02 Avalanche Pass (9 page)

“I’m afraid you’ll be staying, Ben. Now I want you to pick five others to stay here with us. And Ben,” he added quietly, “don’t go picking any heroes, okay?”

S
enator Ted Carling locked his skis in the ski rack and clumped up the escalator to the reception desk. He stopped, puzzled, as he took in the deserted lobby, the empty tour desks and the lobby drugstore with its closed sign in place. The hotel looked deserted, yet it was barely half-past three in the afternoon.

As he stood, uncertainly, he noticed a tall, gray-haired man behind the reception desk. The senator moved toward him. He didn’t recognize the man and he was wearing shirtsleeves and a tie, rather than the usual hotel uniform blazer.

“Yes, Senator Carling? Can I help you?” the man said. Carling wasn’t particularly surprised that the other man knew his identity. He was a prominent figure and he was used to being recognized wherever he went. He courted media attention to make sure of it. Being recognized gave a man presence. And influence. And that spelled power. He swept his hand around the deserted lobby.

“Where is everybody? I wanted change for the cigarette machine but the store is closed,” he said. His tone of voice, and his body language, said that he expected the situation to be rectified. Whatever the senator wanted, the senator got.

The gray-haired man leaned forward, dropping his voice to a more confidential level, even though there was nobody around to overhear. “Yes, sir. I’m afraid we’ve had a most tragic event. One of the staff…”

“Tragic? What happened?” Carling cut him off. The man behind the desk nodded several times, an expression of deep sorrow evident on his face.

“Well, Senator, it was one of our porters. Somehow, there seems to have been a brief ammonia leak into the heating system. You’ll notice that we’ve had to shut it down?”

Carling hadn’t noticed. But now that the other man mentioned it, he looked around and became aware that the ever-present low level hum of the heating system had ceased. He also thought that maybe the temperature was a little lower than usual.

“Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Now that you mention it—”

The gray-haired man continued smoothly. “It’s only a precaution, sir. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe now. But we’ve had to put all staff to work checking the system in the basement for the source of the leak into the line.”

“You mean you haven’t—” the senator began but once more he found himself cut off.

“Until we have a clearance, sir, may we ask that you make your way to the gymnasium?”

“The gymnasium?” Carling repeated. “Why there?”

“It’s on a separate heating system, sir. It’s perfectly safe there and also perfectly comfortable. We’ve got bar staff up there serving drinks and snacks. If you’d just oblige us, we’ll have the situation cleared up shortly.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go on up,” the senator capitulated. He moved away, conscious of the other man’s unctuous smile as he departed. He glanced nervously at the big, grilled vents above the elevator as he waited to go to the gymnasium on the third floor. He was sure now that it was getting colder. He zipped his ski suit closed at the neck.

A
ntoinette Deschamps, in room 701, received a similar message when she rang room service to order a pot of herbal tea. She had declined to go skiing that afternoon. Suffering a bout of stomach cramps, she had spent the afternoon sleeping.

Now she climbed painfully out of bed, feeling the ominous beginnings of another bout of cramps. Buttoning her blouse, she headed for the gymnasium.

L
ike the staff before them, the few remaining guests drifted in, in ones and twos and small groups. As they did, they were directed, politely but firmly, to the gymnasium.

They went there hurriedly, for the most part, anxious to remove themselves as quickly as possible from the threat of further ammonia leaks into the heating system.

They reached the gymnasium with a sense of relief—a relief that changed quickly to confusion, then ultimately to fear, when they were greeted by the ten armed men who waited there for them.

O
n the highway, the driver of the ancient shuttle bus connecting Snow Eagles to two other ski fields was mildly surprised to see a tall African-American man flagging him down. It was late in the day and the driver was on his way back to the depot, but he thought he could possibly give the hitchhiker a lift. He pulled to a halt and levered the door open.

“Take me to Canyon Lodge,” the man said. The driver was already shaking his head.

“Can’t be done, friend. I don’t call in there.” His eyes widened as he noticed the large automatic pistol that had appeared in the man’s hand.

“You do now.”

The driver nodded. Bus drivers weren’t paid enough to argue with armed hijackers.

“I guess I do at that,” he said.

Tina Bowden moved through the crush of people in the conference room until she was close to Markus’s side. She had to shove her way through. The manager was besieged by anxious staff members, all of them with the most compelling reasons why they shouldn’t be among those selected to stay. Markus ran a desperate hand through
his hair and glanced to where Kormann was standing by the podium, deep in conversation with one of his men. The terrorist, for that was how Markus now thought of him, in spite of Kormann’s claim that they were businessmen, glanced up and met Markus’s troubled gaze.

“Get on with it, Ben,” he called, glancing meaningfully at his watch. “You’ve got seven minutes to pick your people.”

Markus turned back to the faces crowding around him. How could he be expected to choose? How could he play God with people’s lives, deciding who stayed and who went? A young girl, one of the waitresses from the rooftop silver service restaurant, clutched at his arm, babbling desperately.

“Please, Mr. Markus! I can’t stay here! Don’t make me stay! Not now I’m pregnant!”

She couldn’t have been more than seventeen and Markus looked at her in surprise. A middle-aged receptionist behind her curled her lip in disbelief. “Don’t believe that! The little bitch is only saying that so you’ll let her go. Me, I’ve got three kids down in Salt Lake City and no man to look after them. You’ve got to let me go, Mr. Markus.”

Markus shook his head in desperation. A hand grasped his upper arm with surprizing strength and he turned to find himself face to face with Tina Bowden.

“I’m staying,” she said, quietly but forcefully. “You know I have to, Ben.”

Markus hesitated, then nodded. As part of management, he was one of a limited number of staff who knew that Tina was actually an undercover member of the hotel’s security service. She was, in fact, the senior officer on duty at present. He guessed there could be no argument about whether she stayed or went. She stayed.

Counting himself, that made four people selected. He’d already chosen the other two men who were to stay. One was a cleaner and the other ran the lobby drugstore and gift shop. Under Kormann’s direction, they were both middle-aged. The terrorist leader had told him he didn’t want any “young, gung-ho heroes kept on the premises.”
Now he had to pick two more women. Another stipulation of Kormann’s.

“Five minutes, Ben,” came the mocking voice from the podium.

Markus’s eye alighted on one of the gym fitness instructors. Fit, healthy, in her mid-twenties, she was unmarried and, as far as he knew, had no ties anywhere local. Then, as he opened his mouth to call her name, he reconsidered. Maybe having an attractive young woman around wasn’t such a great idea, he thought. He ran his hands through his hair again. Jesus! Why did he have to be the one? If he picked an older woman, odds were she’d have family somewhere in the vicinity, people who depended on her. To hell with it, he thought, the fitness instructor would have to take her chances with the rest of them.

“Lois,” he called, and saw her face blanch slightly. She knew what was coming. “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re going to have to stay.”

That made five. One to go.

As the group chosen for release reached the underground arrival area, they were mildly surprised to find the old exhaust-and dirt-stained yellow shuttle bus parked in the tunnel.

The double doors slid apart and one of the guards moved forward to activate the lock that would keep them in the open position. Then he gestured with the stubby muzzle of the submachine gun that he carried, indicating the people closest to the entrance.

“Get moving. Everyone on the bus.”

Hesitantly, they moved forward. First one, then two or three others. Then the herd instinct took over and they began to move as a group, jostling each other as they reached the bottleneck formed by the doorway. The armed men stood well clear; each one avoided standing in anyone else’s line of fire.

“Keep moving! Come on! On the bus!”

The commands were taken up from both sides of the moving mass of people.

Now the first few were climbing aboard and again, the group slowed and swelled as they had to negotiate the steps and the narrow doorway. The delay seemed to anger the guards and they moved closer, shouting and yelling, shoving at them, urging them to board more quickly. The shouts became more frequent, with a rising edge of anger and urgency.

“Get moving! Come on! Don’t stop! Move!”

It was inevitable that someone would turn to object. It was almost certain that it would be one of the younger staff members. It was a female ski-school clerk who did it. She spun on her heel as a gun barrel jabbed into the small of her back, urging her forward.

“Goddamn it!” she cried. “We’re moving as fast as we can! Why don’t you guys take a—”

She was right beside the black man who had hijacked the bus when she turned to argue. He saw the rebellion in her eyes, leveled the big pistol and aimed at the girl’s head.

Still arguing with the man who had jabbed her, she never saw the movement from her side. The deafening crash of the pistol echoed through the confined space of the tunnel. The heavy slug hit the girl in the back of the skull and exploded out through her forehead in a sickening fountain of red and gray tissue that showered those close to her.

Already dead, she jerked forward, took a few spasmodic steps, then sagged to the cold ground. The woman beside her, covered in blood and tissue, screamed.

Others in the crowd echoed the scream and, in an instinctive, fear-driven reaction, the prisoners huddled closer together. Around the lifeless body, members of the crowd drew back, pressing against their immediate neighbors as they tried to leave space between themselves and the bloody-headed corpse—as if afraid that even touching it would lead to their own destruction.

The black man nodded to one of the other guards, who immediately
raised his slab-sided, heavy-barreled submachine gun in a one-handed grip and squeezed off a racketing, seven-round burst.

The shots were deafening in the confined space. The howling of the ricochets, and the echoes they sent up, were terrifying.

Then Kormann’s voice cut through the screams of the terrified staff members, reducing them to a frightened silence.

“Now move! Cut the crap and get on the bus!”

Gradually, the panic subsided. Moving once again, and with fearful glances around them, the prisoners began to climb aboard the bus. As the first few climbed aboard, the black man moved along outside the windows, motioning for them to move right to the rear, the threat of the pistol in his hands reinforcing his shouted orders.

There were fifty-five passengers in all—a heavy load for the old bus, with its slipping transmission and worn rings. The driver, still behind the wheel, hoped they weren’t heading any further uphill. The bus would never make it.

The black man’s next words dispeled any such doubts.

“Okay. Get this load back moving down to Salt Lake City.”

The still-warm diesel fired almost instantly.

Spewing black, oily smoke, the overloaded shuttle bus pulled slowly away from the hotel doors. Riding the clutch against the slipping transmission, the driver gunned her up the ramp leading out of the tunnel. The small group of armed men watched it lumber heavily up and out into the late afternoon sunlight.

Behind it, the body of the young girl lay, fair hair already stained to a deep red by her own lifeblood.

T
he late afternoon sun was low in the west and the shadows were stretching dark across the snow. In the next few minutes, the mountain would block the sun entirely and the ski runs at Snow Eagles would take on the ominous, deserted feeling that came with the end of the ski day. The chairlifts, controlled by automatic time switches that started them every day at eight a.m. and shut them down each afternoon at four thirty, continued to run. But without their cargos of eager skiers, they seemed forlorn and vaguely futile.

Far below, the few remaining skiers were finishing their last runs, the day trippers heading for the parking lot while the on-mountain residents skied toward the bulky, gray, man-made mountain that was the Canyon Lodge. Their bright ski clothes provided a few remaining traces of color in the shadowed, leached-out snowscape. There was an air of emptiness and even desolation to the almost deserted mountain that matched Jesse’s mood.

He sat disconsolately in the snow below The Wall, exhausted and defeated. He had given up smoking several years previously but now he reached into the inner pocket of his parka and produced a nearly full pack of Chesterfields, shaking one out of the pack and lighting it with a book of matches he’d taken from his room. The little flame flared, unnaturally bright in the shadows under the pines, and Jesse squinted through the smoke back up the mountain.