02 Avalanche Pass (11 page)

“The line’s reattached. You read me okay?”

“Clear as a bell. Now get out of there.”

He flicked the switch up to break the connection. The replacement line had been laid several days previously, bypassing a two-mile stretch of the road at Avalanche Pass. He’d hired the linesman who attached it through an intermediary. The technician had been fired by Bell Telephone several years before for illegal wire tapping. He was now twenty-thousand dollars richer and it was unlikely he’d go to the authorities when he found out what was going on here. Even if he did, there was nothing useful he could tell them.

T
he African-American who had hijacked the shuttle bus was lounging comfortably on one of the sofas near the reception desk when Pallisani emerged from the office, dragging a still-distressed Jenny Callister behind him. The girl’s incessant sobbing was beginning to annoy him and he had things he had to get on with. Catching sight of his colleague, he called him across to the desk.

“Carter! Over here!”

Carter rose easily and sauntered over to the desk. He didn’t care much for Pallisani but he’d agreed, as they all had, that a rigid chain of command was essential for an operation of this scope.

Pallisani jerked the girl’s arm and sent her staggering toward the other man.

“Put this one with the others in the conference room,” he ordered, a little more abruptly than Carter was willing to accept.

“Yes, Duce,” he muttered.

Pallisani swung back to glare at him. “And cut the funny crap. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

Carter nodded. He understood that. He also understood that he wasn’t going to put up with the Italian throwing his weight around unnecessarily. Taking orders was one thing. Taking crap was something else entirely and he hoped the big paisan got the message. He gave the girl a gentle shove in the direction of the elevator.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said, “let’s join the others.”

Pallisani watched them go. He placed both hands deliberately on the reception counter and took a deep breath. He’d got the message
from Carter all right. What’s more, he recognized the fact that the big man was right. But dammit, he’d a right to be uptight at this stage of the operation. Things were going to plan so far, but that could change at any minute. He and his companions seemed to be in undisputed control of the hotel but the situation was a fragile house of cards. It could collapse around them at any moment. It was essential at this stage that they maintain their momentum, keep things moving, keep the hostages off balance and wondering what was coming next. Uncertainty was their ally and the longer they maintained it, the firmer their hold over their prisoners became.

He reached into his shoulder bag and brought out a walkie-talkie. It was a piece of equipment that every member of the team carried. He thumbed the squawk button on the side and spoke into the microphone.

“Kormann. You read?”

He released the button and, after a few moments, heard the small loudspeaker in the unit come to life.

“Kormann.”

Just the one word. Pallisani thumbed the talk button again.

“Phones are back on line. Let’s get moving.”

In the conference room, Kormann slid his walkie-talkie back into the leather holder clipped to his belt. He glanced around, caught Ben Markus’s eye and beckoned to him to move forward. Hesitantly, unsure of what he might be getting into, the duty manager obeyed.

“Come with me, Ben. We’ve got some business on the roof and I want you there,” Kormann told him.

Markus nodded warily. After all, he had no other choice in the matter. Kormann took his arm and steered him toward the door. On the way, they passed the dejected figure of the assistant chef. Kormann grinned at him without sympathy.

“Tough luck, buddy. Still, things could be worse.”

The chef had good reason to look glum. Originally, he had not been among those selected to remain behind. But, as he had been about to move down to the bus, Kormann had noticed the high white toque he wore and realized its significance.

“Just a moment,” he had said. “He stays too.”

Markus had remonstrated, but without any real hope of success. “But we’ve already got the five you said.”

“Then we’ll make it six,” Kormann told him. “We’re going to be here awhile, Ben, and I don’t know about you but I’m a lousy cook. Let’s just take out a little insurance in self-indulgence, shall we?”

In a few moments, Kormann thought now, as the guard at the door stood aside to let them through, the chef would be thanking his lucky stars that he’d been chosen to stay.

In a few days, who could tell?

Kormann pressed the call button for the elevator. The left-hand car arrived, its doors sighing open with that peculiar self-satisfied sound all elevators seem to make. Kormann nudged Markus forward and pressed the top button. They rode up without speaking. The only sound in the elevator was the gentle hum of the electric motor whirling them up six stories to the roof. Again, the doors slid open and Kormann nudged the other man out.

