02 Avalanche Pass Read online

  The FBI director nodded to his opposite number to take over and then sat down again.

  Tildeman resumed the briefing, turning the page on the easel to reveal a plan of the hotel itself: “The hostages are on the third floor,” he said. “There’s a gymnasium there and the walls are floor to ceiling glass. If the mountain did come down on them, they’d be buried alive in there.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the president said petulantly. “Why would anyone design a building with glass walls?”

  There was a brief silence around the room and a few of those present exchanged glances. The question typified the Gorton way of facing a problem, by asking irrelevant questions. “I guess they didn’t plan on someone planting explosives in the cliff wall,” Janet Haddenrich answered softly. She was the director of the CIA and, like her or not, Gorton knew he could never get rid of her. After a few months in the job, he knew that he wanted the second term in his own right. He also knew that if he fired the first woman ever to head up the CIA, his chances of being reelected would be diddly shit.

  Gorton glanced sourly at her and she remained impassive, her face a deadpan mask. With a loud exhalation of breath to mark his displeasure, he turned back to Tildeman.

  “How many hostages?” he asked, “and who are they? Is there anyone well-known?”

  That, of course, was another clue to the Gorton approach. If the hostages were nonentities, there would be far less pressure upon him to react to the situation. Tildeman shrugged.

  “We don’t have a list of names yet,” he said. “The terrorists haven’t indicated that they’re holding any prominent people.”

  “So we can assume they’re not,” Gorton said. It was half a question, half a statement. He was actually looking for someone to make the decision for him and put it into words.

  Linus Benjamin chipped in with an alternative. “Or we can assume that they may be and they aren’t necessarily aware of the fact.”

  Gorton grunted his displeasure. “What’s the name of this hotel again?” he asked.

  Tildeman checked the notes in front of him, although he knew the name of the resort. “Canyon Lodge, Mr. President. It’s in the Wasatches.”

  “Well at least we know that much.” Gorton replied. “We may not know anything too useful but we know the name of the hotel. I guess that’s something.”

  That was the problem, as Gorton saw it. Nobody seemed to know anything concrete. Yet sooner or later, they’d be asking him what actions they should take. He looked around the faces at the table: Homeland, FBI, CIA, NSA, the Joint Chiefs representative and a crew-cut marine light colonel who had accompanied him to the meeting and been introduced as the commander of the RRTF—the Rapid Response Tactical Force.

  As far as Gorton knew, this sort of situation was what the RRTF had been formed for. He nodded at the marine now.

  “So what are your people doing about this, Colonel… ?” He let the sentence trail off. He’d been introduced to the soldier but he didn’t see any reason why he should remember the name of anyone as lowly as a light colonel.

  “Maloney,” General Barrett interceded, thin-lipped. Maloney hesitated, not sure if the president was going to correct his mistake. Gorton waved one hand in an impatient circular motion, telling the marine to get on with it.

  “Ah… sir, at this stage, we don’t have enough facts to formulate any sort of rescue plan,” he said.

  The president snorted derisively. “Then what’s the point of having the RRTF in the first place?” he asked.

  Maloney hesitated again and once more, Barrett answered: “Mr. President, Colonel Maloney is here to observe only. It’s not his role to set policy or initiate plans. He’ll do whatever we tell him.”

  Tildeman leaned forward to re-enter the conversation. “In the meantime, Mr. President, we’ve got forces on the ground there: local police, state police, the sheriff’s office and a ranger unit from the Utah National Guard.” He glanced at Benjamin. “I assume your people are there by now?”

  The director of the FBI nodded. “The local agent-in-charge from Salt Lake City was headed up there as soon as the news broke. We’ll reinforce him with whatever he needs as soon as he’s assessed the situation.”

  The president grunted, the sound carrying a weight of disdain behind it.

  “Sounds like a jurisdiction nightmare,” he said. “Are they at the hotel itself?”

  “No, Mr. President,” Tildeman answered. “The road is blocked around five miles from the hotel. We’ve got choppers on site, of course, but the terrorists have warned us that they’ve got missiles and triple-A set up.”

