2020: Emergency Exit (33 page)

When he got back to the Denver base, he sent Omar and Cabo to retrieve any plans or info they could find on the Cheyenne Mountain bunker. He told Lazzo about his conversation with Captain Kubar, and his brother was just as interested in studying the designs as he was. Omar and Cabo returned an hour later with stacks of papers and plans that had been copied and sent up from Colorado Springs. There was no final blueprint of the facility, but the many architectural sketches and notebooks provided plenty on their own.
Perfect
. Additionally, in a phone conversation with an intelligence officer in Colorado Springs, they’d learned that the engineers had failed to break into the bunker this afternoon. The vice president’s information was going to be even more valuable now. Eddie’s assignment in the morning was a significant one, and he was suddenly really looking forward to it.

Eddie flipped through the pages of data they’d brought him. The Cheyenne Mountain bunker was over five acres, equivalent to nearly six football fields. It had millions of gallons of water and enough stored food to keep a hundred people alive for over a year, potentially even two. It had a command center, a clinic, an extensive workout facility, sleeping quarters, and more. Moreover, the bunker was blast resistant to the strongest of nuclear bombs. If anyone was indeed in there, they could rest easy for quite awhile.

Eddie and Lazzo continued to study the books deep into the night and scanned several hundred pages onto a couple of zip drives for future reference. “Imagine what we could build, brother,” Eddie said to Lazzo as he shut off the light to catch a few hours of sleep. “Someday…imagine what we could build.”

The next morning the four men from Captain Kubar’s troop were waiting at the hangar. Despite his newfound security Eddie decided to proceed with his original plan for the Wyoming men. He communicated it to Lazzo on the way to the hangar.

When they arrived Lazzo addressed the troops on the significance of this mission while Eddie discussed the itinerary with the helicopter pilot. The fourteen soldiers on this assignment were divided into pairs. Lazzo partnered Omar up with one of the Wyoming men and Cabo up with the other. They flew into Estes Park and landed on a road adjacent to the Endovalley camp, where the vice president was being held. As they landed in the valley, it began to snow again. Snow had lost its novelty with Eddie now. Now it just pissed him off.

Lazzo ordered two men to make a loop along the mountain edge of the camp and two more to make a loop around the river boundary. “Guard the perimeter,” was all he said. Cabo and Omar, as arranged, volunteered, and they set out with their partners.

Fifteen minutes later, they met by the river. As they turned to loop back, Cabo shot Omar’s partner in the back, and Omar took out Cabo’s. They cut a hole in the ice on the river and shoved the two men under. Then they returned together to the front of the camp.

Lazzo meanwhile entered the command post with his brother. While the Endovalley base commander took Eddie to see the prisoner, Lazzo took two transfer forms off his desk and forged the commander’s signature on each. Lazzo got two soldier’s names from Omar and wrote them on the transfer papers. The papers were delivered to the men and they were congratulated on “receiving a priority assignment” back in Denver. Omar and Cabo stressed the importance of not talking about the assignment, since the orders came from the Command Intelligence Division. The soldiers understood. Eddie asked the base commander if he could borrow two of his men for the transport to Denver, in case The Seven commanders had any questions about the vice president’s capture.

“No problem,” the base commander said. Knowing the Endovalley station was going to be abandoned soon, now that they’d captured the vice president, the men wouldn’t be missed. Eddie intended to transfer the two men to Captain Kubar’s troop to replace the two Wyoming men he’d taken. The captain wouldn’t care which two men he got back. Bottom line, the helicopter would return to Denver with the same number of bodies it had originally departed with. There would be no questions and no visible loose ends. So far, Major Eddie’s plan to avoid getting caught in his lies about Cheyenne was worked to perfection. It was almost too easy. He still had to take care of the remaining Wyoming man somehow when he got back to Central Command. But he wasn’t going to worry about that now.

As the soldiers untied the vice president and dressed him for the cold, Eddie looked around the tent. A dried mud streak on the floor led towards the back of the tent.
Odd
. He knelt down and rubbed the dried streaks of dirt.
What had caused these streaks? Boots? A body? Why would someone have been crawling across the floor?
He stared at the back lining of the tent and could see a part of the canvas moving lightly in the wind. Eddie was convinced someone else had been in this tent.
But who?

