Avalanche Pass by John Flanagan

  The slight upward inflexion told the anchor that this was all the reporter had for him at this stage. He swiveled back to face the camera as the location shot reduced down to the monitor beside him once more.

  “And we’ll bring you further developments on this breaking story as they arrive. In other news, the secretary of state today was welcomed in Beijing by the premier of the People’s Republic of—”

  Jesse had no wish to hear what the secretary of state had said to the Chinese premier. He switched off the set and sat thoughtfully for a few moments. It seemed that the outside world knew very little about the situation here. He was one up on the FBI, he realized. At least one of the hostages was a US senator. There’d be hell to pay when that news got out. Unless, he thought, the authorities already knew it and were keeping it quiet. After all, a United States senator would make a powerful bargaining tool for the group who had taken over the hotel.

  He stretched out on the bed, considering his options. Perhaps, he thought, the most useful role he could play would be to keep the authorities aware of what was going on in the hotel. He had a cell phone in the glove box of his car. He could…

  Then he remembered. Earlier in the week, he’d tried to use the phone and discovered that the Canyon Lodge was in a dead spot. Probably an intentional one, he had thought at the time, as it meant customers would have to use the room phones, with their usual one and two hundred percent charges for calls. The phone systems in hotels these days were handy little profit centers.

  Of course, he could always try the room phone. The hotel had an automatic switch that would allow him to dial an outside line. But the switch could be monitored and he wouldn’t take the risk. Maybe he could find a phone outside the hotel itself, he thought. There was a payphone near the base of the chairlift, he remembered, and there would be other phones in the adjoining buildings. Potentially, there was the same problem with those phones, of course. Chances were they would all go through the same central switchboard in the hotel. The cell phone would be best. He’d just have to find a spot where its signal wasn’t blocked. There had to be one somewhere on the mountain.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE CABINET ROOM

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON D.C.

  0802 HOURS, EASTERN TIME

  SUNDAY, DAY 2

  Most of the usual group was assembled although this time, Benjamin noticed, the marine colonel was absent. He assumed that he was on the way to, or was already at, the siege site with his rapid response tactical force. Following the decision to keep the president’s involvement as low key as possible, they’d moved the venue for these meetings to the cabinet room. The Oval Office, after all, was the president’s principal workplace and a constant gathering of this group in the Oval Office, along with the disruption it would cause to his normal schedule, might have aroused the sort of media attention and speculation that they didn’t want on this case.

  President Gorton swept in on a wave of self-importance, followed by Chief of Staff Pohlsen. He made a half-hearted gesture to prevent them rising from their chairs—which, had they obeyed it, would have brought his displeasure down on each and every one of them. He dropped into his own high-backed chair at the head of the table and glared at them all.

  “Now what the hell is this about Carling?” he grated.

  Benjamin cleared his throat and answered. “Ah… Senator Carling was chairing a kind of informal conference with a group of aerospace executives from his constituency. Does it every year,” he replied. Gorton frowned, trying to place the name. He didn’t know the senator from Washington but the name rang a bell in his memory.

  “Carling… Carling…” he muttered to himself. Then memory cut in. “He was involved in some kind of shooting a few years back, wasn’t he?”

  “Only by chance, sir,” Benjamin told him. “He was a White House aide at the time. He simply happened to be dining with Senator Atherton when there was an attempt on Atherton’s life.”

  “Atherton? The abortionist?”

  Mentally, Benjamin rolled his eyes at the president’s propensity to sum up a person in one overarching, and usually inaccurate, phrase.

  “He’s a free choice advocate, Mr. President, yes. The assassin’s bullet hit him in the shoulder. Carling had dropped his glove and they both bent to pick it up at the moment the shot was fired.”

  “Mmm. Pity.” Gorton said. “So, as to Carling. Do the kidnappers know his identity?”

  “They’ve shown no sign that they do, sir.”

