“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 being 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
