“Yuk, yuk, yuk. C’mon, Skip. I want to peek in on her. I have to know how she is.”

“As soon as I am finished. Any areas of severe pain?”

“Yeah, right in my ass. I’m going to give you to the count of three to help me out of this bed, or I’m going to shove you off and do it myself. One-”

“Alive and kicking. That’s a good sign, isn’t it, Dr. Trawick?” asked Tom Hollenbeck as he threw his parka on a chair next to the door and made his way over to the bed.

“Maybe. The patient, though, claims to have a pain in the ass,” replied Dr. Trawick.

“The patient is a pain in the ass,” said Hollenbeck. “What’s the story? Anything broken, concussion?”

“I haven’t been able to complete my examination, as of yet. The patient is not being compliant.”

“Not compliant? Skip, you son of a-I’ll give you noncompliant.”

“And a wee bit aggressive,” said Skip, the Scottish accent back again.

“Jesus, Skip. You’re on duty. Could you at least pretend to be a professional for a few minutes? On second thought, fuck this. I’m getting up,” said Scot.

“Hold on there, Harvath,” Hollenbeck said sternly. “I want you to cooperate. None of this tough-guy stuff. You just lie there and let the doc take a look at you.”

“Fine. Go ahead, Skip. The sooner you’re finished, the sooner I can get over to Amanda.”

“You’re not going anywhere until I get a full statement from you. Just settle down, would ya? My God, Scot. We’ve got a very serious situation on our hands right now, so get focused,” said Hollenbeck.

“I’m sorry, Tom. You’re right. If the good doctor would unplug me from this IV, I’d be happy to get started.”

“No way, José. The IV stays in. You came in severely dehydrated. I want to get some more fluids into you first,” said Dr. Trawick as he continued to examine Scot from head to toe.

“I brought a tape recorder with me. We’ll take your statement verbally,” said Hollenbeck.

“Verbally? But what about him?” said Scot as he motioned to Dr. Trawick.

“What about me? I’m still on nonoperational Special Forces duty, Scot.”

“Oh, so that’s what you call shagging kegs when members of your old unit come to town,” said Harvath.

“Listen, as one of the ‘Quiet Professionals,’ I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Oh, yeah? Coulda’ fooled me, ‘cause it’s always open.”

Hollenbeck hated to break up the lovefest, but he had bigger concerns. “Dr. Trawick, I don’t have time for you to sign a National Security Non-Disclosure Document. I am aware of your status as a Special Forces operative, and I know that you’ve maintained your top secret clearance. In the interest of tending to your patient and the ongoing emergency, I want to make sure you understand that nothing said within this room is to be repeated.”

“No problem, Agent Hollenbeck. You have my word.”

“Can you also get his word that he’ll shut up and not repeat that lame-ass story of how he served his country by treating an elephant in the Kuwaiti zoo during Desert Storm?”

“Now who’s the comedian? Why don’t you try to sit up? I want to listen to your heart and check your ribs.”

Harvath stifled a groan as Dr. Trawick helped him sit up. The agents who brought him in had cut away his sweater and turtleneck, as well as his Lycra pants, placing him in a hospital-style gown before putting him into bed. As Harvath leaned forward, his gown was open in back and Hollenbeck saw what looked like a topographical map of green, blue, and yellow islands, bruises that covered his back and shoulders.

“Holy shit. Are you sure you’re up to this?” asked Hollenbeck.

Trawick said, “I’m going to shoot some adrenaline into your IV, and that should help give you a little more strength. You want anything for the pain?”

“No, let’s get this over with, and then I want you to clear me for the hot tub downstairs so I can soak this out.”

“Scot, this isn’t some post-ski-competition session. You walloped yourself quite a few times back in those days, and God knows you scared the bejesus outta me more than once, but your body has suffered some serious trauma here. So far it doesn’t look like anything is broken. If there’s no blood in your urine, I might postpone having you to go to the hospital for further tests, but if I do, you’re gonna stay right here in this bed for several days at least. Now shut up for a second and take a deep breath.”

Scot did as he was told, and Hollenbeck waited until the doctor had removed the stethoscope from his ears before he launched into a series of questions and recorded everything on tape for later transcription.

Scot ran down the list-seeing the president, Harper, and the rest of the team at the last lap, Amanda’s wipeout and the communications outage, the decision to take her through the bowl to get back to the house, the avalanche, getting to the outcropping, being buried, digging out, and trying to get Amanda’s unconscious body back to the house.

Occasionally, Dr. Trawick broke in with questions that pushed Scot to reach a little further back. Long-term memory questions like, What’s your address, your telephone and driver’s license numbers? were easy for him to answer, but he had problems with some short-term memory questions such as, What hotel are you staying in, what airline did you fly to Utah on, and when was your last visit to the White House?

When he was finished recounting his tale, the room was completely silent. After a moment, Dr. Trawick let out a long whistle.

“You know how lucky you are to be alive, boy?” he asked.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I worry, though, about the short-term memory loss. I don’t know how much is gone.”

“Like you said, Skip. It’s just like the old days. I got whacked in the head and I’m a little fuzzy…on some utterly unimportant stuff, I might add, but it’ll come back.”

“I’m sure it will, but at some point I am going to need to run some tests on you, nonetheless.”

Scot ignored Skip and turned to Hollenbeck and asked, “What’s the status on the others? The president, Harp, Maxwell?”

Hollenbeck inhaled deeply before he responded. “At this point, there is no status. The radios are still down, and you and Amanda are the only ones we have recovered.”

Scot couldn’t believe his ears. “No status? That’s ridiculous. Nothing from the CAT or JAR teams? Nothing off the Smocks? You can’t even get his five cents’ worth?” Five cents’ worth referred to the homing device that every president was provided with by the Secret Service. It was an Indian head nickel containing a transmitter that operated on a special frequency that could deliver GPS coordinates. The president always carried this coin on his person and referred to it as his “good luck piece.” Although tonight, it didn’t seem to be bringing anyone any good luck.

“The Motorolas, the Smocks, everything was intermittent throughout the day. Because it was across the entire communications platform, we wrote it off to weather or mountain shadow anomalies. It wasn’t until we were down for several minutes that we raised the alarm. So, in answer to your question, we have no status.”

“What about search-and-rescue?”

“All available agents have been sent to Death Chute with some of the ski patrol and sheriff’s department S-and-R guys. Agent Palmer is leading a civilian team back where we picked you and Goldilocks up. I think Palmer’s team is going to have better luck.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You were picked up in the bowl. The bowl is easily accessible. We’ve already got some construction lamps and related equipment en route. I must have personally spoken with every construction company within a hundred-mile radius. Any and all heavy earthmoving equipment that exists is trying to make its way there right now.”

“But what about the president and Sam?”

“You tell me, Scot. You’ve skied Death Chute. You were the one who was in charge of securing it. What kind of equipment do you think we could get onto a nearly vertical drop face?”