02 Avalanche Pass Read online

  “Ice and lime?” he asked and Kormann nodded again.

  “That sounds good,” he said. He was right. When Estevez passed him the glass, the sides already frosting with dew in the hot, humid climate, the smooth bite of the rum and sharp tang of the fresh limes were a perfect combination. He sipped once, experimentally, then again, deeper this time for enjoyment. He leaned back in the cane chair. This was the way to talk business, he thought, not sweating in tropical heat and swatting at mosquitoes under the palm thatch of an African hut, in the company of a would-be president with psychopathic tendencies and delusions of destiny. Again, he surveyed the vast lake below them, dotted in this part with green islands. Estevez followed his gaze, frowning as he saw the cruise ship, still steadfastly making its way across Lake Gatun.

  “Look at that,” he said distastefully. “Where’s the glamour? Where’s the beauty? They don’t build real ships anymore. They might as well set a city block afloat as one of those.”

  Kormann shrugged. Estevez had a taste for the old ways, for old-fashioned glamour and style. The restored Grumman at the jetty was proof of that. But frankly, Kormann hadn’t traveled halfway around the world to discuss glamour and the lost era of ocean liners.

  “It’s practical,” he said. “But you didn’t ask me here to discuss ships.”

  “That’s true,” Estevez said. Normally, he expected those he dealt with to defer to him, to allow him to set the pace of their agenda. But Kormann was something more than a subordinate, or even an employee. He was a man Estevez trusted and respected, a professional who had seen the Jefe through more than one dangerous situation in the past. He was a colleague—slightly junior perhaps, but a colleague nonetheless.

  He reached to a side table now and retrieved a manila file folder. The cover was battered and creased. The file inside had been collated over a long period and added to continually. He opened it and spread out several black and white photos, separating them from the pile of typescript and press cuttings that the folder also contained. Kormann glanced at them incuriously. He knew who the subject would be. The photos were grainy and showed the lack of perspective that meant they’d been taken through a telephoto lens.

  He flicked the photos around so that he could view them right side up, then glanced up at the Jefe’s face.

  “Still him,” he said. He saw the sudden rush of blood to Estevez’s face, saw the rage that suddenly burned deep behind his eyes.

  “Still him. I don’t forget. Not ever.”

  Kormann pushed the photos back across the table. He didn’t need to study them.

  “Are you sure this is worth pursuing?” he asked. “It must be years now.”

  “It’s eight years. Eight years and two months.” Estevez stabbed a forefinger at one of the photos and leaned toward his guest. The intense hatred in his voice was almost palpable. It was all Kormann could do not to recoil slightly.

  “And if it were eighteen years, or twenty, or thirty, it would still be worth pursuing. This man attacked me. He chose to become my enemy and I do not allow that to go unanswered. Maybe you don’t understand that. You’re an anglo, after all.” There was the slightest hint of disdain in his voice as he added the last few words.

  The mercenary shrugged. Revenge wasn’t one of his motivators. Profit was. “It’s your money,” he said.

  Estevez nodded agreement. He took a deep breath, making a visible effort and regaining control after his sudden show of emotion. He leaned back. “And I have plenty of it.”

  “Which is all I need to know,” Kormann told him. Their gazes met and there was a moment of silence between them.

  “What I need to know,” Estevez said, “is can you put a team together quickly? Say, fifteen to twenty men?”

  “How quickly is quickly?” Kormann asked and Estevez paused, considering.

  “On two weeks’ notice. To be available in the United States within two weeks of your receiving the go ahead. One other thing,” he added. “Don’t pick anyone you may want to use again. There will certainly be casualties.”

  He was pleased to see that Kormann didn’t even need to think about his answer.

  “Not a problem,” he said evenly. “Will it be Washington?”

  The Jefe shook his head. “Washington is impossible these days. Too much security. Too many cameras. I should have got him last time. Things were easier then. But the shooter was incompetent.”

  Kormann shrugged. “One shooter is never enough if you want to make certain. Too many things can go wrong. Look at Kennedy. It took four to make sure of him—five, if you count Oswald.”

