Peacekeepers (1988) (35 page)

"It's good to see you again."

"And you, my dear sir. But please tell me, who is this charming young lady with you?"

"An assistant of mine," Alexander said curtly. No one outside the immediate "family" of his organization knew of Kelly's relation to him.

"Ah," said Rodríguez, his smile starting to look a bit forced. "I see."

Alexander said, "I believe you have a package for me."

"Sí, sí. A rather heavy one, in fact. It is here in the car."

He opened the limousine's door and ducked inside it.

Alexander had just enough time to wonder why the chauffeur wasn't doing his usual job of opening doors. Rodríguez wasn't the kind of man who allowed a servant to sit inside the limo while he . . .

"Look out!" Kelly yelled.

Six men with snub-nosed submachine guns sprang out of the bushes. A roar of motorcycles made Alexander whirl; another half dozen on bikes were coming up the street, blocking them off.

The heavy-set driver of their car pushed his way out from behind the wheel, yanking a pistol from his shoulder holster. Kelly was already on one knee, an automatic in one hand while she slid a second one across the asphalt toward her father.

A burst of gunfire slammed the driver back against the sedan, his chest spouting blood. Kelly fired back, then ducked behind the car. Alexander froze where he stood crouched beside the limousine. Machine-gun fire raked the limo, making it jounce on its springs as the slugs hit it.

Something smashed into Alexander's head and he pitched face-first onto the asphalt paving. He heard more gunfire and a scream. He tried to push himself up, but everything turned black and silent.

When he came to, Rodríguez was bending over him, wild-eyed, babbling about the money being stolen. The limo was riddled with bullet scars, but its armor and bulletproof glass had saved Rodríguez and his chauffeur.

Not so the other driver. He lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

And Kelly was gone.

If we had known that Shamar was going to

strike at Alexander before he could get his

own attack started, we would have certainly

warned the man. But we did not know.

Even with the intelligence-gathering services

of the International Peacekeeping Force, we

did not know what Shamar had planned.

Cynics claim that we set Alexander up;

some even lay the blame for what happened

next at Red Eagle's doorstep. But I was

there at Geneva. I was serving with IPF

intelligence at the time. We did not know.

How could we?

And we certainly had no part in what

came afterward.

AS he lay prone in the high grass, studying the ancient stone city that clustered in the hollow just below the mountain's crest through electronically boosted binoculars, Jay Hazard sensed that he was no longer alone.

The morning air was crisply cool this high above the forest. The Cesar River was nothing more than a glinting gray ribbon snaking through the thick greenery that stretched as far as the eye could see. Up here the trees were smaller, sparser, and tall fronds of grass waved in the moaning mountain wind.

Somewhere in the grass a man was crawling toward him.

Jay could feel it in the back of his neck.

Damned fool! he raged at himself. Dashing off like a one-man army without taking more than a handgun and canteen of water. What are you going to accomplish except getting yourself killed?

He went absolutely still. Except for his left hand, which snaked down to the holster at his hip and slowly pulled the heavy blue-black automatic pistol.

He lay the electro-optical binoculars on the ground before him and cocked the gun as quietly as he could, pulling the action back carefully and holding it as it slid forward again so that it did not make too much noise.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned over onto his back so that he could see who was approaching. The city and the men in it would have to wait. Kelly was there; Shamar had made the ancient ruin his headquarters. But whoever was sneaking up on him had a more immediate priority.

He lay there in the grass, gun cocked and ready, wishing he had a silencer for it. Or a knife. The morning sun was hot despite the altitude. His shirt was already soaked with sweat from the long climb up here.

"Jay, is that you?" A whisper carried by the wind.

He said nothing.

"It's me, Pavel. I'm going to stand up so you can see me. Don't shoot."

Sure enough, the small slim Russian rose amidst the waving fronds of grass. Jay felt the breath he had been holding back puff out of his lungs.

Half annoyed, half relieved, he waved Pavel to him. The young Russian bent forward and crawled to his side, staggering under a backpack almost the size of his own torso. He flopped on the grass next to Jay with a grunt.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Jay growled.

