The Kill Zone (17 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
“Thank you,” Otto told her.
She studied his face for a few moments, then smiled. “I'll make dinner for us. Now tell me everything that you can. What are they doing in Puerto Rico, and what about Todd and Liz?”
SOMEBODY HAD TRIED TO KILL HER. IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT HE AND LIZ DROP OUT OF PUBLIC VIEW RIGHT NOW.
I
t was nearly 6:00 P.M. and off piste it was already getting dark. Elizabeth was about twenty yards ahead and to the left of her husband, moving fast through the trees along the side of the last bowl before they came out over the ridge behind the groomed and lit slopes.
t was nearly 6:00 P.M. and off piste it was already getting dark. Elizabeth was about twenty yards ahead and to the left of her husband, moving fast through the trees along the side of the last bowl before they came out over the ridge behind the groomed and lit slopes.
It had snowed heavily last night and most of this morning. Most of the territory they'd covered today had been unmarked by anyone else's skis. The feeling was exhilarating.
Liz had laid off the wine, as her doctor had told her, and she had skied well. Better, Todd had to admit, than he had. And she was four months pregnant.
But he was getting worried about her. He'd wanted to quit two hours ago and return to the chalet. She was pushing too hard, as usual, and she wouldn't listen to him.
“This is my last shot before I get as big as a house, and everybody starts worrying about me again,” she argued.
He'd not been able to resist her big green eyes, the promise in her face, in the way she held herself. He saw a lot of his mother in herâspoiled, willful, but almost painfully desperate to be needed. For somebody to depend on her.
His father had made a killing on Wall Street before he was born, so Todd never knew what it was like to live an ordinary life. He'd grown up rich, so he never thought about money. At least not consciously. If you wanted something, you simply acquired it. He was nearly thirteen before he understood the meaning of the word need, or the concept of dependency.
He was allowed to pick from a litter of prize-winning English sheepdogs. He wanted to tie a paisley bandana around the dog's neck and teach it to catch Frisbees on the fly.
Flyer was his dog. He made his parents, and especially the house staff, understand in no uncertain terms that no one else was to go near the dog. No one was allowed to feed, water, or train the animal, which slept at the foot of Todd's bed in the west wing of their Greenwich mansion, except for Todd.
All went well for the first six months, until summer, when Todd and his parents left for their annual eight-week tour of Europe. Since nothing was mentioned to the staff, they thought the Van Burens had taken Flyer with them, and Todd's parents had assumed that their son had given the staff instructions. Flyer was Todd's responsiblity.
Flyer was eight days dead by the time one of the servants noticed the smell and opened young Master Van Buren's room. Flyer had died of thirst and starvation, but not before the poor animal had tried to claw and chew its way out of the room.
Forever after Todd maintained an extremely acute sense of duty, of responsibility and of need. Not a day went by that he didn't think about what had happened. He still had occasional nightmares about Flyer's desperate attempts to escape.
Elizabeth cut sharply left off the narrow track to pick up a series of moguls; on the side of a very steep and heavily wooded slope.
“Goddammit,” Van Buren shouted. He turned after her, carving a sharp furrow in the powder, sending a rooster tail of snow downslope.
She disappeared in the darker shadows amongst the trees, leaving him with no other option than to follow her tracks.
“Liz! Goddammit, slow down!”
He caught a glimpse of her bright yellow ski jacket farther to the left, and
much farther down the slope than he thought she'd be, and she disappeared in the trees again. He saw that he could bear right and cut her off near the bottom, where she would have to traverse toward him along the lower part of the ridgeline. They were less than three hundred yards from Earl's Express Lift. He could make out the top of the lead tower but not the chairs. The lights were on. It meant that the lower slopes were in darkness, and there was less than a half-hour of daylight up here.
much farther down the slope than he thought she'd be, and she disappeared in the trees again. He saw that he could bear right and cut her off near the bottom, where she would have to traverse toward him along the lower part of the ridgeline. They were less than three hundred yards from Earl's Express Lift. He could make out the top of the lead tower but not the chairs. The lights were on. It meant that the lower slopes were in darkness, and there was less than a half-hour of daylight up here.
