Below the yellow pennant, on a post at the far end of the ridge, was a white placard with double black diamonds. It was the international sign for an extreme trail.
There were no ski tracks on the slope, its snow the lumpy kernel texture for the most part, and only partly covered by the light powder favored by skiers.
The snowcat machines had not smoothed out the mounds and moguls in the snow made by yesterday's reckless freestyle showoffs. This would make a fall-line route difficult to maintain; a straight descent in the tuck position that under optimum conditions can exceed 60 miles an hour. The slope had rocky outcrops and occasional lone pines, rather like the hazards on a golf course, except that these could be deadly.
Sanguineus and Tertia were alone at the top of the trail. As they clipped on their extra rigid, broad skis, he said to her, "That tall rise about three hundred meters down is where we'll stage the accident. When we descend on the farther side I want you to carve right, slow, and fall in whatever looks like a good depth of powder. I'll get behind you when we reach the rise, so I can see where you choose your spill. The medivac helicopter should be along in a few minutes. Let's take it fairly slow going down. But if there's any sound of gunfire once we go over the rise, we'll do the cross-trail maneuver like we discussed earlier. If that's the case, tuck it and follow my lead. "
Tertia straightened, gripping her poles. "How much farther down from the rise is that big drop you were talking about?" she asked.
"Roughly five hundred meters, about a hundred short of the copse of fir trees. If the gunmen, or sniper, are in the trees, we'll be out of range where we stage the accident. But one or more thugs might be closer up, perhaps behind a boulder. If the chopper comes in sight we'll take our chances at the rise. But if not, we'll cut right for the big drop. That will put us on the adjacent trail."
"Yeah, if we don't break our necks."
Sanguineus pushed off the steep lip of the ridge. "I trust you've made hair raising jumps at Sugarbush," he said.
"After checking them out first!" said Tertia, following alongside him, their speed accelerating over the moguls that had their skis chattering the first fifty yards where the snow was mostly crud.
They were soon swerving back and forth down a smooth stretch of powder. Tertia did sharp carving moves that threw up waves of white crystals. Sanguineus kept a little ahead and to the left a tad, frequently glancing back at her.
For the first couple of minutes she felt relaxed and was focused on technique: her knees slightly bent, her upper body leaning well forward, her swaying arms stabbing the lush white surface with the poles in gloved fists, to keep her poise and balance. She would have liked to go faster, but the powder was often fading out into crunchy slush, and here and there a large rock glinted in the late sun, some of which she skimmed over with a clacking noise and a jarring of the ankles.
Tertia saw the rise of gleaming whiteness drawing nearer in a hurry. She swerved around a pine, ducking to avoid low branches, leaping a shallow gulley, following Sanguineus in a broad swath around a ten-foot-high boulder glistening in frost, her first jolt of fear going down her spine as she wondered if there might be a gunman waiting to pop them as they swished past through a carpet of powder.
There was only the slicing rush of their descent.
Tertia relaxed again.
Everything seemed to her so serene, so fresh and lovely, in the golden red sunlight. The rise loomed just ahead, a good thirty feet high and a hundred yards wide, fully in the sun, an obstacle as unavoidable as it was beautiful.
Sanguineus made sharp carving twists, his ski edges biting deep in the wet crust, to slow himself.
Tertia squatted in a low semi tuck, driving forward with hard digs of her poles. In the next moment she was swooshing up the face of the rise, Sanguineus just to her left.
The icy breeze struck her as she floated over the summit of the rise in that moment of seeming weightlessness. Six hundred yards away the clump of firs were many-armed white stick figures in a panorama of light and shadow.
Tertia thought she saw a flash of yellow at the edge of a jagged outcrop one hundred yards distant. At nearly the same instant her left ski jerked to the right, its rounded tip splintering, a slap of air hitting her right cheek.
Numb with shock she landed awkwardly on the downward side of the rise, her goggles spattered with bits of white crust as Sanguineus flew ahead of her.
He alighted in a tight tuck, carving out sprays of powder in his hard swerve to the right. Tertia held her breath. They were being fired on.
She lunged after him, carving deep, sending up a curtain of snow to her left, in the direction of the sniper. The rifle stuttered a burst of hot hail. A whistling noise over Tertia's head as she crouched down: her bent arms pressed to her sides, angling up alongside Sanguineus.
