Avalanche Pass

by John Flanagan

  “Gentlemen, I’m Ben Markus, the duty manager. Now what seems to be the problem?”

  Kormann and Pallisani exchanged glances. To Jenny Callister’s surprise, the two men began to smile, all trace of their previous ill humor seemed to have evaporated.

  Pallisani stepped a little closer to the manager, then placed the barrel of a Browning Hi-Power 9 millimeter against his forehead.

  “The problem is this, Ben. If you don’t do exactly as we tell you, we’re going to kill you.”

  SEVEN

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  Markus froze, unmoving, feeling the cold rim of the barrel gradually warmed by its contact with his flesh. Beside him, he heard Jenny Callister choke back a scream—only a small mewing sound escaped her.

  For Markus, everything was a blur, except for the blue-black pistol pressed against his forehead. Try as he might, he could focus on nothing else in the room. He heard Kormann’s voice as if it came from a long, long distance.

  “Now, Jenny, tell me this: what’s the alarm signal for staff in this hotel?”

  Jenny shook her head. Her eyes, like Markus’s, riveted to the gun against his head. “Signal” she said weakly, “I don’t understand.”

  Kormann stepped toward her and took hold of her chin between thumb and forefinger. Gently, he turned her face to his.

  “Yes, you do,” he told her patiently. “Now, you know and we know that every hotel has a signal that’s used to alert staff to an emergency without alerting the customers. Remember? They taught it to you on your first week here?”

  She nodded, remembering.

  “Don’t tell them,” Markus managed to croak through his panic-dried throat.

  He felt the pistol withdraw momentarily, then jab forward viciously almost immediately, slamming into his forehead with bruising force. His eyes closed involuntarily as he waited for the thunder of the detonation, the rush of darkness, then nothing. But it didn’t come.

  The pain of the pistol pressed to his head remained. The sick heaving of his stomach was still there. The gun hadn’t been fired, he realized with an immense surge of relief.

  “You keep your mouth shut,” Pallisani said, very quietly. He jabbed once more, unnecessarily, and Markus flinched again. His stomach roiled and he thought he was going to be violently sick. With an effort, he controlled himself. Kormann was speaking again.

  “Now, Jenny, the signal please.”

  Again, she tried to look to Markus. As before, Kormann’s powerful grip wouldn’t let her.

  “Please,” she said. “Please take that thing away from him.”

  Kormann looked at Pallisani and nodded. Markus took a deep breath of relief as he felt the gun removed from his forehead. Then Pallisani swung the pistol in a short, chopping arc, hitting him just above the left eyebrow. Markus staggered, feeling a sudden rush of hot blood down his face, blinding him momentarily as it ran into his eye. He caught the edge of the desk with his hand and saved himself from falling. Jenny watched, horrified, as he tried to stem the flow of blood.

  Pallisani now swung the gun backhanded and caught the manager high on the right cheekbone. More blood. Jenny whimpered as Markus staggered again. The brutality of the pistol-whipping was so casual, so cold-blooded. It almost seemed to be without malice, which made it all the more horrifying.

  “Please!” she begged. “Don’t hit him again! It’s two short and one long.”

  Markus, dazed by the two sudden blows to the head, made no effort to stop her.

  Kormann nodded, satisfied. “Two short and one long what?” he asked. The girl continued to talk, her words tumbling over one another again.

  “Two short and one long ring on the fire alarm bells.” She gestured uncertainly to a large red button on the wall behind the desk. “We ring it from there. Then we repeat it again after fifteen seconds so everyone will know it’s not a drill or a false alarm.”

  “And where’s the assembly point?” Kormann asked.

  Now that Jenny had begun to speak, the words seemed almost anxious to spill out of her. “The lobby, in front of the reception desk.”

  “Okay. Now, Ben, how are you feeling there?” Before Markus could answer, Kormann continued. “Roughly how many staff have you got on site at the moment?”

  Markus’ shoulders sagged. There seemed no point in holding out the information.