"Same as you: trying to find Kelly."

"Who gave you permission to try a stunt like this?"

"Same as you: nobody."

Jay looked into the Russian's dark eyes, thinking. He's here, nothing you can do about it. And you're going to need all the help you can get.

"How's Alexander?"

"Still under sedation. Steiner says he has a concussion, probably from a ricocheting bullet."

"And the meres?"

Pavel started to struggle the pack off his shoulders. "It will still be two days before they arrive, even with our emergency call."

"We can't wait two days."

"I agree. We must get Kelly out of there now."

Jay felt his jaw tighten. "Moscow order you to come and rescue her?"

"Moscow knows nothing of this," Pavel snapped.

"Then why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same question."

"She saved my life," Jay said immediately. "When I thought it was over, when I was exiled at Moonbase, Kelly had faith in me. She brought me back to Earth, back to life."

"So you love her." Pavel's voice trembled slightly.

"Love her? No! I owe her."

Shaking his head, the Russian said, "But she loves you."

"That's crazy!"

"She does."

His voice was so low, his face suddenly so miserable, that Jay finally recognized what he had not understood before.

"And you love her."

"Yes." The faintest of whispers.

Jay made a coughing noise that might have been a laugh.

Not even he could tell for sure. "Fine mess."

"You're certain she's there?" Pavel cocked his head slightly in the direction of the ancient city.

"Haven't seen her, but that's Shamar's base of operations, all right. Must be a couple hundred men there. Women, too."

"He sent a message to Alexander, after you left."

"Message?"

"Last night. By radio, over the civilian band frequency."

"What the hell did he say?"

"That Kelly was alive and unhurt and that he would exchange her for Alexander himself."

Jay felt a surge of emotions blaze along his veins. "So that's his game. He wants Alexander."

"Shamar will kill Alexander if he gets his hands on him."

"He'll kill Kelly if Alexander doesn't agree."

"That is why we must get her out of there," Pavel said.

"Right" Jay rolled back onto his stomach, then asked, "What answer did you make to Shamar?"

"Barker took the message. He told them that Alexander was under sedation and would be unable to reply for twenty-four hours."

"And what'd Shamar say?"

"He said that in exactly twenty-four hours Kelly would be killed, unless Alexander agreed to surrender himself."

"How long . . . ?"

"Seven hours ago. That is when I decided to come up here after you."

Jay's thoughts were tumbling wildly through his mind.

"Kelly ... did they let Kelly speak?"

"No."

"Then how do we know she's still alive?"

"We only have Shamar's word for it"

"Those bastards could do anything to her," Jay said.

"We must act quickly."

"Yeah. But there's a couple hundred of them and only two of us."

Pavel took the binoculars that lay before them and focused them on the stone structures in the hollow. It was an ancient city that must have been magnificent in its day.

But now it was abandoned, crumbling with age, half tumbled down. Massive stone statues had toppled over and rested on their sides. On some of the buildings entire wails were gone, leaving their interiors gaping. Grass and shrubs had invaded those broken buildings, making them look as if they were rotting, covering them with a green slimy decay. Pavel observed that the stones were not blackened by fire; earthquakes must have done the damage.

The city had been built around a large central plaza paved with gray stones. Now it was weed-grown and cracked, but it served as a helicopter landing pad. A chopper stood oflf at one end of the square, covered with a camouflage net. At the head of the square was an impressive temple raised on a tiered platform. A steep flight of stairs led to its colonnaded front entrance; most of the massive pillars were still standing, but much of the roof was gone. Several other old buildings were still intact, their roofs whole, although sprouting grass and flowers and even a few small trees here and there. Ideal camouflage, Pavel realized. Even satellite sensors would detect nothing much except natural vegetation.

Focusing tighter, he could see dozens of men in the plaza, most of them in military fatigues, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. Some Kalishnikovs, he noted, but mostly American Colts and Springfields.

