02 Avalanche Pass (41 page)

“Jesse! I hear you!”

“The Apache’s down, Dent. They got it before he could stop Kormann. The cable car is still coming!”

In the Blackhawk, Dent Colby ducked instinctively as heavy caliber bullet strikes slammed into them. The shooting from the roof was too good and they’d need the remaining Apache’s covering fire to make it to the ground below the hotel, where the fifty calibers couldn’t depress far enough to reach them. Also, he realized now, if he ordered the attack helicopter to go after the cable car, it would expose itself to the same tailpipe shot from another Stinger. He could lose both attack birds.

“Jesse! Can you stop the cable car? If he’s left hanging up there, he can’t blow the charges. The avalanche will sweep away the pylons and take him with it. Just buy us some time then we’ll take care of him.”

Jesse glanced through the small window beside him. The operator’s hut was on the far side of the terminal building and there was bound to be an emergency stop somewhere in there. If all else failed, he’d simply take out his .45 and blow the control panel away.

“You’ve got it,” he replied grimly.

The entry door to the terminal was fifteen yards away, uphill. He
turned, clumsy in the skis, and bent to release one, setting the phone down on the bench as he did so. The movement saved his life.

A line of ragged holes punched into the shaped metal side of the building. At the same moment, he heard the rattle of an Ingram, and looking up, saw Pallisani and his three companions running from the trees toward him. The doorway was between him and them and he knew he’d never have time to get his skis off and reach safety.

Pallisani fired again and the bullets whipped all around him. They were still at extreme range for the short-barreled machine pistols but they were closing by the minute. He had to move, and move fast. Instinctively, he jump-turned in the skis and skated desperately away, heading downhill to where the ski runs started, opening the distance between himself and the shooters. He heard yelling behind him and more shots, and two or three of the 9 millimeter slugs cracked the air above his head like whips. Below him, the cable car continued to make its way up the mountain.

A
lston signaled to the two men beside him. All three of them were mercenaries, with long experience in close-quarter combat like this. At his signal, they broke cover and dashed to the far side of the corridor, spraying shots in the direction of the gymnasium doors some fifty feet away. There was a rapid volley of return fire and 9 millimeter slugs tore chunks from the rendered concrete walls. But their sudden movement had caught the lone shooter by surprise and neither man was hit.

The three mercenaries were under no delusions as to what they had to do, Kormann or no Kormann. The radio was alive with reports of incoming choppers and the sound of machine-gun fire. Their only chance of survival was to get the hostages under their control once more, to hold them as a bargaining chip for their own escape. If the rescue team arrived and found the current stalemate, Alston and the others were toast, and they knew it.

Alston looked across to the opposite corner, caught Milgate’s eye and nodded. The other man leaned around the corner and sprayed the door with a burst from his Ingram. As he did so, Alston, knowing that the shooter at the door would be concentrating on the opposite side of the corridor, stepped half clear, the Stinger tube already on his shoulder.

There was no lock-on light or tone because with no heat source, they had disconnected the infrared seeking head. But the target was one he couldn’t miss—a double set of doors fifty feet away. He centered the crosshairs on the door and pressed the trigger. The pause
before the rocket launched was only half a second or so but it seemed forever to him as a bullet slammed the wall beside him, showering him with concrete chips. He flinched and the crosshairs moved fractionally, then the launcher fired, throwing the missile clear of the tube. Halfway to the door, the main rocket motor ignited and the corridor was full of acrid smoke and howling noise.

Ralph, emptying the Beretta at the machine-gunner, saw Alston too late. He saw the Stinger leap clear of the tube and scream toward him as if in slow motion, the vast smoke trail behind it obliterating everything else from sight. Then the rocket slammed into the right-hand-side door, smashing it into huge shards of toughened glass and hurling it open, scattering the hastily constructed barricade with the sheer force of its momentum. The warhead didn’t explode—the oblique impact wasn’t enough to crush the detonator. But the out-of-control rocket, capable of reaching out and nailing a fast-moving jet, transformed its speed and energy into an irresistible battering force as it slammed through the doorway, scattering the barricade and hurling Ralph to one side, slashed cruelly by the broken safety glass and already dying from horrific burns as the white-hot exhaust flame flayed the clothes and flesh from three-quarters of his body.

