The waitress looked terrified, nodded enthusiastically.
Caroline looked hesitant, then relented. “Okay,” she said. “But hang at the rear and follow us. We’re not babysitting you, though. There’s a vehicle parked up on the west side. Get in it and take cover…” They both nodded, and Caroline looked at Rashid. “Ready?”
He nodded and aimed the pistol down over the bannister. Caroline eased her way down the flight of stairs and when she reached the bottom, Rashid guided Natalia forwards then made after her, overtook the her and Caroline, and Caroline covered the next flight of stairs with the pistol as he took point. Ramsay nodded for the chef and the waitress to follow, and he closed the rear holding the rifle in a manner akin to one of the cast members of Dad’s Army. He had already decided that if he lived through this then he was going to get some weapons training. He hadn’t signed up for this, and always preferred his comfortable office over anything he’d done this past year. But if he continued to find himself in these situations, he was going to bring more to the party.
Rashid checked the area of the lobby he could see, signalled for Caroline to join him. The wind swirled through, raining debris on the reception desk and office wall. It was difficult to see, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees from upstairs. Rashid pulled up his collar and zipped his suit up tightly. Caroline copied him but crouched when she saw a movement. Rashid hadn’t seen it, but he dropped down all the same and aimed his pistol in the direction she had been looking. There was a flicker of flame as the muzzle flash flared in front of them and bullets slammed into the stair treads above them.
Caroline fired twice and ran out to the reception desk, taking cover behind the thick oak. She signalled to Rashid for him to cover her and when he fired three successive rounds, she leapt up, kept low and made her way along the length of the desk. There was a burst of gunfire and when it stopped she dodged out and fired two shots. She was buffeted back into the desk, but she had seen a splash of red against the white snowsuits and had heard a howl. The injured man in front of her turned and kicked his way through the wooden boarding and charged into the ice hotel. Caroline was about to follow, but heard Rashid screaming for her to stop. She remembered the IED setup that Rashid had constructed, and she ducked back to the cover of the desk.
The sound of detonation was deafening and shut out the howl of the wind for a moment as the series of explosions tore through the ice passage and large chunks of ice blew out through the opening and peppered the walls adjacent to the reception.
“Stay put!” Rashid shouted above the wind. He half ran, was half blown across the lobby to her. “There are two devices in there. Low yield, but maximum effect. He’ll be crushed flat by the roof to the tunnel. Leave him.”
Caroline tucked in beside Rashid as they made their way back to the staircase. “What the hell was that?”
“Those bear-scaring bangers, some fuel and few things out of the kitchen. A trip wire and a rough-pull fuse. A bit old-fashioned, but deadly.” Rashid shepherded her into the lee of the stairwell, out of the wind. There was a lull and he found himself shouting too loudly. “We’re doing the bloody conga here with these two tagging along,” he said, nodding towards the chef and the waitress. “Let’s get them someplace safe and find King. What about the wine cellar?”
“But that will not be safe!” the waitress said incredulously. “There are bombs dropping, people with guns and the storm is still raging. We are safer staying with you!”
“I think she has a point,” Ramsay said from behind her.
“The mortar rounds have stopped,” said Rashid. “I got the man operating the mortar from upstairs.” He shrugged. “That’s three with the guy in the ice hotel and that makes four with the man I took down when we rendezvoused with the asset…” He looked at her and said, “Sorry, I mean Natalia.” Natalia shrugged like it was nothing.
“So, there are still more unaccounted for. And where is Niles, the hotel manager?” the waitress asked. “And the two Russian workers?”
Rashid spun around as a metallic scraping was clearly audible, and a cannister around twice the size of a soft drinks can rolled through the lobby and came to a stop against the reception desk. He turned back to the group and shouted, “Grenade!” Before crashing into Caroline and landing on top of her amid an explosion of smoke and shrapnel and a flash of hot white light.
73
The service stairs were just like others that King had seen in expensive establishments around the world. Smooth concrete, no carpet and narrow. A way of getting the staff to where they had to be without cluttering up the stairs for paying guests. The lighting warranted no shades, just simple low-energy light bulbs hanging from bargain-budget ceiling roses above each landing. It was a stark reminder of the façade of a hotel. That people worked hard behind the scenes but were never wanted in sight unless they were waiting on or serving drinks. Nobody wanted to see a fifty-year-old chambermaid who earned minimum wage struggling along with armfuls of soiled sheets and used towels.
King kept the AK-74 ready. He had ditched his jacket in the hall below and wore his all-in-one snow suit undone to the waist like a wetsuit. He was sweating in the heat of the sealed stairwell. The destruction of the glass and the roof meant that much of the hotel was well under minus-twenty.
The wind had