  “Sixty-odd,” he muttered.

  Kormann’s eyebrows rose. “That’s all?” he asked.

  “That’s all,” Markus replied, adding, “The others will come in tomorrow from Salt Lake City, before the new guests arrive.”

  Kormann smiled, without humor. “Not tomorrow, they won’t,” he said. Then he continued, in a brisker tone. “Okay, Ben, let’s ring those bells. Then clean yourself up a little and we’ll go out to greet the folks.”

  EIGHT

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  On the fifth floor, Maria Velasquez groaned softly as she leaned over the bath in room 546, spraying a generous mist of bathroom cleanser onto the far side. Her back ached and she hated bending and leaning to do this job. She began wiping the enamel with a square of toweling in quick, painful strokes.

  In the corridor outside, the fire alarm bells shrilled suddenly. She stopped, feeling a momentary lurch in her heart. Two short, one long. The staff alarm. If it were a test, there would be one long peal of the bells in fifteen seconds. She waited, then heard the alert repeated. This was for real, she thought. She wondered what the danger might be. Her heart began to race as she thought of the possibility of the mountain coming down. That was the thing the old hands always talked about, remembering the time when the hotel had been buried up to the fifth floor. Heart pounding, she gathered her cleaning equipment into a basket and headed for the stairs.

  George Kirby was opening a gallon can of tomatoes in the kitchen below the hotel’s Mexican theme restaurant.

  “Try not to spill them this time,” the sous chef said with withering scorn. George, facing away from the sarcastic son of a bitch, mouthed a silent obscenity. The sous chef loved to throw his weight around on a Saturday evening. It was the one night of the week when he was left in total charge of the kitchen.

  “And another thing—” he began, then both men froze as the bells rang through the tiled kitchen, reflecting and echoing off the hard surfaces of tile and stainless steel. They both looked at each other.

  “A test?” said George uncertainly. Then, as the sound repeated, they both dropped what they were doing and headed for the door. The can of tomatoes teetered for a moment on the edge of the kitchen bench. Then it toppled and fell. Red tomato juice leaked from the half-slit rim, spreading in an ever-widening pool across the floor.

  Henry Bolkowski was deep in the bowels of the massive building, inspecting the oil-fired boiler that provided heat for the heating system, when he heard the alarm bells. Henry was sixty-three years old and he’d heard those bells once before. He was one of those people who actually remembered the event Maria Velasquez feared. He’d heard the crash and rumble of the avalanche, felt the entire building, massive as it was, tremble as the thousands of tons of snow and rock slammed into it.

  He limped quickly for the service elevator. If it was happening again, he didn’t want to be down here.

  And so it went all over the hotel. Staff going about their routine duties stopped in mid-task, hesitated, refusing to believe the evidence of their ears the first time. Then, having their fears confirmed, they headed for hallways, staircases and elevators to make their way to the reception lobby.

  NINE

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  There were already between twenty and thirty people assembled in the lobby when Markus and Kormann emerged from the office.

  An urgent buzz of conversation filled the large room as more and more staff members streamed in. Unlike Henry Bolkowski, the majority had never heard the alarm bells rung in earnest. Now, as they gathered, they
wondered to each other what the problem might be. A young room-service waiter, standing close to the reception desk, caught sight of Markus as he emerged from the office with Kormann close beside him. The younger man noticed the adhesive bandage on Markus’s eye and the dark bruise on his cheek and wondered if they had anything to do with the current emergency. The manager definitely looked a little rattled, he thought.

  “Say, Mr. Markus,” he called. “What’s going on?”

  Instantly, another half-dozen employees echoed his question. A chorus of voices rose and the gathering crowd began to press closer around the reception desk. Markus looked uncertainly at Kormann. The other man stepped forward and held up both hands for silence. Gradually, most of the questioning voices dropped away as people pressed in closer to hear what he was going to say.

  “Please, people, please be patient until everybody’s here.”