The Crow’s Nest Bar and heated enclosed swimming pool occupied about a quarter of the flat roof. With panoramic glass windows on three sides, it commanded breathtaking views of the mountain to one side and the ski slopes to the other. Outside, there was a jogging track and an expanse of artificial grass, with lounging chairs and tables set out.

“Move,” Kormann said, nudging Markus toward the door. They came out into the crisp, cold, late afternoon air. The sun had already dropped behind the far mountain but there was still a good half hour of light left in the day. Outside the bar, sheltered from the wind by its solid walls, one of Kormann’s men was busy setting up an array of equipment. Markus stopped and watched curiously. His captor allowed the delay for a few minutes.

“Twin fifty caliber Brownings, slaved to radar tracking, and a dozen or so Stinger missiles,” he said, by way of an explanation to the unspoken question in Markus’s eyes. “Just in case you should be talking to anyone from outside, I want you to know that no choppers are going to be coming up this valley.”

He paused and Markus looked at him. Then, with a cold glint of a smile in his eye, Kormann corrected himself.

“At least they might come up the valley, but they sure as hell won’t be going back down if they do,” he said. Markus nodded somberly. The twin mount heavy caliber machine guns might seem to be old technology in this era of missiles and electronic warfare, but he knew that combat in Vietnam and the Middle East had proved the effectiveness of radar-directed small arms fire against attacking aircraft—particularly slow movers like helicopters. He glanced around the roof and saw another twin fifty mount being installed at the opposite side. Between them, the two gun installations covered all approaches to the hotel. And in case there were any gaps, the shoulder-launched Stingers—heat-seeking AA missiles—would fill them in quickly enough.

Evidently, Markus realized, their few moments of communication were over. Kormann shoved him roughly in the direction of the northern parapet. The duty manager shrugged and began walking in the direction indicated. Shivering in his thin blazer jacket and shirt, he walked toward the four-foot high parapet at the edge of the roof. He noted that Kormann had had the foresight to slip on a warm-looking parka. Markus stopped at the parapet, Kormann a few paces behind him.

“Now what?” asked the duty manager. Dully, he looked out over the magnificent view. From here, you could see the massive peaks of the Wasatches all around them, and the heaving panorama of mountains that stretched out before them, all the way back to Salt Lake City. The city itself wasn’t visible from this point but at night, when the weather was clear or when there was a low overcast, you could see the loom of the city’s lights on the horizon, or reflected on the underbelly of the clouds.

Kormann’s eyes were searching the valley below them, looking for something in the near distance. He found the single road that wound tortuously along the canyon and down to Salt Lake City. It was the only route in and out of the valley and its blacktop surface showed up clearly among the white snow cover of the rest of the terrain. It was a stark black ribbon among the shadowed white. His eyes narrowed briefly as he searched along the road, then came to rest on what he was looking for. He pointed.

“There he is. Take a look,” he told Markus.

The duty manager followed the direction indicated by the pointing arm and made out the tiny yellow shape of the shuttle bus crawling along Canyon Road. In the clear, cold air, he thought he could even make out a thin, ragged line of black diesel smoke drifting in the air behind the old bus. He wondered why Kormann had brought him up here to see this, then realized that the terrorist was speaking again, virtually mirroring his own thoughts.

“Now, Ben, I wanted you to see this. Just like I wanted you to see those fifties over there.” He gestured briefly to the machine gun installations behind them, then looked back to the bus. “Because, Ben, I want you to be very clear in your own mind that we’re not just fooling around, blowing smoke up here. You get it?”

Markus nodded doubtfully. He could understand the message implicit in the machine guns and the missiles. What the bus was going to tell him, he had no idea. Still, the edge of mockery in Kormann’s tone grated on his nerves. He glanced at the other man with hatred in his eyes.

“You’ve killed one of my people, you bastard. I’m hardly likely to think you’re fooling around.”

