The Lions of Lucerne

by Brad Thor

  Now that they had a way out, Scot was faced with an even bigger problem. With Amanda unconscious and unable to help him assess her injuries, moving her might cause permanent damage. On the other hand, it was equally, if not more dangerous to stay where they were. There was a very good chance they might freeze to death, or even worse, be reburied in a secondary slide. Though he was certain a massive rescue effort was now under way, there was no way the rescuers could have known that he and Amanda had traveled so far across the face of the mountain. It would take them days before they started looking in this area. He thought about using his flashlight to signal for help, but realized it wasn’t powerful enough to reach any significant distance in this weather. Scot had to risk moving her, and the sooner, the better.

  Sliding back down on his stomach, Scot reentered the cave. With his Mag-Lite, he checked Amanda again, only to find that her condition had not changed. Her pulse felt weak and her breathing was still slow and shallow.

  Scot used his mini shovel to move all of the snow away from the entrance of the tunnel so he would have less trouble getting her out. After that was done, he took off his ski boots and removed his bib-style ski pants. Underneath his ski pants, he wore tight-fitting Lycra biking pants, which he prayed would be enough to keep him from suffering from exposure.

  As much as he hated to do it, Scot knew he had to move Amanda to prep her and get her out. With his knife, he cut the padded straps from his backpack and fashioned a crude C-collar, which he fastened around Amanda’s neck to keep it from moving. He used the supporting plastic shell from inside his pack as a short back board. He then cut the straps off Amanda’s bib ski pants and gently put her already jacketed arms and upper body into his ski coat. Next, he removed her boots and slid her into his ski pants, carefully threading the bib straps underneath her back.

  The knife came in handy again as Scot fashioned two primitive booties out of the large zippered compartments of his pack. Hopefully, they would help keep Amanda’s feet somewhat dry. Taking her down the mountain with her heavy boots on was not an option. Not only would the added weight be difficult for Scot to bear, but it could also exacerbate any trauma she might have already suffered. He put the nylon booties over her boot liners and pushed her feet gently into them.

  Knowing he could never clomp all the way back in his own heavy, uncomfortable ski boots, Scot pulled out his liners to keep his feet warm and then used what was left of his pack to fashion his own booties from the waterproof nylon. Feeling like a postapocalyptic caveman, Scot was now ready to drag Amanda out of their hole and hopefully down to safety.

  As he readied himself to go, Scot realized he had made a critical mistake. In an effort to protect Amanda from any falling snow or ice, he had dug the entrance to the escape tunnel at her feet. Amanda was wearing his bib pants so that Scot could pull her by the excess length of the straps dangling next to her shoulders, which meant she was pointed in the wrong direction to be dragged from the cave.

  It was bad enough that Scot was going to drag her anywhere without knowing how injured she was, but now, to get her out, he was going to have to turn her around. The cave was only three-and-a-half feet wide, so he would also have to bend Amanda’s legs to do it. Could this get any worse?

  Ever so gently he bent her knees up. Next, he placed his hands beneath her shoulder blades and began maneuvering her upper body toward their only way out. Scot knew all too well that if Amanda had suffered any damage to her back, he could be making it permanent. She was such a good kid with such energy. The thought that she could end up paralyzed because of his effort made him sick, but he knew that he couldn’t allow his emotions to control his thinking. It ran counter to his training. He tried to filter the thoughts from his mind, but not before he heard a sickening pop.

  Harvath froze in his tracks. Please, God. Please tell me that wasn’t something in Amanda’s back, he said to himself. When he looked down, he saw her ski jacket had caught and chipped off a piece of ice on the cave floor. Scot breathed a sigh of relief and then another when he had Amanda fully turned around and at the mouth of the tunnel.

  It was as if he’d had to go into a cold, dark womb, turn a breech baby, and now had to pull it through the birth canal into the world. With his ski gloves back on and the loose straps of the bib ski pants in his hands, Scot moved backward two feet and then pulled Amanda slowly forward for one. The journey out of the icy cave seemed to take forever. At this point, it was nothing but Scot’s sheer force of will that kept them moving.