The base commander turned away from the vice president and saw Eddie staring at the tent wall. “Problem Major?”

Eddie grunted. “No.” He stood up. “No problem.” They escorted the prisoner out towards the waiting chopper.

Eddie and his men climbed into the helicopter with the vice president right before 2 p.m., expecting to be sent back down to Denver. A giant snowstorm was heading east down the Rocky Mountain corridor but they easily could have made it. Instead, for some reason, they were rerouted to the base at the top of Trail Ridge Road for the night. “Orders,” was all the pilot would say.
Orders? Whose?
As they climbed through the sky to the Alpine Visitor Center, Eddie looked into the vice president’s eyes. He wanted to ask him who had visited him in the tent, but there were too many ears around. Eddie would wait for a more private moment.

--------------------

The storm was massive. It expanded up both sides of the mountain corridor, down to Pike’s Peak and up to Estes Park and beyond. It dumped a foot of snow per hour for the first three hours and then several inches each hour after. Danny wanted to sit it out and make sure the helicopter was gone, but he also knew the vice president’s little girl was locked under a storage closet in a freezing cold building. There was a short way and a long way to the Stanley Hotel. The short way was eight miles along the highway, which they’d never be able to walk without a snowplow. The slightly longer way was almost twice as difficult with a steeper off-road climb across the face of Bighorn Mountain followed by a descent down the Black Canyon. They didn’t make snowplows for that terrain. Danny had initially planned on going the long way each way to maintain some kind of cover, but the blizzard had changed his plans.
Try walking eighteen miles through six feet of snow
. Now, if the snowplow didn’t clear the shorter way, they’d have to move the white truck we’d hidden in the woods to make it to town. Once they did that, there would be no driving it back.

The snowplow came through before 10 p.m.. It seemed we’d lucked out. Again. The snowplow drove all the way down to the camp, then turned around and drove all the way back. By the time it returned, Danny, Cameron, Blake, and Hayley were crouched under the bridge near our cave.  As the plow reached the intersection with the main road, for the first time ever it didn’t turn. Instead it went straight, shortening the route to the hotel from eight miles to seven. Danny and the others would be grateful for that unexpected deviation. I saw the four of them emerge from under the bridge and begin running up the road after the snowplow.

It was pitch black out—no moon tonight—and freezing cold. Thank God for extra layers and thick ski masks. The cold wasn’t keeping the wildlife indoors, though. Skunks, deer, elk, coyotes, rabbits, and raccoons cut across the road in front of the rescuers, and every one they saw freaked them out a little. It took them almost two hours to cover the seven miles to the Stanley Hotel, and when they arrived it, too, was a snow-covered pile of burnt rubble. The white, castle-like, Georgian-style structure used to tower above Estes Park. It had a well-documented history as the area’s “haunted house” with a “King” suite in room 217—the inspiration for Steven King’s novel
The Shining
—several other “ghost suites,” and even its own on-site psychic, Madame Vera.

Monday, November 30, 2020.

Estes Park, Colorado.

They circled the rubble, careful to avoid the bright lights illuminating the main entrance, and searched in the darkness for any kind of side entry to get them to the lower level. It was a nearly impossible quest in these blizzard conditions. After about an hour of searching and poking around in the deep snow, Blake stumbled upon a pile of bricks with a sizeable gap in it. The pile turned out to be a staircase, but excavating it was a tedious process. The deeper they dug the tighter the gap became and the rubble became more and more unstable. Knowing this may be their only way in they took their time carefully removing bricks and boards out of the stairwell until they could all safely squeeze through. They’d already lost another hour. It was almost 2:30 a.m.

When they reached the bottom level, Danny and Cameron pulled out their military flashlights, and the other two followed them through the lower floor of the building, which was amazingly intact. The walls were charred, but the structure was almost totally made of concrete and had held up well in the blazing fires. Hayley found the supply closet, after another half-hour of searching, and whistled for them to join her.

