02 Avalanche Pass (30 page)

Kormann felt a slight lessening of tension. He’d assumed as much and they’d discussed the effect of a blizzard like this when they’d planned the operation. But seeing it proved beyond doubt was a whole lot better than assuming. He slapped the Korean-American on the shoulder.

“Good work,” he said. “Keep a close watch.” He turned to the watch commander who was crowded into the canvas and timber-framed hutch with them. “You even think they’ve put anything in the air, open fire as soon as you’ve got a lock. Don’t wait for my say-so.”

The watch commander nodded his understanding. “I’m bringing the visual lookouts in for a while,” he said. “There’s nothing much they can see in all of this and the radar will tell us if anything major is happening.”

Kormann thought about it, then nodded agreement. There was no point in keeping the men out in the open unnecessarily in this weather.

“Bring them into the pool area,” he said. The roof had a heated indoor pool set behind full-length glass windows. “But keep the
gun crews out there. Change them every fifteen minutes.” That would give the men an hour and a half inside the shelter of the pool area for every fifteen minutes they spent out in the wind and snow. That was plenty. The commander nodded again.

“You got it.”

Kormann turned back to the Korean again. “You let me know if there’s any problem, okay?” The technician shrugged. He was beginning to think that Kormann was obsessive about this but what the hell, he was being well paid.

“Won’t be no problems. Long as we keep the snow from building up on the dishes, and we’ve got guys with hot air blowers to look after that.”

Kormann stepped out into the wind again and glanced around the roof. Satisfied that things were under control, he headed for the elevator again, hunched over against the keening wind.

“I’ll get back downstairs and ring that damned federal agent again,” he said. “If they’re even thinking of trying something, I want to have him on the phone, talking to me.”

C
olby looked around at the former professor as the connection to the Canyon Lodge was broken. The phone conversation with the man he now referred to as Roger had followed the usual pattern—accusation, threats, seeming paranoia and, in between, very little in the way of real communication. He had also noted that the original pattern of calls coming from both Roger and his companion had changed lately. Roger was now the main contact.

“So what do you think?” he asked, and Emery shrugged.

“Sounds like normal behavior for this sort of situation,” he said. “He’s keyed up, excited, unwilling to trust you or anything you say. Hell, you’ve done this before, what do you think?”

Colby shifted uncomfortably. They’d barely reached the command trailer when the phone had begun its muted chirping and he’d been tied up in a conversation with Roger ever since. Truscott Emery had listened silently throughout the exchange.

“It’s how I’d expect a terrorist to behave. That’s what troubles me. It’s all so pat. There’s something about it just doesn’t ring true. I’m getting one picture when I talk to Roger, and it simply doesn’t gel with what Parker has told us.”

He stood and moved to the coffeemaker on a bench along one wall, pouring himself a cup. He glanced at Emery, eyebrows raised, and the other man shook his head.

“So,” Dent said finally, “what brings you out here?”

Emery shrugged in his turn. “I wanted to get the feeling for this on-site. I’ve been kind of fired by the president from his advisory
council,” he added. He wanted Colby clear on that point. The FBI agent smiled briefly.

“From what I’ve heard, that could be in your favor,” he said.

“But Linus Benjamin has kept me on in an advisory capacity. We both thought I might be of some value out here.” He hesitated and Colby nodded. Emery was relieved to see the positive response. There had always been the possibility that Colby might see him as intruding on his authority. He continued: “Point is, there’s been something worrying me since this started. Like you, I feel something just doesn’t ring true. Did Linus mention anything to you?”

“Not specifically. I knew he’d asked you to stay involved after the president blew his top. He didn’t say what you were up to in any specific terms.”

The trailer shuddered as the wind gusted up to a new level. Colby stooped to look out through the window. The clouds were still scudding low overhead, the snow still flying. It was difficult to tell now how much of the snow was falling and how much was just blowing. Either way, it formed a thick white curtain.

“Let me tell you what I was working on then,” said Emery. “I was looking into an operation called Powderburn that happened just over ten years ago.”

