The Lions Of Lucerne

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 next move should be. The president’s life, his daughter’s, and the lives of no less than thirty Secret Service agents were in his hands.

“Sir!” cried Palmer as she came running up to Hollenbeck with her notepad. “Deer Valley says that there was an avalanche.”

“Shit! Give me the w’s,” said Hollenbeck, which was Service slang for “who, what, where, when, and how many.”

Palmer looked down at her pad and began reading off her list of facts. “Apparently, this was a pretty big one. Several ski patrollers heard it and, knowing what it was, called it in to their base as a potential. Only two patrols actually got a visual and confirmed it.”

“Why only two?”

“Look at the way it’s snowing outside. With weather this bad, you’d have to be practically on top of anything to see it.”

“All right, so several patrols heard what sounded like an avalanche and called it in as a potential, while only two could actually give a positive visual on it. And they also called it in?”

“Correct, sir.”

“How? I thought their radios were down.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Then how did they do it?”

“Apparently, they used a citizen’s band radio inside one of their ski patrol huts.”

“A CB?”

“The call came through loud and clear.”

“Why do you suppose a CB would work, but not our gear and not Deer Valley’s regular radios?”

“Apples and oranges.”

“What do you mean, ‘apples and oranges’?”

“The CB uses a different frequency than those used by the Secret Service or Deer Valley. The weird thing is that our gear is much more sophisticated. Everyone else should be having problems, not us.”

Hollenbeck agreed and tucked that nugget away for later while he proceeded with the matter at hand. “Okay, Palmer. Now for the ten-thousand-dollar question. Where did the avalanche begin?”

“According to the ski patrol, it began at Squaw Peak.”

Hollenbeck’s hand shot through a stack of papers and laminated charts on his desk, pulling out the topographical map the Secret Service’s TAT, or Threat Assessment Team, had prepared. It detailed all of the president’s known and potential ski routes, along with rotating postings for the JAR and CAT teams. Hollenbeck had a photographic memory and knew exactly where Squaw Peak was, but hoped in his heart of hearts that he was wrong. He wasn’t.

Squaw Peak was the highest peak of Deer Valley, and it fed directly into the basin the president and his daughter were skiing through.

In anticipation of Hollenbeck’s next question, Palmer said, “The slide was on this side of the mountain and would have funneled a wall of snow, ice, and debris directly along the routes of Hat Trick and Goldilocks.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Hollenbeck sat back down in his chair.