02 Avalanche Pass (18 page)

“French fries,” she said and Jesse looked at her, uncomprehending. “I’ve got to get French fries out of the freezer back here,” she told him and they walked the few steps to the big industrial freezer. Jesse slid back one of the plastic lids and she saw a row of plain plastic packs, labeled in blue capitals: “Frozen French fries.”

The deputy picked one out for her and added it to the carton with the stew cans. She smiled her thanks.

“I’d better get back,” she said and he nodded. She hesitated, then said: “What are you going to do? Maybe you should get the hell out of here.” Although she wasn’t surprised when he shook his head.

“I’ll stick around for a while,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to do something. As long as they don’t know I’m here, I might come in handy at some point.”

The thought struck her that their initial lighthearted involvement was developing into something a whole lot more significant—although not in any direction she might have anticipated. She felt comforted by the knowledge that he was here. He was the sort of person you’d like to have around when there was trouble. There was something… dependable… about him.

“Here,” she said. “Take this.” She pressed a plastic card into his hand. He glanced down and saw that it was her security pass card. “It’ll open any door in the building. It might come in handy.”

He regarded the innocuous looking piece of plastic, tossing it lightly in his hand.

“It might at that,” he said and smiled at her.

Another thought struck her. “Room 517 is my room,” she said. “You’ll find a .38 in the left-hand bureau drawer.”

He repeated the room number and nodded at her. “How will we make contact?” he asked and she glanced around the storeroom.

“I guess I’ll be helping the chef with meals. Either wait for me here or leave a message under this can.” She indicated a can of pickled
cactus on the second shelf from floor level. It didn’t strike her as the sort of thing they’d be using over the next few days. He grinned as he read the label.

“Good choice,” he agreed.

Another thought struck her. “One thing: if I come in here every time we’re cooking someone might get suspicious. If you’re here, or you’ve left a message, leave two coffee mugs upside down on the bench beside the big sink.”

“Two coffee mugs,” he agreed. Then, suddenly fearful, suddenly aware of how long she’d been in the storeroom, she glanced nervously toward the door. “I’d better get out of here,” she said. Then she leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the mouth before she left.

C
ale Lawson and Denton Colby were drinking coffee in the FBI agent’s command trailer. The sheriff looked at his companion with a mixture of respect and pity. He was damned glad he hadn’t been put in charge of this mess, he thought, particularly now that they’d received the hostages’ names. There, right at the top, was Senator Ted Carling, senior senator from Washington state, followed by some of the most important names in the aerospace industry. That piece of information put this whole mess right out of the league of a Utah sheriff, Lawson thought to himself.

“Didn’t take the press long to see through the avalanche story,” Dent said. The sheriff shook his head.

“They announced the hotline when they released the initial statement. Some bright reporter rang in, pretending to be a relative. They kind of let the cat out of the bag.”

Dent sighed and took a sip of coffee. “Bound to happen sooner or later. How’s the situation down there?”

“We’ve set up an information center. So far, nearly three hundred people have been in to find out what’s going on. Not that we’re telling ’em too much. The important thing is to keep them off the road leading up here. I’ve had the state police set up roadblocks on Canyon Road. They’re turning back anyone who doesn’t have a good reason to be here. Including the press.”

“Sooner or later, we’re going to have to let some of the reporters in,” Dent said. “For the moment, I’ve got a press officer keeping them at bay.”

“So, what you going to do about all this?” Lawson asked, jerking a thumb at the hostage list. Colby shrugged.

“Not much I can do right now. Ball’s still in their court. We should know soon enough if they know who they’ve got. Guess if they do, their ransom demand will climb a little higher.”

“I guess so,” the sheriff agreed. Then, curiously, he asked, “You done much of this sort of thing in the past?”

Colby pursed his lips, selecting his words before replying. “Some,” he said at length. “I’m one of the Bureau’s three senior negotiators. One of us usually gets called in at some stage in a hostage situation. The scale of this one makes it a little different, of course.”

“So what do you usually do in these situations?” Lawson asked him and Colby’s heavy featured face twisted into a wry grin.

