by Ben Bova
He thought.
INDONESIA,
Year 4
Stretched out prone on the damp grass at the edge of the trees, Alexander peered through his binoculars at the village in the clearing. He swept his gaze across the cinder-block huts, then focused beyond them to the six helicopters resting beneath camouflage netting at the village's farther side.
"Those're Shamar's choppers?" he asked the man lying beside him. He kept his voice low, almost a whisper. No telling who might be prowling through these woods.
The man nodded. "One of them is. The others belong to the rebel leaders and some of the government men who are in with them. If the word we picked up from Surabaya is right, Shamar and the rebels will be taking off tonight to rendezvous with the guerrillas over in Vogelkop."
"And the government men go back to Jakarta."
"Right," said the man. "Bloody traitors."
The man's name was McPherson, a lifelong professional soldier. Both he and Alexander wore green-mottled jungle fatigues and floppy Digger hats that broke up the outline of a man's head against the heavy foliage of this sweltering tropical forest. Safer than tin helmets, McPherson claimed.
Their plastic armor vests were also jungle green; they felt heavy and hot in the sweltering humidity, no matter what the manufacturer claimed for their lightness and comfort.
It had taken almost a year for Alexander to recruit his mercenary force. It was small, but elite. McPherson had not come easily, nor cheaply. Almost every penny Alexander had inherited he had spent on McPherson and his band of professionals. Their arms and training were first-rate.
What little money he had left Alexander had used to track down the elusive Jabal Shamar. The mass murderer had also turned mercenary, using his skills and cunning in everything from terrorism to rebellion, all around the world from Ankara to Quebec. But he made certain to remain beyond the reach of the Peacekeepers. He never engaged in an attack that the IPF would consider to be aggression.
The thousands he killed died in civil wars, rebellions, guerrilla movements, terrorist demonstrations. But they died just the same, cut down by machine-gun fire or blown to bloody pieces by car bombs. They died and Shamar moved on, devising elaborate schemes of murder for pay.
Shamar had the ultimate insurance policy, of course.
Somewhere he had cached six nuclear weapons, six bombs capable of destroying six cities. As long as no one knew where the bombs were, Shamar could range the world and fearful governments would allow him untroubled passage.
Was there a nuclear weapon submerged in a Bangkok canal? Thailand turned a blind eye to Shamar's passage through their territory. Is a nuclear bomb hidden in a slum basement in Sao Paulo? Why should Brazil risk triggering it by trying to arrest Shamar?
But Alexander hunted him. He recruited McPherson and, through him, a mercenary force whose only task was to find Shamar so that Alexander could execute him.
Now Alexander and McPherson lay on a ridge at the edge of a steaming forest, raucous with birds and monkeys, stinking of tropical rot, crawling with insects. The humid heat pressed on them like a sopping sponge, drenching their fatigues with sweat.
McPherson spoke quietly into a palm-sized radio, ordering the other men to take up positions ringing the village.
He was a tall, rawboned New Zealander, ruddy of face, with hair and brows so blond he almost looked albino. He had come to Alexander highly recommended, having seen action in the Katangan Secession, the overthrow of the Diaz government in Chile and the bloody shambles of South Africa.
Alexander had agreed that McPherson would be in tactical command, since he himself had never been in action before.
"You stay close by me. Cole. Check your weapons now."
With sweaty hands Alexander examined the grenades hooked to the web belts across his shoulders, memorizing the different types: concussion, frag, smoke. Then he took the pistol from the holster at his waist. Loaded clip in place, safety off. More clips in the belt pouches. Finally he slid the action of his stubby submachine gun back and forth. Satisfied that it was ready, he slapped a banana-curved magazine into place.
"Now we wait," McPherson said.
"How long?"
"Until dusk. Let them get their dinner fires started."
Alexander felt his guts fluttering. "Suppose they have patrols out around here?"
"They do," McPherson replied with a deprecating little smile. "But they won't find my men. I promise you that."