They plunged down into a snow-padded gorge at terrific speed. They were practically in free fall.
A sharp curve ahead, a wall of ice and rock rushing up to them. Gasping, Tertia dug the leftside edge of her skis into the deep powder, leaning far to her left, her poles angled above her head as her right side scraped along the granite wall for ten yards of ripping nylon and plumes of feathers. On her right side her jacket and trouser leg were in shreds, the chill wind of her downward rush through the gorge like needles fired into her torn thermal underclothes.
Just ahead Sanguineus was a symmetrical snowman, dodging fluidly the big rocks rising up from the snow like squads of gnomes. Tertia mimicked his every move, her skis chattering madly as the gorge steepened and the powder became crud and slush.
She heard a bang! No silencer.
The Glock roared twice more.
A falling body in white ski clothes hit the ice inches from Tertia's flight.
She glimpsed Sanguineus angling sharply right. She attempted to follow, but her skis slid out from under her.
She was tumbling wildly head over heels, feeling the lung-busting impact but, in her state of shock, no pain.
Then she was spinning along a level patch of slush, a frozen hell of motion and fear. The 'big drop' was all she could think of.
A shout ahead of her. Gunfire.
She hit something hard and glanced off what she recognized as her bodyguard's boot. Then... falling... falling... the rush of wind so strong it might have arrested her fall, or so it seemed. A blow against her left hip that felt as though her body had exploded. Somersaults over mounds of snow whose crust of ice crystals shattered throughout the line of her cartwheels.
Then at last a cessation of movement. It was so profound a change that she felt herself to be awakening from a bad dream.
The thumping whirl of a helicopter.
She raised her bruised and scratched face to the sunset sky.
Sanguineus stood beside her aching body. He was watching the blue and white aircraft swaying lower and lower. His face was grim, angry, frustrated. She turned her gaze to the broad expanse of snowy field toward which the helicopter aimed to set down on its extra wide struts.
The side door of the chopper's cargo bay was open. A young man with a fur cap over longish blond hair, a not unhandsome man with a dimple in his chin, was strapped to a seat, his back to the cockpit, the AK-47 assault rifle in his lap pointing at Sanguineus.
Drake LeCourt was grinning, first at the bodyguard, then with prolonged satisfaction at Tertia.
The blast of snowy wind from the aircraft's blades stung like birdshot. Tertia buried her face in her crossed arms. Sanguineus turned away, his gun still in his gloved right hand.
The helicopter landed gently.
Its motor went into neutral with a screeching sigh that quickly became a low hum. Gradually the double blades grew distinct, lethargic, indifferent.
A heavy-set man of late middle age, wearing an insulated brown trench coat over warm casual clothes of a dark color, stepped carefully down from the bay and brushed back his thick curly grey hair.
Stooping over slightly, he crunched his way over the snow with his bright little brown eyes steadfast on Sanguineus. He glanced once at Tertia, thereafter ignoring her.
Now beyond the reach of the slowly turning blades, the stout man straightened. He chuckled in the Corsican manner, his hands in his trench coat pockets.
"You, sir," he said in a thick accent, "are the assassin and vigilante called 'Sanguineus.' No?"
Sanguineus said nothing. He aimed his Glock at the considerable stomach of the Corsican.
"My offer," the man continued without any show of concern, "is to fly you and the signorina to the pastures at Gipfelhaus. You will be free to go your way, and the signorina will accompany me to... another place. You have the word of Vicente Napolitano," he added in a very solemn voice, his expression aristocratic.
Sanguineus said nothing.
Tertia slowly sat up on her knees, her heart in her throat. She was staring at the young man in the helicopter.
Napolitano smiled his usual poisonous smile. "A dear friend of mind was fond of saying, 'No ass is more valuable than one's own.' If you shoot me, LeCourt will riddle you with bullets. Is that the way it is said in Americano? 'Riddle with bullets'?"
"The most valuable ass," said Sanguineus, "is the one that is paying me. Tell the kid to throw his rifle to his sister, and to come and stand beside you. Your pilot will fly her and I to a place of my choosing."
Napolitano sighed. He squared his shoulders. "I can never remember the word for 'No' in English," he remarked. "How do I say 'No' in English. Eh?"
"With your dying breath," said Sanguineus.
[Next: the conclusion.]
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