He spotted her yellow jacket again, then lost it, and found it again. She had made a sharp turn to the right and was just unweighting her skis, coming partially out of the powder, when there seemed to be a flash at her feet.
She planted her left ski pole as if she was setting for a sharp turn to the left, but her body continued in a straight line.
It was all happening in slow motion. Van Buren was above her and less than twenty yards away when she struck the bole of an eight-foot pine straight on. He heard the crash and snapping of the branches, then the watermelon thump as her helmet hit. She crumpled to the snow.
Van Buren panicked. It was his wife and child down there. But then his training kicked in, and he skied down to her. He activated his emergency avalanche transponder that most off-piste skiers carried with them. The ski patrol would pick up the emergency signal and home in on the transponder's exact location within minutes.
There was blood on the side of Elizabeth's head. It had run down under her helmet to the collar and right shoulder of her yellow ski jacket.
Van Buren released his ski bindings, got rid of his poles, raised his goggles and tore off his gloves. He shook so badly inside that he had trouble keeping his balance as he ducked under the tree branches and knelt in the snow beside Elizabeth.
Her eyes were fluttering, and her breathing came in long, irregular gasps. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth. Her complexion was shockingly white, and the way she was slumped forward against the tree made him sure that her neck and maybe her back were broken.
He was afraid to touch her for fear that he would cause further damage. “Liz,” he said to her. “Sweetheart, it's me. Can you hear me?”
She didn't respond.
He eased the ski glove off her right hand and held her fingers.
“Liz, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” He looked down at her unmoving fingers. Tiny, narrow, delicate, lifeless. “Oh, God, Liz, please,” Todd said close to her ear. “Just a little squeeze. I'll feel it.”
She was on her knees, almost as if she were praying. Her ski goggles were askew on her face, the right lens shattered and covered with blood. He wanted to take them off, but he didn't dare.
He looked back the way she had come, then up toward the chairlift tower at the top of the ridge. He could make out two figures starting down the slope into the bowl. Even from this distance he could see that they were pulling a stretcher sled and were clad in the orange jackets of the ski patrol.
“Help is on the way, Liz,” he told his wife. “Hang on, sweetheart, they're coming.” He shifted so that he could look up into her face. There was a lot of blood from a big gash low on her forehead, but it wasn't arterial, and because of the cold air the bleeding was already slowing down.
There was blood in the snow between her legs. At first he thought that it was from her head wounds, but then he realized that the front of her ski suit was soaked with blood.
He fell back, a moan involuntarily escaping from his throat. The baby. Not again. Please, dear God, not again.
The ski patrol was moving fast down the slope. Todd looked up and desperately waved to them. They waved back.
“Just a couple of minutes now, Liz,” he said to her. “I swear to God.” He didn't know how he could face Mac and Mrs. M. This was all his fault. He should have been an asshole and canceled the ski trip. He'd known better. The doctor, who'd been somewhat skeptical, would have sided with him.
If he had been strong enough. Responsible.
He glanced at the ski patrol rescuers, who were getting closer, then turned the other way, hardly able to contain himself. He felt helpless.
His eyes lit on one of Elizabeth's skis. It had gotten tangled in the lower branches of a couple of small pines a few feet away.
Elizabeth's condition didn't seem to be getting any worse. She was starting to breathe a little easier, and there was nothing he could do for her.
He wanted to scream. To lash out at someone, at anyone.
He crawled over to the lone ski and pulled it out of the branches. He brushed the snow from what was left of the bindings. The rear mechanism had shattered. Nothing remained attached to the base of the ski except for some jagged pieces of metal.
He stared at the mechanism. It hadn't broken apart. The metal hadn't simply failed because of work fatigue. The binding had shattered.
As if it had been blown apart, from the inside out.
He bent forward and sniffed the binding, then reared back. He knew the smell. He should. He'd smelled it often enough during training at the Farm.
