A part of him knows that every hostage’s visit to the office has played out the same way, with two exceptions.

  He might not like his wife very much at times, and the love he feels for her is more like the one he has for his siblings, but he cares enough for Lily to abandon his principles rather than his wife.

  The office is the same as it was the last time he was there, with one notable exception.

  Where the female terrorist had been calm and in control earlier, there is now a palpable change to her manner. She is strung out and there’s a different set to her jaw. Previously it was determined, now it juts out with an angry challenge to every target her eyes land upon. The hand that’s holding the pistol has white knuckles and, even to Leslie’s untrained eye, she looks as if she’s about to have a psychotic meltdown.

  Leslie follows her arm and takes the seat she is pointing to and prepares to follow her instructions again.

  ‘Are you going to do as you’re told?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  As craven as his compliance may be, Leslie doesn’t want to provoke the female terrorist. He reaches forward and starts to do her bidding.

  A significant part of him is cursing her for the way she’s forcing him to act against his will. Not only does following her instructions go against every one of his principles, but he also knows that once this is all over, the events of the evening will affect many hundreds, possibly thousands, of people.

  Despite all this, he can’t stop himself from admiring the woman’s ingenuity in not only coming up with the scheme but finding the right people to help her execute it too.

  Chapter 53

  It’s not hard to see where the piste basher is; the flames licking at its body make a most effective beacon.

  As I wade through the knee-deep snow towards the stricken vehicle, I make sure that my hands are above my head. If any of the cops have survived the blast they will be mighty pissed and more than a little trigger happy.

  I’ve claimed an assault rifle from one of the two terrorists acting as guards for the guy with the rocket launcher. I’ve strapped it to my back so it’s out of sight until I can establish my credentials.

  Walking downhill in this fashion, through deep, cloying snow, isn’t easy – especially when I’m wearing dress shoes – but I manage to get within a hundred yards of the piste basher without slipping and landing on my ass.

  Now that I’m close, I call out as I approach the wreckage. I don’t see any signs of life, but if any of the cops have survived, they’ve probably found cover and will be lying in wait for terrorists to arrive. In their position, it’s exactly what I’d do.

  As I’m covering the last twenty or so yards, the vague shapes of the machine become clear.

  The piste basher has been ruined by the explosion, which has ripped apart the area where the cab would sit above its mighty engine. Behind it, what looks to have been a trailer converted into an alpine-style tour bus, is decimated above its tracks. Its sides are thin aluminium sections topped with Perspex and it’s covered with a Perspex sheet, which must be to allow its passengers to see the stars on a moonlit night.

  The flames from the piste basher are throwing weird shapes around while illuminating the trailer enough for me to look inside.

  Not one of the bodies I can see silhouetted in the trailer is moving. The Perspex has been more or less shredded away to nothing by what I imagine was shrapnel from the explosion.

  I call out my name and announce I’m not a terrorist as I circle the vehicle.

  I also make a point of mentioning I have an assault rifle strapped to my back. The last thing I want is for a hidden cop to see it and consider me a threat.

  The more I walk round the piste basher, the less I worry about getting a bullet in my back. The trailer has twelve seats and each one of them has a body slumped on top of it.

  Those in the rear look as if they’re sleeping, but when I reach through a hole in the Perspex and nudge the nearest one to me I get no reaction.

  I take a step towards the front of the trailer and look back at the man I nudged. His face is more or less unmarked, but there’s a thumb-sized chunk of metal protruding from his throat. The man next to him carries similar wounds, and as I move further towards the front of the trailer the injuries worsen.

  The men in the front row have borne the full force of the explosion and the shrapnel it created. They’re missing limbs, and in one case, a head.

  Even as I’m trying to comprehend the horror of what I’m seeing, my brain is firing off at tangents. Part of it is fanning the flames of the MacDonald blood in my veins, which in turn is creating all kinds of murderous feelings, while another, more practical, part is taking in the straps that are holding the men to the seats, and seeing the logic of them in a vehicle that is designed to go up even the steepest of slopes.

  The heat from the fire would be welcome to my frozen body were it not for the fact that its source has spelled death for a dozen brave cops, and the man whose job it was to drive this behemoth.

  To warm myself by its flames is wrong on every level. I’d rather freeze to death on the mountainside than warm myself on what’s nothing more than a pyre.

  The final part of my brain is troubling me with thoughts I’m all too familiar with. These are ideas I’ve carried too far, for too long. The feeling that people have died because of me and my actions is back with a vengeance.

  This time the guilt is telling me that my ideals are wrong, that I should have killed the three terrorists before they had the chance to fire the rocket launcher, that my inaction had cost thirteen men their lives.

  Whichever way I look at it, I know if I’d acted sooner they’d still be alive. By staying my hand until I had what I felt was just cause for the execution of the terrorists, I’d condemned all the men travelling on the piste basher and its trailer to death.

  I force the guilt from my mind and use my anger as a stimulant to power my legs as I turn and head towards RidgeTop Resort.

  The time for being reactive has long passed, as has the idea of taking down the terrorists without killing any of them. From now on, I plan to use whatever methods I can to ensure the safety of the hostages.