It was freezing cold on the lower level, and they were afraid of what they were going to find below the closet floor. It didn’t seem likely the little girl could have survived the night in this place. There were four shelving units in the storage closet, and they tried to move them, but not a single one would budge. They appeared to be anchored into the wall.

A closer inspection of the cabinets revealed them to be clothes lockers of some sort with nameplates of famous authors on each door. Hayley again figured out the puzzle. Opening the door with a nameplate for C. S. Lewis—the only non-American—she moved the uniforms out of the way, revealing a panel with a digital keypad. She typed in the letters N-A-R-N-I-A, and there was an audible click.
Who said you don’t learn anything useful in school?
She was then able to slide the back panel of the wardrobe aside. They found a hole in the wall behind it with a ladder going down into the floor.

Hayley pulled off her ski mask so she could see better and climbed down the ladder first. The others waited for her to tell them what was down there, but she didn’t respond to their questions, so Cameron climbed down next. Danny was standing watch at the door, but he kept looking back to see what was going on. He motioned, irritated, for Blake to go tell Cameron and Hayley to hurry up. Blake flipped his mask up and climbed down the ladder. A few minutes later Danny was beyond worried.
How big was that room? Could they not find the girl? Why hadn’t any of them come back up? Maybe there were more tunnels under there.
With three of them down there and no one replying, he knew something was wrong. But the vice president had specifically told him to come get her here.

Danny’s options were limited. Dropping a stun grenade in the hole could do major damage to everyone down there. He couldn’t start shooting either, nor could he leave them there. He called down, but no one answered, so he stepped into the closet and peered into the dark hole. Even with his night vision goggles on he couldn’t see anything. Reluctantly, he too took off his facemask and descended the ladder. A light suddenly came on, momentarily blinding him. He flipped his night vision off quickly, but too late. He was introduced to the cold steel of a gun barrel against the back of his head.
Crap
.

FIFTY-FOUR: “Guard Down”

Following orders from the voice behind him, Danny stood still while he was disarmed, and his eyes took in the room. There were four men in suits—a little out of place in this setting—all armed and none wearing a smile. A girl was asleep in a bed in the corner next to a generator that powered a heater of some sort, a low-voltage light, and a wall covered with about twenty monitors. Only two screens were on. One camera showed the room above them, and the other was in the hallway outside the storage closet. It seemed possible they were the only two still operational, which would explain why all the others were off.

Adjacent to the monitor wall was a large control panel covered with all kinds of stickers. Danny couldn’t read what the stickers said, but this was probably the room that made the Stanley Hotel “haunted,” and it also seemed to serve as some form of security bunker.

The man with the gun to Danny’s head finally addressed them. “You are clearly Americans, so we don’t want to kill you. But you damn well better have a code if you’re down here.”
The code
.

“A76845B940,” Danny recited from memory as Hayley, Blake and Cameron looked at him quizzically.

“Are you sure?” The man behind him asked.

“If that’s wrong, you can check my forearm,” Danny answered through gritted teeth. “It’s on there too.”

The man lowered his gun. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Protocol. You were right the first time.”

It all made sense to Danny now, and he was glad he had a good memory. “No worries. You guys must be Secret Service?” he asked as the man handed him back his guns.
Why didn’t the VP tell him about these guys?

The other man nodded, shaking Danny’s hand and introducing himself as Agent Adams. “We were assigned to the vice president but…”

“But what?”

“Allow me to speak freely here, sir,” he asked, and Danny nodded, sure he was outranked anyway. “The bastard tricked us. He was under direct orders not to go after his daughters, which you evidently know he did.” Clearly Adams was more than a little upset, but then their guardian responsibility had been huge. “He is the last known government official in America—unofficially the new president. He has the codes to access NORAD, and is the only American outside of Hawaii who knows how to drop the island’s defensive shield. We know Air Force One went down north of Maine, over Prince Edward Island, with the President on Board. If he’s dead, as we suspect he is, then the enemy knows how valuable Vice President Moore is. They know the info he has. Orders from NORAD were specifically to keep him under lock and key. I’m sure now you can understand why.”