From where he was lying, he could see the outline of Amanda’s left leg. He needed to get to her and knew it was going to hurt like hell, but he pushed the thought from his mind. With all the strength he could summon, Scot rocked his body slowly from right to left until he got up enough momentum to roll all the way over. He was right. Rolling over did hurt like hell, but it was nothing compared to what came next.

When he’d been on his back, he could look straight down past his ski boots and make out Amanda’s leg as she lay on her side. Now that he was on his stomach, he couldn’t see her, because she was behind him. Scot summoned up another surge of strength and, banishing the pain from his mind, managed to lift himself onto his elbows. This change of position sent searing, red-hot spikes of pain up his arms and into his battered shoulders. He began turning his body around upon the cold, rock-strewn snow so he could face Amanda. His legs refused to cooperate, and for a moment he was afraid he might be paralyzed. Eventually, he felt his ski boots move.

Scot’s incredibly weakened legs were not of much use, so he went back to dragging himself in Amanda’s direction while the incredible pain in his arms, shoulders, and back threatened to slam him back into unconsciousness.

It took the resilient Secret Service agent over fifteen minutes to crawl ten feet. Even though he didn’t want to, Scot was forced to stop every couple of seconds to catch his breath. He probably had cracked one, if not several, ribs in the tumble down the mountain. Nevertheless, he was alive, and if Amanda was too, then they both had won, so far.

As he drew closer, he could see Amanda’s chest slowly heaving up and down in the beam of his small flashlight. Thank God, she was breathing. At least she was alive. Harvath tried feebly to call out to her, but all he could manage was a hoarse whisper. He would need to get a lot closer to communicate.

He continued his pattern of crawl, rest, crawl, rest, until his face was even with the back of Amanda’s head. With her face turned away toward the sheer rock wall of the overhang that had saved their lives, he couldn’t tell if she was conscious.

Scanning the top and back of her head, he didn’t see any injuries, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Scot knew that attempting to reposition her head could worsen any spinal trauma that might already be present. He would have to carefully support her head, neck, and shoulders, and at this point he didn’t have the strength to do it.

“Amanda?” he whispered in his hoarse, dry voice. “Can you hear me? Mandie sweetheart, it’s Scot. We’re alive. We made it, but I need you to talk to me. I need to know if you’re okay. C’mon, honey, just a couple of words. Let me know if you can hear what I am saying.”

Amanda didn’t respond, and Scot didn’t have the energy to keep talking. He had resisted for as long as he could the syrupy blanket of unconsciousness that had been threatening to overtake him. It was no use. As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t fight it. All he wanted now was to sleep. Peaceful sleep. I’m so sorry, Amanda.

“Palmer!” yelled Hollenbeck to the nearest Secret Service agent in the command center. “Get on the horn to Deer Valley and find out if those avalanche sirens are legit. I want to know why they’re sounding and if there has been an avalanche. I want a full, and I mean full report!”

“Yes, sir,” replied Palmer, who immediately contacted the resort’s emergency services department.

“Longo! One question. Are we green?”

“Negative. We are still dark.”

Tom Hollenbeck had been standing for the last nine minutes. He couldn’t think of sitting down. He needed to pace. His crew knew him well enough to steer clear.

He walked over to one of the windows and watched the whipping snow outside, racking his brain for what his next move should be. The president’s life, his daughter’s, and the lives of no less than thirty Secret Service agents were in his hands.

“Sir!” cried Palmer as she came running up to Hollenbeck with her notepad. “Deer Valley says that there was an avalanche.”

“Shit! Give me the w’s,” said Hollenbeck, which was Service slang for “who, what, where, when, and how many.”

Palmer looked down at her pad and began reading off her list of facts. “Apparently, this was a pretty big one. Several ski patrollers heard it and, knowing what it was, called it in to their base as a potential. Only two patrols actually got a visual and confirmed it.”

“Why only two?”

“Look at the way it’s snowing outside. With weather this bad, you’d have to be practically on top of anything to see it.”

“All right, so several patrols heard what sounded like an avalanche and called it in as a potential, while only two could actually give a positive visual on it. And they also called it in?”

“Correct, sir.”

“How? I thought their radios were down.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Then how did they do it?”

“Apparently, they used a citizen’s band radio inside one of their ski patrol huts.”

“A CB?”

“The call came through loud and clear.”

“Why do you suppose a CB would work, but not our gear and not Deer Valley’s regular radios?”

“Apples and oranges.”

“What do you mean, ‘apples and oranges’?”

“The CB uses a different frequency than those used by the Secret Service or Deer Valley. The weird thing is that our gear is much more sophisticated. Everyone else should be having problems, not us.”

Hollenbeck agreed and tucked that nugget away for later while he proceeded with the matter at hand. “Okay, Palmer. Now for the ten-thousand-dollar question. Where did the avalanche begin?”

“According to the ski patrol, it began at Squaw Peak.”

Hollenbeck’s hand shot through a stack of papers and laminated charts on his desk, pulling out the topographical map the Secret Service’s TAT, or Threat Assessment Team, had prepared. It detailed all of the president’s known and potential ski routes, along with rotating postings for the JAR and CAT teams. Hollenbeck had a photographic memory and knew exactly where Squaw Peak was, but hoped in his heart of hearts that he was wrong. He wasn’t.

Squaw Peak was the highest peak of Deer Valley, and it fed directly into the basin the president and his daughter were skiing through.

In anticipation of Hollenbeck’s next question, Palmer said, “The slide was on this side of the mountain and would have funneled a wall of snow, ice, and debris directly along the routes of Hat Trick and Goldilocks.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Hollenbeck sat back down in his chair.

With almost a straight vertical drop and so much that could have gone wrong with the descent, Miner’s Lions had done an exceptional job. His men deserved their sobriquet. They certainly had the hearts of lions. In assembling the best-trained force-for-hire in the world, Miner had revived Switzerland’s illustrious mercenary tradition. It seemed only fitting that his men should carry a name that honored their predecessors.

Not far from the heart of the city of Lucerne was a majestic monument carved into a sheer rock face. It depicted a lion resting on a shield bearing the Swiss coat of arms and paid tribute to the 786 members of the Swiss Guard who died defending King Louis and Marie Antoinette during an attack on the Tuileries in 1792. Even the American author Mark Twain had called it the most “moving” piece of rock in the world. Upon Miner’s suggestion, his men had taken the name and had been his band of courageous and deadly Lions ever since.

It took the Lions ten minutes to make their descent. When they emerged from the icy crevice, the lead skiers took off their skies and began removing a series of snow-white tarps that hid three Ski-Doo snowmobiles.