It was Semtex. A Polish-made plastic explosive. Very stable, very powerful, very easy to get on the open market.
The ski patrol was a little more than one hundred yards out now. Van Buren buried the ski, then scrambled back to Elizabeth. She was still unconscious, and although she was pale, he couldn't see anything catastrophic.
He unzippered her belt pouch and took out her wallet. He removed her CIA identification card, driver's license, and two credit cards under her real name and pocketed them. The ski patrol was coming on quickly, but they were still too far away to make out what he was doing.
He took a small, plastic-wrapped package from a back compartment in Elizabeth's wallet and extracted a Minnesota driver's license, social security card, bank debit card, and University of Minnesota student ID and medical insurance card all in the name of Doris Sampson, and distributed them in her wallet.
Somebody had tried to kill her. It was important that he and Liz drop out of public view right now until he could call for help. His cell phone was at the hotel.
Van Buren replaced Elizabeth's wallet in her pouch. “It's going to be okay, sweetheart. I promise, nobody's going to hurt you again.”
Van Buren stood up, glanced at the ski patrol rescuers, then scanned the ridgelines. Either the plastique had been set on a fuse, possibly by someone back at the chalet, or it had been remotely detonated by someone up here. Someone who was watching them, someone who had followed them.
But there was no one around. The bowl was empty.
The ski patrol arrived, secured the sled and stepped out of their skis.
“What happened, sir?” one of them asked. His name tag read LARSEN.
“She hit a tree,” Todd said. It was difficult to keep on track. He wanted to fight back.
The second ski patrol volunteer whose name tag read WILLET, brought a big first-aid kit over to Elizabeth, took off his gloves and knelt beside her to start his preliminary examination. “What's her name?”
“Doris,” Todd told him.
“Okay, Doris, how are we doing this afternoon?” Willet said, taking her pulse at the side of her neck.
Larsen pulled out a neck brace and backboard, which he brought over to where Elizabeth was crumpled.
“Breathing is labored, but breath sounds are equal and symmetrical. Her heartbeat is fast, but strong,” Willet said. “Some trauma to the forehead and right temple, some bleeding but not heavy.”
They'd worked as a team before. Their moves were quick and professional. They knew what they were doing; they'd been here many times before.
Larsen took out a wireless comms unit a little larger than an average cell phone. “Base, this is Ranger Three in Pete's Bowl beneath Earl's Express.”
“Stand by, Ranger Three.”
“Are you the husband, sir?” he asked Todd.
“No. I'm her brother. She's four months pregnant.”
Larsen's lips compressed, and he nodded. “How old is she?”
“Twenty-five.”
“General health?”
“Very goodâ”
“Ranger Three, go ahead.”
“We have a white female, twenty-five, with blunt trauma to the head, chest and abdomen. Some blood loss, but she's wearing a helmet.”
“Okay, pulse is one fifteen; regular and strong.” Willet called out. “BP one hundred over fifty. Patient is unresponsive, but her pupils are equal and reactive to light.”
Larsen relayed the information to the clinic at the base of the slopes down in Vail Village. “The patient's brother is with her. He says that she is four months pregnant. There is evidence of some bleeding around the perineum of her ski suit.”
“Stand by,” the on-call doctor ordered.
“Is she going to make it?” Van Buren asked. He had to keep it together, but it was hard.
Larsen nodded. “She was wearing a helmet. Probably saved her life.” He glanced over at Elizabeth. Willet was taking off her helmet, careful not to move her head. “Where's her husband?”
“She's a widow,” Todd said. “That's why she wanted me to come skiing with her.”
“Tough luck. She's a good-looking girl.”
“She is,” Todd said, his nerves jumping.
“Ranger Three, give her 500 ccs of normal saline and start her on O
2
. The medevac chopper is en route. We'll transport her to Denver General when you have her ready to move.”
2
. The medevac chopper is en route. We'll transport her to Denver General when you have her ready to move.”
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