  The president rubbed his fingers across his smooth shaven chin. At this early hour of the morning, the skin was sleek and shiny from the close attention of his razor. Later, the gray stubble would begin to spoil the effect. Gorton usually shaved two or three times in a day, depending on his schedule of commitments.

  “So what do we do?” Gorton demanded of the room in general. “How do we get Carling out of this goddamned mess he’s got himself into?”

  Janet Haddenrich answered this time. “We feel it’s best to keep a low profile on this one sir,” she said smoothly. “If they know who they’re holding, they have a real bargaining card.”

  “How can they not know?” General Barrett interrupted. “All they have to do is check the hotel registration.”

  Benjamin shuffled the printed sheets in front of him, containing the list of fifty names of the hostages. “There’s a good chance that Senator Carling was incognito,” he began and, as the general looked askance at him, continued. “It’s fairly normal procedure. And it would account for the fact that the terrorists haven’t mentioned his presence.”

  “Maybe,” Barrett said doubtfully. His opinion of the senator from Washington was that Carling, like most elected officials, would never travel incognito. They craved the limelight. That was what kept getting them elected, after all. “Or maybe these damned terrorists are just jerking us around, waiting to see if we’ll admit he’s in there.”

  Linus Benjamin lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “Could be,” he agreed. “But we just have to play it by ear until we find out more. In the meantime—” he turned back to the president—“we feel the White House should maintain its current low profile. Too much interest from the president might start the terrorists looking harder at the hostages’ names.”

  There was a general muttering of agreement around the table and Gorton paused, pretended to think the matter over, then nodded decisively.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll play it that way for the time being.”

  General Barrett voiced the question that all of them wanted answered. “Do we have any line on these people yet?” he asked Benjamin.

  The FBI director turned both hands palms up in a negative gesture. “Nothing so far,” he said. “Homeland security has nothing on them and neither do we. Whoever they are, they’re playing it real close to the chest.”

  “Our sources are showing nothing so far, either,” chipped in Haddenrich. “There are a couple of possibilities—long shots. We’re checking them out. But so far these people look as if they’re new kids on the block.”

  “These guys are professionals. Look at the equipment they’ve got,” Tildeman added. “Radar-slaved fifty caliber, heat-seeking missiles.”

  Pohlsen held up a hand to interrupt. “Stingers and machine guns?” he said skeptically.

  “That’s pretty low tech for this day and age, surely.”

  But General Barrett shook his head in reply. “That’s just the thing, sir,” he said. “Professionals usually stick to the KISS principle.” He noticed Gorton’s frown of incomprehension and elaborated. “Keep it Simple, er… Sam,” he said, at the last moment changing “Stupid” to “Sam” as he realized that the president could possibly think the word was aimed at him.

  “Low-tech equipment is reliable. There’s less to go wrong. The past few decades have shown simple triple-A is often more efficient than more complex missile systems.” He turned now to Haddenrich. “Surely we’ve got something on them???
?

  The CIA director made no reply. She raised one eyebrow at the general and shook her head. They might be pros, the gesture said, but we still don’t know jack about them.

  “Well we need answers, goddamn it,” the president rasped. “Get more people on it and keep them working on it till we know something. We have to know who we’re dealing with.”

  There was no answer to that. Several pairs of eyes around the table dropped and there was a low mumble of acknowledgment. Both the FBI and the CIA were frustrated by their inability to pin the blame to any individual or group. The fact that Gorton could then use their inability as a way to needle them made it even more galling.

  There was an apologetic cough from the bottom of the table and Truscott Emery leaned forward, his well-manicured hands resting on a small stack of computer printouts.

  “Um… we might have a possible lead,” he said softly and the table turned toward him. His hesitant tone brought an instant frown to President Gorton’s face.

  “Are we talking facts or supposition here?” Gorton asked, and his predecessor’s special adviser hesitated once more before replying.

  “No facts yet, Mr. President. Just a theory we’re working on,” he said.

