by Brad Thor
Ploonk, ploonk, ploonk. The shots were wildly inaccurate, but they came in rapid bursts, tearing up the water in all directions around him. The shooters were back. Their inaccuracy told Scot they must be firing from the other side of the river. He heard the roar of two shots being fired from a nonsilenced weapon somewhere behind him, and he prayed it was Claudia. Bullets kept splashing around him, and he knew he had no choice but to forget the ring and submerge himself once again. His strength was ebbing at an alarming rate, and he felt that despite his awesome training in deep cold, there was only so much more he could take. Scot sucked in another huge breath and once again swam for the bottom.
He knew that in cold water, the key to survival was to move as little as possible, as swimming took desperately needed heat away from the center of the body and radiated it out to the limbs. The body cooled four times faster in water than in air of the same temperature. The effects of extreme cold could take over very quickly.
The river continued to sweep Scot along at an awesome rate of speed. He counted to five and, not seeing any rips of bullets carving into the water around him, decided to surface. He needed to find someplace to get out. He swam slowly upward, ready to dive again if anyone began shooting. Strangely, the water seemed to have an even stronger pull on him now. His arms felt like limp noodles, and he was worried that the cold was beginning to adversely affect his mind. I have to get out, he told himself.
As Harvath once again broke the surface, he quickly scanned the opposite bank. There was no sign of the shooters, but at this moment, that was the least of his problems. His mind had not been playing tricks on him. The river was pulling him with much greater force. It was picking up speed as the water was sucked into a small pumping-and-generator station next to Lucerne’s other covered bridge, the Spreuerbrücke.
The speed at which he was traveling doubled, and then in an instant tripled. Half of the river’s force was being funneled into a set of iron grates fifty yards ahead. Harvath didn’t care about the shooters anymore and focused all of his concentration on the grates that were rushing up to meet him. The white froth and level of the water told him that there was a drop-off right before the metalwork. If he didn’t find a way to break free from the river’s hold, he would be pulled under and pinned against the grates, where his lungs would fill with the icy water and he would drown.
Summoning every last ounce of strength he had, Harvath began to try to paddle across the current, closer to the north bank and safety. His muscled arms pumped like giant pistons, and he didn’t give a single thought to the stitches or the pain radiating from his left arm. Again and again, he pulled and stroked, trying to break free of the frigid grasp that hurtled him toward certain death. For a moment, he thought he was making progress, then came to the crushing realization that the current had only adjusted itself to the right as it entered a directional chute of concrete. The chute narrowed, and the water picked up even more speed.
Harvath pulled with all of his might and kicked his legs frantically. Suddenly, a new pain shot through his body. Something had come racing down the river and slammed into his hip. Before Scot could take stock of what had happened, he felt the pressure of the river growing on him. It was bending him almost as if he were a twig. Bending instead of pushing? The only way you can bend something is if there’s resistance! As the river swirled and pushed against him, sending sheets of water shooting up and over his head, he realized what had happened. He’d come to a stop.
Twenty yards before the pumping station was another grate submerged just below the water line. Its function was to keep large objects such as trees, oars, and other waterborne debris from being sucked in. Thankfully for Harvath, it had worked. The pain he’d felt had not been something hitting him, but rather his hip and the rest of him crashing into the grate. For the moment, he was safe, but the water was crushing his chest. The cold already made it so hard to breathe that the added pressure from the water was now making it impossible. He wouldn’t die from drowning, but suffocation was an all-too-new and all-too-likely possibility.
Ten feet away was a concrete embankment that jutted out from the pumping station like a finger into the river. Scot tried to shuffle toward it, but in his weakened state, he was pinned too tightly to move. He fought to breathe in slow steady breaths. He couldn’t see a way out. But there must be. He closed his eyes and tried to think. A splash nearby startled him, and he opened his eyes just in time to see a huge, neon-yellow object racing toward his head. Instinctively, he threw up his hands to protect his face.
“Don’t let it go by! Grab it! Scot, do you hear me? Grab onto it, and I will pull you in. Hurry, they’re coming. We don’t have much time!”
It was Claudia’s voice. The object was a life ring with a line attached. Claudia was standing on the embankment holding the other end. He wrapped an arm around it.
“Good. Listen to me. I need you to put your right arm and shoulder through and then your head. The water is moving very fast, and I don’t want to lose you. Do you understand?”
Scot fought to regain control of his body. His arm didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Finally it did, followed by his shoulder and then his head. Half his body was now safely in the life ring, and he found he could move against the current with Claudia pulling from the embankment. She guided him to a short ladder he hadn’t seen before and kept the rope taut as he climbed up.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Was he okay? Sure, a swim was just what today needed to make it perfect. Scot could only shake his head. He was too cold to speak. He had lost all of his color, unless you counted the blue in his lips, and his teeth were chattering.
“Here, put this on,” said Claudia as she removed the life ring and draped her coat over his shoulders. “I hate to do this to you, but can you move? We have to get going.”
