The Lions Of Lucerne

12

Harvath slid out of his jacket and placed it over Amanda to help keep her warm. She was lying on snow-covered ground, so the gesture was more symbolic than anything else. Amanda would have been better served with the jacket placed beneath her, but he’d already moved her once and didn’t want to risk it again.

Her pupils not constricting was a sign of abnormal brain function. Despite all of Scot’s efforts to cushion Amanda, she’d probably hit her head during the fall down the mountain. Only a doctor would be able to know for sure what her prognosis was, and that made their situation all the more dire.

As Scot’s head continued to clear, he realized they probably had a little more air available to them than he’d originally thought. He needed to begin the dangerous process of extricating himself and Amanda from their snowy dungeon. He crawled back down toward Amanda’s feet, dragging his backpack with him.

Confident that he was far enough away that a minor cave-in of snow or ice wouldn’t land on Amanda, Scot reached into his pack and withdrew what looked like a telescoping ski pole. The pole was known as an avalanche probe and was used by search parties to feel for avalanche victims beneath the snow. As Scot began extending the device, he breathed a sigh of gratitude that he had been safety conscious enough to bring it along.

He picked an angle that looked to be the safest and easiest to dig out from and began feeding the pole through, careful not to disturb any unstable snow. The pole fed out for what felt like a million miles. They had survived a major avalanche.

Shrugging off the fatigue that leaned on him like a heavy boulder, Harvath assembled his collapsible snow shovel and prayed he wouldn’t bring the icy roof crumbling down on top of them.

Bending his knees and putting one foot against the rock wall behind him for leverage, Scot began the delicate process of digging out. The last thing he wanted to do was to cause a cave-in.

When he felt he had tunneled a sufficient distance forward, he began scraping the snow along the ceiling in front of him. It created an ice spray that rained down on his face and hands. The process was agonizingly slow. Time and again, Scot backed out of the tunnel, pulling the recently shoveled snow toward him, and deposited it within their frigid cave.

On his eleventh grueling trip back into the tunnel, Scot felt the shovel break the surface. He let the crisp plates of frozen snow fall down on him as he dug an exit wide enough to crawl through.

A chill wind howled as he pulled himself through, and the snow was falling harder and blowing faster than before. The sun was completely gone, and Scot couldn’t make out anything below them in the terrible conditions. He sat on the rim with his heavily booted feet resting within the tunnel and took two seconds to catch his breath. It was biting cold, but at this moment he didn’t feel it.

Now that they had a way out, Scot was faced with an even bigger problem. With Amanda unconscious and unable to help him assess her injuries, moving her might cause permanent damage. On the other hand, it was equally, if not more dangerous to stay where they were. There was a very good chance they might freeze to death, or even worse, be reburied in a secondary slide. Though he was certain a massive rescue effort was now under way, there was no way the rescuers could have known that he and Amanda had traveled so far across the face of the mountain. It would take them days before they started looking in this area. He thought about using his flashlight to signal for help, but realized it wasn’t powerful enough to reach any significant distance in this weather. Scot had to risk moving her, and the sooner, the better.

Sliding back down on his stomach, Scot reentered the cave. With his Mag-Lite, he checked Amanda again, only to find that her condition had not changed. Her pulse felt weak and her breathing was still slow and shallow.

Scot used his mini shovel to move all of the snow away from the entrance of the tunnel so he would have less trouble getting her out. After that was done, he took off his ski boots and removed his bib-style ski pants. Underneath his ski pants, he wore tight-fitting Lycra biking pants, which he prayed would be enough to keep him from suffering from exposure.

As much as he hated to do it, Scot knew he had to move Amanda to prep her and get her out. With his knife, he cut the padded straps from his backpack and fashioned a crude C-collar, which he fastened around Amanda’s neck to keep it from moving. He used the supporting plastic shell from inside his pack as a short back board. He then cut the straps off Amanda’s bib ski pants and gently put her already jacketed arms and upper body into his ski coat. Next, he removed her boots and slid her into his ski pants, carefully threading the bib straps underneath her back.

The knife came in handy again as Scot fashioned two primitive booties out of the large zippered compartments of his pack. Hopefully, they would help keep Amanda’s feet somewhat dry. Taking her down the mountain with her heavy boots on was not an option. Not only would the added weight be difficult for Scot to bear, but it could also exacerbate any trauma she might have already suffered. He put the nylon booties over her boot liners and pushed her feet gently into them.

Knowing he could never clomp all the way back in his own heavy, uncomfortable ski boots, Scot pulled out his liners to keep his feet warm and then used what was left of his pack to fashion his own booties from the waterproof nylon. Feeling like a postapocalyptic caveman, Scot was now ready to drag Amanda out of their hole and hopefully down to safety.

As he readied himself to go, Scot realized he had made a critical mistake. In an effort to protect Amanda from any falling snow or ice, he had dug the entrance to the escape tunnel at her feet. Amanda was wearing his bib pants so that Scot could pull her by the excess length of the straps dangling next to her shoulders, which meant she was pointed in the wrong direction to be dragged from the cave.

It was bad enough that Scot was going to drag her anywhere without knowing how injured she was, but now, to get her out, he was going to have to turn her around. The cave was only three-and-a-half feet wide, so he would also have to bend Amanda’s legs to do it. Could this get any worse?

