Peacekeepers (1988) (31 page)

Alexander drew in a deep breath to calm the pulse racing through his veins. "I get it. Shamar wants to immobilize the nations that might go after him."

"Precisely so," said Red Eagle. "As far as we know, he still believes each of those bombs to be armed and capable of being detonated when he gives the word."

"So he thinks he can hold France, Russia and the States captive."

"So we believe."

" 'We,' in this case, is who?" Alexander asked.

A look of astonishment came across Red Eagle's normally placid face. "Why, the Peacekeepers, of course. Who else?"

"The Peacekeepers found those bombs and deactivated them?"

Red Eagle replied, "Peacekeeper sensors located the bombs. As you yourself said earlier, Mr. Alexander, we do have surveillance satellites in orbit and drone aircraft patrolling most of the world's land surface."

To himself Alexander silently replied, And you've already plotted out the world's major opium fields and drug manufacturing centers, I'll bet.

"The Peacekeepers shared their information with each national government's top security agency. In Washington, it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation that found and disarmed the nuclear weapon. In Moscow, the KGB."

"And Shamar doesn't know their teeth have been pulled?" Alexander asked.

"We believe not."

"That's three bombs. Where are the other two?"

"One is in Colombia, at the site where Shamar himself is located. We believe he is making plans to place it in Bogota, the capital."

"Makes sense. And the fifth one?"

"That is where you come into the picture, Mr. Alexander. We need your force to get to the fifth bomb and disarm it—without letting Shamar's people know that you have done so."

"My people? Why me?"

"Because we cannot possibly trust the local government of the nation where the bomb has been hidden."

"Why not? Where is it?"

Red Eagle fell silent again, and stood as still as the brooding statue that loomed above them both.

"Before I tell you that, Mr. Alexander," he said at last, "I would appreciate it if you told me why you want the locations of the major drug manufacturing facilities."

There's no sense beating around the bush, Alexander told himself. Better spit it right out. "I want more than that," he said. "I want Shamar's bombs. All five of them. Intact."

"No, Mr. Alexander. That is not possible."

Ignoring the refusal, Alexander explained, "I've spent six years tracking down Shamar. Now that we're close to getting him, I realize that he's not the only mass murderer walking on God's green earth. The drug dealers are killing millions each year. I'm going to wipe them out, one by one."

Red Eagle's massive head drooped on his shoulders, his chin sinking to his broad chest. His eyes closed, his shoulders sagged. For a moment Alexander thought that the man was undergoing a heart attack or some incredible, unbearable pain.

"The fault is my own," he said slowly, so softly that Alexander barely heard him. "I knew it would come to this."

"I can accomplish what the Peacekeepers can't do and the national governments won't do," Alexander urged. "I can destroy the drug centers . . ."

"And kill how many?"

"They're criminals! Killers!"

"Are the farmers and shepherds downwind of your nuclear attacks also criminals?" Red Eagle asked. "You know what fallout can do, Mr. Alexander. You, of all people, should know."

"The centers are in remote areas . . ."

"Such as Marseille?"

"We'll get that one with different methods."

The huge Amerind seemed on the verge of tears. "The one thing I feared when I first contacted you six years ago was that you would start to enjoy your work too much. I told you then, Mr. Alexander, that I wanted no vigilantes or assassins. I will brook none now."

Trying to hold down the furies burning within him, Alexander countered, "There are others who'll pay me to root out the drug dealers."

"Then you will work against the Peacekeepers, not with them."

"So what?"

Red Eagle stared at him. "I am sorry, Mr. Alexander. Our relationship is at an end."

He began to walk away.

"Not so fast!" Alexander called, scampering to catch up with him. "I've got my people ready to nail Shamar. Nothing's going to change that."

Red Eagle stopped and looked down at Alexander. For a long moment he seemed to peering through him, as if his eyes beamed X rays. Alexander stood up to that gaze, his own gray eyes blazing.

It was Alexander who broke the deadlock. "Don't be so damned hasty," he said, trying to make his voice sound light. "I want Shamar, you want the nukes. We can still cooperate on that."

