by Brad Thor
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Not at all.”
Mrs. Maddux led the groundsman to a canary yellow rotary dial phone that looked as if it had been mounted on the wall in the mid seventies.
“I haven’t seen one of these in years,” marveled the groundsman. “I didn’t even know folks still used rotary phones.” He laughed.
Mrs. Maddux smiled. “We have a simple rule around here: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”
“I hear you. Too many folks spending too much money on things they just don’t need.”
“Amen to that,” came the voice of Mr. Maddux from the other room, where he had turned on the old color television set.
“Ma’am, I don’t want to be a bother, but we’ve got one of those tricky phone mail systems down at the dispatch—”
“Oh, I can’t stand those,” broke in Mrs. Maddux.
“Well, that makes two of us,” responded the groundsman with his warmest smile, “but you see I need to use a push-button phone if I want to bypass the system and get through to the dispatch man. Seeing how it’s Sunday, all we’ve got is a skeleton crew down in Salt Lake. There’s no operator on duty. You wouldn’t happen to have a push-button phone, would you?”
The groundsman knew perfectly well that they did and where it was located.
“Yes, we do have one upstairs. But I think our service is just rotary. Would that still cause a problem for you?”
“No, ma’am,” lied the groundsman.
“Okay, then. Follow me and I’ll show you where it is.”
Halfway up, he stopped and asked Mrs. Maddux, “Ma’am, do you suppose your husband would mind coming up, just in case I need him to confirm anything to the dispatcher?”
“Of course not,” said Mary Maddux, who leaned over the banister and called to her husband.
“Okay, I’m coming!” yelled back Mr. Maddux, who didn’t like being pulled away from his TV, even if it was for the Church.
Mary led the groundsman into the master bedroom. On the nightstand was a Touch-Tone phone with oversized glow-in-the-dark buttons. It was preprogrammed with the names of the Maddux’s children and had special speed dial buttons for Police, Fire, and Ambulance.
The groundsman moved toward the right side of the bed next to the phone and unzipped the top of his coveralls. He pretended to fumble in his breast pocket for something.
“I’ve got that invoice in here somewhere. Probably ought to get a clipboard one of these days.”
Mrs. Maddux smiled politely and inwardly hoped that this misunderstanding would not put her and Joe in bad standing with the Church.
The groundsman heard the footsteps of Mr. Maddux as he came down the green shag carpeted hallway. He stopped fumbling in his coveralls when he found the true item he was looking for. His hand tightened around the butt of a cold Walther P4. The nine millimeter was fitted with a silencer, and despite its extended length, he drew it from his coveralls in less than the blink of an eye.
This was the part that he enjoyed the most, the expressions on his victims’ faces when they knew death was only seconds away, but this couple had no telling expressions whatsoever. They were in utter shock, and their faces were blank. This kind of thing never happened in Midway, never even happened in Utah. It was utterly beyond their ability to comprehend. Not even a sniffle from the missus. They just stood there as if they were watching it happen to someone else on television.
Then, the dam broke. Mrs. Maddux let out a wail; the tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks as the reality of the situation hit her full force. They were going to die. The mister, on the other hand, still had no clue. His instinct was to comfort his wife, and as he reached out for her, the groundsman shot him twice in the forehead.
Spatters of blood, mingled with slivers of bone and pulpy gray matter, sprayed across Mary’s face, and she began a repetitive mumble through her sobbing. All she could manage was, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God…”
“Good thing you went to church this morning, eh, Mary?” hissed the groundsman, his English now accented with his Swiss-German tongue. “In your next life, when the kids invite you to dinner, I suggest you accept.”
He pointed the suppressed Walther at Mary Maddux and pulled the trigger. Anticipating the end, Mary turned her head at the last moment. The bullet tore away a huge piece of flesh and the underlying cartilage from the bridge of her nose. She fell to the floor screaming. Angrily, the groundsman fired his remaining rounds into her neck, chest, face, and head as she writhed in agony on the bedroom floor. Soon, her movements ceased, and she was still.
