02 Avalanche Pass (36 page)

He’d brought a blanket from the room but after half an hour sitting on the cold concrete in the unheated stairwell, he’d begun to wish he’d brought two or three. The cold ate into him, seeming to go bone deep and numbing his feet and hands from the inside out. He was cramped and stiff after the first hour. By now, after twelve hours, he was totally miserable.

And totally bored.

Yet, at the same time, there was a hard lump of apprehension in the pit of his stomach. He was exposed here, as he hadn’t been at any stage so far. Kormann and his men were only a matter of yards away and at any moment one of them could decide to walk into the stairwell and check it, or maybe take a shortcut between floors. It wasn’t likely, he knew. If he were one of the guards and had to move to another floor, he’d use the elevators. There was no reason not to, particularly when you considered that with less than twenty people moving around the hotel at any given time, the elevators were easily able to cope with demand.

Still, it was possible that someone could come in here and discover him. For that reason, he’d had to keep his equipment to a minimum. If he heard or saw that door beginning to open, he had to be able to gather everything immediately and head upstairs in a hurry, keeping out of sight. He’d chosen the upstairs landing deliberately. If someone were going to use the stairs, odds were best that he’d be going down. The only reason the guards had to go up was to head for the roof and that was fifteen floors away. If he was wrong about it, he’d just have to get well ahead of whoever was coming upstairs, then use Tina’s keycard to open the door into one of the higher floors.

The potential need for silence was another source of discomfort. He’d left his Timberlands off and was wearing socks only and now his feet felt like blocks of ice. As a member of the Denver PD, Jesse had spent many hours on stakeout, cold, bored and uncomfortable. And around Steamboat Springs, he’d done his share of hunting, waiting in hiding for his quarry to come first into sight and then into range. So he was used to the discomfort, the cold and the utter boredom of it all. But being used to something and enjoying it were two different items altogether, he thought. In fact, the more time he spent in situations like this one, the less he liked it.

He wished now that he’d thought to bring one of the pillows from Tina’s room. The concrete was getting harder and harder with each passing minute. He wriggled his butt for what must have been the thousandth time, finding a few seconds of relief from the new position before the hard concrete asserted itself once more. He yawned. He’d made a pot of coffee the night before and emptied it into a used soft drink bottle—a systematic search of Bowden’s room and the two adjoining ones had failed to turn up any sign of an insulated container. There was a grainy, cold mouthful left in the bottle and he swigged it morosely, hoping the caffeine hit would do something to revive his spirits. He yawned again. Apparently not, he thought.

Such was the dulled state of his reactions that the fire door was halfway open before he registered the fact that someone was coming through it.

It was too late to run now. Any movement would be seen. Cursing himself for letting the conditions relax his attention, Jesse quickly stood and tossed the blanket to one side, out of the man’s line of sight, and began walking down the half flight of stairs toward the door. The man who entered the stairway now was a tall, well-muscled African-American. Jesse had a second to wish that he’d been a small, thin Italian-American but now the man was looking up at him in surprise. He hadn’t expected to see anyone else on the stairs. Before he could say anything, Jesse spoke.

“Where the hell have you been? Have you got the seeker unit?” He forced himself to sound exasperated, like a man who has been looking all over for the person he’s just confronted. Carter, the African-American, hesitated. Jesse was dressed in jeans and a parka, much the same sort of clothes that the guards wore. That, and his words, created a moment of doubt in Carter’s mind. There were nearly twenty men working for Kormann and he only knew maybe five of them—and another eight or nine by sight.

“Seeker unit?” he repeated now, wondering what the hell Jesse was talking about.

“Goddamn it! I told Kormann that one of the Stinger seeker units was acting up. He was sending a replacement twenty minutes ago.” The exasperation was plain in his voice now. That, and the mention of Kormann’s name, served to allay any possible suspicion on Carter’s part. He shrugged. He knew nothing about any seeker unit. He’d been heading down to the ground floor level to check the layout of the Atrium restaurant. It was only two floors down and he’d decided it was quicker to use the stairs.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.” He stood aside, assuming that the man wanted to go through the fire door into the hotel proper. Then, as Jesse hesitated, Carter realized that he had subconsciously registered something unusual about the man before him. Now it hit his conscious awareness.

