Peacekeepers (1988) (25 page)

Mavroulis's thick, blunt fingers pecked at the keys:

MUST GET BARKER. ONLY HE CAN FLY HOVERJET.

Kelly tapped:
HOW???

WE NEED WEAPONS
, Pavel typed with one finger.

"Fine," grumbled Mavroulis. "What are you going to do, ask them?" He glanced at the bored soldier lounging opposite them.

NO VIOLENCE
, Kelly typed,
UNLESS UNAVOIDABLE
.

Pavel took a deep breath. This was not a situation that would be resolved by delicate sensibilities or strategic arguments. This situation called for action.

"It is unavoidable," he muttered.

Kelly began typing something more, but Pavel stood up and stretched his arms as far as possible in the confines of the oven-hot compartment. His back felt all right. It only took a single step to put him in front of the soldier, who now looked up at Pavel.

One lightning-fast chop at the boy's neck and he sagged back against the armor plating, unconscious. The soldier up in the turret did not notice anything. Neither did the two men up front.

Pavel quickly took the pistol from the youngster's holster.

It was a nine-millimeter Skoda, manufactured in Czechoslovakia: simple and reliable, though not very accurate at farther than fifty meters. No matter. Pavel was familiar with the gun. He felt better as he hefted it in his right hand.

Mavroulis got to his feet as Pavel reached toward the soldier standing in the turret and tapped him on the back.

He ducked down and turned face-to-face with the muzzle of the pistol. Pavel smashed the gun barrel against the soldier's temple. Mavroulis caught him in his arms.

The captain turned to see what the commotion was and Pavel leveled his pistol at him.

"Stop the car," Pavel commanded.

Wide-eyed with surprise, the captain did as he was told.

Pavel had him and the driver haul the two unconscious soldiers out onto the sandy track.

"You can't leave them out on the desert!" Kelly objected.

Pavel threw a pair of water cans to them. "They can walk back to the camp. It's only a few kilometers now."

Kelly looked doubtful, but Mavroulis slammed the APV's rear hatch, then hunched forward and took the driver's seat. With a grinding of gears he lurched the vehicle into motion. Pavel climbed up into the turret. Twin twenty-millimeter machine cannon and half a dozen boxes of ammunition. Now they could defend themselves.

But Kelly was still shaking her head when he ducked back into the rear compartment.

"We're hundreds of miles from anyplace safe," she said.

"Hassan has at least one armored car like this one, plus who knows what else."

"We can fight," said Pavel.

"Hassan's also got Chris. And the plane. We need them both—unharmed—if we expect to get out of here."

Knowing she was right, Pavel replied merely, "It is better to be armed and prepared to fight than to go like a lamb to the slaughter."

Kelly said nothing.

Late afternoon shadows were lengthening as their vehicle topped a low ridge and Mavroulis shouted over the engine's clattering roar:

"There's the camp."

Kelly jumped up from the bench and wormed into the right-hand seat up front in the cab. Pavel stood at the hatch behind her and Mavroulis, clinging to the baking-hot handgrips on either side.

Half a dozen APVs were parked around the camouflage netting that covered the hoverjet. And several low black tents had been pitched some distance away, swaying in the hot breeze.

"Hassan's gathered a welcoming committee," Mavroulis growled.

"We can't fight our way out of this," said Kelly.

Pavel felt a strange hollowness in his middle. His legs trembled. Fear! Something deep inside him was screaming at him to run away, to dig a hole and hide where none of these enemies could find him. His mouth went dry, his throat raw. He gripped the metal bars on either side of the hatch so hard that his fingernails were cutting painfully into the flesh of his palms.

Mavroulis slowed their vehicle, but kept moving ahead toward the hoverjet. A phalanx of soldiers in sand-tan fatigues fell in on either side of them. Each man was armed with an assault rifle or an armor-piercing rocket launcher.

Pavel climbed up into the turret and swiveled the guns around. A hundred rifles and anti-tank launchers pointed straight at him.

"You'll get us killed!" Kelly screamed at him.

He looked down at her terrified face. "Better to let them know that we will fight. Better to die like soldiers than as prisoners of these savages."

Mavroulis slammed on the brakes and killed the engine.

