2020: Emergency Exit (38 page)

Despite his anguish, Danny knew they had to keep going. He knew Kate was waiting for him, and he knew Hayley was dying inside with him. This wasn’t his loss alone, but it felt like it was his fault. He’d walked them right into those lions. He couldn’t compare it to losing his mother, but he didn’t remember ever feeling worse. If we hadn’t needed Danny as much as we did, I don’t know what losing his best friend would have done to him. But at that moment, Cameron’s last words reminded Danny of Jenna. Cameron needed him to keep going. He needed them to make it back to the cave. I don’t know how a twenty-year-old gets to be more mature than a man nearly twice his age, but Danny handled it better than I had handled Sophie’s death…by a mile. I could only credit that to his mother’s strength. Sophie would have had that courage, too.

Danny picked up his best friend and somehow carried him down several steep cliffs and across the face of Bighorn Mountain on his own. He wouldn’t let anyone else carry Cameron. This was his burden. Hayley and Blake respected his wishes and stayed ahead of him with Abbey. Hayley constantly checked behind her to make sure Danny was still with them and to help out the few times he needed it, but no one said a word to him.

She knew he was going to blame himself for this. She figured he’d probably even be a little short with Reagan and Abbey. There was no way he could help it. Cam had risked his life to save Abbey, and it had cost him. It had cost Danny. It had cost all of us who loved Cameron. We lost a lot of strength, smiles, and security that day.

As they closed to within a hundred yards of the cave, I saw them. And they saw me. The first thing I noticed was the little girl with Hayley.
Yes! They found her
. I was about to call back down the tunnel when I noticed Danny was carrying someone. Even without using the binoculars I held, I could see who Danny was carrying, and my hands started shaking. I could tell by their faces it was bad, if not the absolute worst. My mind went to the same place theirs was at that moment. It went to Jenna. And I went inside to find her.

I led her up the tunnel towards the ledge as Dad lifted open the front door. Blake stepped through with Abbey, and Reagan swept her up. Tara gave Blake a big hug, and then Hayley entered. Mom and Kate were there with open arms to meet her. Jenna could hear people coming in and was trying to see past me, to move past me, asking why I wouldn’t let her go, but I held her back.

“Jenna,” I said, shaking my head. It registered an instant before Danny stepped through the entry with Cameron. She covered her mouth with both hands and let out a stifled scream. Everyone in the room froze and looked at Jenna, then back at Danny, who gently set Cameron on the floor, stood up, and walked towards Jenna.

“No no no no no no noooo,” she cried, collapsing on the floor.

Danny knelt beside her and pulled her against him. “I’m so sorry. Jenna, I’m—” I could see tears running down his face.

“How could you?” she wailed, and I saw Danny bite his lip.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

Reagan was in a difficult place. She was hugging her little sister tightly to her and wanted more than anything to celebrate her return, but the mood in the room was anything but celebratory. It was clear Cameron had played a significant role in our lives. But then, I figured she had to be wondering what anyone knew about her dad…and she was probably afraid to ask. She didn’t yet know anyone other than Jenna well enough, and this was obviously
not
the time to ask her anything.

She knelt down beside her little sister and whispered to her. Tara took Emily over to introduce her to Abbey. Mom was trying to heat up some soup for Hayley, Abbey, and Blake. We knew Danny wouldn’t eat anything. He had walked up the tunnel to the back entrance with Kate and Jenna, no doubt trying to help Jenna any way possible.

I kept my eyes on Reagan and called Blake over. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and joined me at the tunnel entrance. “Blake. What happened down there?” I asked. I knew Danny wouldn’t be in the mood to talk.

He told me about everything that had happened at the hotel, about the Secret Service agents, the bunker, and the escape. Then he described the mountain lion attack. Cameron’s uniform had protected his body but not his throat. A major artery had obviously been nicked, because there had been no way to stop the blood flow completely and no way to get him here fast enough. It could have happened to anyone, but it didn’t.