  “But what’s going on?” called a voice from the middle of the crowd. Kormann smiled reassuringly in the direction the voice had come from.

  “There’s no danger. Let me repeat: there is no danger. We will explain what’s happening when all staff are present.”

  The muttering began again. The crowd was nervous and unconvinced. The young waiter turned to the people around him.

  “Who is this guy, anyway? How come someone from Snowdrift Transport is giving the orders around here?”

  His neighbors nodded agreement. The young waiter stepped closer, encouraged by their support.

  “Mr. Markus, you’re the manager. What’s going on?”

  Kormann turned to face Markus, putting his back to the crowd. He leaned forward, speaking quietly but forcefully so that only the manager could make out what he was saying. He made sure that the reassuring smile remained on his face as he spoke.

  “Now you calm them down. Just repeat what I said: they’ll find out what’s going on soon enough.” His hand gripped Markus’s forearm like a vice as he continued. “And if you don’t settle them down, we’re going to have a little more bloodshed here. But this time we won’t stop at pistol-whipping. Understand?”

  His eyes moved around the lobby and, following their direction, Markus became aware of the other men who had arrived in the minivans with Kormann. There must have been twenty of them, spaced around the walls, standing back from the central area where the crowd was still gathering.

  There was a sameness to the look of them. A hard look. And each of them carried a shoulder bag. Markus had no doubt what would be in those bags. As his gaze passed over them, he caught sight of Tina Bowden entering the lobby. She saw him and started to thread her way through the crowd. But he made eye contact with her and gave a brief shake of his head. She stopped, frowning, then seemed to understand. Tina was listed on the staff roster as a relief receptionist. Her role as security officer was kept secret. There was no sense in letting these people know she was anything but a junior employee. He felt the pressure of Kormann’s hand on his arm moving him forward. He obeyed the implicit order and moved to face the crowd.

  “Please,” he began, then repeated the word a little louder so that it carried over their voices. “Please! Just bear with us. Mr. Kormann here is helping us with the situation. As he told you, there is no danger and we’ll just wait until everyone’s assembled. Just be patient and stay calm, all right?”

  “Is the mountain coming down?” It was a nervous female voice from near the back of the crowd. Markus forced himself to smile, trying to look reassuring. He was sure the effect must be ghastly.

  “No. The mountain is not coming down,” he replied, forcing his voice to be calm. “I’ll say it again. There is no danger. We do have a situation here and we’re asking for your cooperation. That’s all.”

  The buzz of conversation subsided a little. They weren’t convinced, he realized, but they knew this was all they were going to get for the moment. Markus noticed that Kormann was sweeping his gaze over the crowd, his lips moving fractionally as he counted heads. Seeming to be satisfied, he nodded to the men standing around the walls of the lobby. Without drawing any attention to themselves, half of the men moved away from the walls and headed down the corridor. Markus watched them going. There was nothing in that direction but the main room of the conference center.

  Kormann waited another minute, then nodded to the young manager.

  “Okay, I think we’re about all here. Let’s move them to the conference hall, Ben.”

  Markus frowned at him, uncomprehending. “The conference hall—” he began, then stopped as he saw the cold anger flash in the other man’s eyes. He hesitated, then tried again.

  “But there’s nothing there. We’re not set up for a conference,” he said. Again, Kormann leaned forward and said in that same forceful undertone: “Just get them in there, Ben.”

  Their gazes locked for a few seconds. Then the manager dropped his eyes, defeated. He moved a pace away from the other man, as if the physical separation could somehow lessen the threat he felt.

  “Okay, people!” he called, and again the buzz of conversation died away. “Let’s move out of here. Could you all please move to the conference center, main room.”

  They complained among themselves, as crowds do. They muttered. They questioned the direction. But they obeyed. Once the first few people drifted from the back of the crowd in the direction of the conference center, the trend was set. The movement became more definite, less haphazard, as those at the front of the room, realizing they were now at a disadvantage, tried to push through to secure better positions in the new location.