Kormann had taken the walkie-talkie from his belt. He was in the act of changing the transmission frequency when Markus spoke. He froze, his hands still on the little radio, then stepped a pace closer to Markus, his face only a few inches away.

“Never let your emotions get the better of you, Ben,” he said in a dangerously low voice. “Particularly when you don’t have the power to back them up. Remember, you’re alive—and you really don’t have to be.”

He held the duty manager’s gaze with his as he let the last words die in the cold air. The threat behind them was all too obvious and eventually, Markus felt his own eyes dropping from the other man’s. Kormann nodded, satisfied.

“Just speak nice and do as you’re told, Ben, and you might survive. Okay?”

Markus nodded, hating himself for his abject acquiescence, yet knowing there was nothing else he could do. Kormann returned his
attention to the little radio, selected the new channel and pressed the talk button.

“Kormann. You read?” he said. Markus heard the tiny, muted sound of an answering voice in the earphone against the other man’s head. It was too faint for him to make out the actual words.

“How long?” Kormann asked and again there was an indecipherable answer.

“When you’re ready,” Kormann said into the radio, then clipped it back to his belt. He glanced up and saw Markus’s eyes on him. He nodded toward the pass.

“Watch the bus, Ben, not me,” he said, deceptively mild in his tone.

Markus turned back to the road below them. He had lost sight of the bus as they had been talking. Now he traced the thin, winding line of the blacktop until he found it again—a tiny yellow beetle struggling along, laboring under the massive, snow-laden cliffs of Avalanche Pass—one of the steepest sections of the mountain.

“Any time… now…” Kormann said, half under his breath. Sensing that something was about to happen, Markus riveted his attention on the old bus, straining to see more clearly, to make out more detail. But the dying light and the distance defeated him.

Then there was a movement. Not from the bus, but from the cliff face high above it. A sudden fountain of white geysered upward, then another and another, in a line along the rim of the massive cliff, until there were six in all—the snow cloud of the first slowly drifting away on the light breeze as the last erupted into the late afternoon sky. The skin around Markus’s eyes tightened as he squinted, trying to see more clearly. There was a small halo of drifting snow hanging above the cliff… then a ragged black line zigzagged across the snow, following the line of the fountains they had just seen. Then, for a brief space, nothing.

He glanced down. The tiny yellow bus was directly below the spot on the mountain where the black line scarred the white of the cliff face. Then, dimly to his ears came the reverberating echoes of six short, deep reports.

“Oh Jesus…” Markus said softly, the horror of it all suddenly
registering as he heard that familiar sound. It was the sound of explosive charges placed in the snow. Markus heard it most days this time of year as the ski patrol on Snow Eagles found those unstable areas of the mountain and brought them down before they could avalanche out of control.

The zigzag gap was widening visibly and now he could sense movement in that mass of white as the entire face of the cliff, millions of tons of snow and loose rock, bulged outward below the line of the explosions and began to slide away from the tenuous grip that had held it there for the past three months of winter.

Now it was a massive, moving wall of snow that thundered down the near vertical slope of the cliff, dwarfing the tiny yellow shape below it. In the mass of it all he could see the dark shapes of trees and rocks, tiny against the ever-growing, roiling mass. Flung snow stood clear and stark above it, like spray above a giant wave, and the avalanche was growing ever-wilder, ever-bigger, feeding on the mountain, devouring it, destroying it and everything in its path as the entire mountain surged on a downward slide.

The deep voice reached him now, a thundering roar that he could almost feel in the pit of his belly, at the precise moment that the massive wall of snow and ice and rock swept over the road, obliterating the bus and the sixty people inside it in an instant, then sweeping on into the valley below the road, unchecked by the tiny obstacle.

Markus watched in silent horror, staring fixedly at the spot where the bus had disappeared, hopelessly willing it to emerge from the mass of snow and debris that had overwhelmed it—and knowing at the same time that it would never happen. The bus was no longer there. Crushed and flattened like a discarded tin can, it was rolling underneath the moving mass of the avalanche, buried deep in the snow and rock that continued to cascade down the mountain into the valley below.