The Lions Of Lucerne

55

Half an hour gave Harvath plenty of time to become cozy with the members of the tour group sitting around him. A healthy dose of charm made him the darling of the conversation while the train slowly descended from the Jungfraujoch.

As the overhead speaker began announcing the stop for Wengen, Scot could feel the train slowing down. Timing would be everything.

He looked at his watch and then out the window to judge how much distance was left.

“…It’d be great to have you. We’ll take you out on the boat and show you nothing but whales, seals, and beautiful Washington State scenery. Camano Island is like no other vacation you’ve ever taken,” Scot said as he wrote down a fictional address with a pen he borrowed from one of the group members. On vacation, people were so willing to give strangers personal information that they never would at home: names, addresses, phone numbers…it was a phenomenon unique to traveling.

As Scot was about to hand the ballpoint pen back to the man he’d borrowed it from, he made it appear as if he had accidentally dropped it.

“What butterfingers I’ve got. Sorry about that,” he said, bending down to pick it up. The train came to a stop in the Wengen station, and Harvath kicked his plan into action.

From where he was fishing beneath the seats for the dropped pen, he screamed, “Oh, my God! There’s a bomb underneath the seats! Everybody out!”

A murmur of shock floated across the train compartment, but only a couple of people moved. He didn’t have time for this. They were getting out whether they liked it or not. A little added influence was needed. Scot drew the fake Glock from his waistband and began yelling once again as he waved the pistol in the air where everyone could see it, “A bomb! A bomb! A bomb! We’re all going to die! Everybody get out! Run for your lives!”

Whether it was the added urgency in his voice or the gun he would never know, but it didn’t matter. Passengers were screaming and trampling each other to get out of the compartment and as far away from the train as possible. This only helped Harvath as passengers began streaming out of the other compartments, shouting for help and running for their lives. It was sheer chaos.

Using the fleeing passengers for concealment, Harvath hopped out of the train and began running with the herd’s forward direction. Tentatively, he shot a glance backward and his stomach immediately cramped at what he saw-three very large, broad-shouldered men standing alongside the train scanning the crowd and not moving. Trouble in paradise.

Harvath turned around, but not quickly enough to see that a woman in front of him had stumbled, and he fell right down on top of her. She was panicked, hyperventilating, and clawing at the snow-covered ground to get back up and away from the soon-to-be-exploding train. Next, a man ran straight over the top of Harvath, unknowingly digging the toe of his boot into the small of his back. Scot let out a groan of pain. Maybe his ruse had been a little too effective.

Knowing he had to move fast, he saw a break in the people running to his right and rolled off the woman, who was up and away in an instant. Scrambling to his feet, Harvath dug his boots in and shot forward out of his crouch, just in time to see two explosions in the snow where he had been lying. The killers had seen him too and were now firing. Harvath took off as fast as his legs would carry him.

There wasn’t enough time to try to do another quick change to throw the men off his path. His only hope was to outrun them, or lose them somehow in the village.

Wengen played host every year to the world’s longest downhill ski race, the Lauberhorn. Although downhill had not been Scot’s area of expertise, he had come to Wengen to see the race twice and cheer on the American team, as well as competitors he knew from other countries.

The village hadn’t changed much since he’d last been here. Completely devoid of cars, it seemed frozen in time. Were Goethe to come back to revisit the nine-hundred-foot-high Staubach waterfall, only the fashions would seem out of place.

Harvath’s breath came in quick, short gasps as he ran uphill deeper into the village. Dodging the brightly attired skiers that crowded the narrow lanes, he didn’t dare venture a look back. He knew his pursuers were right on his tail.

He took a quick right turn, and wood splintered as an ornate balustrade on a low-lying balcony exploded just above his head. Running hard, Harvath removed his purple cap and threw it to his left into a narrow alley between two chalets. He then dove right, behind a wall of hay stacked only a few feet high.

Focusing on his breathing, he willed his body to calm down or at least to quiet down. He strained his ears for sounds of the men coming down the small street. Fifteen feet in front of him, a herd of mountain goats, realizing Harvath was not here to distribute any of the hay he was hiding behind, went back to rubbing their heads against the rough posts of the tiny paddock, their bells ringing in a disjointed chorus.

Scot continued to listen, and slowly, he began to hear the telltale sounds of heavy boots crunching upon the snow. The shooters were close, but they weren’t stupid. Taking their time, they moved cautiously down the street, ever watchful for an ambush.

When they were almost even with the bales of hay, Harvath held his breath, his hands tight around the toy Glock, for all the good it would do him. He heard one of the men speak. “Look. On the ground. Ten o’clock. That’s the hat he was wearing. He went this way.”

“We’ll check it out. You go the other way and radio if you see anything. We don’t want any more screwups. Get moving, and remember, he has a gun,” said another voice. This one was obviously in charge.

These men were speaking English…American English. They weren’t the same voices he had heard in the Ice Palace. They were different, but the second man sounded familiar. He knew that voice. It was the same one Harvath had heard yell the word gun days before outside his bank. These were the men in the ghettomobile with the automatic weapons who had tried to kill him. What were they doing here? How could they possibly have followed him all this way? Harvath was sure that his trail stopped dead in Zurich, even if someone had been sharp enough to have been looking for Hans Brauner. Switzerland was a small country, but not that small. He couldn’t figure out how in the world they had tracked him.