“Where are your shoes?” he said, realizing in the same instant that he had let the man get too close to him. He tried to back up but the edge of the half-open door stopped him and he glanced
around involuntarily to see what the obstruction was and that was when Jesse hit him.

It was a hard, straight left with all Jesse’s body weight behind it and it landed with crunching force on Carter’s nose. Tears sprang into his eyes in an unavoidable reflex as the bone and cartilage gave way. He reeled away from the door, hitting the concrete wall of the stairwell, blinded by the tears, clutching the air in front of him as Jesse grabbed desperately at his throat to stop him calling out. Carter felt his head bounce off the concrete as Jesse jerked him backward and forward, keeping him off balance, slamming his head repeatedly against the wall.

Jesse fought grimly to maintain his advantage. The man was bigger than he was and if he let him recover from the first attack, he would inevitably get the upper hand. In addition, Jesse had to keep him silent, while the other man had no such problems. He could yell the house down for help if he got any respite. At the moment, his entire being was focused on survival. Jesse slammed the man’s head against the wall again, then felt hands gripping at the collar of his parka. The .45 was in the parka pocket and he had no chance to reach for it. Besides, a shot would be heard all over the second floor and he couldn’t afford that. He jerked the man forward and back, hitting the wall again. He could see the eyes beginning to lose focus. Carter fought for his life, but his knees were buckling and his consciousness was beginning to waver.

Carter felt a sudden surge of fear as the face in front of him began to blur and he knew he was losing the fight. The fear turned to desperation and he rolled sideways, still gripping the other man’s collar, taking him with him as they plunged down the half flight of stairs, spinning so as to bring Jesse underneath as they hit the hard concrete.

They rolled in a tangle of arms and legs down the stairs, each losing his grip on the other, coming to rest side by side on the landing below. Jesse gasped for breath. His ribs had taken the force of the stairs, with Carter’s weight on top of him in the first fall, and he could barely breathe. The other man was in worse condition, however.
He was dazed. He’d cracked his head against the iron pipe stair railing as they fell and rolled and now he lay with his head through the rail, supported by the lower rung.

Blinded and disoriented, Carter groped in his belt holster for the Beretta Model 92 that he kept there, clawing it free of the jacket that was in his way. Dimly, he was aware that his assailant was regaining his feet, just a yard or so away, and he knew if he didn’t get the pistol out in time he was finished. He felt a wave of relief as the pistol came free and he pointed it vaguely at the fuzzy shape near him and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The Beretta was fitted with a double-action trigger. Once a round was chambered, all you needed to do was pull on that trigger to cock the hammer and get the first round away—as long as you also released the safety at the top left of the grip. Dazed and disoriented, Carter had forgotten that vital step. Now as his thumb sought the little grooved lever, Jesse had come to his knees beside him.

Carter sprawled across the stairwell, his neck supported by the iron railing, his throat and chin exposed. Jesse heard the small metallic click as the safety on the Beretta released and knew he had maybe two seconds to act.

One was enough. He struck forward with the heel of his right hand, thrusting at the raised chin before him, fingers spread to stiffen the impact. His hand caught the exposed chin and jolted Carter’s head violently back over the railing. His neck, trapped as it was, couldn’t take the sudden impact and snapped like a twig.

As he died, his right hand clenched in a reflex movement and the Beretta went off, the report loud and ringing in the concrete walls of the stairwell.

“Shit!” Jesse exclaimed, ducking for cover as the 9 millimeter round cannoned off the concrete walls. The shot had been deafening in the confined, echoing space. It had to have been heard outside the stairwell. He staggered upright, shaking his head. The adrenaline was still pumping, for the moment masking the pain of the bruises and contusions he’d suffered as they rolled down the stairwell. He figured he had a couple of minutes to get the hell out of here, and
the way was down. His ski boots and skis were in the lower ground floor ski room. He’d use the time he had to get to them, then get the hell out and head for the chairlift.

