Avalanche

by James Patterson

  “Later,” Pumpkin says. “I’d like to play with her some more.”

  “Now! Kill them now!”

  Pumpkin taps the woman he thinks is Ali on the shoulder. “Wake up, honey.” He rolls her over and is disgusted. “Who is this bitch? Where’s Ali?”

  “Over here.” Ali stands at a distance behind a boulder and aims a gun at Al-Fayed. “Let Robert go, or I kill the beard.”

  “Really?” says Al-Fayed. “From that distance? With a handgun? A woman?” He extends his arms in a cross and walks slowly in her direction. “Go ahead. Take your best shot. You will miss. My men will not.”

  “I’m not kidding. I’ll shoot!”

  The three bodyguards raise their Uzis and point in Ali’s direction. Robert looks over to Carola. Their eyes meet. He shows her the gun under his chest. She nods.

  Al-Fayed moves closer to Ali. “This is hard for you. Your kind shrinks from violence, even when it is absolutely necessary. I will help you, count it out for you. One! Two!”

  Ali narrows her eyes, aims.

  “Three!”

  She squeezes the trigger. The air rips at the sound. Al-Fayed doubles over—gut shot. He touches his stomach and lifts a bloody finger. His bodyguards look on with amazement. “Kill her,” Al-Fayed utters with a choked voice. “What are you waiting for?”

  Robert rolls over and fires at one of the thugs, hitting him in the face. Robert continues rolling on the ground until he is under the first SUV. Carola turns to the closest man and wrestles with him for the gun. Robert takes aim at the man’s calves and fires two shots—one in each leg. The man falls, and amazingly enough, Carola is left standing with the machine gun. “Hey, assholes! This is for Eugenio!” she screams. She squeezes down on the trigger and sprays lead indiscriminately. The third bodyguard is hit in his shoulder, in his thigh. He turns and unloads his own gun.

  Before Robert’s eyes, it’s a double annihilation.

  The bodyguard jerks like he’s hooked up to a car battery. Carola flails in the first rays of sunlight.

  Riddled with bullets, Carola appears in strobes, her hands above her head, her hair tossed about, her blood splashing through the air. She spins. She falls.

  The bodyguard, as if suddenly unplugged, collapses.

  The mountain rumbles in the distance.

  Robert hears the sound—and realizes that the gunfire has set off an avalanche. He knows they have very little time. “Ali! Get to the mine!”

  “Oh, how divine.” Pumpkin surveys the surrounding area and sniffs the air like a hound. “I was hoping for a hunt.” He sees Ali run and follows her.

  Al-Fayed limps over to where his last living bodyguard lies groaning on the ground, holding his legs. “Worthless!” he spits. He leans down and picks up an Uzi and the aluminum briefcase. He looks under the SUV for Robert, but he is not there.

  Al-Fayed limps down to his Ferrari and settles in the leather seat.

  A wall of snow fifteen feet high can now be seen tumbling down the mountainside. Like a great broom, it sweeps up trees and rocks and everything in its path.

  The heavy-breathing engine of the 250 GTO comes to life. Al-Fayed is pleased. He has his car, his money, and the two USBs. He will have a private surgeon at his house in less than an hour. And the Modigliani—he still may be able to unload it on an ignorant drug dealer.

  He will put out a contract on the Americans, and they will disappear. He puts the car in gear and speeds down the mountain pass.

  Chapter 49

  The wall of snow tumbles down the mountain, a giant wave of ice and debris. Ali is the first to the mine’s entrance. She turns to look for Robert. He’s still twenty yards away, and the sound of breaking trees, tumbling rocks, and snow is deafening. “Run, Robert! Run!”

  Suddenly Pumpkin stands before her. “Oh, my lovely!” he sings out. He flips open a butterfly knife and holds his arms out. “Come to me.”

  “No!” Ali aims the gun. She fires, hitting him dead center in the chest. The impact pushes him back, but his arms only fall for a second. He even smiles. “Do you really want to hurt me?” he asks. She fires again to the same result.

  “It’s fate. We should be together,” he says. “Forever.”

  She realizes now that he is wearing a Kevlar vest. She aims higher, at his distorted face. She closes her eyes and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks empty. Robert grabs Pumpkin’s shoulder, swings him around, and punches him.

  Pumpkin staggers back toward the cave entrance, then drops his blade across Robert’s cheek, slicing the skin. He laughs. “Not so pretty anymore. That’s only the begin—”

  A wall of ice falls and crashes violently into Pumpkin. He cartwheels, then is swallowed up.

  Ali pulls Robert into the cave and falls on him. She holds his bleeding face and kisses him.

  In an instant, Carola, the bodyguards, the North Korean woman are all buried. The SUVs are flipped upside down as if they were children’s toys. They float off in the river of snow. The sound is deafening, until it’s over, and everything is quiet.

  Chapter 50

  Al-Fayed pulls his Ferrari into his garage. He gets out, bent over, and limps toward the staircase holding an Uzi in one hand and the aluminum briefcase in the other.

  “Drop zee gun!”

  Al-Fayed turns to see Hervé, Greta, and four police officers standing at the open garage door, all aiming guns at him.

  “This is private property. You have no warrant,” says Al-Fayed. “Be gone. Or I will have your jobs.”