Scot nodded, and they made their way up the embankment.
As they reached the top, the ground in front of them erupted in a volley of muffled pops. The shooters were charging down the Spreuerbrücke right at them.
Claudia shoved Harvath down and reached for her SIG. She faked left and then jumped and rolled hard to her right, trying to draw their fire away from Scot. The trick worked, and the shooters turned their attention in her direction.
The bullets tore up the ground around her, and Claudia continued to roll, aiming as best she could at the figures closing in on her. She had long ago lost count of how many shots she had fired and had no idea how many she had left. Only two thoughts raced through her mind: stop these two men and protect Scot. Over and over she pulled the trigger and finally she saw one of the men drop his weapon and fall forward. It was the man in the long coat. Claudia had managed to hit him square in the chest. He dropped his H&K and fell forward, his momentum causing him to slide across the frozen ground like a runner stealing third. Only one left.
Claudia turned her sights on the man in the blue parka and pulled the trigger. She heard a sickening click. Nothing. She was out of ammunition. Not only that, but she had rolled as far to her right as she could. Claudia was trapped against the wall of the embankment. The man knew it and closed the gap fast.
As he moved in for the kill, there was a smile on his face. Claudia wondered if it would hurt to die or if it would be instantaneous, like turning out a light. She saw a muzzle flash and closed her eyes waiting for the projectile to shatter her skull and tear through her brain, but it didn’t happen. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
Three feet away, the man in the blue coat was on his knees with both hands clutching his throat, trying to stem the gurgling tide of blood. Ten feet farther, she saw Scot drop the heavy Beretta from his hands and fall back onto the ground.
Claudia ran over to the man in the blue parka and kicked his pistol away. She then ran to Harvath. “I thought for sure he was going to kill me,” she said.
“Not on my watch. I hear sirens, the police are getting closer. We’ve got to move.”
“You’re right. I have to get
you out of here and into some dry clothes.”
“Wait,” said Scot. “Search both of the bodies. Don’t bother looking at anything, just shove everything you find into your pockets. Hurry up; it’s a bit nippy out here.” Scot managed a grin for a fraction of a second before his teeth began chattering violently again.
Claudia went right to work. Neither of the men had a wallet or very much else on them. She put everything she found in her pockets and then rushed back to Scot.
Her car was on the other side of the old town. How would she get him back to it? Any minute now the police would be swarming all over. Then she saw it. About two blocks up the St. Karli-Quai from where they were was a sign for the Tourist Hotel. Claudia got Scot on his feet and urged him forward. She hoped the exercise wouldn’t do him any further harm.
When they reached the hotel, a group of people were standing in front. They had heard the gunshots and come outside to investigate. They had no idea from which direction they were fired. There was a line of three taxicabs, and Claudia rushed with Scot up to the driver of the first one.
“Please, sir,” she said in German, “I need to get my brother to a hospital. We heard something that sounded like gunshots, and he lost his balance and fell into the river. I think he has hypothermia.”
Before the cabdriver could answer, the manager of the hotel, who was standing in the doorway, said to the cabdriver, “Heinrick, wait!” and he disappeared inside. Claudia had no idea what was going on. All eyes, including the cabdriver’s, were turned to where the manager had stood just a moment before. As quickly as he vanished, he reappeared with a thick wool blanket, which he wrapped around Scot. “Now you go!”
Claudia thanked him and climbed into the back of the cab with Scot as the driver peeled away from the curb. She spoke softly with Scot for a few moments and then addressed the driver. “My brother says it’s not as bad as I thought. He says I’m overreacting. My car is parked at the Matthäuskirche parking. Please turn right here and take Diebold-Schilling Strasse along the Musegg Wall to Brambergstrasse.”
“But he is soaked through. Are you sure?” asked the driver.
“He was only in the water for a few moments before I helped him out. I think the most important thing is to get him home to a warm bath and some nudelsuppe. Our mother is a nurse. I’ll call her and have her come over straightaway to look at him.”
“I can take you to the hospital. It’s no problem.”
Harvath managed a feeble, but believable, “Nein, danke,” from the backseat.
“As you wish,” replied the driver, who turned right at the Geissmattbrücke bridge and headed along the Musegg Wall toward the Old Town section of Lucerne, where Claudia and Scot had parked her car.
“Please turn up the heat,” Claudia asked the driver.
Scot smiled to himself as two police cars sped past. Could it possibly get any hotter?
70
Claudia got them out of town and onto the auto route for Bern as fast as she could. The heater was turned up as high as it would go. Scot stripped out of his wet clothes and remained huddled in the wool blanket until Claudia found a roadside café, where she bought containers of piping hot soup and coffee. Scot drank down everything she gave him and, when he was finally feeling up to it, reached into the backseat and pulled some clothes from his suitcase. Although Claudia should have been watching the road, every once in a while she sneaked a guilty peek at him getting dressed.
The color began to return to Scot’s face, and his shivering lessened.
“How are you feeling?” Claudia asked.