He quickly did the math-the woman and at least two men at the Ice Palace and now these three here. What was the connection? Were they all working together? Were the woman and the two men from the Ice Palace also searching for him in the village? There wasn’t any time to figure things out; he needed to get moving again.

Peering over the bales of hay, he saw that two of the men had taken the bait and had headed off down the passage between the two chalets, back toward the village. The other man continued down the street in the direction his group had been heading before they split up. There was only one option open to Harvath, and that was to go through the paddock.

It would allow him to put a lot of distance between him and his pursuers quickly, and that was all that mattered. Taking one more look over the bale of hay, he decided to make his move. Tucking the Glock back into his waistband, he covered the fifteen feet to the paddock in seconds. In hindsight, he probably should have brought some of the hay with him.

The minute he jumped into the enclosure, the animals started going crazy. The neighing and jangling of their bells grew as the animals converged on Harvath. Some of their horns were long and sharp, and undoubtedly could do a lot of damage. The goats didn’t look happy, and Scot didn’t want to hang around and see if they were friendly. This wasn’t a day at the petting zoo.

The animals converged on him almost at once as he tore across the territory they were so vigorously trying to defend. When he got to the far rail and placed his hands on top, ready to vault over, he felt something tear through the upper part of his left arm. He was sure one of the goats had gotten him with its horns, but looking back, he saw it wasn’t that at all.

The commotion from the goats had caught the attention of the lone shooter, who’d raced toward the paddock and was able to get off one silenced round before Scot got over the fence. It connected with Scot’s arm, tearing through the windbreaker, as well as the clothes and flesh beneath. Harvath could already feel the warm spread of blood running down his arm. He didn’t want to give the guy a chance at a second shot.

With only his right arm for support, Harvath vaulted the fence and rolled when he hit the ground on the other side, wincing from the pain. He ran alongside a decaying shed that looked as if it were three hundred years old and then headed to where he could see crowds of people on a more populated thoroughfare.

He heard the muffled spits being fired from behind as the bullets tore up everything around him. Scot ran faster.

Hitting the thoroughfare, he ran across it and saw that he was parallel with a café that must have been popular with skiers, because there were rows and rows of skis and poles resting on racks outside. Quickly, he grabbed a pair that were entangled with ski poles and headed for an alley about twenty feet down.

The alley actually passed beneath an old chalet and therefore was relatively dark compared with the bright sunshine outside. As he hurriedly unlocked the skis, Scot glanced out the far end of the passageway and could see the peak of the Schilthorn off in the distance.

His back flat up against the wall, he looked at his left arm and saw that it was completely covered in blood. The blood had even run down to his hand. There was nothing he could do about it now.

Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded… Harvath wrapped both of his hands around one of the skis as tight as he could, the tip resting against the wall above his right shoulder. Time seemed to creep at a snail’s pace. Where is he? He had to have seen me come this way.

His left arm was killing him, and holding it in this position wasn’t doing it any good. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up.

Then, he heard footsteps from the other side of the wall. Careful…wait for it.

The gun preceded the shooter through the entrance to the passageway. Scot fought against every impulse in his body that told him to swing and run. Wait, he told himself, not yet.

Whoever the shooter was, he seemed to sense Harvath was near and chose his steps very carefully. It almost appeared as if he weren’t moving at all, but he was. Scot could now see the hand, wrist, and forearm of the gunman. Soon.

The upper arm appeared, then the shoulders, a torso…Now! Swinging with all of his might, Harvath nailed the gunman square in the chest with the ski, and the man went down, dropping his gun. He went for it, but Scot kicked him hard in the ribs. The man grunted, and instead of clutching his side where he’d been kicked, he rolled quickly to his right and grabbed for Scot’s leg. The shooter brought his feet quickly around behind him, ready to jump up, and then there was a flash of something in the man’s hand…a knife.

That was the last straw. Harvath’s anger raged. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he’d had enough and he certainly wasn’t going to grapple with one bad arm and try to fight this guy for the knife.

The man pointed his knife at Harvath.

“You know what? I really, really don’t like it when people point things at me,” said Harvath.

The man froze for a moment, confused that Scot would address him, rather than attack, but the confusion was only temporary.

“If it’s not a gun, then it’s a knife. Here’s the deal. I’m not playing around anymore.”

Just as Scot finished, the man lunged and slashed at him with the blade. Harvath turned in time and grabbed one of the ski poles from where it rested against the wall. As the man attacked again, Scot faked left, then spun around hard to his right and plunged the pole deep into the man’s chest. The knife fell from his hand, and in seconds, blood gurgled out of his mouth, painting his jacket a deep crimson.

“It looks like you got my point,” said Scot as he let go of the pole.

The man, still on his knees, fell forward, but only a foot before the bottom of the pole hit the ground and he was propped up like a human pup tent. Not wasting a moment more, Harvath went for the man’s pistol.

A blanket of fire erupted in front of him as bullets ricocheted off the cobblestones of the passageway. The gunman must have radioed his position to his two colleagues. There was no telling how far away they were. The bullets were close enough, and that was all that mattered. Harvath ducked and rolled toward the opposite entrance. Snaking around the outer wall of the chalet, he jumped to his feet and ran.