Some of the ancient buildings had new additions of corrugated metal and even cinder block. Always the roofs were covered with dirt and greenery. Men in jeans and T-shirts lounged around the largest one. Pavel saw another man in a white laboratory smock come out of a door, followed by three others—one of them a woman.

"Their processing factory is here," he muttered.

"Yeah," Jay replied. "But where're they keeping Kelly?"

All through the morning, as the sun climbed higher into a pale blue sky dotted with wisps of cirrus clouds, they took turns studying the city through the binoculars.

Slowly, by a process of elimination, they tried to determine where Shamar might be holding Kelly. Not in the factory, of course. Across the square was a smaller building where all the windows had been boarded up and a half dozen armed guards lounged by the only door.

"Could that be it?" Pavel asked.

Jay brushed an insect away from his face. "My guess is that's the bomb-storage depot. And the building next to it, where the truck is parked, is probably their electronics facility."

Pointing to the temple at the head of the plaza, Pavel said, "She must be in there. None of the other buildings are guarded. Most of them are half destroyed."

Jay nodded agreement. "Plenty of guys with guns hanging around that entrance, too. How do we get in?"

"Through the back. It's only a few dozen meters from the trees to the rear of the platform. Can you climb the stones?"

"I guess, if I have to."

Pavel reached into the pack lying beside him and pulled out a coil of rope. "This will be helpful."

"Only if there's a door back there. Or a window."

They circled around the hollow, staying low, using the grass for cover, until they could train the binoculars on the rear of the temple.

Jay saw a dark oblong shape, focused the binocs on it. It wavered in the heat haze, then snapped into clear sight: a window, about ten feet above the floor of the stone platform. Unbarred. Unguarded.

Passing the glasses to Pavel, he murmured, "That's the way in."

The Russian nodded. "Let's go."

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the edge of the woods behind the temple. What had looked like a short distance to the stone base of the platform now seemed like a mile of terribly exposed open territory.

Both men were studded with tools and weapons from the pack Pavel had brought: ropes, grenades, knives, electronics gear, pistols on their hips. Both men held machine pistols in their hands, long black ammo clips jutting from their grips.

"Come on," Jay whispered. "Hurry it up."

Pavel looked up from his kneeling position. He had spread a satchel full of antipersonnel mines along the ground at the edge of the trees, tiny gray plastic discs that could blow a man's feet off or shred his legs from ten meters' distance.

"This will cover our retreat," he whispered harshly. "It is necessary."

Jay knew he was right. The Russian had a lot more training in this kind of thing than he did. Jay knew. His own background consisted of a one-week course in guerrilla warfare, part of the mandatory training the Peacekeepers insisted upon. Not much. Would it be enough?

Finally Pavel was ready. Jay tossed the rope up to the twenty-foot-high tier of the platform. The electrochemical bonding agents in the grapnel at the end of the rope took hold of the ancient stone surface. Jay tested the rope with a hard pull, then started scrambling up the face of the stones.

Pavel looked around one wary time, then followed him up the rope.

There were four tiers to the platform, and then they were at the base of the temple wall. Once more Jay flung the rope upward, this time into the dark cavity of the window. They scrambled up the rope and disappeared inside the ancient temple, the site of countless human sacrifices in centuries long past.

Down at the base of the platform a hidden stone door swung outward and four armed men dressed in ragged fatigues calmly walked out to the edge of the woods and began picking up the small gray disc-shaped antipersonnel mines that Pavel had so carefully scattered there to cover their retreat.

Gunfire broke out from inside the temple, booming, echoing weirdly. The four men looked up briefly. One of them pointed a finger to his head and made a circular motion.

"Los gringos hay muy loco, no?"

His companions grinned. Then they returned to their task.

That scene was a re-creation, of course. A

bit of dramatic license. We know some

details of the ancient city and its temple

from questioning the grave robbers who had

been methodically looting Montesol until

the drug manufacturers chose it as their

headquarters. We assume that young

Hazard and the Russian Zhakarov made the

best use of the resources available to them.

More than that we cannot say.