  Estevez tapped the documents in the folder. “Well, this time, he’ll be away from Washington. There’s a pattern emerging in his movements that we can take advantage of.”

  Kormann picked up the half-empty glass. The beads of dew had coalesced into water and it dripped on his trousers as he drank. He ignored it. The material would dry in minutes in this heat.

  “Time frame?” he said. “I have a few projects coming up in the next six months.”

  “There’ll be no conflict. I’m looking at maybe eighteen months. Winter in the North.”

  Kormann smiled. “You certainly plan things well in advance,” he said. Estevez didn’t return the smile.

  “That’s how you make sure of things. I learned my lesson last time. I need a little more time to make sure this pattern is permanent. We can talk about fees over the coming months. You know by now that I pay well.”

  “That’s why I came here.” Kormann finished his drink and set the glass down on the table. Estevez made a tentative move toward the bottle.

  “Another?” he invited. He enjoyed Kormann’s company. He liked speaking with someone who didn’t live in fear of him. Then again, he thought, with a small inner smile, he liked speaking with people who did live in fear of him as well.

  “Maybe not,” Kormann said. “I’ll call for the boat. He’s cruising somewhere down the Banana Cut.” He took a utilitarian Nokia cell from his hip pocket and began to hit the numbers. Estevez smiled to himself. Everything about Kormann was unremarkable. No flashy jewelry. No ostentatious phone. Estevez indicated the jetty below them with a sweeping gesture.

  “Why not fly back to Panama City?” he offered. “I’ll have my pilot take you in the Grumman.” But again, Kormann declined.

  “The Grumman is a pretty distinctive piece of hardware,” he said. “Best if I’m not seen associated with you.”

  “You may be right. Keep a low profile.”

  The mercenary nodded. “I always have.”

  EIGHTEEN

  CANYON ROAD

  WASATCH COUNTY

  5 MILES FROM CANYON LODGE

  1755 HOURS, MOUNTAIN TIME

  SATURDAY, DAY 1

  THE PRESENT

  Sheriff Cale Lawson took off his small-brimmed Stetson and scratched his head thoughtfully. Above the suntanned face—browned and weathered by years of exposure to the mountain elements—there was a startling white patch of skin where the hat protected his forehead from the sun, surmounted by a thinning thatch of gray hair. Cale was fifty-seven and he’d decided a year back that he wasn’t going to be running again for sheriff of Wasatch County. He had another eight months in the job and he wished this damn mess had shown the good taste to wait nine of them. So far, he’d been the main contact with the terrorists in the hotel. Fortunately there hadn’t been a lot of it and he felt that, so far, he hadn’t made any irretrievable mistakes in dealing with them. But now he was aware of a distinct sense of relief at being able to hand over the responsibility.

  “So what do you think?” he said to Special Agent-in-Charge Denton Colby. The FBI agent didn’t answer immediately. He was standing in the middle of the road, staring fixedly at the pile of rock, snow and ice that filled it. He was a massively built black man, with a thick, bullish neck, muscle-corded shoulders and heavy features. He was just over six feet tall, but the width of his shoulders and the massive chest made him appear almost squat.
He was a remarkably ugly man, and he seemed almost disproportioned. Yet Lawson had noticed that he moved with a certain athletic grace, and a deceptively light step. Vaguely, he remembered the name. He was a boxing fan, had been all his life, and the name Colby was familiar to him. He frowned, searching his memory, but to no avail.

  In a day or so, he’d remember that Denton Colby had boxed light heavy in the Golden Gloves and had missed out on silver at the 1988 Olympics when his Polish opponent’s intentional elbow, unnoticed by the ref, had opened a deep gash in his left eyebrow, bringing the fight to an abrupt end. Colby could have taken the Pole with one hand. But trying to do it with one eye was a different matter altogether.

  Now, the ex-boxer surveyed the blocked road that led to Canyon Lodge.

  “Can we clear it?” he asked finally, and Lawson let go a short bark of laughter.

  “Hell yes, we can,” he said. “But I don’t see us doing it this side of a month and by then those boys up at the lodge will be well away.”