"You have just told me, Mr. Alexander, that you want Shamar and the nuclear weapons."

"Getting Shamar is still more important to me than anything else," Alexander said. It was even true, he told himself.

"I don't know that I can trust you anymore."

Grinning crookedly, Alexander countered, "So don't trust me. Just don't get in my way when we go in after Shamar."

"There is still that fifth nuclear bomb," Red Eagle muttered.

"Guess you'll have to find somebody else for that one," said Alexander.

"There is nobody else," Red Eagle admitted. "At least, no one who can be called in so quickly."

"Then let us get it for you."

"So that you can steal it and use it for your vigilante justice?"

Puffing out a long, defeated breath, Alexander lied, "No, goddammit. I guess that was a dumb idea, after all."

Red Eagle said nothing for several moments. He knows I'm lying in my teeth, Alexander thought. Question is, can he do anything else or will he have to deal with me?

"Mr. Alexander," the Amerind said at last, "I propose a truce."

"A truce?"

"You disarm the fifth bomb and get Shamar. Then we will discuss ways and means of cooperating in attacking the drug centers."

"You mean it?"

Raising a giant paw. Red Eagle added, "Without nuclear weapons. There are other possibilities. Our researchers have developed non-lethal chemical weapons. And biological agents might be used against the crops themselves ..."

His deep voice trailed off into a faint rumble, leaving the possibilities dangling.

"You've got a deal," Alexander said, extending his hand.

Red Eagle shook it, again taking care not to exert too much strength. But to Alexander it seemed that the Amerind's hand clasp somehow lacked the warmth and friendship of their meeting, only minutes earlier.

He doesn't trust me anymore, Alexander said to himself.

Maybe he never did. Question is, how far can I trust him, now?

Aloud he asked, "Now this fifth bomb. Just where in hell is it that the local government can't go after it?"

"Barcelona."

Alexander felt puzzled. "Barcelona? In Spain?"

"Yes."

"What's so touchy about the Spanish government that you can't inform Madrid about the bomb?"

Pacing slowly out onto the broad front portico of the Memorial, to the place where Martin Luther King spoke of his dream. Red Eagle explained:

"Spain is going through another of its traumatic seizures, the kind that has led to civil war in the past. The Basques, the Catalonians, even the Andalusians are demanding complete autonomy from the central government of Madrid. The nation of Spain may cease to exist. It may break up into seven or eight independent entities, each with its own government, its own economy, even its own language."

Alexander nodded understandingly. "But I don't see how a bomb . . ."

"Shamar is extremely clever," Red Eagle went on. "That is what makes him so dangerous. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, one of the regions struggling the hardest for autonomy. The city is about to dedicate the first nuclear fusion plant in Spain—a Russian fusion reactor, by the way, financed with loans from French banks."

"You think the bomb is there?"

"It is the obvious place for it, Mr. Alexander. Madrid opposed building the fusion system; the Catalonians claimed it was because the national government wanted to have the first fusion.power plant at the capital instead of Barcelona. Imagine what would happen if the plant exploded in a nuclear fireball soon after being turned on. Madrid would blame the Catalonians for the 'accident'. The Catalonians would become enraged at Madrid."

Alexander mused, "And hydrogen fusion power would get a black eye—worse than Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to the old fission power plants."

"Indeed. To say nothing of destroying much of the city of Barcelona and killing a million or more people."

His face twisting into an almost evil smile, Alexander asked, "When did you say they're turning on the fusion plant?"

"The official dedication is a week from today."

"That doesn't give us much time."

"The bomb will not be set off until the following week."

Alexander's brows shot up. "How do you know that?"

With a heavy sigh, Red Eagle replied, "There will be an international conference in Barcelona during that week. Most of the leaders of the Peacekeepers will be there, including Director-General Hazard and his top aides."

"Jesus Christ!"

"With the proper timing, the bomb could decapitate the IPF."

"That's what Shamar is after!"

Red Eagle allowed a slight smile to cross his somber face.

"I will be there also, Mr. Alexander. The bomb will also assassinate me, if it goes off."

