Peacekeepers (1988) (22 page)

Kelly seemed cheerful and friendly, but nothing more.

Pavel hoped desperately that her father had not told her of his admission.

On the evening of the third day after the attack Alexander abruptly called for a final mission briefing. Pavel, Kelly, Barker and Mavroulis gathered around the display table in the wardroom. A detailed map of the Libyan aquifer facility glowed in the otherwise unlit compartment, throwing deep shadows across their faces.

Alexander asked each of them to recite their assignments.

Barker spoke about flying from Dakar and landing in the desert, pointing to a spot marked on the map some twenty kilometers from the Libyan facility.

Mavroulis took over. "We meet Hassan and his men here"—he tapped the tabletop display screen—"and proceed to the aquifer facility. We get past the guards and take over the facility."

"Timing?" Alexander asked.

Mavroulis rattled off a series of hours and minutes that meant nothing to Pavel. Obviously they had rehearsed this sequence of actions many times. They all knew exactly what they were supposed to do. All of them, except Pavel.

"Kelly?" her father asked. "Let's hear your story."

"Once we're inside the control building I proceed to the main computer center and reprogram the machine. Reprogramming tapes are in my kit."

Alexander gave her a long, serious look. "You're the key to this whole operation, young lady. Everything we're doing, all the risks we're taking, are so that you can get into their computer."

She nodded, equally serious. "I understand."

Mavroulis then told how they would retreat to the spot where Barker was waiting with their aircraft. Barker said he would fly out of Libyan airspace to a rendezvous with a fighter escort waiting for them in Chad.

Alexander looked at each of them in turn, his lips pressed into a tight, tense line, his gray eyes cold as scalpels. "Okay, sounds like you know your jobs."

"What about me?" Pavel blurted. "I'm going, too, am I not?"

Looking almost surprised, Alexander said, "Sure you're going. Red. Your job is very simple. You're Kelly's protection. Stay with her wherever she goes. If the operation blows up, you're to get her out and back to me. Don't come back without her. Pahnyeemahyo?"

His Russian was execrable. "I understand," Pavel answered in letter-perfect English.

Pavel could not overcome the feeling that they were being watched. And followed.

Four would-be tourists: an American woman, an Englishman, a Greek and a Russian. From Alexander's seaplane anchored out in the harbor they went to the waterfront of Dakar in two separate groups of two, Pavel and Kelly first, then Barker and Mavroulis. All dressed in casual slacks and sport shirts, with overnight bags slung across their shoulders. In two separate taxis they went to the airport, where they bought four separate tickets for Casablanca, Tunis, Cairo and Malta.

Each of them started for the gates where their respective planes were waiting. Each of them handed their tickets to strangers who identified themselves as part of Alexander's operation. The strangers boarded the planes while the four of them ducked through an emergency exit (conveniently left unlocked thanks to a small bribe) and into an empty luggage carrier that just happened to be parked there.

Barker drove the electrically powered van into a hangar on the far side of the sprawling airport.

A swivel-engined hoverjet sat alone in the echoing hangar.

It looked old and hard-used. Paint worn and chipped, except for a fresh-looking smear where the name of the plane's previous owner had been whited over. The only identification on the craft was its registration number, back on the tail. The bulky engine pods, out at the ends of the stubby wings, were black with oil and dirt. Pavel began to wonder if this machine would make it all the way to their base camp in the desert. And back again.

Wordlessly the four of them climbed into it. The plane smelled sourly of oil and tobacco smoke and old human sweat. Barker took the pilot's seat, Kelly the copilot's—to Pavel's surprise. He sat behind them, with Mavroulis beside him, glowering like a dark volcano at Pavel as they strapped on their safety harnesses.

They taxied out onto the ramp, Barker chatting with the traffic controllers in the clipped, professional English of the airways. Pavel watched as they rolled out to a vertical takeoff area marked by wide red and yellow circles. The plane's two turboprop engines tilted slowly backward, their big propeller blades scything the air until they became an invisible blur. The engines roared with full power, shaking the cabin so furiously that Pavel began to worry that the plane might fall apart.