Ever so gently he bent her knees up. Next, he placed his hands beneath her shoulder blades and began maneuvering her upper body toward their only way out. Scot knew all too well that if Amanda had suffered any damage to her back, he could be making it permanent. She was such a good kid with such energy. The thought that she could end up paralyzed because of his effort made him sick, but he knew that he couldn’t allow his emotions to control his thinking. It ran counter to his training. He tried to filter the thoughts from his mind, but not before he heard a sickening pop.

Harvath froze in his tracks. Please, God. Please tell me that wasn’t something in Amanda’s back, he said to himself. When he looked down, he saw her ski jacket had caught and chipped off a piece of ice on the cave floor. Scot breathed a sigh of relief and then another when he had Amanda fully turned around and at the mouth of the tunnel.

It was as if he’d had to go into a cold, dark womb, turn a breech baby, and now had to pull it through the birth canal into the world. With his ski gloves back on and the loose straps of the bib ski pants in his hands, Scot moved backward two feet and then pulled Amanda slowly forward for one. The journey out of the icy cave seemed to take forever. At this point, it was nothing but Scot’s sheer force of will that kept them moving.

To pull Amanda’s limp body through the final vertical portion of the tunnel, Scot had to summon every ounce of strength his reserves had to offer. It didn’t matter how tired he was or how much pain he was in. The only thing that mattered, and the only outcome Scot Harvath was willing to accept, was complete and total success in extricating Amanda Rutledge, the president’s daughter and one-day-old member of the sweet-sixteen club, from that icy cave and getting her back home to safety.

After he slid Amanda onto the snow next to the mouth of the tunnel, he sat for a moment to catch his breath and quiet the symphony of screaming muscles throughout his body. He removed his flashlight and checked Amanda’s eyes again. They were still dilated. He took off a glove and checked her pulse. It had grown weaker. He had to get moving, now.

Careful not to disturb her neck, Scot unfurled the hood from beneath the collar of his jacket and velcroed it shut as best he could around Amanda’s face. With the wind and snow blowing so hard, he wanted to keep her as warm and dry as possible.

He stood, wrapped his hands around the straps of Amanda’s makeshift stretcher, and slowly began easing her down the mountain.

The going was brutally difficult. Scot continually sank down into snow up to his knees, sometimes even to his thighs. There was no way to tell which snow was firm and which would give way. And every time Scot sank into one of these unexpected patches, the added weight of Amanda’s stretcher-borne body dangerously threatened to topple him over and send them both hurtling down the face of the mountain.

The wind bit into Scot with a piercing cold against which neither his exertion nor the tepid fumes from his emptying tank of adrenaline could warm him. The razor-sharp crystals of snow tore in sheets across his exposed face like sandpaper.

Harvath fought back against the storm and commanded himself to go forward, one step at a time. Hampering his already slow movement was the knowledge that he had to proceed with a gem cutter’s precision, so as to shield Amanda from any added trauma whatsoever. One foot in front of the other, thought Scot. Failure is not an option. We will make it!

He pressed forward through the hellish wind and cold. He had now lost all sense of time and space. All that mattered was getting Amanda back home. Scot was vaguely aware that his body had stopped shivering in its feeble attempt to keep warm. At least my legs are still moving. But what Scot mistook for his legs moving of his own volition was actually a stumble in slow motion. In truth, his legs had given up three yards ago, and it was only through an amazing effort that he kept moving down the mountain without losing complete control.

Finally, he fell forward into the snow. Like the old brainteaser about a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it, Scot wondered, would his fall make any sound, or any difference? After all, they were completely alone. Or so he thought.

Two hundred yards away, wearing next-generation infrared goggles, the leader of Amanda’s Secret Service intercept team picked up the heat signature of two forms, prone in the snow. In a breakout maneuver that would have made the best F-18 pilot envious, the agent gunned his Polaris snowmobile in their direction.

Within seconds, the snowmobile’s miles-per-hour gauge showed the needle well over one hundred, and he quickly closed the gap with Scot and Amanda. The rest of the intercept team was hot on his trail.

The leader pulled up next to Scot and Amanda, while the rest of the team surrounded the two bodies lying in the snow and used their goggles to continue searching the immediate area.

As an agent carefully rolled him over, Scot let out a low moan.

“It’s Norseman! He’s alive!” shouted the team leader to the other intercept members. He then moved over to Amanda and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but at least her heart was beating. “He’s got Goldilocks too! They’re both alive, but in bad shape.”

The team leader engaged his throat mike in an attempt to raise the command center. “Birdhouse, this is Hermes, do you read? Over.” There was no response, which is what he had expected. His original orders had been not to escort anyone back, but the game had changed. Every Secret Service agent was selected on the basis of a wide variety of criteria. One of the most highly prized was intelligence, along with the ability to make the right decisions in a life-or-death situation.

Hermes addressed his men. “I want two pop toboggans inflated. I will transport Goldilocks on mine and Archimedes will transport Norseman. I am changing our status to medevac under Hostile 2. Hammer 4 and Hammer 5 will take the GPS coordinates so we can return to this location to search for the rest of the party. Let’s move. Go! Go!”

Harvath was only faintly aware of the hissing air and of being strapped into the emergency inflatable pop-up toboggan. As soon as the intercept team swung the snowmobiles around to speed them all back to the command center, he once again slipped into unconsciousness.