I listened in disbelief. Of all the threats we each had worried about, mountain lions were probably not on anyone’s mind. You had to almost feel sorry for the dumb cats now. They’d made an enemy of a man who wasn’t going to forget what they’d done. Two dead ones barely scratched the surface of how many lions Danny probably wanted to take down.

I was about to ask what we knew about Reagan’s dad when Blake started telling me about the helicopter. He told me Danny was absolutely certain the soldiers had followed their tracks up the valley to the ledge…that the people in the helicopter knew they were there and still let them go.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I argued. “They needed Abbey, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what this all was about?”

“Well…” Blake paused.

“What?” I asked.

“Maybe they didn’t need her anymore.”

I could see Blake actually believed that. “But the only way that would be true is if the vice president had already talked or if—” Then I paused.

“He were dead,” Blake finished for me.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

“Danny says he’s dead,” Blake said, nodding up the tunnel behind us.

“But how would he know that?” I asked, aware someone was walking up behind me.

I glanced back as Danny brushed past us in a direct line towards Reagan. “Because I gave him the pill,” he said.

SIXTY-FOUR: “Never Safe”

When the helicopter landed back in Denver, Eddie instantly sought out the guard with the keys who had been in the room with the vice president. He wasn’t hard to find. He was back at his regular post at the base prison. He and Lazzo convinced his superior—with a case of beer—to allow him an early lunch, even though it wasn’t yet 11 a.m. “Thirty minutes,” the officer said. “He’s not supposed to leave.”

“No problem,” Eddie replied.

They took the guard around the corner of the building and Eddie pulled his gun, placing it against the man’s temple. “What happened in that room?”

The man spilled everything. He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t have a tough side. He was a prison guard because his brother was an officer in the Qi Jia military and volunteered him for the job. He accepted the post to satisfy his brother and contribute to the cause. That was it. It was all he could do to keep from crying. Eddie didn’t even need the gun, so eventually he put it away. His huge stature was more than intimidating enough. The man begged them not to share with anyone what he told them. Neither Eddie nor Lazzo had any intention of doing so.

The man told them the Russian commander had been eager to get information from the vice president. As soon as Eddie flew down to the Stanley Hotel, the Russian was in the room with the VP, telling him they were going after his daughter. When the first radio call came up about the gunfight, he burst into the room and told the VP they had trapped her in the lower level of the Stanley Hotel. The prison guard watched as the vice president began weeping. The Russian kept pushing him to talk, and finally the American man nodded and began moving his hand as if to indicate he needed a pen.
Ah, the pen and paper.

Standard prisoner protocol in Russia—particularly for VIPs—mandated they wear neck braces and bulletproof vests so they couldn’t slit their throat or stab themselves in the heart. It was 99 percent foolproof. If they slit their wrists, the bleeding could be stopped. If they stabbed themselves in the eye or anywhere else, it would hurt, but it likely wouldn’t kill them. There was only one exposed area of the body that would work for a “way out.” The vice president somehow knew this before he was even moved up to the alpine base.

The Russian handed him a pen and piece of paper, demanding he write some sort of code on it. The vice president nodded, but never spoke. He took the pen and tried to write, but it was a struggle with both his hands chained. The guard was asked to unlock the vice president’s right hand, which he did, and as soon as the Russian commander backed away, the vice president stabbed himself just inside his left armpit with the pen. He quickly removed something from his mouth and inserted it into the pen hole. They fought to lift the vice president’s arm to access the wound and were finally able to remove a pointed capsule from the hole, but it was too late. Other than the metal tip, the capsule had mostly dissolved. Whatever poison it had contained immediately spread to his heart. He died a few minutes later.

The vice president hadn’t given them a single bit of useful intel. The Russian commander went crazy. A doctor had searched every inch of the vice president’s body when he was brought to the Endovalley camp, and again hours later just to be safe. No one knew where the capsule had come from. Somehow the vice president was given that capsule after both searches and he successfully concealed it until he was able to use it. It didn’t seem possible. The vice president had been guarded every minute in that tent by three guards. But somehow it had happened. And now, without him, they didn’t need the daughters…either one.

