02 Avalanche Pass

by John Flanagan

  “I thought I heard choppers,” the Korean said, peering thoughtfully toward the ridge, three miles away. Mosby was instantly fully alert.

  “You see anything on your screen?”

  The Korean shook his head and made a sign for Mosby to remain quiet while he listened further. He cursed under his breath after a few seconds.

  “It’s gone now.”

  “If it was there,” Mosby replied. He’d heard no sound of choppers. He’d heard nothing but the wind moaning around the top of the building. Up here, eight stories from the ground, the wind was a constant companion. He thrust his hands into his parka pocket. The Korean hesitated, uncertain whether to get back to his screen.

  “Keep your eye on the ridge,” he said finally, and turned back into the radar shack to check the screen once more. Mosby moved to the edge of the rampart that surrounded the roof. He had an uneasy feeling about the way things were going. When a situation started to unravel in one direction, it often let go all over, and that’s what seemed to be happening here. He’d heard no more from Kormann about the prisoners in the gym—except that he’d been ordered to turn over one of the precious Stingers to try to blast them out of their barricade. It was a mistake, he felt. Their supplies of the Stingers were strictly limited and he’d counted on needing them all if push came to shove. Then there was the unknown intruder whom Pallisani had gone after. Where the hell had he come from? And if one man had managed to penetrate their surveillance, who was to say that there weren’t another dozen somewhere about?

  Every one of the mercenaries recruited by Kormann for this operation knew that their security depended on a gigantic bluff. The authorities had to believe that they were terrorists, ready to destroy themselves alongside the hostages for the sake of their beliefs. As long as they maintained that scenario, the army couldn’t come storming in here on a rescue mission. But the hostage card could only be played once or twice. Sure they could kill one or two of them to keep the authorities at bay, but sooner or later that would become a problem of diminishing returns. The government could not afford to stand by while hostages were slaughtered one at a time. They would have to act. The secret in these situations, Mosby believed, was similar to chess. You had to maintain the momentum. You had to make the moves and force your opponent to react to you—and not make the move he might have chosen for himself. For the past six days, they had managed to do that. Now, it seemed, the momentum might be moving away from them. They were reacting and that was raising large danger signals in his mind.

  He shivered, not entirely from the cold, and raised his binoculars to scan the far ridge once more.

  GROUND LEVEL

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1146 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  “Kormann! Wait up!”

  Kormann had paused to collect the remote-control triggering device. Now he was jogging toward the cable car terminal when he heard his name called. He turned and saw Harrison, the man who had been patrolling the first floor, hurrying to catch him.

  Harrison was a big man, fit and well muscled. Kormann had looked for big men when he had been recruiting. He wanted the captives well and truly cowed and having men who towered over them was one way of achieving it. He waited till the other man caught up to him, noting that the Ingram was slung across his back, out of immediate reach. He felt his own fingers close around the butt of the Beretta in his jacket pocket, felt for the grooved safety with his thumb and slowly released it.

  “What’s the panic?” Harrison asked. Kormann gestured with his left hand toward the hotel behind them.

  “The prisoners,” Kormann said briefly. “They took out Clark, Washburn and Gibson and they’ve barricaded themselves in the gym.”

  Harrison’s eyes widened with surprise. “Jesus,” he said softly. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Alston and the others are going to blast them out with a Stinger,” Kormann told him, cursing the delay but realizing he had to get rid of the other man before he could move to the cable car. “Maybe you better get up there and give them a hand.”

  Harrison nodded several times as he thought about it. He started to turn away, then another thought struck him and he stopped, turning back to Kormann.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. And that was the problem. There was no logical reason why he should be here, outside the hotel, heading in the direction of the cable car, when there was an emergency situation at the gym.

  And unfortunately, Harrison was the sort of guy who would argue the point if he gave him a half-baked reason.

  Unfortunately for Harrison.

  Kormann nodded, pointing with his chin toward the wide ski slopes at the bottom of the homeward run, behind the other man.

  “I’m going to take care of those guys,” he said. And as Harrison’s head turned to look in the direction he’d indicated, he drew the Beretta from his pocket and fired one shot.

  Harrison lurched away from him as the slug hit him in the back, turning slowly as he sank to his knees, clawing vainly for the sudden, burning pain behind him that he couldn’t reach. His eyes were puzzled.

  “Kormann?” he said hesitantly. “What are—”

  He died before he could finish the question. Kormann looked down at the body in the snow.

  “Why didn’t you just shut up and do as I said?” he asked the dead man. Then he turned and headed for the cable car again. Unlike the chairlift system, the cable car engine didn’t kick in automatically each morning. He checked his watch. Time was slipping away and he was going to have to sort out the controls, start up the main motor, let the system warm up and get the car underway. It would all take time and that was getting to be in short supply.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE GYMNASIUM

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1147 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  The hostages, under the direction of Senator Carling, had dragged bedding and exercise equipment into place to barricade an oblique corner of the room. Now most of them huddled behind the makeshift shelter, while Tina, Nate Pell and several others stood guard at the barrier by the door, waiting to see what the guards’ next move was going to be.