“Just what we’re doing now,” he replied. “We wait. And, sooner or later, the perps tell us what they want, where they want it and when they want it by.”

“And you just give it to them?” Lawson asked. It wasn’t his idea of law enforcement.

Colby shrugged again. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “if there’s no other way to get the hostages out.”

“And how do you know that?” the sheriff persisted. Colby looked up at him and their eyes locked as he answered.

“You can’t ever know,” he said. “Not for sure. You have to go with what your gut tells you.”

Lawson didn’t want to ask the next, obvious question. And he sensed that Colby didn’t want it asked either. But a mixture of curiosity and professional interest drove him to it.

“What does your gut tell you on this one?” he asked finally. Colby let out a long, drawn-out breath. It was a sound of surrender.

“At the moment, it’s telling me this is one of those times,” he admitted. He glanced at the narrow cot set against the end wall. The trailer was a normal recreational model, with living quarters, a kitchenette and a shower recess and toilet. In addition to the standard fittings, there was a Hewlett-Packard laptop, with wireless modem connection, printer and scanner and a state-of-the-art communications console.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Sheriff, I think I’ll get a few hours’ sleep. I figure the time’s going to come over the next few days when I’ll need all I can get.”

He accompanied the words with a small smile, to let the sheriff know no insult was intended. Cale Lawson nodded his understanding, reached for the small-brimmed Stetson that was on the sofa bench behind him and rose, heading for the narrow trailer door. He stepped down the three metal stairs to the road, his breath freezing in giant clouds on the still night air. Above them, when he glanced up, the stars blazed at him out of a clear sky.

“Be a fine day tomorrow,” he said. Colby, leaning inside the doorframe of the trailer, grunted.

“For some,” he said.

The intercom on the director’s desk buzzed discreetly. Benjamin looked up from the printout in front of him. “Yes, Lois?” he said. There was no need for him to hit a switch on the intercom. It was voice-activated. Technology, he thought, doing everything possible to conserve his energy so that he could focus more completely on the job at hand.

“Director Tildeman is here, sir.” His secretary had a soft Virginia accent that even the tinny tones of the intercom couldn’t hide.

“Ask him to step in please, Lois,” he said and he rose from behind his desk to greet the national security director as he came in through the heavy, soundproof door that ensured privacy for the head of the FBI.

In times past, Benjamin thought sourly, that privacy had been necessary to preserve the highly dubious reputation of the man for whom the building was named. Nowadays, he hoped, the secrecy served a more worthwhile purpose.

“Working late, Linus?” Tildeman asked and Benjamin replied with a vague gesture.

“Fairly normal hours. You on your way home?” The NSA director’s home was over an hour’s drive from D.C., set in eight acres of rolling Virginia woodland.

“Not much else we can accomplish tonight,” Tildeman said and Benjamin nodded agreement. “What do you make of that?” Tildeman continued, indicating the printout that had come through from Denton Colby’s headquarters some time earlier in the evening. Benjamin shook his head wearily.

“It complicates things,” he said. “Particularly if these people know who they’ve got.”

“But so far, there’s no indication that they do know?” Tildeman said and Benjamin shrugged once more.

“No indication that they don’t either,” he said. “They could be playing cat and mouse with us here. They know we know who they’ve got but they’re not going to tell us that they know who they’ve got—that sort of thing.”

Tildeman considered the thought. “Is there any reason why they would do that?” he asked. Benjamin sank back into his swivel chair, motioning for the NSA director to be seated. He leaned back, rubbing his tired eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

“Keeps us off balance,” he said finally. “If we’re not sure how much they know, it affects our negotiating position. Obviously, we don’t want to tell them who they’ve got. At the same time, we’ve got to move carefully so that if they happen to be testing us out or if they happen to find out in the future, we don’t appear to have intentionally misled them. If we do that, we hand them an advantage. We’ve got to establish a position of trust with them.”

Tildeman snorted derisively at the word. “Trust,” he said, “with a bunch of gun-toting loony tunes.”