  To pull Amanda’s limp body through the final vertical portion of the tunnel, Scot had to summon every ounce of strength his reserves had to offer. It didn’t matter how tired he was or how much pain he was in. The only thing that mattered, and the only outcome Scot Harvath was willing to accept, was complete and total success in extricating Amanda Rutledge, the president’s daughter and one-day-old member of the sweet-sixteen club, from that icy cave and getting her back home to safety.

  After he slid Amanda onto the snow next to the mouth of the tunnel, he sat for a moment to catch his breath and quiet the symphony of screaming muscles throughout his body. He removed his flashlight and checked Amanda’s eyes again. They were still dilated. He took off a glove and checked her pulse. It had grown weaker. He had to get moving, now.

  Careful not to disturb her neck, Scot unfurled the hood from beneath the collar of his jacket and velcroed it shut as best he could around Amanda’s face. With the wind and snow blowing so hard, he wanted to keep her as warm and dry as possible.

  He stood, wrapped his hands around the straps of Amanda’s makeshift stretcher, and slowly began easing her down the mountain.

  The going was brutally difficult. Scot continually sank down into snow up to his knees, sometimes even to his thighs. There was no way to tell which snow was firm and which would give way. And every time Scot sank into one of these unexpected patches, the added weight of Amanda’s stretcher-borne body dangerously threatened to topple him over and send them both hurtling down the face of the mountain.

  The wind bit into Scot with a piercing cold against which neither his exertion nor the tepid fumes from his emptying tank of adrenaline could warm him. The razor-sharp crystals of snow tore in sheets across his exposed face like sandpaper.

  Harvath fought back against the storm and commanded himself to go forward, one step at a time. Hampering his already slow movement was the knowledge that he had to proceed with a gem cutter’s precision, so as to shield Amanda from any added trauma whatsoever. One foot in front of the other, thought Scot. Failure is not an option. We will make it!

  He pressed forward through the hellish wind and cold. He had now lost all sense of time and space. All that mattered was getting Amanda back home. Scot was vaguely aware that his body had stopped shivering in its feeble attempt to keep warm. At least my legs are still moving. But what Scot mistook for his legs moving of his own volition was actually a stumble in slow motion. In truth, his legs had given up three yards ago, and it was only through an amazing effort that he kept moving down the mountain without losing complete control.

  Finally, he fell forward into the snow. Like the old brainteaser about a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it, Scot wondered, would his fall make any sound, or any difference? After all, they were completely alone. Or so he thought.

  Two hundred yards away, wearing next-generation infrared goggles, the leader of Amanda’s Secret Service intercept team picked up the heat signature of two forms, prone in the snow. In a breakout maneuver that would have made the best F-18 pilot envious, the agent gunned his Polaris snowmobile in their direction.

  Within seconds, the snowmobile’s miles-per-hour gauge showed the needle well over one hundred, and he quickly closed the gap with Scot and Amanda. The rest of the intercept team was hot on his trail.

  The leader pulled up next to Scot and Amanda, while the rest of the team surrounded the two bodies lying in the snow and used their goggles to continue searching the immediate area
.

  As an agent carefully rolled him over, Scot let out a low moan.

  “It’s Norseman! He’s alive!” shouted the team leader to the other intercept members. He then moved over to Amanda and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but at least her heart was beating. “He’s got Goldilocks too! They’re both alive, but in bad shape.”

  The team leader engaged his throat mike in an attempt to raise the command center. “Birdhouse, this is Hermes, do you read? Over.” There was no response, which is what he had expected. His original orders had been not to escort anyone back, but the game had changed. Every Secret Service agent was selected on the basis of a wide variety of criteria. One of the most highly prized was intelligence, along with the ability to make the right decisions in a life-or-death situation.