Mr. Maddux, unlike his wife, the groundsman mused, had been cooperative enough to fall back onto the bed. The groundsman lifted the man’s feet and placed them on top of the chenille bedspread. Except for the bullet holes in his head, it looked as if he had just lain down to take a nap.
The groundsman then dragged Mrs. Maddux across the floor to the other side of the bed and hefted her up and onto it. When she landed, her arms were upright above her head. He toyed with the idea of stripping the old couple and leaving them in a sexually suggestive pose, wondering what the Mormon relatives would think, but there was other work to be done.
After he washed his hands in the small guest bathroom down the hall, careful not to leave any fingerprints, he went outside to finish unloading the contents of the semi into the barn.
With the truck unloaded, there was nothing for him to do but come inside and wait for Miner and his fellow Lions.
The small family room was warm, and its large window provided the groundsman as good a view as was possible through the blowing snow of anyone coming up the driveway. The television was still on, tuned to a station with an American football game.
Halfway through the third quarter and a pack of cigarettes later, the groundsman began to feel the telltale signs of his low blood-sugar level. Healthy as a horse since a child, he had made his doctor in Zurich explain three times how diabetes could have chosen him when no one in his family had ever had it. The doctor explained that there was no specific reason but that it was quite manageable, provided he took the right precautions. Of course the first precaution he took was never to let Miner know about his condition.
From a pocket in his coveralls, he withdrew a Nestlé’s chocolate bar and broke it into perfect little squares, calculating how many he might need to keep his blood sugar up for the rest of the day. He lay the silver foil, with its purple-and-white wrapper, on his lap and put a piece of the creamy milk chocolate into his mouth. He sucked on it slowly, savoring it as he closed his eyes.
Then, from out of nowhere, came the sound of breaking glass from upstairs. The groundsman leapt from his chair and grabbed the German-made pistol from the end table beside him. Cautiously, he moved forward toward the stairs, crept up them and then down the hallway’s green shag carpet. He inched toward the master bedroom, which was where he believed the sound had come from. He gripped the pistol tighter, grateful that he had replaced its spent magazine. As he neared the bedroom door, he inhaled deeply, applied slight pressure to the trigger, and spun into the open doorframe.
In an instant, he had not only surveyed the room, but also the condition of the two bodies lying atop the bed. The source of the noise was apparent at once.
He had left the woman’s arms above her head and now noticed that one arm was splayed across the nightstand and the glass frame of a picture of seven small children lay broken on the floor. Post mortem reflex.
The groundsman lowered his pistol and laughed out loud. As quickly as he started, he stopped. His ears had picked up the high-pitched whine of snowmobiles. He looked at his watch. Miner and the men were ahead of schedule.
He took the stairs three at a time and landed with a large thud in the downstairs hallway. As he bounded into the family room, he found his chocolate wrapper and bent down to gather up the pieces that had fallen on the floor. Not wanting Miner to find him away from his assigned post, the groundsman
folded the wrapper around the chocolate and shoved it back into his coverall pocket. He used his handkerchief to grasp the half-filled water glass he had been using to ash his cigarettes in and flushed the contents down the hall toilet. He rinsed the glass with rusty brown water from the kitchen tap and returned it to a drying rack next to the sink.
He made it outside just in time to pick out the first glimmer of snowmobile headlights. Through the swirling and blowing snow, he could see them speeding toward him at the rear of the farmhouse.
14
With Sam Harper, the Secret Service’s number one man on-site, missing in action, Tom Hollenbeck was now in charge. When word reached him that Agent Harvath and the president’s daughter had been recovered and brought in unconscious, he left instructions that he was to be notified immediately when either one came to.
The storm was making it impossible to coordinate search-and-rescue efforts. Even so, Hollenbeck contacted Hill Air Force Base’s commanding officer and requested that they locate the two closest choppers with advanced heat-seeking FLIR, or forward looking infrared, units and have them flown to Deer Valley as soon as humanly possible. Hollenbeck hoped that by the time they got there, there would be no need for them, but contingency plans always had to be made.