They were parked twenty meters from the edge of the netting that covered the hoverjet. From his perch in the turret Pavel could see that the plane was undamaged.

For agonizingly long moments no one moved or said a word. The only sounds were the pinging of the diesel's hot metal and the distant flapping of bedouin tents in the desert breeze.

Colonel Hassan stepped out from behind the ranks of his arrayed soldiers. One of the berobed Arabs was at his elbow, pointing up toward the turret.

"You are the Russian?" Hassan called.

"Yes," said PaveL

Hassan smiled pleasantly from behind his mirrored glasses. Once again Pavel thought that he looked enough like Rayyid to be the man's brother. It is the uniform, he told himself. But still the resemblance was uncanny.

"You may come down and join us now," said Hassan.

"You have done your work well. You have nothing to fear from us."

"And the others?" Pavel demanded.

Hassan's smile broadened. He shrugged his epauletted shoulders. "They will be dealt with. My bedouin brothers have prepared a proper ritual for them."

Very slowly Pavel was inching the twin guns toward Hassan. He stalled for time, trying to think of something that could break the stalemate in his own favor.

"The pilot?" he called to Hassan. "The Englishman?"

"He tried to escape. The bedouins had to restrain him—in their own way."

The colonel snapped his fingers and there was a stir from behind the ranks of soldiers. Two Arabs dragged a half-conscious Barker forward and threw him to the ground at Hassan's feet. The Englishman's legs were covered with blood, his face battered and swollen.

"It is traditional to hamstring a prisoner who tried to run away," Hassan said calmly.

Pavel heard a gasping sob from the APV's cab, below him.

"Come now," said Hassan impatiently, "come out of the vehicle and let us treat the other two infidels to their reward."

"No," said Pavel, training the guns a bit closer to the colonel's hateful smile.

The smile vanished. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that my orders are to bring these prisoners to Moscow. My superiors have their own plans for them."

Hassan's face hardened. "I was not informed of that."

"Those are my orders," Pavel insisted.

"And how do you propose to take these prisoners away from here?"

Speaking as the ideas formed themselves in his mind, Pavel replied, "You will provide a pilot to fly this aircraft to Tripoli. I will present the prisoners to the Soviet embassy there. The KGB will know what to do with them."

Hassan snorted. "Impossible! Tripoli is a battlefield now. My brother is fighting for his life against my army contingents."

So they are brothers, Pavel said to himself.

"Then fly us to Tunis or Cairo. There are Soviet embassies in both capitals."

Hassan hesitated.

"You may keep the hoverjet as proof that foreign agents tampered with the aquifer system, if you like," Pavel said.

With a sudden inspiration he added, "Or destroy it so that no one will be able to link you to the sabotage."

"There must be no trace of these foreigners," Hassan insisted. "No word of this operation must ever leak out."

Pavel made himself laugh. "The only thing that leaks out of the KGB is the blood of capitalist dogs."

"I have no pilot here," Hassan said.

"Call for a helicopter from the aquifer complex," said Pavel, recognizing a stall. "We will remain here."

"You would be more comfortable outside that cramped vehicle."

"We will remain inside." Pavel nudged the guns the final few millimeters so that they were pointing directly at Hassan. "And I suggest that you remain where you are, also."

The colonel paled momentarily, whether from sudden fear or anger, Pavel could not tell. But then he put on his smile again and reached inside his tunic for his gold cigar case. This time he had to light his own cigar; none of the soldiers or bedouins stirred from where they stood.

"Very well," Hassan said at last, exhaling thin gray smoke, "I will send for a helicopter."

He turned to the lieutenant nearest him and spoke swiftly in Arabic.

For nearly fifteen minutes they all waited: Pavel with his fingers on the triggers of the machine cannon; Mavroulis and Kelly sweating down inside the APV cab; Hassan smiling and puffing and chatting with the sycophants around him; the Libyan soldiers grouped around the APV, ready to fire into it at a word from their leader.

Barker lay on the sand, unmoving, his legs crusted with blood, his eyes swollen shut.

The sun sank lower. Shadows lengthened. The desert wind sighed.

And Pavel heard, far in the distance, the faint throbbing sound of a helicopter.

None of us can fly a helicopter, he knew. Perhaps Barker could, but he is in no condition to try. We will have to let the pilot actually fly us to Tunis and try to make a rendezvous with Alexander there.