  With the cops out of commission, it’ll be an hour or so before their superiors in the valley bottom give up hope of them returning and call for another team. From there, it’ll be an hour for them to get to the valley, plus another hour or so to travel uphill.

  That’s provided they even try coming this way again.

  If they do, the soonest they’ll be here is three hours. Three hours after that, the first wisps of daylight will be showing, which means there’s a strong possibility that whoever is in charge of the cops won’t act until daylight. They’ll be wondering if the piste basher has had an accident, or if the terrorists have forced the tactical team into a standoff by aiming their guns at the heads of the hostages.

  The police won’t want to act without new information, that they’ve already done so much on my say so is little short of a miracle.

  So far as I’m concerned, three hours is far too long to leave the hostages in Hannah’s hands; six is unthinkable. She’s planning to murder them all, and even though I’ve dismantled her bombs, she has enough firepower to gun them down.

  My breath is labouring as I trudge my way back up the slope, but I don’t care about being breathless, I have a rifle in my hands and I’m looking forward to pulling its trigger.

  For the first time since spotting the three terrorists leaving the resort, a different part of my brain speaks to me.

  It’s the limbic system that is talking to me, telling me there’s danger ahead.

  I know how the so called ‘sixth sense’ works: it’s all to do with experience, coupled with details that are absorbed by the subconscious rather than the conscious brain.

  The details trigger a search-engine-like trawl through the brain’s experiences and known facts until it’s sure of itself, and then it warns the rest of the body.

  Right now, my sixth sense is screaming at me to be careful, that there’s a danger on the slopes that isn’t anything to do with the conditions or the risk of avalanche. It’s telling me there’s a hunter out there and I’m its prey.

  Chapter 54

  The pain is worse than anything she’s experienced before, including childbirth, but that doesn’t worry Sharon. To her the pain is welcome, it tells her she’s alive and, despite the beating she’s taken, there’s no lasting damage to her head.

  If the crazed terrorist had broken her skull, Sharon knows she’d either not be feeling anything, or her head would be aching a lot more than it does.

  From what Sharon remembers of the beating, the book wielded by the female terrorist had been slammed into her face rather than her skull.

  Even through her agony, Sharon is aware of the other woman’s intent. As she’d done with the singer, her brutality had been aimed at inflicting psychological as well as physical pain.

  Where she’d cut the singer’s chin and rested her knife underneath one of her breasts, the terrorist had chosen to ruin Sharon’s looks.

  It didn’t just speak of a cold ruthlessness, but also an inner vanity. For a woman to do such a thing, she had to be heartless – that much was a given – yet, so far as Sharon was concerned, the woman’s attacks were most likely fuelled by the things she most feared.

  Therefore, looks are important to the terrorist. The threat to the singer’s breast also speaks of personal fear. Nobody wants to lose a part of their body, but breasts are by and large a part of the human body that are often removed for medical reasons. They’re also tampered with for cosmetic and egotistical reasons, but that won’t be the case with the woman.

  For her it is all about fear.

  Sharon couldn’t help but surmise that someone close to the terrorist had a horror story to do with losing their breasts, and because of this, an irrational fear has settled in her mind. It’s irrelevant whether or not her mother had a mastectomy that got infected, or didn’t cut out all the cancer, a chink in the woman’s armour has been exposed and Sharon knows what lies beneath. The terrorist’s vanity is her Achilles heel, and while Sharon doesn’t yet know how to make the most of that fact, she’s at least got the advantage of knowing one of the woman’s weaknesses.

  So far as her own injuries are concerned, Sharon isn’t bothered about lasting effects. Her face is a white-hot ball of agony, but she can breathe, and one of her eyes opens enough to let her see the person crouched over her. During her time in Afghanistan she witnessed the injuries caused by IEDs, bullets, and other weapons of that most vicious of wars. She’d met up with comrades who’d been invalided out of the army and had found a way to cope with their disability.

  Sharon is self-aware enough to know that looks are superficial, that what matters is the person beneath, and she possesses enough self-confidence to have never worried about her own looks.

  What’s of far greater concern to her is there’s been no indication that Boulder has raised the alarm, and it’s been a long time since any of the terrorists left to go after him.

  ‘Jeez, Sharon, are you okay?’

  The speaker is one of Sharon’s fellow servers, she can’t remember her name, but that’s nothing new. The youngsters who take jobs here seem to change every week or two, so she’s long given up trying to memorise who they are. Sweetheart, darling and honey are perfectly good names for either sex, and though she doesn’t like to admit it, Sharon’s aware she’s old enough to use them whenever she chooses.

  The question is a stupid one. Sharon’s face has been smashed in and, while she’s alive, she’s a long way from being okay.

  ‘Aye.’

  The one word answer costs her dearly. She didn’t know until now, but speaking a word that is nothing more than a letter tells her that her jaw is broken.

  The server misunderstands Sharon’s answer and reaches a hand forward.

  ‘Does your eye bother you? Here, let me open it for you.’

  The touch on Sharon’s closed eyelid is gentle, but to Sharon it feels as if molten metal is being poured over her face.