"Why'd you make me check weapons now if . . ."
McPherson laid a hand on Alexander's shoulder.
"Wouldn't do to be caught unready to fight, just in case somebody does stumble on us."
"But you said . . ."
"I know what I said, Cole. But it's always best to be prepared for every contingency. Remember that."
Feeling like a student facing a fatherly schoolmaster rather than a mercenary soldier getting ready to attack, Cole nodded and lapsed into silence.
He worried about his exposure to sunlight; solar ultraviolet could trigger skin cancers, or worse. His leukemia was under control as long as he took the pills, but Alexander looked on the sun as an enemy. Shamar's gift to me, he thought angrily. Something else he's taken away from me.
But if we nail him here it won't matter. The UV dose will be a small price to pay for killing the son of a bitch.
For hours he scanned the village with his binoculars, turning up the electro-optical gain to its highest, until he could make out the faces of the people. Hard to tell the villagers from the guerrillas, he realized. Except for the tattered camouflage uniforms they wore, there was no real difference among the brown-skinned men. Some of the women were in dirty mottled uniforms, too, with assault rifles slung over their slim shoulders. The village women wore long colorful batik skirts and Western-style loose blouses, all of them shabby and tattered.
This was not a rich village. The paddies out on the other side where the helicopters were hidden seemed pitifully small and scrawny. Even the few water buffalo Alexander spotted looked emaciated.
Why is Shamar here, when he's being paid to organize the rebel guerrillas in West Irian? Cole wondered. Is he
actually here, or is this a ruse—or worse yet, a trap?
And then his heart leaped. He saw Jabal Shamar. The man calmly stepped out of one of the larger cinder-block buildings in the center of the village, squinting at the lowering sun and raising his hand to shield his eyes. It was him, all right! Alexander knew that face, even though he had never met Shamar.
Seeing him live, instead of a picture, brought surprises.
Shamar was shockingly young for a general, a youthful forty at most. Practically my age, Alexander realized. He wore desert tan fatigues, unadorned by insignia or any mark of rank. Vigorous, brisk movements. As he spoke he gestured vividly; his hands were never still. Yet he was much smaller than Alexander had expected, a stunted marionette of a man, slim and hard-faced, with a trim dark mustache and a livid white scar that ran from the bottom of his right ear along the jawline almost to the point of his chin.
"The murdering son of a bitch is there," he muttered, passing the binoculars to McPherson.
The Kiwi took them for a moment, then handed them back with nothing more than a grunt of acknowledgement.
The largest building, in the center of the village, was obviously where the meeting was taking place. Alexander clicked on the sub-miniaturized video camera built into the binoculars as he watched the men gathering around Shamar, bowing to him or shaking his hand. They all seemed so subservient to this mass murderer. The men from Jakarta wore lightweight, light-colored Westernized business suits; bureaucrats through and through, dressed almost identically to their brethren around the world. The guerrillas wore rags and tatters of old army uniforms they had decorated with bright head scarves and armbands.
Alexander videoed it all as he watched, waiting impatiently for sunset.
The shadows lengthened. Spires of smoke began to rise from the roof
holes in several of the cinder-block huts inside the village. Alexander could smell vegetables boiling and fresh fish sizzling on the fire.
McPherson checked by radio with his men. No sign of enemy patrols. No hint that they had been detected.
Shamar was in council with the rebel leaders and the traitors within the government who were in league with the rebels.
He touched Alexander on the shoulder. Cole jerked as if a hot ember had seared his skin.
"It's time," McPherson said.
Alexander nodded, his lips pressed to a bloodless tight line. "Okay," he said, with a firmness he did not feel. "Let's get it done."
McPherson thumbed his palm-sized radio again. "All units—attack!"
And they were up and running toward the village. It was not walled; it was nothing more than a roughly circular collection of the cinder-block buildings, none of them more than a single story high. Alexander held his submachine gun in both hands, felt the weight of the grenades on his chest, the pistol flopping in its holster at his hip, the bulky electronic binoculars pressing against the small of his back.