When they returned to Denver, the Russian commander had told the prison guard not to go anywhere because he would be summoned before the full panel of commanders this afternoon. The guard asked Eddie if that was a bad sign. “No,” Eddie said.
It was a terrible one
. The man had been quite relieved, and as he turned to walk away Eddie grabbed him. “One more thing.” The man nodded. “President write anything on the paper?”

“I love you, girls,” the guard replied.

Eddie let the man go and looked away. There was a lump in his throat. He really missed his own girls. He coughed and turned back to his brother. “Let’s go, Laz.”

Eddie and Lazzo returned to Eddie’s office in the Intelligence Center where there was a message waiting for Eddie. He was to meet The Seven commanders in the Command Room at 2 p.m. sharp. Lazzo asked if Eddie wanted him, Cabo, and Omar to go along. Eddie didn’t. It wasn’t safe for them.
Might not even be safe for him
. “Pack your things,” Eddie said. “Be ready to go.” He would do all he could to spare them and buy them time to flee, if it came to that.

Eddie dressed in full uniform before his meeting with the panel. He was searched prior to entering the Command Room, which they hadn’t done last time.
Not good
. He could actually be facing the same fate as the prison guard.

He entered the room to a solemn atmosphere, also entirely the opposite of his last visit. He was told to remain standing at the far end of the table. He listened for the next ten minutes as he was blamed for the vice president’s death. He had been responsible for security and transportation between the Endovalley base camp and the alpine base and had failed to secure the most valuable asset in this war.
War? This was missiles against rubber bands. This wasn’t war.

The Russian commander “supposedly” had defended him and pleaded for his life, stating under those circumstances the same mistake could have been made by anyone.
Yeah. Right!

Eddie knew he had made no such mistake. The vice president had the capsule before Eddie even reached the Endovalley camp. He was certain of that. He thought about divulging what he’d found in the tent at the Endovalley camp, but figured that would only make it worse now. They’d want to know why he’d kept such potentially valuable information to himself. Then they might actually kill him. Instead he listened as he was told the Russian’s “compassion” was the only reason his life would be spared. He was additionally being stripped of his post in the Intelligence Division and demoted to the lowest level of soldier. The same went for his brother.

Eddie stood still as the Libyan commander ripped the rank patches off his shirt and removed all his pins. He looked Eddie right in the eye and called him an impotent coward—
probably meant incompetent
—and an embarrassment to the Libyan nation. Eddie never said a word. He wondered how many of the people at this table disagreed with what was going on. He wondered how many of them knew the Russian commander had been up at the alpine base or knew any of what took place up there. Eddie doubted it. The Russian commander wouldn’t look at him. Not once. That was another sign Eddie was right.

Eddie knew anything he said here would be either construed as a lie or ignored altogether. It didn’t matter how much dirt he had on the Russian commander. There was no fight here he could win. Eddie was given his choice of post “anywhere more than one hundred miles from Denver.” After looking at the map of bases on the wall he selected Buena Vista, Colorado—125 miles southwest of Denver—the closest city still on the assumed American route. He “accepted” a transfer there.

He was to remain at that post unless otherwise ordered by The Seven commanders themselves. Even if the soldiers there were sent on assignment elsewhere, he was to stay at that base. Period. Lazzo was being transferred with him, but Cabo and Omar were being reassigned to another division. Eddie would not be told anything more. His career in Qi Jia intelligence was done. He should be thankful he still had his life. This was his last chance…blah, blah, blah.

Eddie had tuned them out well before he left the room. If he ever came face to face with that Russian commander again he was a dead man, even if it meant Eddie’s own death. He found it hard to believe the other commanders could so gullibly accept Eddie’s “sole responsibility” in all of this, but those seven men seemed intent on at least pretending to have a unified front.
If they only knew
.

Eddie was met at his office by a smiling Lazzo. The prison commander had called an hour ago to inform them the guard they’d spoken with had “fallen down a flight of stairs and tragically died.”
Shocker
. The Russian commander was never going to let him get in front of that panel and even begin to point a finger elsewhere. Thus the sarcastic smile on Lazzo’s face.