Peacekeepers (1988) by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online

hopefully.
    It was a cave in the face of the deeply scoured hillside.
    Ages of sudden rainstorms had seamed the slope like rumpled gray corduroy.
    "Just a friggin' cave," Kelly muttered, disappointed.
    Until she noticed that a fairly broad road had been built up in a series of switchbacks from the valley floor to the lip of the cave's entrance. It was a dirt road, rough, dangerous if it rained. But this was the dry season, and a single truck was jouncing up that road at a fairly high rate of speed, spewing a rooster tail of dust from its rear tires.
    Kelly coasted her plane lower, below the crest of the hills that formed the valley. Hidden down among the scruffy trees that lined the riverbank was a column of trucks, their motors running, judging from the heat emissions.
    Punching her comm keypad furiously, Kelly sang into her microphone, "I've found it! Major supply dump, not more than ten klicks from the frontier!" She squirted the data to the commsat without taking the time to code or compress it.
    She knew that the monitors in Geneva—and Ottawa, for that matter—would home in on her transmission. So would the Eritreans, most likely.
    It was not Robbie's voice that replied, an agonizing ten seconds later, "It might be a supply dump, but how can you be sure?"
    "The truck convoy, dammit!" Kelly shouted back, annoyed.
    "They're starting up the road!"
    And they were. The trucks seemed empty. They were going up the steep road to the cavern, where they would be loaded with the fuel and ammunition necessary to continue the battle.
    "Even if you are right," came the voice from Geneva—tense, a slight Norse accent in it—"we have no means to get at the dump. It is too well protected."
    Kelly said nothing. She knew what would come next.
    "Return to your base of operations. Your mission is terminated."
    Kelly bit her lip in frustration. Then a warning screech on her instrument panel told her that she was being scanned by a radar beam. Ordinarily that would not have bothered her. But in morning's brightening light, with a few hundred enemy soldiers below her, she knew she was in trouble.
    By reflex, she craned her head to look above, then checked the display screens. A couple of contrails way up there. If she tried to climb out of this valley, those two jet fighters would be on her like stooping hawks.
    Kelly took a deep breath and weighed her options.
    Blowing her breath out through puffed cheeks, she said aloud, "Might as well find out for sure if I'm right."
    She pushed the throttle forward and angled the little plane directly toward the mouth of the cave.
    Tracers sizzled past her forward screen, and her acoustic sensors picked up the sounds of many shots: small-arms fire, for the most part. The troops down there were using her for target practice. They're lousy shots, Kelly told herself. Then she added. Thank God.
    Kelly dove at maximum speed, nearly as fast as a modem sports car, through a fusilade of rifle and machinegun fire, and flew directly at the yawning cavern. It was dark inside, but the plane's sensors immediately displayed the forward view in false-color infrared.
    It's their main dump, all right, Kelly told herself. She saw it all as if in freeze-frame, a bare fraction of a second, yet she made out every detail:
    Dozens of trucks were already inside the mammoth cave, in the process of being loaded by troops suddenly startled to find an airplane buzzing straight at them. Some men stood frozen with wide-eyed fright, staring directly at her, while others were scattering, ducking under the trucks or racing for the cave's entrance.
    The cave was crammed with stacks of fuel drums, cases of ammunition. Be nice to know who they bought all this crap from, Kelly thought. For the briefest flash of an instant she considered trying to pull up and eluding the fighters waiting for her. Maybe the cameras have picked up valuable information on who's supplying this war, she thought.
    But she knew that was idle fancy. This mission