On both sides of them other men in jungle green and floppy hats, guns held level, were racing across the clearing between the forest and the outer ring of huts.
McPherson sprinted a few steps ahead of Alexander and dashed in between the two nearest huts. No one else was in sight except his own mercenary soldiers.
But then a burst of gunfire off to his right. Alexander saw McPherson skid to a stop on the dusty bare ground and flatten out along a cinder-block wall. He did the same.
A soldier in a dirt-caked steel helmet popped out of a doorway and squirted a burst of semiautomatic fire at them. McPherson threw himself to the ground and fired back in one motion. The soldier screamed and fell back into the hut.
"Come on!" McPherson yelled. Alexander followed him on legs suddenly gone rubbery as the New Zealander raced to the hut and threw a grenade into the doorway.
It exploded almost immediately. Smoke and screams billowed out the doorway.
"Squirt 'em!" McPherson commanded, already heading for the next hut.
Alexander ducked into the smoky doorway, coughing as he pointed his gun inside the hut. Squinting, he saw a tangle of bodies huddled next to a small table splintered by the grenade's blast. He knew what he was supposed to do: spray the bodies with bullets, make certain no one would stagger out of that hut to shoot them in the back.
His finger froze on the trigger. They're all dead. Have to be.
One of the bodies moaned and writhed in pain. A woman, her colorful skirt smeared with blood.
Alexander doubled over, fighting down the bile that was surging into his mouth. He backed out of the doorway, took a gulp of fresh air, and saw that he was alone.
Gunfire deeper in the village. The crump of a grenade.
Men's deep voices shouting and cursing. Screams, high-pitched with terror and agony.
He ran down the crooked lane between huts and saw several of the green-clad mercenaries blazing away at the rooftops. Chunks of cinder block flew in all directions, but no one seemed to be up there. Then the black oval shape of a grenade arced against the flaming sunset sky and exploded between the men. Their bodies were flung like rag dolls, smashed against the cinder blocks.
A fragment caught Alexander, nicked his shoulder and spun him halfway around.
He saw three men with assault rifles coming up toward him. No, two men and a woman. Ragged clothes, but the rifles looked polished and new.
He could not fire at them. He knew he had to kill them or they would kill him. He commanded his finger to squeeze the trigger. He silently raged at his hand to do what it had to do. Yet his finger would not move a millimeter.
The woman shot him, a single round, straight at his chest. Alexander felt a tremendous hammer blow slam him down into the ground. The blood-red sky went dark. The last thing he heard was a man's voice bellowing angrily over the sound of more gunfire. It sounded like McPherson.
He woke to McPherson's voice.
"I expect you to allow me to evacuate my wounded and what's left of my men," the Kiwi was saying.
"You are a professional soldier," replied a harsh, guttural voice in heavily accented English. "You expect all the niceties of polite professional conduct to be extended to you."
Alexander tried to open his eyes. They seemed glued shut.
"You've beaten us," McPherson said, his voice sounding more exasperated than fearful. "What more do you want?"
"Why should I allow you to go? You might come against me again, some other day. Why not kill you all now and be done with it?"
In the silence that followed, Alexander tried to rub the blurriness out of his eyes. His chest flared with pain.
Broken rib, he knew. More than one, most likely. The armor vest stopped the bullet, but not its impact.
He focused on the shadowy ceiling, then carefully turned his head toward the voices he had heard.
He was lying on a straw pallet on the floor of a tiny room.
The only light came from the doorway from which the voices emanated. The room stank of blood and excrement.
Flies buzzed annoyingly, but Alexander's chest hurt too much to try to wave them away. Two other bodies were stretched out next to him. They both were unmoving, eyes staring—the flies and other insects were crawling over them.
Alexander barely held down his gorge. He looked past them, toward the lighted doorway.