Even though he was fully dressed in new clothes with heavy wool socks, Harvath wrapped the blanket back tightly around his body. “Very pissed off.”
“Good. The way you were shivering, I thought we had made the wrong decision.”
“No, we made the right one. If we’d gone to the hospital, there could have been police, questions, and who knows what. Miner probably would have found us, and that would have been the end of the story.”
“I guess so, but if we had been wrong about the severity of your condition, that could have been the end of the story as well.”
“I know my limits. You don’t ever need to worry about me.”
“Thanks, Scot. I’ll remind myself of that next time I see you looking like a flipped turtle.”
There was a touch of hurt in her voice.
“Thank you,” said Scot.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
“You mean when I drew the fire of Miner’s men and pulled you from the river? That? That was nothing. Sorry I didn’t have a towel ready when you got out.”
Scot thought about what a gift she had for pissing him off while at the same time making him want to laugh out loud. They made quite a pair.
“How do you know the men were Miner’s?” asked Scot as he brought his mind back.
“They weren’t wearing any American brand-name clothes, and the man you shot in the throat was mumbling in German as he was dying. I just assumed Miner had sent them.”
“Seems like it.”
“You were also right about something.”
“What was that?”
“They were in radio contact. They each had an earpiece and a sleeve mike. The radio was a German brand.”
“Was there anything in their pockets?”
“No wallets, which doesn’t surprise me. These men would not be carrying ID around with them. That’s not the way it’s done.”
“I agree. Anything else?”
“Cash, cigarettes, and each had one of these,” said Claudia, who pulled out what looked like two playing cards from her pocket and handed them to Scot. He was getting warm now, and with his free hand he turned down the VW’s heater.
Harvath examined the cards. They had a magnetic strip on the back and a red dragon on the front, under which were the words Mt. Pilatus and some other lines written in German.
“What are these?” said Harvath.
“They are kind of like lift tickets for Mount Pilatus.”
“What is it?”
“Pilatus is a mountain not too far from Lucerne. Normally, on clear days, you can see it from the city. According to legend, the body of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate is buried in the lake near the top, and supposedly this was the only place his soul could rest. Every year on Good Friday, he is said to rise from the water to wash the blood from his hands. The mountain is named after him.”
“That’s just charming. What about this dragon on here? What’s that all about?”
“That is the logo for Mount Pilatus. It comes from something different. Starting in the fourteen hundreds, the people of Lucerne began to think they saw dragons around the mountain, and the image stuck.”
“Tell me more about the mountain.”
“There are two hotels on the top. One is called the Bellevue, and it is completely round like the Schilthorn in the Jungfrau region. The other is a more traditional hotel called the Hotel Pilatus Kulm.”
“What’s the attraction up there?” asked Scot.
“The views mostly. Although some people come for hiking, rock climbing, and paragliding as well.”
“So it’s kind of like the Jungfraujoch?”
“I guess that would be a fair comparison, but the Jungfraujoch is actually carved into the glacier and the mountain, while the hotels at Pilatus are basically built on top of it.”
“But, why would these two guys be carrying lift tickets for Pilatus?”
“Maybe they were hikers,” said Claudia.
“C’mon, Claudia, think. They don’t carry wallets with them, but they do carry these lift tickets? Why would they need them?”
Claudia focused on the road in front of her while she toyed with Scot’s question in her mind.
“Do you suppose,” Scot continued, “that they were going to kill us and then go off for a nice little hike?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Then why have the ti
ckets?”
“To get up to the top of Pilatus.”
“Right. And if they were carrying the tickets with them when they attacked us, that probably means they were going to be using them afterward, right?”
“I guess you could be right.”
“How many ways are there to get up Pilatus?”
“Well, you can hike it. That takes about five hours. Then there is a series of two gondolas and a cable car from the town of Kriens, or you can take the cogwheel railway from the town of Alpnachstad.”
Scot opened Claudia’s glove compartment and started rummaging around.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Do you have a map of the area around Lucerne?”
“Yes, it’s in my Swiss atlas, underneath your seat.”
Scot fished out the atlas and found the pages he was looking for.
“Okay, I’ve got the towns,” said Scot. “So the cogwheel train is direct, no transfers?”
“Right. Why? What are you thinking?”
“Would it be possible to hide someone in one of the hotels up at the top of Pilatus? Let’s say maybe Miner knows the owner or is blackmailing him? Could he do it?”
“I suppose he could, but it’s not very likely.”
“Why not?”
“The staff of those hotels are much like others all over the country. They’re very chummy and they talk. They all know each other’s business and everything that goes on in the hotels. It is hardly likely Miner could hide your president there.”
“Good point. What about someplace else, maybe only halfway up the mountain?”
“From what I could see on the tickets, they are good for travel all the way to the top. Why would they pay for full trips and not use them?”
“To throw anybody off if they ever came across the tickets?” Scot speculated.
“If they ever thought anyone would find the tickets, why not leave them at home in their wallets? Or better yet in their car?”