The last-minute wavering of Alston’s aim meant the rocket hit the right-hand-side door, not the center gap. So it was deflected slightly as it smashed through the glass, then more so as it hit the chrome uprights of a Nautilus weight machine. It toppled end over end, the rocket motor sending a deafening scream through the room, caromed off the floor, spinning for a moment like a giant Catherine-wheel, then slithered at blinding speed toward the outside wall, slamming into the painted concrete, crushing the nose-cone and finally, finally tripping the detonator inside.

The three-kilogram warhead exploded in a flash of orange flame and a cloud of white-hot metal shrapnel.

There were fifty people huddled behind a hastily erected shelter within thirty feet of the explosion. The shrapnel ripped through the blankets and exercise machines. Four of the hostages died almost instantly. Another eight were injured by the shrapnel, Senator Carling among them.

Nate Pell, Tina Bowden and Carl Aldiss all survived. Blinded and coughing from the choking smoke, which would account for another two lives within the next eight hours, they huddled together behind an upturned weight bench, flinching as shrapnel rang against the metal base. Then Pell, coughing, was on his feet, pistol in hand, as he yelled to them.

“They’ll hit us in the smoke! Get up! Get up!”

His battle-hardened instincts knew that the guards would follow up the confusion caused by the explosion. He staggered toward the doorway, sensing Tina behind and beside him. He thought he saw a shadowy figure in the smoke ahead of him and fired twice. Somewhere close at hand he heard an Ingram’s tearing rattle. Whether it was Carl Aldiss or one of the mercenaries, he had no idea. His eyes stung, streaming tears and he felt a savage hammer blow in his right leg, felt himself falling, felt the sickness and nausea of shock welling up inside him as he hit the hard nylon carpet.

He sensed a figure above him and tried to raise the pistol, but a soft hand touched his face and he realized it was Tina, crouching over him to protect him.

“It’s okay!” she was saying, her voice racked by a fit of coughing as the smoke seared her throat. “It’s okay!” then he heard the sharp bark of her pistol and he felt his eyes closing.

It dropped away before him. Steep. Impossibly steep. Unforgiving and undefeated.

Fear and self-doubt made the near-vertical snow face seem even steeper as Jesse hesitated at the top of The Wall.

The four gunmen would be after him any minute. He could ski down Drifter and leave them behind, take cover in the trees and
hope that everything worked out all right. Odds were he’d survive. Even if Kormann set off an avalanche, Jesse could ski out of its path, back into the center of the canyon. The danger area lay between the top station and the hotel itself, he knew, and he could avoid that, given the time.

But below him lay the means to stop Kormann. All he had to do was reach it. And to reach it, he had to ski The Wall.

Not just ski it, but stay on his feet and stay in control, because if he fell, he’d slide and tumble all the way to the bottom. He took a deep, shuddering breath. This was more than a simple personal test of courage and commitment, more than a battle with his own fears. If he surrendered to the fear this time, he was surrendering the lives of the fifty hostages, condemning them to a thundering, suffocating, crushing death.

He hesitated, breathing deeply, gathering his resolve. Fittingly, the steep wall of snow that stretched below him was in shadow, dark and cold under the close-growing trees that lined either side of the narrow chute. He glanced quickly back up the track to the top station. His pursuers were just visible a hundred and fifty yards away, rounding a bend in the trail, floundering on the uneven snow. Out to his right, the cable car continued to climb inexorably up the mountain, now nearly halfway through its journey.

Behind him, a rattle of automatic fire, but no sound of the bullets passing nearby. The range was still too great for that. He took a deep breath, flexed his legs, bent forward, willing himself to go, yet, at the last moment, unable to commit himself.

Go! His mind screamed. Go now!

And then he did, the scream torn from his mind and emerging from his throat as a high-pitched keening yell and he thrust up and out with his legs and thighs, angling his body out over the giddying drop below him, plunging fifteen feet down through the cold air and then feeling the impact of skis against the soft snow, feeling them dig in and hold as his knees flexed to absorb the landing, feet and skis at forty-five degrees to the fall line and his mind screaming at him: Stay out with the upper body! Stay out!