  “And we believe them?” Gorton asked sarcastically.

  Tildeman shrugged. “No reason why we shouldn’t at this stage,” he said. “We don’t want to risk lives testing their word. Not yet anyway. As for jurisdiction, we’ve agreed that it’ll be an FBI show, with support from the military if it’s needed. Linus has one of his senior negotiators already on the way from Washington.”

  “And your people, Mr. Traill?” Gorton asked. He refused to give the man his courtesy title of general.

  “We’ll maintain an overview of the situation, Mr. President. We’ll coordinate intelligence as it comes in and pass it on. But operational control will stay with the FBI.”

  The president grunted noncommitally. He gestured to his chief of staff, Terence Pohlsen. Pohlsen was the one appointment he had been able to make already. Even a president-by-default was entitled to appoint his own White House COS immediately.

  Pohlsen cleared his throat. “Gentlemen,” he said, and they all turned to him as he remembered, belatedly, that Janet Haddenrich was in the room, “… and Ms. Haddenrich, of course,” he added.

  “Mrs.,” Janet said flatly, and he smiled and nodded another apology.

  “Of course. Mrs. Haddenrich. I suggest at this time we await further contact from the terrorists, and that we spend that time ascertaining who might be among the hostages.”

  Tildeman and Benjamin both nodded. “We should have a guest list from the hotel chain within an hour or so,” the FBI director said. “Plus, if these people run true to the usual form, we’ll be hearing from them again within the next eight hours.”

  Pohlsen glanced quickly at him. “The usual form?” he asked and Benjamin nodded.

  “They’ll feed us information in dribs and drabs, keep us off balance, keep us guessing. We won’t know what they want, the full details, for at least another twenty-four hours. In the meantime, we find out as much as we can and we wait.”

  Now that a course of action had been suggested, Gorton took the opportunity to look as if he were making a decision.

  “That’s it then,” he said. “We hold a watching brief while we wait for more information. Gentlemen, as soon as anything breaks on this, I want to hear it, understand?”

  The department heads nodded. Pohlsen, satisfied that he had given his man a chance to look as if he were in control, now raised a question.

  “The press, Mr. President?” he said. He paused a second, then prompted: “I guess we don’t want them involved yet?”

  Gorton shook his head decisively. As far as he was concerned, not telling the press was always the best course of action in any circumstances. “No need to get them all fired up and asking questions we can’t answer. Wait till we have more information and Jimmy can put out a press release.”

  Pohlsen nodded. “For the moment, we’ll keep it simple,” he said. “We’ll say the road has been blocked by an avalanche halfway up the mountain. So far as we know, everyone at the resort is safe but the phone lines are down and we’re working to make contact. Cell phones don’t work up there. The hotel is in a dead spot. We’ll issue a hotline number where relatives can contact us for further information as it comes to hand. That’ll keep it all low-key.”

  “And it’ll give us a line on who’s still up there,” Benjamin put in. Pohlsen glanced his way.

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  Gorton looked around
the table now, then placed his hands flat on the arms of his chair and stood.

  “Well, gentlemen…” he said and, after just the right length of pause to be infuriating, added, “and Mrs. Haddenrich… I guess that’s it for now.”

  Protocol demanded that as soon as he rose from his seat, everyone must do the same. He nodded to them and swept out of the room on a tide of self-importance, a cavalcade of one.

  FIFTEEN

  CANYON LODGE

  WASATCH COUNTY

  1730 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  SATURDAY, DAY 1

  The ski room seemed virtually empty.

  Throughout the week, the lockable racks that lined the room had been full of brightly colored skis of widely differing shapes and lengths. An equally diverse range of ski boots had lined the racks set above the heating ducts.

  Now the skis were widely dispersed. In a room that would cater to over two hundred pairs of skis and boots, there were barely thirty left, spaced out around the racks that had been assigned to the few remaining residents. The ski room was situated at the rear of the hotel, facing the cliff. A double-glazed door led in and out, forming an airlock that retained warmth inside the building and kept the exterior cold at bay. Jesse had waited till dark and then skied down the broad slope of the homeward run, staying close to the trees and shadows. Once at the bottom of the hill, he had removed his skis and covered the rest of the distance on foot, staying close to buildings wherever possible, until he reached this back entrance.