It took Emery five minutes to give Colby a quick outline of Operation Powderburn. The FBI agent listened with a frown on his heavy features. The whole thing seemed so long ago and far away, it couldn’t possibly have any bearing on events here in Utah. When he finished, Dent shook his head slowly.

“It’s thin,” he said. “Very thin. You’re saying this Estevez guy is behind this because we blew up his drug cache over ten years ago? Jesus, you’re hanging the whole case on the odd amount of the ransom.”

Emery shook his head. “No. That was just part of the message. That was to make us look more carefully. There’s another link that I hadn’t seen until I was on the flight out here. Look at the article about the F-117. Particularly the photograph.”

Dent did so, scanning quickly through the details.

“Now,” said Emery, “look at the hostages’ names.”

And there it was, buried in the middle of the list—one of Senator Carling’s party, listed as an aerospace executive working for Rockair Aviation, with a degree in aeronautical engineering. But what wasn’t so obvious was that he was more than a company executive with a nine-to-five desk job. He was Rockair’s senior test pilot, and he’d had fifteen years in the air force. He was the leader of the group of pilots in the photo—the ones described as the best the air force had.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Dent Colby said quietly, as the man’s name leapt off the two lists. “You think that he…”

He hesitated and Emery concluded it for him.

“Do I think he flew the Powderburn operation? I phoned General Barrett and he ran a check of Pell’s records. There’s a twelve-month gap—listed as special duties. It coincides with the time of Powderburn. And now here he is in Utah, still involved in developing stealth technology.

“Now all of that could be a coincidence. But then I did some more checking. Seems that when Powderburn was planned, there was a special presidential aide in the White House called Ted Carling.”

“Carling? The senator?” Dent sat up a little straighter. But Emery shook his head.

“Not then. That came later. But his role in the White House is listed as ‘Special plans aide to the president on internal security’—or, more specifically, the much vaunted ‘War on Drugs.’ You see where this is going?”

“Carling was the one…” Dent began, then hesitated to make sure he wasn’t leaping to a false conclusion. But Emery finished for him.

“Pell might have been the pilot on Operation Powderburn. That’s a possibility. But one thing is definite. Carling was the one who planned it and ordered it carried out. He’s the target in all of this. The very fact that they haven’t mentioned him or used him as a bargaining tool confirms it. They want to keep us guessing.”

Right then, before Colby could say anything, the phone rang.

The storm had been a blessing. With visibility reduced to a few yards, Jesse had taken the chance to make his way to the chairlift once more. Shrouded in the white poncho, he figured he was virtually invisible in the whiteout.

It had been a successful day so far. He’d managed to make contact with Tina Bowden again when she and the chef had arrived to prepare food in the middle of the day. This time, she had engineered a reason to come to the storeroom and he wasted no time putting the questions that Colby wanted answered. In clipped tones, as they moved through the storeroom, piling another carton with the requirements for the lunch break, she had given him the answers. How much Dent would make of them, he had no idea, but now, at least, he knew for sure that the terrorists were aware of Carling’s identity, and he had a good description of the man in charge—Kormann, she had said his name was. When the storm hit, he realized that he had a chance to get this information to Colby immediately, without another overnight wait for the chairlift.

Now, at the top of the mountain once more, armed with his own cell phone and one he’d found in Tina Bowden’s room, he hit the redial button for the FBI’s1-800 number.

As soon as he identified himself he was patched through to Colby’s phone. The eagerness in the other man’s voice was unmistakable.

“Jesse! I didn’t expect to hear from you until tomorrow!” he said.

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Agent Colby, but there’s a storm blowing. I used it for cover to get up here. Now listen up. I managed to speak to Tina again and here are some of the things you wanted to know.

“The leader of the mercenaries is a guy called Kormann. Around five ten, five eleven, medium weight and build—say one-sixty pounds. Dark hair going gray, so he may be in his late thirties, early
forties. I saw him up here the other day and he looks pretty fit. What I didn’t see was something Tina mentioned. He has amazingly blue eyes—piercing blue.” He hesitated. “You getting this?”