The pilot is actually going to fly us to Tunis, he added fearfully. If Hassan has not cooked up some deal of his own to land us in his own territory. Even if he believes my fairy tale about Moscow, he could easily claim that our helicopter crashed in the desert and we were all killed. Moscow will never question him.

The helicopter materialized in the yellow desert sky, a massive ungainly metal pterodactyl hovering overhead, its engines shrieking, rotors thrumming, blowing up a miniature sandstorm as it settled slowly on its wheels. It was huge, one of the giant heavy cargo lifters built in the Soviet Union. Pavel almost smiled at the irony.

It took several tense minutes for them to get Barker aboard and strap themselves into the bucket seats lined along one wall of the helicopter's barn-sized cargo bay.

Hassan watched carefully, puffing his slim cigar, a satisfied little smile on his lips.

We're not going to Tunis, Pavel realized as the ship lifted off the ground. All I've done is delayed Hassan's fun by a couple of hours.

But as the helicopter rose into the brazen sky two women in white nurse's uniforms came down from the flight deck and began tending to Barker. Neither of them looked Arabic; one was a blonde.

Then Cole Alexander clambered down the metal ladder from the flight deck, grinning his crooked sardonic grin at them. Kelly leaped out of her seat and wrapped her arms around her father.

"Ohmygod, am I glad to see you!" she gasped.

"Likewise," Alexander said. "Good work, all of you.

"Specially you, Red. You used your head back there."

Pavel was speechless. Mavroulis leaned his head back and laughed maniacally.

"I knew it!" the Greek roared. "I knew you had a backup for us!"

Detaching himself from Kelly, Alexander squatted cross-legged on the cargo bay's metal flooring. His daughter sat beside him, facing Pavel and Mavroulis.

"I knew Hassan was a double-dealing sumbitch," Alexander said almost apologetically, "but he was the only sumbitch we had to work with. Like my dear Uncle Max used to tell me, 'When they stick you with a lemon, make lemonade.'"

"You expected him to try to kill us?"

"No, he surprised me there. I expected him to take you prisoner and hold you hostage until his fight with Rayyid was settled."

"His brother," Pavel said.

"Yep, they're siblings." Alexander made a sour face at the thought, then went on, "The way I figured it was this: We screw up Rayyid's aquifer project. Hassan and his army people pull their
coup d'etat
while the Libyan people are still stunned at Rayyid's flop with the water project. Hassan holds you four as his trump card. If he wins, you go free. If he loses, he can offer you to Rayyid in return for his own life."

Kelly said, "But instead he decided to remove all evidence of sabotage."

"He must be damned confident he'll beat Rayyid,"

Mavroulis muttered.

"He's probably right," Alexander said.

"But you had a backup plan for us, nevertheless," said the Greek.

Alexander's sardonic smile came out again. He looked down at his daughter, then his gray eyes locked onto Pavel's.

"Wish I'd really been that smart," he admitted. "I did have this old Russkie chopper and a medivac team ready, just in case. And when I got Kelly's message—Pavel's warning, actually—I flew this bird as close to Hassan's camp in the desert as I could."

"Damned good thing you did," Kelly said.

"Yeah, but then I was stuck. I couldn't go flying in there with the four of you surrounded by trigger-happy Moslem fundamentalists. I needed some excuse to come chugging into their camp. Pavel provided the excuse. When Hassan radioed for a chopper to take you guys to Tunis, I got my chance."

"You see?" Mavroulis said, thrusting a blunt finger under Kelly's nose. "I told you to keep quiet and not interfere! I was right!"

Kelly nodded glumly. "You were right, Nicco."

"She wanted to shoot you when you said you were going to turn us over to the KGB," Mavroulis said to Pavel. "I had to hold her down."

"You thought I would really do that?" Pavel's voice was weak with shock. He felt betrayed.

Kelly blushed, even under her dark makeup. "You were damned convincing."

"I had to be."

Alexander interrupted, "Damned good thing you were, Red. Otherwise my little girl here . . ." His voice choked off. He put an arm around Kelly's shoulders and hugged her to him, as if to make absolutely certain that she was with him and safe.

"Hassan was actually going to fly us to Tunis?" Pavel asked.