  He’d figured that if there were trouble in the hotel, this entrance would be the one most likely to be forgotten. So far, it seemed that he’d been right.

  Conscious of the silence in the room, Jesse leaned his own skis against an unused rack by the door. The packed snow on the skis and in the bindings was melting already, leaving an ever-widening pool of water on the concrete floor. He hefted the skis again and crossed the room, placing them in a rack at the end furthest from the door, slipping the locking bar across and placing the open padlock through the hole in the bar. A quick glance would assume that the skis were locked in place and the puddle of water beneath them would probably go unnoticed by a casual observer.

  Leaving them where they had first been, leaning against the end of the ski rack, in a puddle of fresh water, would have been an instant giveaway that someone had entered the ski room in the past few minutes. Why that should be a problem, Jesse wasn’t sure. But his instincts were warning him not to take any chances until he knew what was going on in Canyon Lodge. There was no sense in advertising his presence.

  Tina’s words from the previous night came back to him now. “You’re a ghost,” she had said when he finalized his bill, and he decided that he would remain that way a little longer. He discarded his goggles, woolen cap and gloves and stuffed them behind the skis. After the piercing chill of the early evening outside, the heat in the room was becoming oppressive but he kept his parka on for the time being. He could see no other parkas in the room and he reasoned that if he left his here, it would be noticed. He unzipped the front of the lightweight padded jacket. For now, that would have to be enough.

  His boots were another matter. They were too clumsy to go clumping around the hotel in if he hoped to maintain any degree of concealment. Usually, skiers left their indoor shoes here in the ski room, changing back into them at the end of the day. But Jesse had been planning to go directly to his car in the underground garage and that’s where his worn old Timberlands were at the moment.

  He knelt quickly and unclipped the ski boots, sliding his feet out of them, unable to resist the small groan of pleasure as the restriction was released from his feet. He grinned wryly to himself. The old adage among skiers, the best part of skiing is taking your boots off, was a definite truism. There was a scrap of threadbare toweling hanging above the boot pegs and he quickly wiped the excess snow and moisture from them and hung them onto two of the thick dowels that stood out from the walls to support them. Then in his socks, he made his way out of the ski room. He cursed quietly as he trod in the icy puddle that his skis had left by the door.

  Outside, in the gray concrete hallway, he hesitated. There was an elevator, of course, but there was no way he was taking that. He glanced around, looking for the doorway to the service stairs that he had noticed earlier in the week. It was a few yards from the elevator and he slipped through it, testing it before he let it swing closed to ensure that he could get back through if necessary—that the handle inside wasn’t locked. Finding that it moved easily, he allowed the door to click shut. Then he headed down, toward the underground garage, his socks noiseless on the concrete steps.

  The fire door into the garage was equipped with a wire reinforced safety window and he peered carefully through it for a few moments, trying to see if there was any movement in the parking lot itself. He could only see a limited area of the parking lot so he eased the door quietly open and slid through, staying close to the wall and moving quickly to a deep pool of shadow.

  The parking lot mirrored the air of desertion that he’d seen in the ski room. A vast, low-ceilinged underground cavern, it stretched away before him, row after row of empty parking spaces, with only a few cars in evidence. His own rental, a last year’s model Buick, was a quarter of the way down the room. Staying close to the wall, he moved silently toward it, his left hand reaching into his parka’s inside pocket for the keys.

  And stopped.

  Here was a problem he hadn’t foreseen. The Buick had an electronic lock, and as soon as he hit it, the indicator lights would flash and the audio warning would chirp twice. In the empty silence of the parking lot it would stand out like a gunshot. Before he tried retrieving anything from the car, he had better make damned sure there was nobody else down here with him.