  Hermes addressed his men. “I want two pop toboggans inflated. I will transport Goldilocks on mine and Archimedes will transport Norseman. I am changing our status to medevac under Hostile 2. Hammer 4 and Hammer 5 will take the GPS coordinates so we can return to this location to search for the rest of the party. Let’s move. Go! Go!”

  Harvath was only faintly aware of the hissing air and of being strapped into the emergency inflatable pop-up toboggan. As soon as the intercept team swung the snowmobiles around to speed them all back to the command center, he once again slipped into unconsciousness.

  13

  By the time the Lions reached the farmhouse of Joseph and Mary Maddux, they were seven minutes ahead of schedule. Miner was pleased.

  The farmhouse had been selected because of its remote location. It was on the outskirts of the small town of Midway, which bordered Deer Valley. The nearest neighbor was three miles away. The only access was via either a terribly potholed dirt road or the narrow canyon behind the west side of the farm, which, during this time of year, was only navigable by experienced snowmobile operators or cross-country skiers.

  Joe and Mary Maddux had spent their Sunday the same way as always. Even though their large extended Mormon family saw them as retired, the word didn’t exist in their vocabulary, and who could be with twenty-two grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren? If anything, the Madduxes had become even busier in their golden years.

  The morning had started with the elderly couple getting up before the sun. While their faith prohibited labor on the Sabbath, there were some exceptions, such as tending to animals, which Joe and Mary did before having breakfast and heading off to their ward for Sunday services.

  The bishop spoke of the success of four local Mormon boys on mission in Asia and the tragedy of two others who had been killed in the past week in an Atlanta ghetto while they were spreading the good news of the Mormon Church. Joe’s mind wandered, as it did more and more these days during the almost five-hour Sunday services. Mary, ever the devout follower, listened intently as the bishop spoke about the role of a good Mormon wife and reminded his flock that it was only through a husband’s proclamation that a wife would be accepted into the celestial kingdom. Mary smiled at Joe, knowing that after fifty-seven years of marriage to her best friend, he was certainly going to bring her into the celestial kingdom with him. She was absolutely correct. What she didn’t know was how soon she would be dispatched.

  For the last week, Joe had been feeling a bit under the weather, and so he and Mary decided to forgo the traditional Sunday family supper at their oldest daughter’s home. Instead, they decided they would have a light meal and relax at the farmhouse without the distraction of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Had they chosen to attend supper at their daughter’s house, it would have saved their lives.

  At two in the afternoon, no one really paid attention to the eighteen-wheeler truck that rolled down Sweetwater Road toward the Maddux farmhouse. Its driver cursed the minefield of potholes he was forced to navigate. The truck was emblazoned with the Mormon Church’s trademark seagulls and the logo of Deseret Industries so it would appear as if it were headed out to a farm to pick up a charitable donation of furniture, farm supplies, or canned goods, or to deliver a contribution to a deserving family. Although the Church never did anything on Sundays, Miner had anticipated correctly that anyone who saw the truck would just assume the Church’s business was a rare exception to Sabbath abstinence.

  Miner’s groundsman turned up the long, snow-covered lane of the Maddux farm, convinced that he had not drawn any undue attention to himself. The idea of painting the semi truck and trailer with the Mormon seagulls and Deseret Industries logo had been brilliant. In a state where Mormons were raised not to question the actions of their church and where non-Mormons didn’t pay much attention to Mormon goings-on, nothing would seem out of place, and therefore the truck was the perfect cover. Miner had also informed the groundsman that to the trained eye of someone like a state trooper, the truck would obviously appear overloaded, but even troopers wouldn’t pull it over for fear of the tangled web of hassles it might create in this heavily Mormon state.

  The lane opened into a wide courtyard, which was bordered by the farmhouse, a large white barn, two grain silos, and several outbuildings. The groundsman turned the truck around so that it was facing the way it came, with the trailer doors pointed toward the barn. It was parked at a slight angle so that any passing motorists who might be curious would see that the truck was from the Church.