  “You are under arrest,” says Hervé.

  “For what?” demands Al-Fayed.

  “For holding illegal weapons.”

  Al-Fayed looks down at the gun in his hand. He laughs. “This is nothing we can’t work out. I have right here in this briefcase one hundred million dollars in bearer bonds. I could put it down and walk away.”

  “Now we have two charges,” says Hervé. “Attempting to bribe a law enforcement official. Shall we go for three?”

  “Yes! Indeed! We shall!” says Al-Fayed. He lets the Uzi blaze. Three of the officers fall. Hervé fires three shots, each one landing squarely in Al-Fayed’s chest. He falls backward.

  Hervé and Greta run to his side.

  “Where are the Americans?” asks Hervé.

  “Where are the USB drives?” Greta asks.

  Blood pours from Al-Fayed’s mouth. His eyes go dim.

  She reaches in the pockets of his finely tailored suit and pulls out a USB drive and Eugenio’s Porsche key.

  Hervé calls on his cell. “Three officers down. We need an ambulance. Immediately! Send a helicopter.”

  Chapter 51

  The entrance to the cave is now a dimly illuminated wall of ice.

  The broken boards have been pushed inside. Together, Ali and Robert jam them in the ice, making a ladder to the opening at the top of the cave entrance. They climb to the top.

  Robert takes one step in the snow and sinks to his shoulders.

  He climbs back down into the cave and comes out with the four extra boards. “We’re gonna have to walk on these until we get down to where the snow is hard-packed.”

  After an hour-long hike, a Rega helicopter circles overhead and lands in front of Ali and Robert.

  Hervé hops out and runs up to the couple. “This must be the beautiful Ali Monroe.” He extends his hand.

  “It’s Al-Fayed!” Robert says raggedly. “He was behind the whole thing. The kidnapping, the USB drives…”

  “Yes, we were waiting for him back at his chalet.”

  “Is he in custody?”

  “He is dead.”

  “Carola and the others are buried up by the abandoned mine, in the avalanche.” Hervé nods.

  “We must get you medical attention. Greta tells me you are something of a hero.”

  Robert laughs.

  “He is!” says Ali as she puts her arm in his.

  Chapter 52

  Robert’s arm is in a sling. Fine thread holds his cheek to
gether. He sits at the interrogation desk in the Gstaad police office reading over a typed statement before signing his name at the bottom.

  “We found the girl. They are bringing her in right now,” Hervé says to Robert.

  “May I see her?” he asks.

  “Yes, but I must tell you: it is not a pretty sight.”

  In the morgue, Robert bends over Carola’s corpse. He pushes the hair from her face and brushes her cheek.

  “She’s still beautiful, even in death,” he says to Hervé.

  “’Tis a tragic waste.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  Outside the police station, Robert sips in the clean mountain air. His phone rings. He answers it.

  “Hello, Robert. It is Greta. I hate to give you déjà vu, but the USB drive—there was nothing on it.”

  “Eugenio’s key?”

  “No. This one had a great deal of code. But you told me this one is only the cure. We are missing the sickness. It is still out there somewhere. Do you have any idea where it may be?”

  “No.”

  “Aside from its catastrophic effects, the code could be very useful to us.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m going back to my normal life. I don’t know anything about this stuff anymore.”

  “Okay. Well, thank you for your help,” Greta says before she hangs up.

  Robert walks over to a stone wall. He wedges free one of the rocks and glances over both shoulders. He slips his hand in his pocket. He pulls out a USB drive with a small X carved in the plastic. “This is for Carola,” he says as he puts the drive on the wall and smashes repeatedly with the rock until it is nothing but broken bits of plastic and metal. He sweeps the pieces up in his hand and drops them in the nearest trashcan.

  Chapter 53

  Robert and Ali sit at either end of a black leather couch. A balding man with bright eyes and a dark mustache sits across from them.

  “Robert, Ali, what brings you two to couple’s counseling?” the man asks.

  “She ran off with an Italian playboy half her age,” says Robert.

  “Not half!” she says. “Three quarters.”

  “And she left me a little note on the mirror, saying she wanted a divorce.”

  “And how did that make you feel?” the therapist asks.

  “How do you think it made me feel?” asks Robert.

  The therapist pushes on. “Did you feel abandoned?”

  Robert nods. “That was in there.”

  “He killed a man with a sickle and scythe,” Ali says seriously. “So maybe angry was more like it.”

  The man cannot hide his concern. “Is this true?” he asks.

  “Actually, I killed two or three, depending on if you count Pumpkin or not.”

  Ali flashes a sly smile. “It kind of turned me on.”

  “I’m not sure it’s sustainable. I mean, I don’t want to kill a man every time I want to have sex with my wife.”

  “This is…legitimate,” says the therapist. “Ali, do you hear Robert’s concern?”

  “Yes,” Ali replies, biting her lip. “But it was pretty hot.”

  “I drove a thirty-million-dollar car,” Robert adds.

  “And how did that make you feel?” asks the therapist.

  “Really, really good.”

  About the Authors

  James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

  David Inglish has inadvertently led police on a high-speed chase, shaken hands with a bishop, jammed with Neil Young, and tubed in Bali. His novels Before the Flock and W. B. Bugg’s Change of Heart are available in paperback and on Kindle.

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