"As you said, I'm a professional soldier," McPherson replied at last. "If you allow us to leave here, I'll give you my word that neither I nor my men will ever hire on against you. Never, no matter who approaches us or what he offers."
Another long silence. Then the other voice—it had to be Shamar's, Alexander reasoned—finally said, "Ah, you English and your honor. Very well, I will allow you to go."
"I'm New Zealand," said McPherson stiffly. "But I thank you anyways."
"All but your employer," said Shamar.
"Hold on now ..."
"That man will remain here. He is my enemy and I have no intention of allowing him to go free."
He's talking about me! Alexander realized with a pang of shock.
"I can't allow that," said McPherson.
Shamar laughed, a mocking grating sound. "If you wish to stay with him and share his fate, I will accommodate you." His voice suddenly went iron-hard. "You, and what's left of your men."
"That's not fair," McPherson whispered.
Shamar laughed again. "I thought you English had a saying, 'All's fair in love and war.'"
"He's just a silly rich man."
"A stupid rich man," Shamar corrected, 'Vho swallowed the information that my people sold to him. An ignorant Yankee who led you and your men into this trap like a Judas goat leading sheep."
"I still can't . . ."
"You had better take your men and leave while you can."
Shamar's voice was flat and cold. The discussion was at an end.
McPherson said, "I'm doing this only for the sake of my men."
"Of course. And don't trouble yourself about this American fool. He isn't worth troubling your conscience over."
Alexander heard McPherson's booted feet clump across the wooden floorboards. A door squeaked open, then banged shut.
It's my fault, he realized. I led McPherson and his men into this mess. I let Shamar bait the trap and I walked right into it. I couldn't even fight, when the chips were down.
Worse than a fool. I'm a coward. A gutless coward who can't pull a trigger even to save his own life.
The realization burned him with a searing pain worse than his wound. I'm a coward. A coward.
A lilting Indonesian voice, in tones almost like a flute, asked, "Is it wise to allow the mercenaries to go free?"
Shamar made a coughing, almost barking sound that might have been a single burst of laughter. "No, it is not wise. And they will not leave this village alive."
"But you told him . . ."
&nb
sp; "What I told that Englishman I said to make him and his men easier to handle. They will be marched back toward the forest, toward the vans that carried them here from the coast. Before they reach the vans they will be shot. All of them."
Without consciously willing it, Alexander struggled up to a sitting position. The pain made his head swim, but he still heard Shamar's grating voice.
"In a few weeks' time the jungle will have obliterated their bodies. There will be no trace of them."
I can't let him murder Mac and his men. I've killed enough of them. I can't let him slaughter the rest.
Every breath was an agony. Alexander checked his clothes. They had removed everything: vest, webbing, weapons, even his boots. Nothing remained except his fatigues, and the pockets had been thoroughly emptied.
Glancing at the corpses lying next to him, he saw that they had been similarly stripped.
He crawled painfully, slithering along the splintery boards on the side that hurt less, toward the lighted doorway. It took all his willpower not to cry out from the pain. Staying back in the shadows, flat on his stomach and flaming chest, Alexander surveyed the other room.
Shamar was sitting at a warped, swaybacked table, packing wads of paper money into an aluminum case.
There was a stack of bills on the table, neatly bundled in bank wrappers. Two of the men from Jakarta, in their lily-white business suits, stood with their backs to Alexander, watching their money disappear into Shamar's case.
Also on the table were some of Alexander's belongings: he recognized his electronic binoculars, his never-used automatic pistol, and the six grenades he had carried into the battle.
There was a guerrilla soldier at the door that led outside, standing nonchalantly with a Kalishnikov assault rifle slung over one shoulder, smoking a crooked brown cigarette, staring at more money than he and his ancestors had ever seen in their combined lifetimes.
Biting his lips to keep from whimpering, Alexander slowly clawed up the wall and inched to his feet. He stood there for a long dizzying moment, swaying, forcing himself to remain conscious and not give in to the soft yielding darkness that tempted him.