  “Let’s go with ’em, Ben,” Kormann said with mock politeness, drawing aside and gesturing for Markus to precede him.

  They followed the milling crowd through the double doors that led to the conference center. As Markus had already pointed out, the large room was virtually unfurnished. There was a podium on a raised speaker’s stage at the end farthest from the doors, and a large glass watercooler in one corner. Stackable hard chairs were ranged round the walls, stacked four deep in neat rows. The central area, some thirty feet by sixty, was empty floor space.

  The conference room was at the back of the hotel, on the western side. The western wall of the room was mainly window area, allowing a view of the small expanse of snow-covered flat land behind the hotel, and the massive cliff face that towered barely forty yards away. Light mesh curtains were drawn across the big windows to cut the glare of the reflected light from the snow outside. For the same reason, the glass was tinted. The diffused light filled the room, obviating the need for internal lighting on a clear day. The other three walls were gray concrete, lined with whiteboards and cork display boards. At the moment, they were bare, except for one whiteboard that still bore a trace of the notes left from a conference the previous week. The words “SALESMANSHIP PLUS!” stared out at Markus. He wondered what the phrase actually meant.

  Kormann’s elbow nudged his ribs and he headed to the front of the room. He noticed that the ten men who had left the lobby were now ranged around the walls of the conference area. The remaining ten were nowhere to be seen. Now that he studied them more closely, there was an alarming sameness about Kormann’s companions. All of them were expensively dressed in casual clothes, as befitted guests at Canyon Lodge. And their same brand name shoulder bags slung over their right shoulders—all with the top zips open and their right hands inside the bags.

  It was almost as if they wore uniforms, he thought. And as the thought occurred, he realized that this was probably the reason why they were dressed in such similar fashion. Seen individually, there was nothing to excite comment about any of them. As a group, however, they were easy to distinguish from the staff members who were their unknowing prisoners.

  Kormann and Markus had reached the speaker’s podium now. The members of the crowd watched them expectantly, knowing that finally they would find out what the hell was going on. One girl near the front of the group raised her hand tentatively and addressed Markus.

  “Mr. Markus, ar
e we going to be here long? I’ve left the switchboard unattended and you know that’s against normal procedure.”

  Kormann smiled reassuringly at her. “The switchboard is being looked after,” he said easily and she frowned, not liking what she heard.

  “But how? There’s nobody left to—”

  “One of my men is attending to it.” Kormann rode over her protest, then glanced at his watch. “In any event, the line between here and Salt Lake City is down and it won’t be restored for another ten minutes.”

  “How do you know that?” asked a middle-aged woman standing next to the switchboard operator. Several others echoed the question. People were getting just a little tired of this self-important Snowdrift Transport courier, who seemed to have taken control of their hotel. Kormann raised his hands once more, requesting silence and smiling at them all. They ignored the gesture and pressed a little closer, becoming more vocal in their protests. The smile faded from his lips and he raised his glance, nodding at one of the men standing by the wall.

  The racketing burst of a machine gun was deafening in the enclosed, concrete-walled room.

  Kormann’s man had chosen the glass tank of the water cooler as his target. The heavy bullets slammed into it, shattering the glass and sending the entire unit spinning and staggering in a welter of glass shards and spraying water.

  Several women in the room screamed and everyone dropped into an instinctive, protective crouch. As their eyes swung to the direction of the gunfire, Markus realized that every member of Kormann’s team was now holding a small, stubby machine gun. Kormann himself had drawn a pistol from a shoulder holster inside his parka.

  “Okay, now let’s all shut the fuck up!” he roared and the people dragged their eyes away from the threat of the gunsmoke drifting in the air and turned back to face him—disbelief mingled with confusion on their faces. Kormann waited, his eyes roaming the crowd, looking for the potential leaders, the potential fools, the potential troublemakers. So far, so good, he thought as none of them would meet his gaze. They were all cowed by the sudden turn of events.