With a lurch, they lifted off the ground and rattled up and away, banking so precariously that when Pavel looked out the window on his side, he was staring straight down at the looming roof of a hangar and the bird nests and droppings that covered it. It looked terrifyingly close.

The plane climbed steadily, though, and soon enough the engines slid back to their horizontal positions and they surged ahead, winging across greenly forested mountains with the sun at their backs.

For days Pavel had searched for a way to warn Moscow, to get out the word of what Alexander was planning to do and how he would do it. But there had been no chance. He was always watched, never alone. And now he rode with three of the mercenaries on their mission of destruction, not entirely sure that he wanted to stop them. That would mean placing Kelly in unbearable danger, possibly getting her killed.

Miserably confused, Pavel sat in the swiveljet and did nothing. There seemed to be nothing he could do.

The landscape changed slowly, subtly, but by the time the long shadows of twilight were reaching across the ground, Pavel was watching low, gently undulating hills of bare rock with patches of pitifully thin grass here and there. Dark circles of water holes appeared every few kilometers; most of them seemed to be wells dug by men rather than natural springs. The grass was worn away around the waterholes, leaving only bare gray dry-looking soil that wafted away in long dusty streamers with each passing gust of wind.

Just at sunset Pavel saw a tiny herd of emaciated cattle moving slowly toward one of those waterholes. Three stick-thin persons in gray dust-covered robes walked behind them. From this altitude Pavel could not tell if they were men or women.

It was well past sundown when they landed, coming down vertically in a sea of absolute blackness; not a light anywhere except for the stars strewn across the dark bowl of night. But, straining his eyes, Pavel saw briefly a flicker of a campfire down there; it looked very small and lonely.

Between Barker's and Kelly's shoulders, Pavel could see a glowing display on the radar panel. Yet he did not feel safe until the plane thumped onto solid ground.

It felt good to stretch his legs again. Pavel tried lifting his arms and stretching his spine, carefully. A twinge, nothing more. He was ready for action.

Barker became their team leader. He strode across the sand to the tiny campfire, and spoke with a trio of men swathed in desert robes and burnooses who were waiting there. Then he beckoned to Pavel and the others.

"Everything's on schedule." Barker pronounced it
shedyule
.

"Hassan and his people will rendezvous with us here tomorrow morning."

They spent the next two hours dragging out camouflage nets and radar dispersers to hide the plane from aerial surveillance, then pitching a tan igloo-shaped tent for themselves to sleep in, while the three robed strangers watched in unmoving silence in the flickering light of their fire.

It was surprisingly cold on the desert, although Pavel kept warm by working hard. He did not want his back to stiffen on him. They ate a quick meal from metal-foil packages that heated themselves when their tops were pulled off.

"Sleep now," Barker said. "Big show tomorrow."

Pavel asked, "No one stands guard?"

Barker nodded toward the three bedouins by the fire.

"They're our guards."

"You trust them?"

"They're in on this with us."

"I think we should have a guard of our own."

"Now see here . . ."

Mavroulis's voice came out of the dimness like a distant roll of thunder. "For once I agree with the Russian paranoid."

Pavel grinned. "I will stand watch until midnight."

"Hokay," said Mavroulis. "I will take midnight to two."

Kelly offered to take the next two hours and, reluctantly.

Barker agreed to the final two.

All four of them crawled into the round tent. Pavel strapped a battery-powered heating pad to his back, then pulled a thermal jacket over it.

"Take this, if you're going to be our guardian," said Barker. He pushed a slim flat pistol into Pavel's hand. "It's a Beretta nine-millimeter automatic. Do you know how to use it?"

Pavel flicked off the safety with his thumb and cocked the pistol.

"For heaven's sake, don't fire the thing unless it's absolutely necessary!" Barker warned.

"Good night," said Pavel, calmly returning the gun to its safe condition.

The others muttered good night and crawled into their sleeping bags. Pavel ached for Kelly to say something more, but soon all he heard was the gentle breathing of his companions. Mavroulis began to snore.