  Colby shrugged. He’d thought as much but it never hurt to make sure. He shifted his frozen feet uncomfortably. He’d flown in from Washington and his thin street shoes were less than ideal wear for this frozen mountain road. He made a mental note to get someone to bring him a thick pair of boots. Maybe the local agent could do that for him, he thought. The damn fool wasn’t much use for anything else. He’d been almost pathetically grateful to hand over control of the scene to Colby upon his arrival.

  Cale Lawson moved a few paces to get a better look at the agent’s face. Colby’s features were a mask. He stared, expressionless, at the rubble that blocked the road, his mind’s eye soaring far beyond it to the hotel where close to one hundred people were held hostage—for what?

  So far, there had been a vague hint about ransom from the kidnappers, one mention only. Usually it was the subject of the first demand—and every other subsequent one as well. His impassive face gave him a stolid appearance, almost an appearance of dullness. Nothing was further from the truth. He was already weighing facts and suppositions, trying to fit the known details and the presumed ones into some sort of pattern.

  Lawson, like so many other people before him, mistook the agent’s lack of animation for a lack of resolution. Maybe the Washington hotshot needed prodding, he thought, and attempted some.

  “We’ve got the Jet Ranger here,” he suggested. “We could try taking a look up the valley some?”

  Colby thought about it. He’d seen the Bell 206 when he’d arrived. A similar chopper had flown him from Salt Lake City’s airport to the avalanche site. He hadn’t even had to deplane through the terminal. The commercial flight had stopped on the runway apron while steps were wheeled up and he disembarked and ran to the waiting chopper. It was lifting off and banking toward the Wasatches even before he had his seat belt buckled. The advantages of priority travel with the bureau, he thought.

  “There was some word about Stingers,” he said flatly, and Cale shrugged.

  “They said they’ve got ’em,” he agreed. “Whether they have or not is another matter.”

  Colby studied the county sheriff in his turn. He was a small man, thin and gray-haired. The gun belt with its holstered Beretta 9 millimeter sat high on his waist, seeming to cut off his upper torso prematurely, so that his uniform trousers looked to be pulled up way past his waist. Being small of stature, Lawson carried himself erect and straight-backed—making every inch of height count. Colby smiled to himself. He figured the sheriff for a feisty type, maybe a little argumentative and a touch headstrong. Colby found himself thinking of an aging bantam rooster as he looked at the wiry little sheriff. But the eyes were clear and honest, and instinctively he felt he could trust the other man.

  “Guess there’s one way to find out,” he said, and jerked his head toward the sheriff’s department Jet Ranger. “You up for a sightseeing flight?”

  Together they walked back down the road toward the chopper, passing the trailers that were being deployed, setting up a mobile command and communication post. A group of army six-by-sixes snarled up the hill from Salt Lake City, their diesel exhausts staining the evening sky. Colby saw fresh young faces peering curiously out from under grim kevlar helmets. National Guard, he thought. A state trooper was signaling the lead driver of the convoy, directing him to park a little farther along the road where there was still some space left. With a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other, that was becoming a precious commodity.

  As they walked, Lawson caught the chopper pilot’s eye and made a circling gesture with his right forefinger. The pilot took the hint and Colby heard the high-pitched whine of the starter, saw the big two-bladed rotor begin to turn slowly.

  Then as the revs came up and a thin haze of burnt JP4 blasted out of the jet’s exhaust, the wind began whipping his long-skirted Burberry coat around his legs. He remembered that his feet were still cold and decided it was too late now to start looking for boots. Instinctively bowing his head a few inches, he moved under the spinning rotor and hauled himself up into the rear seat. Lawson took the seat next to the pilot, stuffing his Stetson behind his seat and cramming an intercom headset on. Colby looked around the rear seat, saw another headset on a hook by the window and donned it.

  “Where to, Sheriff?” the pilot was asking. His uniform marked him as deputy in the Wasatch County sheriff’s department. The bone dome crash helmet he wore was emblazoned with a deputy’s star on its front.