  Having observed the Madduxes for the last several weeks, the groundsman had their routine down pat and knew they would not be home from their daughter’s before six-thirty at the earliest, and by then the Lions would be long gone. He unlocked the rear trailer doors and extended a long skid plate ramp. He then slid open the barn door and disappeared into the semitrailer. As he was about to unload the first of his cargo, he stopped and cocked his head in the direction of the driveway, thinking he heard something. The man’s keen hearing hadn’t deceived him. Faintly, in the distance was the low rumble of Joe Maddux’s truck turning up the snow-covered driveway.

  Quickly, the groundsman jumped out of the back of the trailer, closed its metal doors, and slid the ramp back into place. A million questions should have raced through his mind, but he was trained to react, not waste time. He managed to slide the huge barn door closed before the Maddux’s truck came into full view.

  In his blue-and-white Deseret Industries coveralls, he knew he looked the part. He struck a casual pose by the side of the semi and even managed a small grin. He waved to Joe and Mary Maddux as they pulled into the courtyard.

  “Good afternoon, Elder Maddux,” said the groundsman with a slight Utah lax on the consonants of his perfect American English when Joe Maddux stepped down from his pickup truck. “And good afternoon to you as well, sister.”

  “Good afternoon,” replied the couple in unison. Mary climbed out of the passenger side to get a better look at the enormous truck parked in their driveway.

  “I’m sorry I’m a little bit late for our appointment,” said the groundsman as he walked toward the couple, his right hand outstretched.

  “Our appointment?” replied a confused Joe Maddux, who shook the groundsman’s hand and then watched Mary do the same.

  “Yeah, I got caught up in traffic on 215, and then with this weather and all, I almost couldn’t get up the canyon. But, being a soldier for the Lord doing the Church’s good work, I think He was looking out for me.”

  The logos on the truck and the uniform of the groundsman impressed Joe Maddux. Ever mindful of pleasing the Church, he replied, “I owe you an apology. I didn’t know we had an appointment. I feel a bit embarrassed. Can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Oh, no. Don’t tell me. You folks didn’t hear about this either? Well, if this isn’t the third surprise stop I’ve made today. And on a Sunday to boot. I’m gonna have to get on the phone and give someone a good talking to,” said the groundsman, smiling.

  This time it was Mrs. Maddux who spoke. “We don’t know what this is all about, but if it involves the Church, I’m sure they do. It’s cold out here. Why don’t we go inside, an
d you can use our phone to get to the bottom of this.”

  “You are both too kind.”

  The Madduxes led the groundsman across the snowy drive and toward the farmhouse. They climbed the flight of concrete stairs, and Mr. Maddux opened the glass storm door covered with the sun-faded stickers of his grandchildren. Joe then opened the unlocked front door, seemingly unconcerned that he was revealing his lack of concern for security. It didn’t matter. The groundsman already knew that the Madduxes habitually left their home unlocked. As a matter of fact, he had been inside on several different occasions, both when they were out and when they were home asleep. He probably knew the house and the property better than the doddering old couple did themselves.

  “So, how can we help, Mr….” began Joe Maddux.

  “Baker. Brian Baker, sir,” replied the groundsman. “I am here to pick up some old farm equipment that you offered to donate for some of the Church projects in Mexico.”

  “Hmmm…” said Maddux as his wife took his coat and hung it in the hall closet. “I can’t say that I remember offering to donate any farm equipment. I mean we have in the past, but now all we really have is the tractor for the light bit of cropping we do, and we need that. I don’t know what to tell you. Must have been some sort of mistake somewhere.”

  “There probably was. Like I said, you folks aren’t the first ones today who were an incorrect pickup for me. Would you mind if I made a quick call to the dispatch at Deseret to let them know?”

  “Of course you can,” replied Mrs. Maddux. “You can use the phone in the kitchen. Just follow me.”