  Ralph, the chef, had remained in his original position, crouched among the weight benches and heavy bags, with the muzzle of a Beretta protruding through the narrow gap between the doors. Tina eyed him with some surprise. The chef’s previous attitude toward his captors had been anything but belligerent. Maybe, she thought, he was making up for it now. He was still disgusted with himself that none of the shots he’d fired had gone close to hitting Kormann and, despite her repeated suggestions that he move back from the doorway, he had remained there, possibly hoping for another shot at the leader of the mercenaries.

  Occasionally they saw a quick glimpse of a head thrusting around the edge of the anteroom doorway, moving out and in so quickly that there was no time to get a shot off. Once, in frustration, Ralph had sent a further fusillade of bullets hammering off the concrete walls, just in case anyone out there was planning on looking around the doorway again. With a view to their limited ammunition supply, Tina had ordered him curtly to stop wasting bullets. Reluctantly, he agreed.

  The uncertainty of the situation gnawed at them. Tina had seen no point in keeping Jesse’s presence a secret from her fellow captives any longer. After all, she had shot the two guards in the hope that Jesse would hear the shots and call Dent Colby. After she had filled them in on the background details, Markus, Pell, Carling and Aldiss had all agreed that the terrorist scenario being played out for the benefit of the FBI was phony. Nothing that they had seen over the previous six days jelled with the impression that their captors were politically motivated. There was a general consensus of opinion that this group were highly unlikely to set off the explosive charges in the mountain if the resulting avalanche was going to bury themselves along with the hostages.

  From their positi
on by the gymnasium doors, the occupants could see the entire anteroom, with the doorway to the gym administration office to the right, and the outer door that led to the corridor. The door was open so they could see ten to twelve yards of the corridor, until there was a right-angle turn to the left. It was around that corner that they saw occasional glimpses of the guards as they kept an eye on things.

  “We’ve got a stalemate,” Tina told the others. “They can’t approach down that corridor without giving us a clear shot at them.”

  “So we’re safe enough,” the Senator said, “as long as they don’t have any way of blowing us out of here. They can’t get in as long as we hold this position here.”

  “Mind you,” Carl Aldiss put in, “it cuts both ways. There’s no way we can get out while they’re out there.”

  “The difference is,” Tina told them, “they don’t have reinforcements on the way. All we have to do is sit tight until the FBI get here.”

  “If they’re coming.” That was Nate Pell, pointing out the one possibility they all wanted to ignore.

  WHITE EAGLE CHAIRLIFT

  SNOW EAGLES RESORT

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1153 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  Jesse wriggled his butt forward on the chairlift seat as the chair came into the unload area. As soon as it disconnected from the main cable, he was up and on his feet, poling strongly and skating to get speed up as he moved away from the chairlift line. He glanced back once over his shoulder to see if he could spot the four men who were pursuing him but the line of bobbing, dancing chairs obscured them.

  He skied quickly into the thick, ungroomed snow among the trees behind the unload point and began side-stepping smoothly up the mountain. It was hard work, and the tension of the situation combined with the physical effort to drain his strength and leave him gasping for breath. But still he kept on. He had moved perhaps fifty yards from the chairlift when he realized the opportunity he’d missed.

  The lift attendant’s cabin at the top of the chair, like lift attendant cabins everywhere, was fitted with an emergency stop button, which could be used to bring the chairlift to an instant halt in the event of an accident, or if a skier fell dismounting from the chair. It would have taken him maybe twenty seconds to break the glass windows on the cabin and hit the stop button, leaving his pursuers stranded on the chair, twenty or thirty feet from the ground. Now, of course, it was too late to turn back and try it.

  He cursed his own stupidity, then a cold hand clutched his heart as he realized that his pursuers could have done exactly the same thing to him at the bottom of the chair. He uttered a few brief words of thanks that they hadn’t done so—whether due to ignorance of the chairlift controls or in the confusion of the chase, he didn’t know.

  He redoubled his efforts, climbing higher. He was only a few yards from the groomed trail and once he reached that, his progress would be easier. Below him, he heard the voices of the men following him as they encountered the deep snow and plunged thigh deep into it. He smiled grimly. If the going was tough for him, it would be three or four times as bad for the other men, without skis to spread their weight. With each step, they’d sink deep into the soft, piled snow.

  BLACKHAWK HELICOPTER

  TAIL NUMBER 348821

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1159 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  In the lead Blackhawk, Colonel Evan Maloney hit the transmit switch on his headset.

  “Colby, you read?”

  There was a momentary pause, then he heard the FBI agent’s voice in his earphones.

  “I read, Colonel. Still no word.” Dent knew what the marine colonel was calling about but there was still no word from Jesse. He could sense the soldier’s frustration, mirrored by the marines around him in the Blackhawk, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to hold until he heard from Jesse, one way or the other. He thought of telling the colonel so, then shrugged. Maloney knew it. Stating the obvious wouldn’t make matters any better. The line of choppers, rotors turning at idle speed, stayed where they were on the low ground behind the ridge.