Red Eagle literally placed his life in

Alexander's hands. And Alexander had to

postpone his planned strike against Shamar

to bring his key people to Barcelona.

DRESSED in a chocolate-brown leather jacket, open-necked sport shirt and neatly creased navy-blue slacks. Jay Hazard watched through the bar's open doorway as the entire city of three million people seemed to be parading by.

The Ramblas was the heart of Barcelona. A broad promenade lined with bars, restaurants, shops and theaters, it extended from the high pillar bearing Christopher Columbus's statue down by the waterfront to the sparkling Fountain of Canaletes, in midtown. On Sundays everyone in the city went to church, had a good dinner and a nap, and then went for an afternoon stroll on the Ramblas.

Hazard was not interested in everyone. As he sat by the bar's doorway, nursing a glass of pale yellow Rioja wine, his blue-gray eyes sought only one man's face, a face he had seen only in a three-dimensional holographic picture.

Instead, he saw Kelly, sitting out across the narrow motorway at the sidewalk tables, sipping a tiny cup of the lethal local version of coffee. Hazard had never seen her in a skirt before. Her legs certainly look good enough to show off, he thought, but she had always worn slacks or jeans.

Now, however, she was in a tourist's disguise: bright yellow skirt, flowered blouse, and a glitter-decorated sweater to protect her against the springtime chill. She had even put a bright ribbon in her boyishly cropped red hair.

Kelly saw him watching her and smiled at him. Hazard made himself smile back. She seems to like me, he thought.

Maybe too much. She's been damned helpful, testifying on my behalf to get me off the Moon, getting me this job with her father's outfit. But I can't let myself get attached to her.

Not now. Not yet.

Pavel Zhakarov was out there in the crowd somewhere, too, trying to blend in and look inconspicuous while staying close enough to back them up. Pavel's trained for this kind of thing, Hazard thought, wondering in the back of his mind how far he could trust the Russian.

"He says he's in love with me," Kelly had told him one afternoon as they studied satellite photos of Shamar's base near Valledupar.

"I know," Hazard had replied.

"But I don't love him," she had announced firmly.

"Pavel's nice, but—I don't love him."

She had glanced up at him as if she expected him to say something, make some declaration. Hazard said not a word. There was nothing for him to say.

He forced his attention back to the job at hand. The man they were looking for was known only as Julio. They had nothing more than the three-dimensional photo by which to identify him. He was a technician at the new fusion power plant, and IPF intelligence claimed that he had helped to place the nuclear bomb there for Shamar's people. In fact, he was to get his final payment for his work this Sunday afternoon, at this particular bar. According to IPF intelligence.

Hazard sipped at the strong wine. It tasted of iron. He had never been much of a drinker, and had gotten out of the habit entirely during his years at Moonbase.

IPF intelligence, he mused silently. While the bar's loudspeakers hammered out American pop rock and young couples drifted in for a drink and the snacks they called tapas, Hazard thought about the Peacekeepers and the career that he had thrown away.

The IPF gives us all the info we need, he thought, but makes us do the dirty work. They can't let themselves get caught interfering with the internal workings of a country, but they can hire us to do it. If that isn't IPF interference, then what the dingdong dell is it?

They're smart, damnably smart. They don't want the nations to know that they're taking over the whole world, but little by little that's just what they're doing. While Cardillo and the others rot in prison, the Peacekeepers are doing just what the rebels said they'd do: building a world government for themselves.

They. My father is one of them. Their leader, in fact.

Hazard shook his head as if trying to clear cobwebs from his thoughts. Dad makes a damned good world leader, he admitted to himself. But Augustus was a damned good emperor, too. And look what followed him. Tiberius.

Caligula.

His thoughts were stopped dead as Julio sauntered into the bar. No mistaking the face: receding hairline, bum scar on the left cheek.

Holding back the impulse to leap up and grab the technician. Hazard watched as Julio ordered a beer at the bar and then took it to one of the tables toward the rear of the room. He was trying to look casual about it, but he was so tense that his legs seemed unable to bend at the knees.