All the officers the Secret Service had available were sent out to try and locate the president and his team. As Longo was still having no luck getting the Service’s Motorola radios to work, Palmer had taken it upon herself to get hold of Deer Valley’s resort manager and have him send over as many portable CB radios as he could scrounge. Communications wouldn’t be secure, but at this point that was the least of the Secret Service’s worries.
Every available ski patroller and search-and-rescue volunteer from the surrounding three counties had been called in to help with the search. At risk were not only the president, his daughter, and their protective details, but the countless number of civilians who had been skiing on runs affected by the avalanche.
Hollenbeck sent Palmer out with a civilian team to comb the area where Agent Harvath and Amanda had been found. The remaining Secret Service agents took two of the best search-and-rescue people from Deer Valley’s team and as many local law enforcement personnel as they could muster to help coordinate their search for the president. As much as he hated it, Hollenbeck knew that his job was to stay behind and run the operation from the command center.
When the call came that Agent Harvath was regaining consciousness, Hollenbeck grabbed a microcassette recorder, his parka, and flew out the door.
The soft, orange glow of a bedside lamp was the first thing Scot noticed as he began to come to. As his eyes opened further, he saw the boards of knotty pine that paneled the ceiling and below that a wallpaper border that ran the length of the room and depicted moose and deer in a wooded area. The blanket on top of him was heavy. It felt as if he had on more than one, but the one he could see was red and gray wool with white snowflakes. As Scot looked further down toward his feet, he noticed the footboard was carved from rough-hewn logs. He then realized he was in one of the guest rooms of the president’s chalet and it was still night.
“Well, it looks like the wee lad is finally waking up,” came a voice with a mock Scottish accent.
Scot’s reflexes kicked in, and he tried to sit up. “Amanda! Where’s—”
“Whoa!” came the voice again. This time the funny accent was gone and the man spoke in his normal Texas drawl. “She’s here, Scot. Just across the hall. Dr. Paulos is taking care of her.”
“How is she?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. My main concern is you right now, so let’s relax and let me take a look.” The doctor removed a penlight from the bag next to him and shined it in both of Scot’s eyes.
“I want to see her.”
“First I am going to complete my exam; then we are going to get an update from Dr. Paulos, and then if he says it’s okay, you can see her.”
The voice, bad accent and all, belonged to Dr. Skip Trawick. He and John Paulos had been friends of Scot’s since his ski team days. Scot was a pretty good mimic, but the Scottish accent was one he just couldn’t get down, so Skip always used it as his funny way of saying hello.
As head of the advance team for the trip to Park City, Scot had recommended both Skip and Dr. Paulos as the on-site medical pros. Now he wondered if that had been such a good idea.
“Damn it, Skip. Who the hell do you think got you and John these gigs as docs for the presidential party? Let me up; I have to see her.”
“You, my friend, haven’t changed a bit. You know that? Still as haggis-headed as ever.”
“Cut the crap.”
“It would be my pleasure, but first the exam. Now, how many fingers do you see?”
“None, you haven’t poured anything yet.”
“So far I’m going to say your neurological function is the same as it always was, low to subpar.”
“Yuk, yuk, yuk. C’mon, Skip. I want to peek in on her. I have to know how she is.”
“As soon as I am finished. Any areas of severe pain?”
“Yeah, right in my ass. I’m going to give you to the count of three to help me out of this bed, or I’m going to shove you off and do it myself. One—”
“Alive and kicking. That’s a good sign, isn’t it, Dr. Trawick?” asked Tom Hollenbeck as he threw his parka on a chair next to the door and made his way over to the bed.
“Maybe. The patient, though, claims to have a pain in the ass,” replied Dr. Trawick.
“The patient is a pain in the ass,” said Hollenbeck. “What’s the story? Anything broken, concussion?”
“I haven’t been able to complete my examination, as of yet. The patient is not being compliant.”
“Not compliant? Skip, you son of a—I’ll give you noncompliant.”
