. It might also cost me my job.

"Don't look so down, girl," Bailey assured her. "The review board ain't gonna go hard on you."

"I hope," said Kelly.

"Don't worry about it," Bailey insisted.

Kelly trudged along, heading for the bachelor officers' quarters across the road from the underground nerve center of the base.

Should I tell them? she asked herself. They wouldn't care. Or maybe they'd think I was just trying to call attention to myself.

But she heard herself saying, "You know, this is my birthday. Today. Christmas Day."

"Really?" said Van der Meer.

"Happy birthday, little sister," Bailey said.

Robbie pushed his coat sleeve back and peered at his wristwatch. "Not just yet. Angel Star. Got another few ticks to go . . ."

Then they heard, far off in the distance, the sound of voices singing.

"Your watch must be slow," said Bailey. "The midnight chorale's already started."

"Their clock must be fast," Robbie countered.

The whole group of them stopped in the starry night air and listened to the children's voices, coming as if from another world. Kelly stood between tall Robert and beautiful, warm Bailey and felt as if they were singing especially to her.

Silent night . . .

Holy night . . .

All is calm, all is bright ...

The IPF proved itself that Christmas Eve in

East Africa. The world was stunned with

surprise. But a hard-line cadre of officers

hi^ up in the Peacekeepers' chain of

command was still laying its plans for a

coup. They knew that if they succeeded,

their nations would accept their
fait accompli
. If they failed, their nations would

disavow themselves of any knowledge of the

cabal. Being military men, they were

accustomed to such treatment by the

politicians. What the politicians didn't

realize was that if the coup were successful,

the military officers planned to overpower

their political leaders and set up their own

version of a world government, with

themselves as the chiefs.

If Red Eagle was aware of this plot, he

gave no indication of it. He concerned

himself with another worry. The matter of

the missing nuclear bombs.

"YOU certainly picked a conspicuous way of coming here, Mr. Alexander," said Red Eagle.

Cole Alexander shrugged at the massive Amerind. "The plane? It's my home now. A houseboat with wings. Subsonic, but fast enough to suit me."

"It apparently caused quite a stir when you landed on the lake."

"Hide in plain sight," Alexander said. "Sometimes that's the best way."

Red Eagle held the lace curtains aside and stared out the villa's long window down to the lake below. Alexander's swept-wing jet seaplane was moored down among the powerboats and sailing yachts, like a sleek dark panther among fat little sheep.

Alexander stood slightly behind the Amerind, feeling a bit like a child in the shadow of Red Eagle's huge form. A stray memory of boyhood flitted through his mind, of holding his father's hand as they walked along the Minnetonka lakeside promenade together. Then the surge of sorrow. He would never walk with his father again. Or his mother. He could never walk unprotected in the sunshine again. Too much of a risk of cancer now.

"Hide in plain sight," said Red Eagle, chuckling. The sound was like a freight train rumbling in the distance.

"You certainly picked an interesting place for it."

Lake Como was abuzz with pleasure boats churning up the water, hydrofoil ferries speeding past, float planes from the Como Aero Club landing and taking off. A knot of gawkers stood at the club's ramp, admiring the jet seaplane anchored out among the boats. An endless stream of cars and tour buses and motor scooters growled and hissed and honked along the road that twisted around the lake's steep wooded mountains. Even from this high above the water, in this crumbling, dusty old villa, the two men could hear people singing and shouting at each other down along the lakeside where they were fishing or sunbathing.

The city, off in the distance, was a cluster of roofs and towers. The gray-white granite monument to Alessandro Volta rose amidst the greenery of a waterside park.

"It would have been more secure," Red Eagle said, letting the curtain drop, "to meet me on the Swiss side of the lake. I had to go through the border station. My passage will be noted."

Alexander ran a hand through his dead-white hair. "Can you imagine the Swiss letting me land that plane on their side of the lake? It'd take six months just to fill out the forms!"

Red Eagle admitted, "The Italians are somewhat easier in that respect. Their border police did not even look at my car as we drove through."

"You're worried about security?"

"Yes."

"Why?" Alexander asked. "What's this all about? Why did you ask to see me?"

Red Eagle stepped away from the window. He seemed incongruous in the setting: a huge man of powerful dignity, dressed in a conservatively tailored dark business suit, looking for a safe place to sit in a room filled with delicate rococo furniture. The villa that Alexander had rented was faded with time and neglect. Once the home of a wealthy Milanese factory owner, it now was let for rentals to foreigners who came for Lake Como's scenic beauty. The scenery was there, all right, but it was buried beneath hordes of tourists and Milanese weekenders who fouled the waters and littered the roads and belched filth from their engines into the air.

Red Eagle selected an ornate couch of striped fabric and scrollwork legs. Sitting on it carefully, tentatively, he sank into its overplush cushions.

Alexander pulled up a slim gilt-covered chair to the side away from the window and the sunshine.

"We're okay in here," he said. "My people checked the entire house this morning. No bugs."

Red Eagle nodded slowly. Still, he looked around the room as if he could detect electronic listening devices by sheer force of concentration. It was a large room, with a high ceiling decorated with faded frescoes of plump cherubs and insipid saints floating on pinkish clouds. Dust motes lazed through the sunlight lancing in from the long windows.

"I can close the shutters if you like," Alexander offered.

"No need," said Red Eagle. "It may sound paranoid, but I know that I am watched constantly. Probably someone is listening to this conversation."

"I don't see how."

"Neither do I, but the eavesdroppers are ingenious, and the technology of surveillance is quite advanced."

"What's so secret, anyhow?" Alexander asked.

"I have no secrets," said the Amerind, "but I am concerned about your safety, Mr. Alexander."

"Mine?"

Red Eagle nodded again, just once, a ponderous movement of his head. "You have made no secret of the fact that you are attempting to locate Jabal Shamar."

Alexander's face went taut. "He killed my parents. And a couple of million other people."

"So you want to kill him."

"Damned right," he replied tensely. Then, with an obvious effort to be lighter, "Oh, I'm willing to bring him to the World Court, if I can. But I want him, dead or alive."

"That is a very dangerous pastime."

Alexander made a crooked grin and leaned back in his chair.

"You have given up your career, sold your business, used your money to buy that airplane and a crew . . ."

"And I've hired detectives, spies, informers—anybody who can give me information on Shamar's whereabouts."

"Can you afford to hire a team of mercenary soldiers?"

Alexander's smile vanished like a light snapped off.

Drawing in a deep breath. Red Eagle said, "What I propose to tell you could place you in great danger, greater than you have ever been in before."

The sardonic smile twisted Alexander's lips again. "I lived through Jerusalem. I can deal with risk."

Red Eagle said nothing for a long moment. He merely gazed at Alexander, as if trying to make the final decision on whether to speak or not. At last, he let out another long, painful breath and said: