The Lions of Lucerne

by Brad Thor

  “Is that normal?”

  “It happens, but not often.”

  “Damn it. How about the Smocks, then? They transmit on a different frequency than our radios, don’t they?”

  The Smock, or Doc Smock, as it was officially known, was a new piece of technology made for monitoring soldiers in battle. It was a skintight vest with sensors, worn under the clothes, that transmitted the wearer’s vital signs, via a small unit in a fanny pack. It could also indicate if the vest had been breached.

  Even though the technology was still experimental, two duty agents on each detail were wearing one.

  “Yeah,” said Longo, “the Smocks are on a different frequency.”

  “Well, see if you can punch them up.”

  “See if I can punch them up? Do you want me to work on boosting our Motorolas or do you want me working on the Smock signals?”

  “No, you work on the radios and reaching the teams. Who’s watching the Smocks now?”

  “Palmer is.”

  “Fine. Palmer!” yelled Hollenbeck as Longo went back to trying to raise the two details.

  “Yes, sir?” responded an attractive, young female agent from a corner of the Secret Service command center.

  “Can you give me a full sit rep on all four Smocks?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ve been off and on all day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean sometimes they seem to transmit and sometimes they don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Could be the weather. Could be some sort of interference. For all I know it could be that the Nintendo in the break room is messing with them. This is still experimental technology.”

  “How were they operating yesterday?”

  “Clear as a bell. I’ve even got the printouts of vitals broken down over fifteen-minute intervals. Do you want to see them?”

  No, Agent Tom Hollenbeck did not want to see them. What he wanted to see was the president, his daughter, and the rest of the detail agents skiing up to the front door joking about who had eaten the most snow today.

  “What’s the longest amount of time you have been without a Smock signal?”

  Agent Palmer looked down at her watch. “Up till now the longest interval without a signal was just about three minutes. Now we’re going on eight.”

  The same amount of time the radios had been out of commission.

  “Palmer, how would you say the weather was yesterday compared to today?”

  “A little better, but not much.”

  “Longo!” yelled Hollenbeck.

  “What now?” asked Longo.

  “Do we have any rovers with a visual?”

  Rovers were the teams of snowmobiles and Sno-Cats that followed the two details as closely as possible. They were loaded with what the Secret Service referred to as CATs, or Counter Assault Teams. The CATs were heavily armed and armored agents whose sole job was to lend the protective details fire support.

  “The last rover report came in as the teams split for their final run from the last-lap rendezvous position, right before the radios went down. Goldilocks took the low road, and Hat Trick opted for the high road,” replied Longo.

  “Which high road?” asked Hollenbeck.

  “Death Chute.”

  “It would have to be that one, wouldn’t it? What’s the next potential rover or JAR visual contact for Hat Trick?”

  “There’s a JAR unit among the trees in the middle of Death Chute.”

  “I know about that one. I haven’t been able to raise them. What about the next rover?”

  “There’s no access for a rover team until about half a mile down from the treed plateau on Death Chute.”

  Hollenbeck didn’t need to confirm where the next visual was for Amanda’s detail. She had taken the same route home every day. There was normally a pretty good line of sight directly from the command center, but today wasn’t normal. The snow was blowing harder, reducing visibility to next to nothing, and Birdhouse had lost all radio contact with any agents more than one hundred yards from the command center.

  “So,” began Hollenbeck, “we have had no visual, nor radio contact with the details for the last eight minutes?”

  “That’s right, boss,” answered Longo.

  “Okay, that settles it.”

  Hollenbeck stood up from his chair and called for everyone’s attention. He slung his lip mike back over his head and toggled the transmit switch to get the attention of the agents on patrol outside the command center. For some reason, transmissions close to the command center were not interrupted.

  All eyes in the room, and ears outside, were now trained on Hollenbeck.

  “Everybody, listen up. We have a potential hostile situation.”

  5

  Miner gave rapid orders to Anton Schebel when he arrived with the toboggan. “Crack the blanket and help me lean him forward to get this sweater the rest of the way off.”

  Schebel did as he was told. In quick succession, he pounded the pockets of hot packs lining the toboggan’s body bag with the butt of his semiautomatic. Before he had finished with the hot packs, Dryer rejoined Miner and was taking over.

  “Useff?” inquired Miner as they removed the president’s sweater, careful not disturb the IV.

  “He left early. Cocktails with Allah. Everything is on schedule,” said Dryer as they worked the president’s turtleneck off.

  “Good. Get the bag over here and lay it next to him.”

  Dryer laid the body bag out lengthwise next to the president.

  “Everything else off now. Pants, socks, boots, ring, watch, even the underwear.” Miner wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He knew the president wore at least one homing device and that it was cleverly hidden. The fact that he might be surgically implanted with another one was unlikely, but Miner had brought the special body bag along just in case. If the president was surgically implanted with any additional homing devices, the signal would never breach Miner’s clever Kevlar-like design. The bag had been constructed so that as they zipped it shut, the IV could be hung on a special rail at the rear of the toboggan and the tube would still be feeding through the bag into the president’s arm.

  Dryer and Schebel placed him in the warmed bag and loaded him into the toboggan. With the lining of hot pockets, at least he wouldn’t freeze. Miner’s plan certainly didn’t entail dressing the president in new clothes. At least not yet.

  When the bag was belted to the toboggan, Miner spoke into his lip mike. “Two minutes.”

  Gerhard Miner, Klaus Dryer, Anton Schebel, and the other team members clicked into their hybrid cross-country, downhill telemark skis. The incredibly strong men quickly began powering their precious cargo into the trees.

  “Ninety seconds.”

  Dryer led the way, wearing special night-vision-style goggles. Eight days before, he had marked some of these same trees with a special paint that upon contact with air, oxidized and became invisible to the human eye. The goggles now allowed Dryer to pick up the paint’s unique chemical signature and follow the escape route he had marked through the maze of trees.

  Finally, the flat ground grew steeper and they picked up more speed. Klaus knew they would be out of the woods in only a few more seconds.

  Miner had taught his men that the plan depended on absolutely perfect timing. If the toboggan flipped over, or one of them stumbled, all would be lost. There was no margin for error.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The team, now out of the trees, rapidly cut a diagonal path across the dangerously steep mountain face.

  Gravity and the toboggan’s smooth round bottom began causing it to slide downhill, instead of across the face. Schebel, an experienced sled-dog driver, put his weight on the up-mountain side of the toboggan to help it stay on course.

  Snow and ice screamed from the back of the rig as it dug into the mountain and fought against the unnatural course it was bein
g forced to take. If Schebel lost it now, both he and the president would be hurled into the valley.

  The toboggan continued to edge out of Schebel’s control. He leaned harder into the yoke and tried to right the toboggan’s course. He cursed Dryer for not computing the grade of the mountain better and Miner for not outfitting the toboggan with a sharp set of runners like a bobsled.

  Schebel was the biggest and strongest of the group, and that’s why he had been chosen to pull the toboggan. It looked as if he wasn’t strong enough, though. Everything they had trained for and risked was going to be lost.

  Schebel tried again to put all of his weight on his uphill ski. The result was disastrous. The toboggan careened wildly out of control so that it faced straight down the mountain. It began to pull Schebel backward. He cursed again, sure he was going to be killed. Schebel and the president slid rapidly down the mountain instead of across it.

  In a last-ditch attempt to get control of the sled, Schebel threw all of his considerable bulk onto his opposite ski. For what felt like an eternity, nothing happened. The toboggan pitched hard, as if it was going to flip over and carry Schebel with it. Then, a miracle occurred.

  As the toboggan was close to capsizing, its upper seam caught in the frozen snow and acted like the edge of a ski, putting it and Schebel back on course. He was downhill from the rest of the team, but he saw Dryer change direction and make his way down toward an outcropping of rock. As long as the toboggan cooperated and stayed on this new course, Schebel would be okay.

  While Miner resumed the final seconds of his countdown, Dryer saw two enormous boulders looming in front of them. The boulders, which looked impassable from this distance, marked the head of a small, incredibly steep and dangerous chute.

  Compared to this one, Death Chute was child’s play, but for six of the world’s top mercenaries who had spent their entire lives challenging the world’s most unforgiving mountains, it would not pose a problem.

  When Dryer was within meters of the small passageway, Miner reached for something strapped to his chest. It was a small black transmitter with a strip of red electrical tape wrapped around its rubber antenna. When Miner had a hold of it, he depressed its only button.

  A sound like the crack of a rifle, followed by the roar of a thunderhead, reverberated from far above them as they began their arduous descent.

  6

  The icy snow whipped against the Secret Service’s mobile command center, and every agent inside was looking directly at their chief of operations, Tom Hollenbeck.

  “We have had no visual or radio contact with either protective detail going on nine minutes. Visibility is also severely impaired. I am upgrading the current situation to Hostile 2 until further notice. I want the president’s residence locked down and all duty agents that are raisable to report in. The perimeter is to be locked and lit. I want the backup tactical units on deck and ready to deploy. The rest of you know your jobs, so let’s move.”

  Hollenbeck finished issuing orders and then turned his attention to the window as he tried to peer through the sea of snow. A group of counterassault agents waited outside for their orders, which they knew would be next to come.

  For some reason, the radios within a hundred yards of the command center still worked, so Hollenbeck didn’t need to go outside to address the waiting agents. “I want both Hat Trick’s and Goldilocks’s intercept teams to mobilize immediately. You are to assess the situation and report back in person ASAP to Birdhouse unless radio contact can be reestablished. Until then, you are to assume that we are operating dark under a hostile scenario. Your objective is to compile a sit rep and get it to me as quickly as possible. This is not an escort service. I repeat, not an escort service. As soon as you know anything, I want you back here. Don’t waste any time. Any questions?” asked Hollenbeck sternly.

  “Negative. Teams One and Two, understood. Out,” came the response from the intercept leader outside the command center. Within seconds, the two four-man teams of Secret Service agents clad in insulated Nomex jumpsuits and medium-weight body armor had their Polaris snowmobiles fired up and were heading to intercept their respective “packages.”

  “Can we get anything aloft in this?” asked Hollenbeck of one of his operational assistants.

  “From here, no. It looks as if things are supposed to be getting worse. We’ve got the president’s Marine Corps White Top at the bottom of the hill, but even as good as those pilots are, this weather is impossible and their helicopters aren’t made for it. The best we could do is scramble a Black Hawk from Hill Air Force Base.”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Ten minutes to get it up and twenty to thirty more to get on site, but there isn’t much they can do searchwise with the visibility cut down to less than nothing.”

  “Call Hill and have them put one on standby. I want those rotors spinning until I say otherwise.”

  The operational assistant turned away from Hollenbeck and patched through on the com link to Hill Air Force Base to order up the bird.

  “Longo,” barked Hollenbeck, growing tenser by the moment, “are we green yet on those Motorolas?”

  “We are still no go. Situation dark on all communications.”

  “Palmer?”

  “Sorry, sir. Still nothing on the Smocks either.”

  Just when Agent Hollenbeck thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, he heard the resort’s avalanche sirens begin their low, mournful wail.

  7

  There wasn’t time for him to think, only to react. For most, reacting without thinking could be a dangerous thing, but not when you were trained to make life-or-death decisions in milliseconds.

  Based on where the sound of the avalanche came from, Scot instinctively knew that they were right in its path. The job of a protective detail in a threat situation was to immediately cover and evacuate their protectee. Evacuation in this case was impossible, at least for the time being, but maybe, just maybe, Scot had a chance of covering the president’s daughter. It would take every ounce of skill and strength he had in his body.

  He managed to yell, “Avalanche,” he hoped loudly enough for the other agents to hear, and then voiced a quiet, “Oh, shit,” to himself. There wasn’t time to tell the other Secret Service agents what he was planning to do.

  Amanda apparently didn’t hear his cry of “Avalanche” or know what the loud noise was, because she kept slowly skiing down the bowl. Scot pulled up short on his downhill ski and, squatting deeply like a weight lifter getting ready to deadlift, positioned himself behind Amanda. This had one chance of working.

  The tidal wave of snow was already barreling down on top of them. Assuming the radios were still out of commission, Scot yelled for the other agents to follow him. With the roar of the avalanche filling his ears, he couldn’t be sure if anyone had heard him.

  “Don’t move! Just let me take you,” yelled Scot as he grabbed all one hundred and ten pounds of Amanda Rutledge around the waist and lifted her up off her skis. Startled, she screamed, but didn’t fight him. The severe downhill angle and their combined mass sent them rocketing down the slope. With the diminished visibility, Scot couldn’t be sure if he had calculated right. He had to be dead-on. If they undershot what he’d seen, they would be dead. If they overshot it, they would be dead. And if the blinding snow had played a trick on his eyes and what he thought would be there wasn’t, that also could result only in their death.

  While Amanda was by no means heavy for a girl of her age and Scot Harvath was in incredible shape, carrying her as they raced downhill ripped and tore at every fiber of his tightly muscled body. His entire back was on fire, and his thighs felt as if there were red-hot coils wrapped around them. Every primal instinct within him shouted for him to let her go and save himself, but he had been trained to be a master of not only his body but his mind, which meant that fear and pain would serve him, not the other way around.

  Amanda must have known what was going on, at least on some level,
because the minute Scot picked her up, she went as limp as a kitten lifted by the scruff of the neck.

  He’d known when he heard the sound of the avalanche that outrunning it would be impossible. He didn’t even dare venture another look back. The slightest wasted movement could immediately put the two of them on the losing side of this equation.

  The freezing ice and blowing snow tore into Scot’s face like shards of broken glass. He and Amanda picked up more speed as they traversed the face of the bowl. This was where the simple physics of Scot’s plan was working severely against them. In an avalanche, the heavy snow chooses the fastest path available to it. Drawn by gravity, this path is always straight down, tearing apart anything in its way. Instead of going straight down, Scot and Amanda were going almost straight across the mountain. With each foot they gained in going across, the avalanche gained fifty coming down. There was absolutely no room for slipups.

  Scot had no idea if his fellow agents had heard him yell, if they had interpreted the sound of the avalanche for what it was, or how they had reacted. For now at least, there was no way to find out. He could only hope that they had taken his lead and were following right behind.

  The roar had become deafening, and it reverberated throughout Scot’s entire body, shaking him as he held Amanda. It seemed as if they had been traveling forever, even though it had been only a matter of seconds. Where are those goddamn rocks? he screamed to himself.

  As it turned out, Scot had dangerously undershot his target. Through the blizzard of blowing snow, he could just make out the outcropping, further across the face and significantly below where they were now. Damn it! he thought.

  Knowing this was his last chance, Scot pointed his skis, himself, and Amanda straight for the bottom.

  They picked up speed at a terrifying rate. Scot’s knees pistoned up and down like jackhammers as he absorbed not only his weight but also Amanda’s. He fought with all of his might to keep control of his skis, which were furiously slapping the packed snow like a pair of loose dock planks in a hurricane.