  “Let’s take her up the valley, Gus,” Lawson’s voice rasped in the headphones. The deputy did a slight double take.

  “Up to the lodge, Sheriff?” he asked and Cale nodded.

  “Less you got somewhere else you’d like to go, son,” he replied evenly. The pilot pursed his lips.

  “Aaah… Sheriff,” he began uncertainly, “I heard tell they’ve got missiles up there.”

  Lawson settled back into the left-hand seat more comfortably and turned a thin smile on the pilot.

  “Heard much the same thing, Gus. Now let’s pull pitch and go find out.”

  The deputy swallowed and his hands fell to the controls. The chopper quivered slightly, then rose a few feet from the ground, slewing around to head up canyon.

  The sound of the blades whacking the air changed to a less frenetic note as the pitch changed and the little aircraft transitioned from the hover and began moving forward, nose down, with increasing speed.

  On the rear bench seat, Colby shifted position so that he was peering between the two men in front, giving himself a less restricted view out of the front windscreen. He guessed that, as the man in charge, he could have taken the left front seat instead of the Sheriff. But hell, he shrugged, it was the sheriff’s department’s chopper and there probably wouldn’t be a whole hell of a lot to see anyway. Lawson and the pilot, with the added advantage of the clear view panels in the front floor, had the best view of the ground rushing by below them.

  “Follow the road, son,” Lawson told the pilot, adding, “There’s no need to get up too high. Keep her below the ridge line as much as you can.”

  The road below them was still a tumble of rock and snow where the landslide had cut it. Then, after a couple of hundred yards, the black ribbon showed clear again. Looking at the mass of rubble blocking the way, Colby realized that the sheriff’s estimation had been right. It would take weeks to clear that mess—and a whole peck of heavy equipment to get the job done.

  The chopper twisted and turned, following the snake-like track of the road. The pilot needed no second urging to keep low. He wanted to stay masked behind those hills as long as possible. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, that wasn’t going to be for much longer. The valley started to widen out as they approached Canyon Lodge. They rounded a ridge and saw the lights of the massive hotel building a quarter mile away.

  “Hold it here a moment, Gus,” Lawson said, and the whacking of the rotor blades returned as they went into a hover. “Keep the nose on ’em,” he added, and Gus worked the pedals, reduc
ing power to the tail rotor momentarily to slew the nose of the chopper around so that it faced the building. Lawson glanced back over his shoulder at the bear-like FBI agent.

  “Those Stingers are short range. And they need a clear look at the heat signature from the tailpipe,” he said conversationally. “Figure this way we’ll fox them a little.”

  Colby grunted, then replied, “Good thinking, as long as they haven’t got any men on the peaks behind us here.” He saw the quick, nervous glance that the pilot flung over his shoulder at him. The distraction caused him to let the chopper slew a little to one side and he hastened to correct the movement as Lawson growled a warning at him.

  Colby leaned further forward between the two seats and focused a pair of night glasses on the hotel. Things seemed normal enough, he thought. There was no sign of movement. No sign of any trouble.

  “See anything?” Lawson’s voice rasped in his headphones.

  “Uh-uh,” he replied. Then he noticed something moving on the roof, and a light blinking at them. “Wait. Someone’s signaling…”

  “Jesus!” gasped the pilot and threw the chopper into a sideways, skidding dive as a twin line of yellow streaks reached out to them from the roof of the hotel. Colby, who had released his belt to gain a better view, was tossed sidelong on the rear bench seat. He saw streaks of light passing close to the perspex canopy of the helicopter, then impacting the rock face behind them before bouncing high into the air and eventually disappearing.

  “Get us out of here, Gus.” Lawson’s voice was tight. The chopper dropped to a bare twenty feet off the snow as the pilot twisted the throttle wide open, heading for the shelter of the narrow pass once more. The three men were silent as they raced for the narrow gap, fully aware that at any moment the fiery trail of a Stinger missile might reach out for them, homing on the hot gases of their exhaust.

  There was a sigh of relief from all three of them as they reached the shelter of the solid rock. Lawson turned to face the FBI agent once more. He pursed his lips reflectively.