  She bats the girl’s hand away and resorts to a hand signal the girl can’t fail to understand.

  When she lowers her finger and focuses on the girl she sees nothing but anguish.

  Despite her pain, Sharon can’t stay angry at the sorrowful girl, so she twists her hand until she’s got a closed fist and a raised thumb.

  What’s nagging at her is that she knows she spotted something when she was in the office that had given her a clue as to why the terrorists were meeting with the customers. The fact her brain won’t let her remember what she saw is frustrating, but right now she needs to focus on staying conscious.

  Chapter 55

  Rather than head back up the slope the way I came down, I’ve made my way across to the safety netting that borders all the ski runs. My reasoning for this is that I’ve left a trail for the terrorists to follow, and if there is someone out here hunting me, I’m not going to walk right into them.

  I’m about a quarter of the way back up the slope when my limbic brain stops whispering in my ear and raises its voice to a shout.

  I halt and swing the automatic rifle from side to side as I peer into the billowing snow.

  My eyes don’t find any human shapes, so I rotate until I’ve scanned every compass point. I still don’t see anything, but my brain hasn’t stopped shouting.

  My granny in Glasgow would call it a ‘fey feeling’, and I’m wont to agree with her assessment. The old Scottish term is more than apt for the impending sense of doom that’s enveloping me.

  I’m aware I may well be jumping at shadows or the swirls of the snow, but my instincts are telling me there’s a threat to my life. I’m back in a cocoon of isolation and, because of that, I’m unnerved. I don’t want to overreact, but every few seconds another shape created by the whirling, shifting snow makes my heart leap, and my arms swing the automatic rifle towards an imagined threat.

  I’m effectively going back to the resort, risking my life, in an attempt to save the other hostages, so it’s not the danger that’s spooking me; it’s the unknown, and the claustrophobia that’s being created by the darkness and the snowstorm. If the guard from the resort door had heard the gunfire, he’d had two options. The first: coming to help his buddies, and the second: going to get help.

  If he’d gone with the first option I’d be dead by now, as he’d have arrived while I was fighting with the last member of their welcoming committee. So either he hadn’t heard, or he’s on his way down the slope with one or more of his colleagues.

  There’s no way of knowing what he did or didn’t hear, but I’ve learned to trust the warnings my limbic brain gives me, and that’s why I’m moving with every scrap of caution I can inject into my trek back to the resort.

  Every step I take, I sweep the rifle’s barrel through a one-eighty arc.

  For the next ten yards I see nothing but snow and the unmistakable outline of one of the mighty pine trees that flank the ski runs. As much as the safety netting does, they delineate the ski runs, while also adding to the beauty of the environment.

  I keep moving, torn between the need to get back to the resort before the terrorists kill any more of their hostages, and the urge to listen to the warnings my brain is shouting at me.

  When I reach the first corner of the slope, I pause long enough to do a three-sixty turn, but again I see nothing that resembles a human being.

  I set off again. With every yard I cover without incident, the more I convince myself that my fey feelings are mistaken and I’m jumping at shadows.

  I’m inclined to point the finger of blame for my jumpiness at the cold. It’s seeped into every part of me now and, as much as the slog uphill is strenuous enough to shorten my breath and get my heart pumping, I’ve been out in the snowstorm for so long that my limbs are chilled to the bone.

  My ears, fingers and toes all feel as though they’ve been clubbed with a mallet, and there’s a woolliness to my thinking I’ve never experienced without being drunk.

  There’s nothing much I can do about the cold, so I keep going. When I get back to the resort I can swap my sodden clothes for whatever I can find in the maintenance shed. Getting out of the wet clothes will help me, but only to a point. The decision to shed the padded waterproof jacket now seems like a stupid mistake. I don’t know enough of the signs to recognise if I’m getting hypothermia, but it’s got to be a possibility – as has frostbite.

  These concerns aren’t something I can do anything about until I get back to the resort, get out of the cold and find some dry clothing.

  I follow the fencing for another hundred yards. I’m not too familiar with the exact layout of the ski run, but I judge that I’m maybe within a hundred yards of the run’s starting point.

  My arms are still sweeping the rifle through its arc, but I’m not sure I could pull the trigger if I saw someone, and the rifle seems to have quadrupled in weight since I picked it up.

  ‘Drop your weapon.’

  The instruction is shouted into my left ear as a pistol is pushed into my right.

  I go to do as I’m told, but my hands are so cold I have to shake them before they’ll release the rifle. Rather than get shot, I warn the man with the pistol what I’m doing.

  The fact he’s caught me means I’m going to die. Either by his hand or he’ll take me back to Hannah. All he has to do to finish me off is pull his trigger once.

  As much as I don’t want to be taken back and handed over to Hannah, I plan to obey his every command – the longer I’m alive, the more chance there is that I’ll have an opportunity to escape.

  If I were a betting man, I’d figure my odds of surviving the rest of the night are somewhere around a million to one.

  ‘Walk.’

  The shouted instruction is accompanied by a firm jab to the back of my head with the pistol.