  The president heaved a deep sigh. “Well let’s not waste any of our time on it until you have some facts, okay?” he said unpleasantly.

  Emery nodded several times, looking down at the notes in front of him.

  “Of course, Mr. President. It’s just that—” The president’s hard gaze cut him off midsentence.

  “Facts, Mr. Emery. That’s what we need to deal in here. We go off half-cocked on any of your wild-eyed theories, we could be putting a lot of people in danger. This is the real world. Not some hypothetical one you used to study at Harvard. Understand?”

  The special adviser made a half bow from his seated position. “Of course, Mr. President,” he said, his even tone giving no hint of the rage he felt inside at the vain, stupid man sitting at the far end of the table. “I’ll refine the theories a little and present them then,” he said.

  Again, the president’s gaze bore into him. “Present them when they’re facts, Mr. Emery,” he said shortly. Then, dismissing the man, he asked the table at large, “Anything else?”

  Heads shook around the table. One or two of them looked sympathetically to the annoying little special adviser, he noticed. Well, that was their bad luck. It was time he reined in some of these leftovers from the former administration. Time they knew that President Couch was dead and gone and not coming back again. He rose, waited until they all stood with him, then left the room. Pohlsen delayed a few seconds.

  “Anything breaks here, Benjamin, let us know ASAP,” he said. “You too, Ms. Haddenrich,” he addressed this last to the director of the CIA, who nodded. “Otherwise, another briefing tomorrow, same time.” He glanced at his watch and hurried out after the president. Benjamin, Tildeman and Janet Haddenrich all exchanged wry glances. Then Benjamin looked down the table to where the chubby special adviser was replacing his notes in his briefcase, the careless way he was stuffing them in was the only clue to the rage that was burning inside him.

  “What have you got, Trus?” he asked quietly. Emery looked up, realized that the others were still sitting around the conference table, waiting for him, and stopped packing his notes away. Benjamin glanced meaningfully around the room.

  “Perhaps we should—” He began, jerking his head toward the door. The others all nodded assent. There wasn’t a meeting room in the White House that wasn’t wired for sound, as everyone who could remember the Nixon era knew all too well. Only Truscott Emery stood his ground.

  “It doesn’t bother me who’s eavesdropping on this,” he said, with a definite note of acidity in his tone. “After all, it may well be the only way to get an idea heard at the top levels these days.”

  Benjamin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The sarcasm in Emery’s voice would be picked up by the tapes, he was sure. Also, most of them made a polite pretense of not knowing that tapes were running everywhere in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days. Then he shrugged. If it didn’t bother Emery, why should it bother him?

  He looked at the others. Tildeman and Barrett both shrugged in return. Janet Haddenrich, he realized, was smiling approvingly at the plump ex-Harvard man.

  “Okay, Truscott, why not?” he said.

  Emery busied himself with removing the notes from his briefcase once more. He’d stuffed them in angrily, creasing several of the sheets, and now he took his time smoothing them out. He cleared his throat, glanced quickly at his first page summary and began.

  “Are any of you familiar with Operation Powderburn?” he asked. He glanced up at them and saw the blank looks on all their faces. He nodded briefly and continued.

  “I thought maybe not. It was before all our times, of course. It was a clandestine operation in the early 1990s. But it made use of air force resources and I thought maybe General Barrett may have heard rumor of it?”

  The burly ex-fighter pilot shook his head, his face blank. “Name means nothing to me,” he said. “Powderburn?” he repeated. “It doesn’t sound like the sort of operation name we’d use. Most of them are computer-generated these days—just random words.”

  Truscott Emery smiled. “That’s true. Unless of course we’re talking important, self-serving names that include words like Freedom and Liberation and so on. Part of the reason for using computer-generated codenames is that there’s always the risk of someone choosing a name that gives a hint about the purpose of the operation. The concept of a computer doing that with a randomly generated name is pretty thin. However, in this case the operation name was intentionally chosen to do just that.”

