Amanda were going almost straight across the mountain. With each foot they gained in going across, the avalanche gained fifty coming down. There was absolutely no room for slipups.
Scot had no idea if his fellow agents had heard him yell, if they had interpreted the sound of the avalanche for what it was, or how they had reacted. For now at least, there was no way to find out. He could only hope that they had taken his lead and were following right behind.
The roar had become deafening, and it reverberated throughout Scot’s entire body, shaking him as he held Amanda. It seemed as if they had been traveling forever, even though it had been only a matter of seconds. Where are those goddamn rocks? he screamed to himself.
As it turned out, Scot had dangerously undershot his target. Through the blizzard of blowing snow, he could just make out the outcropping, further across the face and significantly below where they were now. Damn it! he thought.
Knowing this was his last chance, Scot pointed his skis, himself, and Amanda straight for the bottom.
They picked up speed at a terrifying rate. Scot’s knees pistoned up and down like jackhammers as he absorbed not only his weight but also Amanda’s. He fought with all of his might to keep control of his skis, which were furiously slapping the packed snow like a pair of loose dock planks in a hurricane.
He and Amanda were going way too fast. One bump in their path and it would all be over. There was no way that any skier, even one of Scot Harvath’s caliber, could keep this up.
Then, he saw it. The outcropping of rock was racing up to meet them as quickly as the avalanche was racing down to swallow them.
Harvath put the distance at twenty yards and closing. His mind raced through the trillion calculations necessary to gauge the successful achievement of the next step in his plan: stopping.
The logical answer he received to his seemingly illogical request was simply, “Three…two…one…Now!”
Scot wrapped his arms tightly around Amanda and threw all of their collective weight over his left ski. He covered her as best he could with his body, acting as a human air bag to protect her from injury, as they brutally spun and pounded out of control toward the rocks below.
Over and over again they somersaulted with furious speed, each time crashing down hard on one or the other of Scot’s shoulders. Between the white snow of the bowl and the blowing white of the blizzard, Harvath fought hard to keep focused on which way was up and where their target was. It was impossible. They continued to flip wildly out of control. The sound of the avalanche was so loud now he couldn’t even think.
As quickly as they had been rolling, they were immediately stopped by slamming into a sheer wall of rock. Scot cried out in pain and held on to consciousness just long enough to see a torrent of wet snow pour over them and Amanda’s limp body lying motionless beside him.
8
The first thing he noticed when he regained consciousness was the eerie silence. The absence of noise was deafening. They had barely made it to the rock overhang in time. The plan had just worked. They were positioned beneath a narrow stone ledge that had formed a partial barrier to the avalanche. The claustrophobic box they were in was about eleven feet long, three-and-a-half feet wide, and four feet high. They were amazingly fortunate. Where there wasn’t rock, they found themselves surrounded by snow, but there was at least some room to move around-as if they were in a small cave. Scot hoped the other Secret Service agents had been as fortunate, but he doubted they had.
In the dark, Harvath began to slowly make an overall assessment of his condition. His ankles felt okay, shins were fine, knees were sore but probably would bear weight. His thighs felt like mush and were bruised, but didn’t seem like a problem as long as he was lying down. He carefully fished his Mag-Lite out of his pocket and turned it on. Next, he struggled to bring his knees up to raise himself into a sitting position, and that’s when the pain started shooting through every inch of his upper body. He gave up immediately.
Covering Amanda during their fall, Scot had taken most of the beating along his back and shoulders. From his waist up, everything hurt, and he couldn’t tell what might be broken. At least there were no apparent open fractures, and he was only bleeding slightly from an abrasion on his forehead, so for that he gave thanks.
From where he was lying, he could see the outline of Amanda’s left leg. He needed to get to her and knew it was going to hurt like hell, but he pushed the thought from his mind. With all the strength he could summon, Scot rocked his body slowly from right to left until he got up enough momentum to roll all the way over. He was right. Rolling over did hurt like hell, but it was nothing compared to what came next.
When he’d been on his back, he could look straight down past his ski boots and make out Amanda’s leg as she lay on her side. Now that he was on his stomach, he couldn’t see her, because she was behind him. Scot summoned up another surge of strength and, banishing the pain from his mind, managed to lift himself onto his elbows. This change of position sent searing, red-hot spikes of pain up his arms and into his battered shoulders. He began turning his body around upon the cold, rock-strewn snow so he could face Amanda. His legs refused to cooperate, and for a moment he was afraid he might be paralyzed. Eventually, he felt his ski boots move.
Scot’s incredibly weakened legs were not of much use, so he went back to dragging himself in Amanda’s direction while the incredible pain in his arms, shoulders, and back threatened to slam him back into unconsciousness.
It took the resilient Secret Service agent over fifteen minutes to crawl ten feet. Even though he didn’t want to, Scot was forced to stop every couple of seconds to catch his breath. He probably had cracked one, if not several, ribs in the tumble down the mountain. Nevertheless, he was alive, and if Amanda was too, then they both had won, so far.
As he drew closer, he could see Amanda’s chest slowly heaving up and down in the beam of his small flashlight. Thank God, she was breathing. At least she was alive. Harvath tried feebly to call out to her, but all he could manage was a hoarse whisper. He would need to get a lot closer to communicate.
He continued his pattern of crawl, rest, crawl, rest, until his face was even with the back of Amanda’s head. With her face turned away toward the sheer rock wall of the overhang that had saved their lives, he couldn’t tell if she was conscious.
Scanning the top and back of her head, he didn’t see any injuries, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Scot knew that attempting to reposition her head could worsen any spinal trauma that might already be present. He would have to carefully support her head, neck, and shoulders, and at this point he didn’t have the strength to do it.
“Amanda?” he whispered in his hoarse, dry voice. “Can you hear me? Mandie sweetheart, it’s Scot. We’re alive. We made it, but I need you to talk to me. I need to know if you’re okay. C’mon, honey, just a couple of words. Let me know if you can hear what I am saying.”
Amanda didn’t respond, and Scot didn’t have the energy to keep talking. He had resisted for as long as he could the syrupy blanket of unconsciousness that had been threatening to overtake him. It was no use. As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t fight it. All he wanted now was to sleep. Peaceful sleep. I’m so sorry, Amanda.
9
“Palmer!” yelled Hollenbeck to the nearest Secret Service agent in the command center. “Get on the horn to Deer Valley and find out if those avalanche sirens are legit. I want to know why they’re sounding and if there has been an avalanche. I want a full, and I mean full report!”
“Yes, sir,” replied Palmer, who immediately contacted the resort’s emergency services department.
“Longo! One question. Are we green?”
“Negative. We are still dark.”
Tom Hollenbeck had been standing for the last nine minutes. He couldn’t think of sitting down. He needed to pace. His crew knew him well enough to steer clear.
He walked over to one of the windows and watched the whipping snow outside, racking his brain for what his
