“That’s a good point,” responded Scot as he engaged his throat mike. “Sound, this is Norseman. Do we need to send the Saint Bernards and schnapps down for Ahern and Houchins? Over.”
Scot’s radio hissed and crackled. There was no response. He tried again.
“If either of them blew their knees, I’ve got a buddy here who’s a great surgeon. Tell Ahern and Houchins I’ll split the commission with them if they use my guy. Over.”
He waited longer this time, but there was still nothing but static.
“Sound, this is Norseman; we saw two agents go down. Can you give us a sit rep. Over?”
Sit rep was short for “situation report.” The president had probably pushed his guys just a little too far and just a little too fast for the end of the day. This really was the most common time for wipeouts. Ahern and Houchins were probably all right, but as head of the advance team, Scot felt responsible for every agent and wanted to know for sure.
“Sound, this is Norseman. Let’s have that sit rep. Over.”
Nothing.
Scot decided to change frequencies to the direct channel with the Secret Service command post. The blowing snow was beginning to pick up again. “Birdhouse, this is Norseman, come in. Over.”
“Scot, I’m getting cold,” said Amanda as she snapped into her bindings.
“Quiet a sec, Mandie.”
Scot pressed the earpiece further into his ear, but all he got was crackling static.
“Birdhouse, repeat, this is Norseman, come in. Over.” Scot waited.
“Birdhouse, repeat, this is Norseman. Can you read me? Over.”
More static.
Agent Maxwell looked at Scot, who shook his head to indicate he hadn’t made any contact.
“What do you think?” said Maxwell.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to cry wolf to the rest of Goldilocks’s detail just yet. I’ll try my Deer Valley radio. If that doesn’t work, then we harden up.” Harden up was the Secret Service term for immediately closing ranks and body-shielding their assignment from any potential threat.
Scot tried three times to raise Deer Valley’s ski patrol and then tried Deer Valley’s operations station. There was no response. All of the radios were completely down. Scot let out a loud whistle, catching the attention of the rest of the detail agents, and gave the harden up command by waving his gloved index finger in a high circle the wagons motion above his head.
In a matter of seconds, Amanda’s protective detail had her completely surrounded. There was an incredible array of weaponry drawn, from Heckler amp; Koch MP5s to SIG-Sauer semiautomatics, and even a modified Benelli M1 tactical shotgun. The men’s eyes never stopped surveying the area as Scot explained that he had seen two of the president’s detail agents go down and all radio communication was dark.
There probably was a simple explanation. Ahern and Houchins could just have wiped out, and the radios had been acting up all day, with the weather the most likely culprit, but that was not how the Secret Service was trained to think.
Operating procedure dictated that they take the fastest and safest route back to the command center immediately. With the loss of radio contact, Birdhouse would already have scrambled intercept teams to recover both details as quickly as possible. But they were still a long way off. It was time to move.
Amanda saw her chance to break in and asked, “Scot, what’s going on?”
“Probably nothing, Mandie, but we need to get you back down to the house as quickly as possible,” said Scot. “You’ve done an awesome job today. I’m really proud of you. Your skiing is red-hot. Now, the normal way we go home would take us a bit too long. If we ski through the bowl, I can have you sipping hot chocolate by the fire with your dad in fifteen minutes. What do you say?”
“This is about him, isn’t it? Has something happened? Is he okay?”
“I’m sure he is, and the quicker we get back, the quicker you’ll see for yourself. Do you think you can do the bowl with me? I’ll be right next to you.”
“I don’t know. I think I can handle it.”
“Good girl.”
Scot smiled reassuringly at Amanda and gave the order to move out. The detail dropped over the icy lip into the steep bowl. The wind grew more fierce and sent sharp blasts of snow into their faces. Amanda was slow, but at least she was moving forward. It was terrifying for her, but to her credit, she was doing everything Scot had taught her-weight on the downhill ski in the turns, leaning forward into her boots, and keeping her hands out in front as if she were holding on to a tray.
Even though Amanda’s cautious skiing slowed them down, it looked as if they were going to make it without incident.
Then the detail heard what sounded like the crack of a rifle, followed by the low rumble of a thunderhead. Scot had been around mountains too long not to recognize that sound.
Avalanche.
3
Despite his formfitting winter assault fatigues lined with a revolutionary new weatherproof thermal composite, Hassan Useff lay in his coffin of snow and shivered. He had been one of the toughest kids growing up in his balmy, south Lebanon village and was now one of the Middle East’s finest snipers, but the cold and being buried alive beneath two feet of snow were beginning to get to him. When the hideous repetition of his own raspy breathing was finally interrupted by two squelch clicks over his earpiece, the fear and cold immediately disappeared, replaced by a rush of adrenaline surging through his stiff body.
Useff tensed and released his muscles several times to relieve some of the stiffness in his joints. Cradling the high-tech glare gun in his gloved hands, he heard an almost imperceptible whine as he powered the weapon up.
Two more clicks over the earpiece and he readied himself to spring from his snowy grave.
Buried completely from view in several more snowy crypts nearby, Gerhard Miner and five more of his “Lions” were about to undertake the most daring mission of their lives.
”Son of a bitch,” cursed Sam Harper to himself as his ski clipped the edge of another rock. He loved skiing, but hated having to follow the president down Death Chute. He had fallen a little bit behind and was glad that several of the younger guys on the detail were able to keep up with the commander in chief.
The biggest consolation of all was that Ahern and Houchins were behind him. At least he wouldn’t be the last one to ski up when the party rested in the flat area among the trees before tackling the final vertical drop.
When Harper reached the beginning of the trees, everything began to happen in what, had he survived, he would have described as a split-second flash.
Three final squelch clicks came over Hassan Useff’s earpiece, signaling that the last members of the president’s Secret Service detail were entering the heavily treed area. Springing from his icy hideaway, Useff began pulsing his glare gun as his fellow team member, Klaus Dryer, did the same twenty meters away.
The results were exactly as planned. Even with their UV-protective ski goggles, the entire protective detail, as well as the president, was dazzled.
The glare guns were Russian copies of the nonlethal weapon developed by the American Air Force’s Phillips Laboratory. First brought into action in Somalia in 1995, the purpose of the high-tech laser weapon was to temporarily blind and disorient an enemy.
Temporarily was all Miner’s team needed.
Useff and Dryer’s cross-pulsing in the narrow alley formed by the trees created a blinding laser funnel that the president’s team couldn’t escape. This included the members of the Secret Service countersniper unit, known as JAR, or Just Another Rifle, who were posted strategically throughout the trees along this leg of the president’s run.
Completely blinded and disoriented, several agents lost their balance and wiped out before they even had a