  He scouted the entire basement quickly. It wasn’t all that hard, with most of the car spaces empty. He moved quietly around the outer perimeter, the cold concrete chiling his wet feet even further, until he was satisfied that he was alone down here. Then he retraced his steps to the car, stopping in the shadow of one of the concrete pillars some thirty feet from the Buick. If somebody suddenly popped out of the woodwork when he hit the button, it might be a good idea not to be standing too close to the car while it hooted and flashed.

  He hit the remote and winced as the car went through its unlocking performance. It seemed even louder and brighter than he’d expected. Pausing a moment, he waited to see if there was any reaction to the light and the noise. Nothing. He edged forward toward the car and opened the driver’s door.

  There was no shout. No sudden burst of gunfire. No clatter of running feet. He was alone down here. Hastily, he popped the trunk lid and unzipped the battered old soft bag that held his gear. The Timberland moccasins were on top of the folded clothes inside the case and he slipped them on gratefully, then rummaged through the clothes to find a spare pair of socks. As soon as he had a minute, he’d discard the wet pair he was wearing. His hands were running through the layers of clothes and personal items now, searching for the small leather satchel… and finding it. He unzipped it and placed it on top of the mussed up suitcase.

  The Colt was still there, along with two spare magazines of .45 ACP ammunition.

  He slipped the spares into a pocket in his parka, then thumbed the magazine release and caught the magazine as it slid out of the butt, checking to make sure it had a full load. Before he replaced it, he eased the action back a little, making sure the chamber was empty. He remembered leaving it that way when he’d packed it but with guns it always paid to make sure your memory was correct.

  He slid the magazine back into the butt and worked the slide once, jacking a round into the chamber. Carefully, he let the hammer down and shoved the safety on. Now, if he needed to fire in a hurry, he simply had to cock the hammer and release the safety where it fell easily to hand by his right thumb. It might be wise to leave the gun with its chamber unloaded for traveling. When you were expecting to run into trouble, it was just as wi
se to have it ready for action.

  He slid the gun into his waistband in the small of his back, then closed the trunk as carefully as he could. Automatically, he was about to hit the remote lock once more, out of sheer force of habit, when he realized he might need to come back to the car sometime later. He left it unlocked.

  Taking a moment to get his bearings, Jesse headed toward the western side of the building. There should be another set of service stairs here that would take him up to the arrivals area—the tunnel where he’d guessed the shooting had occurred.

  There’d been no further sound of shots since the first. But, some forty minutes ago, he’d been puzzled by a string of muffled explosions that seemed to come from some way off. Maybe they had nothing to do with the situation here. It might just be routine avalanche clearance work. He’d heard enough explosions in the week he’d been here to think of them as a normal background noise.

  There was another safety-windowed door leading into the tunnel. Carefully, he checked, pressing hard against the door to give himself the widest possible field of view. Once again, there seemed to be nobody on the other side of the door. Still, he edged it open an inch at a time, peering at the widening expanse of tunnel that became visible, before slipping through and allowing the door to close quietly behind him.

  The Colt was in his right hand, safety off and thumb curled over the hammer, ready to cock it. There was nobody here. Then he noticed the small, huddled shape against the outer wall of the tunnel—at first looking like a discarded bundle of ski clothing. But Jesse had seen discarded bundles like that before and he knew it for what it was: a body.

  Crouching close to the wall, eyes darting in all directions, he advanced on the body.

  It was a woman, he saw, guessing that she was relatively young. He had to guess because the features were a mask of dried blood and a large part of the face was missing.

  Knowing it was hopeless, he touched a finger to her throat, feeling for a pulse. The flesh was cold and clammy to the touch. There was no flicker of life there. Kneeling beside her, he cast his eyes around the tunnel and caught a glimpse of bright metal. Crossing to it, he knelt and picked it up—turning it in his hand to see the letters stamped into the brass. It was a 9 millimeter shell case that had caught a stray gleam of light. Now he could see several more scattered around—eight or nine in all. He remembered the sudden burst of automatic fire that he’d heard that afternoon and he realized that he had been correct. This was where the shooting had taken place.