“And a wee bit aggressive,” said Skip, the Scottish accent back again.
“Jesus, Skip. You’re on duty. Could you at least pretend to be a professional for a few minutes? On second thought, fuck this. I’m getting up,” said Scot.
“Hold on there, Harvath,” Hollenbeck said sternly. “I want you to cooperate. None of this tough-guy stuff. You just lie there and let the doc take a look at you.”
“Fine. Go ahead, Skip. The sooner you’re finished, the sooner I can get over to Amanda.”
“You’re not going anywhere until I get a full statement from you. Just settle down, would ya? My God, Scot. We’ve got a very serious situation on our hands right now, so get focused,” said Hollenbeck.
“I’m sorry, Tom. You’re right. If the good doctor would unplug me from this IV, I’d be happy to get started.”
“No way, José. The IV stays in. You came in severely dehydrated. I want to get some more fluids into you first,” said Dr. Trawick as he continued to examine Scot from head to toe.
“I brought a tape recorder with me. We’ll take your statement verbally,” said Hollenbeck.
“Verbally? But what about him?” said Scot as he motioned to Dr. Trawick.
“What about me? I’m still on nonoperational Special Forces duty, Scot.”
“Oh, so that’s what you call shagging kegs when members of your old unit come to town,” said Harvath.
“Listen, as one of the ‘Quiet Professionals,’ I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh, yeah? Coulda’ fooled me, ‘cause it’s always open.”
Hollenbeck hated to break up the lovefest, but he had bigger concerns. “Dr. Trawick, I don’t have time for you to sign a National Security Non-Disclosure Document. I am aware of your status as a Special Forces operative, and I know that you’ve maintained your top secret clearance. In the interest of tending to your patient and the ongoing emergency, I want to make sure you understand that nothing said within this room is to be repeated.”
“No problem, Agent Hollenbeck. You have my word.”
“Can you also get his word that he’ll shut up and not repeat that lame-ass story of how he served h
is country by treating an elephant in the Kuwaiti zoo during Desert Storm?”
“Now who’s the comedian? Why don’t you try to sit up? I want to listen to your heart and check your ribs.”
Harvath stifled a groan as Dr. Trawick helped him sit up. The agents who brought him in had cut away his sweater and turtleneck, as well as his Lycra pants, placing him in a hospital-style gown before putting him into bed. As Harvath leaned forward, his gown was open in back and Hollenbeck saw what looked like a topographical map of green, blue, and yellow islands, bruises that covered his back and shoulders.
“Holy shit. Are you sure you’re up to this?” asked Hollenbeck.
Trawick said, “I’m going to shoot some adrenaline into your IV, and that should help give you a little more strength. You want anything for the pain?”
“No, let’s get this over with, and then I want you to clear me for the hot tub downstairs so I can soak this out.”
“Scot, this isn’t some post-ski-competition session. You walloped yourself quite a few times back in those days, and God knows you scared the bejesus outta me more than once, but your body has suffered some serious trauma here. So far it doesn’t look like anything is broken. If there’s no blood in your urine, I might postpone having you to go to the hospital for further tests, but if I do, you’re gonna stay right here in this bed for several days at least. Now shut up for a second and take a deep breath.”
Scot did as he was told, and Hollenbeck waited until the doctor had removed the stethoscope from his ears before he launched into a series of questions and recorded everything on tape for later transcription.
Scot ran down the list—seeing the president, Harper, and the rest of the team at the last lap, Amanda’s wipeout and the communications outage, the decision to take her through the bowl to get back to the house, the avalanche, getting to the outcropping, being buried, digging out, and trying to get Amanda’s unconscious body back to the house.
Occasionally, Dr. Trawick broke in with questions that pushed Scot to reach a little further back. Long-term memory questions like, What’s your address, your telephone and driver’s license numbers? were easy for him to answer, but he had problems with some short-term memory questions such as, What hotel are you staying in, what airline did you fly to Utah on, and when was your last visit to the White House?