  General Barrett shook his head in disbelief. “That’s contrary to all good planning policy.”

  Emery nodded his agreement. “That’s true, General. Unless…” He let the word hang for a moment or two, until he was sure he had their attention. “Unless you want the enemy to get some idea of the purpose of the operation.”

  Janet Haddenrich frowned at the benign, smooth-cheeked face. “Why would anyone in their right mind want to do that?” she asked. Emery favored her with a nod, as if he were talking to one of his brighter pupils back at Harvard.

  “Exactly, Mrs. Haddenrich,” he replied, and she smiled at his acknowledgment of her married status. “The only logical reason one would do that would be if one were intending to send a message.”

  Benjamin and Tildeman exchanged quick glances. “In this case,” Emery was already continuing, “the message was to a Colombian drug lord named Juan Carlo Estevez. He was an independent, operating outside the Medellin cartel.”

  Haddenrich shook her head. “Dangerous thing to do,” she said, and Emery glanced at her.

  “True. But he was big enough not to worry about them. He’d built himself a virtual fortress in the mountains. His men were well armed and trained and he could afford the latest equipment. He controlled access into the mountains where he was based and he was planning a large-scale operation. He was preparing for a major blitz aimed at San Francisco. This was his plan. He was going to hit one city at a time and dominate it. Then, once he had that market tied up, he’d move onto other major cities. He’d built up a stockpile of cocaine, buying up supplies from the smaller independents, whether they were willing to sell to him or not. He had ten million dollars’ worth of it piled up in a warehouse in the mountains. He’d invested all his available cash in the venture.”

  He paused, then elaborated. “That ten million dollar figure, of course, was his cost price. It would have been closer to fifty million on the street, even given the fact that he planned to undercut the cartel’s price.”

  Tildeman whistled softly. “A sale like that would have caused the cartel quite a headache.”

  “That was the idea. But apparently, we got word of his plans. I’ll let you imagine who it came from.”

  “The cartel?” Barrett asked and Emery nodded.
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  “Exactly. We might not have wanted Señor Estevez peddling his product on our streets but they wanted it even less. The upshot was, those in power decided to send a message to Estevez—and to any others who might have similar ideas in the future. Hence Operation Powderburn.”

  He leaned back, steepling his fingers. He had no further need to refer to his notes. He knew the details by heart from here on in. He glanced quickly around the table to make sure he had their attention, then continued.

  “There was a top secret black operations group formed in the early 1990s for precisely this sort of purpose. It was an inter-service group with a team of Special Forces troops under its command, along with Navy SEALs and small boat forces. There were also several air force pilots seconded to it, along with two F-117 Nighthawks and their support crews. Stealth fighters,” he added, in case anyone around the table didn’t recognize the name. Several heads nodded. “They could have been purpose-designed for the Group. That’s all it was known as, by the way, the Group.

  “The command structure of the Group was, to put it one way, convoluted. People kind of knew it existed but nobody needed to admit to it. But the CIA, FBI or the DEA could let it be known, by various devious routes, that they wanted a certain result and it would be carried out. On occasions, the ‘suggestion’ came from the White House itself. In all cases, operations were totally clandestine, totally deniable. No permanent records were to be kept by anyone.”

  “One moment, Mr. Emery,” Tildeman interrupted. “If this… Group… was so top secret and nothing was put on paper, how did you come to know all this?”

  Emery smiled at him. The chubby face and the smooth pink cheeks gave him an expression of almost cherubic innocence, Janet Haddenrich thought.

  “There’s always a paper trail, Director. I said it was forbidden to keep any permanent records but we all know that people don’t always obey orders like that. The compulsion to cover your ass is an all-powerful one in this city.”

  There were a few glances exchanged around the table. All of those present knew that at different times in their careers, they had kept records that technically should have been destroyed. Then General Barrett spoke for all of those present as he gestured for Emery to continue.