“I’m recording the whole thing,” Dent told him. “Keep going.”

“Okay. I’ve been thinking some on this. They’ve got Carling and they know it. But they’re not using him as a lever to bargain with you, right?”

“That’s right, Jess. Where you going with this?”

“Just hear me out, Dent. Next up, they’ve spun you some story about Irish terrorists they want set free. But nobody in here has heard one word about that. On the other hand, this Kormann guy said right at the start that they were businessmen and they’re here for ransom.”

“With you so far,” Colby said. He and Emery exchanged glances. The man on the other end of the phone was beginning to reflect their own thinking.

“It’s just I think this whole terrorist thing is a blind of some kind, is all,” Jesse finished. “It’s not political. They’re in it for the money, pure and simple.”

“Nine point seven million is a lot of money,” Colby agreed.

“Nine point seven?” Jesse queried. It was the first time he’d heard the sum. “Why’d they pick a figure like that?”

“That’s what’s got us all wondering. You got anything on any of the others besides this Kormann type?”

Jesse hesitated slightly. He thought briefly about what he’d told Dent the previous time they’d spoken. The group was disciplined, efficient, businesslike. There wasn’t a lot more to tell. Except one other detail.

“The second in command is calling himself Pallisani,” he said. “Sure to be a false name but Tina says he looks like he’s got an Italian background and he sounds like he was born in the U.S. Maybe Brooklyn, but she’s not certain.”

Colby jotted down the details. Jesse was sure to be right. The name would be a phoney. “Anything else on him, Jess?” he asked quickly.

“He’s a bit easier to describe than Kormann. He’s tall, maybe six
one or six two, with gray hair and prominent cheekbones. He’s maybe fifty and he’s very thin, Tina said.” He hesitated, then added apologetically, “Sorry I can’t give you more.”

“That’s fine, buddy. You’re doing great. Anything else spring to mind?”

“Yeah. This one I’m not sure about. It may mean nothing. But have these guys given you any sort of deadline so far?”

Dent Colby hesitated. Then he realized there was no reason why he shouldn’t give Jesse the details of the ransom demand. “So far, they’re asking for the money and they want a chopper in there on Sunday. They say they’re taking ten of the hostages with them and we’ve got to provide a plane out of Salt Lake City. If we screw up, they’ll start killing hostages.”

“Sunday?” Jesse said, uncertainty obvious in his voice.

“That’s right. Does that mean something to you?”

Again the deputy hesitated. Colby knew he was a man who considered his words carefully, never made a statement that he hadn’t thought through. “It’s just… I told you this guy Kormann was up here the other day. He came up in the cable car after we’d spoken.”

“He was looking for you?” Colby prompted, suddenly concerned that the kidnappers might have some way of monitoring Jesse’s cell phone conversations. Jesse hurried to dispel the fear.

“No. He’d simply come up here for the same reason I did—to use his cell phone.”

Again, Colby and Emery exchanged puzzled looks. Why would Kormann, who Colby guessed was the man he knew as Roger, need to travel all that way to use the phone?

Emery leaned forward and said softly: “Maybe he didn’t want the call monitored. The line runs through here.”

Colby nodded but at the sound of the unfamiliar voice on the line, Jesse was instantly alerted.

“Who was that? You got someone else in there?” He was reasonably confident Colby wouldn’t be dumb enough to let anyone from the press listen in but he wanted to be sure. After all, it was his life on the line up here if Kormann’s men ever realized he was on the loose.

“It’s a guy name of Emery who’s here with us, Jess,” Dent reassured
him. “He’s okay. He’s a presidential adviser.” He made a small moue at the professor as he added this last. It wasn’t technically true anymore but it was the quickest way of reassuring Jesse. Emery nodded his understanding. Jesse’s voice, when he spoke again, sounded mollified.

“Okay then. Thing was, this Kormann guy just said one or two words. He said Friday’s the day. There was something about depending on someone called George… then he repeated it: Friday.”

“Friday?” Colby said. “That was it?”