  THE GYMNASIUM

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1159 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  You could almost touch the tension in the big room, Tina thought. The uncertainty of waiting, and the conviction that Kormann would not be content to allow matters to remain as they were, rubbed the raw edges of the nerves like sandpaper on flesh.

  “Elevator just came in,” Ralph said from his position behind the barricade. Tina looked at him interrogatively and he shrugged.

  “I heard the chime,” he told her. Almost at the same moment, they saw sudden movement at the end of the corridor, as a figure darted across the opening, wasting no time getting behind cover. But quick as the movement had been, they had all seen what the figure had been carrying—a khaki-colored tube, some four feet in length and maybe eight inches in diameter.

  “They’ve got some kind of missile out there,” Nate Pell said suddenly, and began waving them back behind the second barricade. “Get back behind cover! Get back!”

  From the corridor, Tina heard the unmistakable double clunk sound as the outer cover was discarded and the firing tube armed. In her time in the service, she’d handled and fired shoulder-mounted missiles, most of them anti-tank weapons, and she’d heard that sound before. She felt panic begin to take hold of her as she backed away from the doors, following Pell, Aldiss and the senator. She went slowly at first, then with ever-increasing urgency. Only Ralph remained by the tangle of equipment, his automatic pressed to the gap between the doors.

  “Ralph!” she called. “Get back here.”

  The chef didn’t look around, his gaze fixed on the corner where he knew the missile launcher would reappear. She could see he was shaking his head, refusing her instructions. He had the muzzle of the Beretta pressed against the narrow gap between the doors once more, holding it in a two-handed grip, his upper body sprawled across two of the heavy punching bags that formed part of the door barricade. Tina started toward him, then felt a firm hand on her arm, stopping her. She turned to meet Nate Pell’s unwavering gaze.

  “If they fire that thing, all hell’s going to break loose in here. He’s made his choice and there’s no point both of you being killed.”

  Alston, eager to make amends for his earlier failure, had taken control of the Stinger when it had arrived. He discarded the fiberglass carrying case and shucked the tube open, arming the batteries, bypassing the infrared guidance system. Then, hesitating, he wondered if he should wait for Kormann to return. He gestured toward the radio clipped to Harrison’s belt—his own was halfway along the corridor, lost when he had dived for cover after the first volley of shots nearly nailed him and Kormann.

  The other man handed him the radio and he hit the talk button.

  “Kormann. This is Alston. We’re ready with the Stinger.”

  There was a pause, extending so long that he was about to try again, then Kormann’s voice came over the little speaker.

  “Go ahead. Blow the door. Then move in and clean ’em out.”

  Alston shrugged. It seemed logical to him. When the missile hit the door, there would be confusion and pandemonium inside the gym. It was the obvious time when they should follow up, rather than wait for Kormann to return and give the hostages time to regroup and redeploy their defenses. He glanced at the other men. One of them nodded, patting the Ingram in his hand.

  “Blow that mother and let’s go,” he said quietly.

  Alston hefted the tube onto his shoulder, flicked up the optical crosshair sights and moved toward the corner.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FLYING EAGLE CABLE CAR

  TOP STATION

  SNOW EAGLES RESORT

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1159 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  FRIDAY, DAY 7

  With one final, exhausted heave of pol
es and legs, Jesse skied onto the level ground at the top of the cable car. He knew the other men were still pursuing him, knew they must have fallen far behind as they struggled through the thick, ungroomed snow above the chairlift. Once they reached the access path they’d make better time, of course, but they still wouldn’t move anywhere near as fast as he could on skis.

  He let the skis glide him to the terminal building and fell, exhausted, onto the bench. He waited a few moments for his breathing to settle down, then reached for the cell phone, punching the memory button for Dent’s number. As ever, the comms technician answered.

  “FBI.”

  Slumped against the cold metal of the building, Jesse replied curtly. “This is Parker. Get me Colby.”

  He was surprised at the reaction his words evoked. Instantly, the technician was all attention.

  “Yessir, Deputy Parker! Agent Colby told me to patch you straight through. Just a moment.”

  There were several clicks and a whirring of atmospherics, then Jesse heard the tone of a phone ringing. It hadn’t completed its first cycle before Dent’s excited voice was on the line.

  “Jesse? Is that you?”

  Suddenly, he was very, very tired. “It’s all started, Dent. I’ve been spotted. I’m at the top of the cable car and I’ve got four guys coming up the hill after me.”

  “Jesse, what about the hostages? Where are they?”

  Jesse frowned. “Still in the gym as far as I know.”

  “We’ve been told they’re in the Atrium restaurant.” Colby’s voice was urgent. Even though he couldn’t be seen, Jesse shook his head.

  “No way. I’ve been on the stairwell since early morning. They couldn’t have moved them without my knowing. Sorry about this, Dent,” he added, “I guess I’ve kind of blown it.”

  There was a momentary pause as Colby thought over the information. Then he asked the vital question: “Jesse, has the girl done anything yet? Are the hostages still safe?”