Then reach far down the face and plant the pole… slamming it
in too hard but never mind style, he’d reached far enough to keep his upper body facing the terrifying slope… now thrust with the knees and thighs and spring high and clear, letting his legs rotate back through one hundred and twenty degrees, while his upper body hardly moved… and down again! Feel the skis thrusting into the snow, the edges biting and controlling and holding him as he maintained that vital upper-body position.

Scream and jump again! Up and out and down again, thrusting, controlling and Christ don’t lean back into the mountain! Leap out and up again, fighting the urge to rear back, away from the steep, dizzying drop below, getting it under control again and now a rhythm was beginning to assert itself: jump and turn and jump and turn and he felt an almost primal surge of satisfaction at being in control, of giving himself over to the rhythm as his fears scuttled back into the dark hole from which they had emerged.

Don’t turn when you want to, he’d been told years before, turn when the rhythm wants to. And now he did that, obeying the rhythm, leaping, twisting, regardless of the fact that every time his skis drove into the snow face they set off mini-avalanches of their own, falling through fifteen to twenty feet of space with each jump before his skis made their tenuous contact once more on the near vertical slope.

And there was the timber platform, just below him, and he dug in with the skis and threw arms and upper body way, way out over the abyss, holding them there against all seeming logic and every demand of intellect, as he felt the exhilarating downhill rush slowly dragged to a halt by the resistance of the skis in the thick, powdery snow.

And it was over.

He’d dropped a few feet below the platform and now he shuffled hurriedly back uphill, sliding forward until his skis grated on the rough, untrimmed planks beneath the covering of snow. He released his bindings and stepped clear of the skis, running the few steps to the canvas-shrouded shape at the outer edge of the platform.

He tore at the lacings and threw off the canvas storm cover that protected the oiled, well-maintained 75 millimeter recoilless rifle. A
quick glance across the valley told him that Kormann was two-thirds of the way to the top station. He looked for the ready-use ammunition locker, saw it to one side—padlocked, of course. He took the .45 from his inner pocket and jacked a round into the breech. There was a moment when he hesitated, considering the folly of firing a shot into a wooden chest full of high explosive projectiles. Then, realizing he had no other choice, he aimed carefully at the padlock and squeezed off a shot.

The force of the heavy slug tore the lock hasp clear of its restraints. Thankfully, the bullet ricocheted away from the ammunition locker, howling as it tumbled end over end into the clear air beyond the platform. He wrenched the lid of the locker open and found himself staring at two neat rows of projectiles, stacked nose to tail. He took one, cradling it carefully, and moved to the artillery piece. There was a crank-handle-shaped lever on the breech end and he turned it to allow the breech to swing smoothly open. The projectile slid in easily and he slammed the breech shut and locked it, dropping to his knees behind the gun, searching for the sights.

They were simple open sights—rear sight V and front sight leaf. He swung the gun experimentally on its tripod. The movement was easy and smooth, obviously the Avalanche Patrol kept it well maintained. He had no idea of the speed or trajectory of the shell’s flight so he’d have to experiment. Figuring there’d be some drop, at least, he raised the barrel until he was sighted on the top of the giant claw holding the car to the cable, then swung to the right to lead it by about ten yards.

A squeeze of the handgrip trigger was followed by a loud WHOOMP! as a huge burst of propellant gas was released from the breech behind him. The projectile leapt away from the barrel, arcing up and across the valley. The avalanche patrollers used tracer rounds, fortunately, and he could follow the glowing projectile easily in the dull, overcast light. By the time it was halfway, he realized he hadn’t allowed enough for drop. It was beginning to arc downwards and he knew it would never reach the cable car. The shell slid under the car by about ten feet, and about five yards behind, fountaining
up a small burst of snow and smoke when it detonated on the hillside. Unlike the avalanche patrol, he hadn’t fired into a carefully plotted fault line in the snow. Nevertheless, a small avalanche slid away from the point of impact.