Benjamin nodded. “It seems odd, I know,” he said. “But we have to establish an appearance of honesty with them. The real skill is knowing when to lie—and to avoid being caught out when you do.”

“This guy you’ve got there—is he good at that?” Tildeman asked, and the FBI director answered with a thin smile.

“Colby?” he said, “Oh yes. He’s one of the best. He doesn’t look it. That’s what makes him so effective.”

There was a silence for a moment or two. Both men knew this was a time for waiting, a time to allow events to develop further. But that didn’t stop them both chafing at the enforced inaction.

“Jesus,” said Benjamin at length. “Why couldn’t Carling have gone to Aspen with his buddies?”

“He’s a Republican,” Tildeman replied, with grim humor. “They still love the Kennedys in Aspen.” Benjamin acknowledged the sally with a tired grin of his own. “Who are his buddies anyway?” the NSA director added. “I saw Carling’s name and that pretty well stopped me.”

Benjamin picked up the printed list and began running down the names. “Rockley you’d know. He’s head of the Rockair Group. He’s taken two of his people along as well: Bob Soropoulos, his chief designer, and Nathaniel Pell, Rockair’s senior test pilot. Antony Beresford is from General Electric—he’s a VP in their jet engine division. Then there’s Carl Aldiss from Sperry Rand…”

“The radar guy?” Tildeman asked and Benjamin looked up at him.

“You know him?”

“Just by sight. He was called to advise a senate committee last month over the horizon radar installations. Some of the work came out of our budget and I went along to see what he had to say. Seems to know his business. So what the hell are they doing there, other than skiing?”

Benjamin sat back and stretched his cramped shoulders before answering.

“It’s an idea Carling came up with a few years ago. He’s got a lot of the aerospace companies in his electorate and he thought it’d be a good idea to get them together each year in a kind of informal seminar and think tank. This year, the subject is the next generation stealth bomber. Preliminary contracts are under review at the moment. Carling wanted an opportunity to go through the initial test results before he takes a recommendation to the Senate. Rockair has built the prototype and Aldiss and his team have been doing the radar testing on it.

“The thinking is, if he can’t see it, nobody will be able to.”

“Well,” said Tildeman, rising to leave, “one thing’s for sure. He can’t see it while he’s in Utah.”

Benjamin walked his visitor to the door. “See you in the morning,” he said. There was a conference scheduled at the White House for 8 a.m. They’d all agreed that it was best if the president kept a relatively low profile on this for the moment. They would maintain the outward appearance of keeping him informed and that was all. Any undue interest on his part might alert the terrorists to the fact that they had a VIP hostage on their hands. After all, as Benjamin had pointed out, the Canyon Lodge had television and terrorists watched the six o’clock news like anyone else.

“Don’t work too late,” Tildeman cautioned. Benjamin laughed softly.

“I thrive on lack of sleep,” he said. He opened the door for his guest, punching in a four-figure code as he did so. He could have done that from his desk but Tildeman was a friend as well as a professional colleague and he preferred to see him to the door. The NSA director paused, remembering something.

“Have you heard anything more from Emery?” he asked. Benjamin pointed one forefinger to the floor below their feet.

“He’s here, in the basement. I’ve assigned a couple of guys to him to see if they can see any significance in this message idea of his.”

Tildeman pushed out his bottom lip thoughtfully. “You put any credence in that?” he asked. His own immediate reaction was to discount the theory so he was interested to see Benjamin hesitate before replying.

“I’m not going to ignore the possibility,” he said eventually. “After all, we’ve been known to do a little message sending ourselves.”

He saw the other man’s eyebrows go up a little at that and he went on in explanation. “LBJ spent a good deal of the Vietnam War sending messages to Ho Chi Minh. At least, that’s what he thought he was doing,” he amended. “When he wouldn’t let our guys take out SAM sites before they became active, he figured Ho would think: He could do it if he wanted to. Therefore, by not bombing them
while they’re being built and they’re vulnerable, he’s telling me he’s a reasonable man and he’s prepared to negotiate.”