He tucked the pistol into his belt, its weight solid and comforting. It was warm and drowsy inside the tent. And there was utterly nothing to do. Pavel decided to duck outside. At least I can count the stars, he told himself.

A wind had come up. Not enough to stir the desert sand. but Pavel walked around the tent to the leeward, then sat cross-legged on the ground. He could not see the campfire from this spot, though, and that bothered him somewhat.

But the spectacle of the heavens was so overwhelming that he almost forgot everything else. The stars were incredibly bright in the desert night; so brilliant that he almost felt he could reach out and take them in his fingers.

For what seemed like an hour Pavel studied the heavens, as excited as he had been at his first visit to a planetarium.

He renewed his acquaintance with the Great and Little Bears, the Princess, the Hunter. A meteor blazed briefly across the sky, silent and cold despite its fire. The Moon was nowhere in sight. The arching beauty of the Milky Way glowed alluringly, much brighter than he had ever seen it from the streets of Kursk or Moscow. And there was Mars, shining red on the horizon. Russians are there, living and working on another world, Pavel thought with a surge of pride.

Pavel tore his gaze away and looked at the glowing digits of his wristwatch. Hardly half an hour had elapsed. He got to his feet and slowly paced around the tent, hunching his shoulders against the cold wind and pushing his fists deep into the jacket's pockets.

The campfire was down to a few pitiful embers. The men were sleeping beside it, on the bare ground.

There were only two men there!

Pavel tensed. His hands came out of the pockets; his right held the pistol. He cocked it; in the dark night the clicking noise sounded like the heavens cracking asunder.

"
Tovarish
. " It was a whisper.

Slowly Pavel turned his head. A shadowy form stood near the tent behind him. He whirled, the gun leveled at the bedouin's waist.

"
Tovarish!
I am friend!" the man said in a mixture of Russian and English.

"Who are you?" Pavel whispered.

"A friend. To help you."

"Help me?"

"I was told a Russian would be among the infidels who came to this camp, and he would be a friend to us. I was told to make myself known to the Russian."

In the dim light of the stars Pavel could not make out the man's face, deeply shadowed by the hood of his burnoose.

"Who told you this?"

"Hassan's men. The faithful of God," replied the bedouin.

"Hassan himself will be here in the morning. He will remain here while you go to the water machinery. He and the faithful will be waiting for you when you return."

"And then?"

"You will be spared," the man whispered. "Hassan knows who the true friends of God are. You will be spared."

A burning tendril of red-hot fear crawled along Pavel's gut and clutched at his heart.

"And the others?" he asked in an urgent whisper.

"God knows."

"What do you mean?"

"They are infidels, are they not? What does it matter?"

A thousand questions boiled up in Pavel's mind, but he clamped his lips shut so tightly that his teeth hurt. This bedouin is only a messenger, he told himself. He knows very little. And the more questions I ask, the more suspicious he will become.

"Go with God," said the bedouin, tapping his right hand to his chest.

Pavel grunted and nodded, thinking that it was an unlikely alliance: a Moslem fundamentalist and a Soviet atheist.

The bedouin went as silently as a wraith back toward the embers of the campfire. Pavel stayed on his feet, wide awake, and forgot the stars that hung above. Even after Mavroulis came out and took the gun from him, Pavel went inside the tent and stretched out in his sleeping bag but found that he could not keep his eyes closed.

Tense as a hunted mountain lion, eyes burning from lack of sleep, Pavel rolled out of his sleeping bag with the first glint of dawn. He had spent the night debating where his loyalties lay: assassinating Alexander did not mean that he should stand aside and let these desert savages slaughter his companions. He could not let them harm Kelly. Never.

Besides, it would make his assignment more difficult if Kelly and the others were killed or even held hostage.

Who is this Hassan? What game is he playing? Is Alexander's plan already known and countered? Are we already in a trap, our necks in nooses?

Kelly and the others gave no sign of apprehension. They shared a quick breakfast of yogurt and honey with the three bedouins, who smilingly assured them that Hassan would soon arrive. Pavel tried to identify which of the three had spoken to him during the night. He could not.

Kelly broke out tubes of dark cream makeup. "We've got to look more like Arabs," she said.