There was no time to recover his shoes and anyway, he realized, he wouldn’t be needing them. He pounded silently down the concrete stairs for the lower level. Behind him, he thought he heard muffled shouting. He was three flights down when he heard the door into the stairwell open, back on the second floor. Then the shouting was a lot less muffled as whoever it was saw the sprawled body on the landing. A voice echoed down the stairwell to him.

“It’s Carter! He’s dead!”

He kept going, unaware of the fact that his shoes, and the blanket he had been using, had brought him precious extra minutes.

Seeing them on the stairs above the body, the man who found Carter naturally assumed that his attacker had gone that way, abandoning shoes and blanket as he went. He started up in pursuit, then hesitated. His reaction had been an instinctive one, now reason came into play. Why would you attack a man, then abandon your shoes and a blanket as you ran away, he wondered. He stopped, uncertainly. From several floors down, he heard a door open, then bang shut. He grabbed the radio from his belt and thumbed the talk button.

W
hat the fuck was that?” Kormann sat bolt upright in his chair at the sound.

Pallisani, relaxing on the couch opposite, swung upright at the sound too. Both men looked at each other. Kormann was already thumbing the talk button on his radio, while he unholstered his own Beretta.

“All stations, report your status,” he said. There was no need to identify himself. They knew his voice.

“Roof. Nine men,” came the laconic reply from Mosby, in charge on the roof. They’d heard no shot fired and he assumed it was a routine check.

“Gym. Three men.” That was the patrol leader in the room with the hostages. Kormann added quickly. Twelve men. Plus him and Pallisani made fourteen. Three more in the ante room outside the gymnasium, where he could see them. One of them raised his eyebrows interrogatively. He was looking around as well. He’d heard the shot too. Seventeen men reporting.

“Harrison, ground floor, patrolling.” Eighteen.

“Alston, second floor, patrolling.” Nineteen. “Thought I heard something from the stairwell,” the last voice added. Nineteen accounted for, thought Kormann. That left one… he thought, picturing the faces of the men in the different positions who had reported in.

“Where’s Carter?” he asked suddenly. Pallisani replied, easing the slide on his own Beretta to make sure there was a round chambered.

“He went down to the ground floor to check out the Atrium,” he replied. Kormann thumbed the talk button again.

“Carter, report in… Carter…” He waited but there was no sound other than the hiss of the carrier wave. Then they heard a click as someone depressed his talk button, and Alston’s excited voice, shouting down the radio link.

“It’s Carter! He’s dead!”

Kormann jerked his head to Pallisani. “Let’s go,” he said. Outside, the three men who had been relaxing in the ante room were waiting for them, Ingrams ready slung. The three on patrol in the gym would stay where they were, Kormann knew, and he led the way to the stairwell.

He hit the radio again. “All stations, we’ve had a shot fired and Carter is dead. Roof, you got any sign of inbound traffic?”

There was a brief pause as the sentries above scanned the horizon with a deal more care than they had been doing. Then the reply:

“Negative.”

“Okay. Keep your eyes open. Anybody off-duty up there, give them a pair of binoculars and get ’em on watch. This could be the start of something. Or it could be an accident. Let’s assume it’s the first, okay?”

He heard a double-click as someone acknowledged—he assumed it was Mosby. Then they had reached the stairwell and Alston was waiting for them.

“His neck’s broken,” he said simply and they crowded into the stairwell, standing over the sprawled body that hung over the rail.

“He wasn’t shot?” Kormann asked quickly, moving down the stairs to kneel beside the body, checking to see if there was any sign of a gunshot wound.

“No. His neck’s broken. The shot was from his gun.”

The Beretta was still clasped loosely in Carter’s dead hand. Kormann took it, prizing the fingers apart, and raised it to his nostrils. There was the distinct smell of burnt powder around the ejection port. A gleam of brass caught his eye and he saw the ejected shell case lying on the next half flight of stairs. He touched the back of
Carter’s head and his hand came away sticky with blood. He looked up at Pallisani, who indicated the wall by the door, where he could see unmistakable smears of blood.