2020: Emergency Exit (41 page)

“I saw him. Yes,” Eddie finally replied.

“What happened?” General Roja demanded.

“Not sure what you mean,” Eddie responded.

The general didn’t speak but glared at him. It became apparent to him this wasn’t a staring contest he’d win, so he walked back behind his desk. “That be all,” he said. “Get out.”

Eddie paused, then turned, and as the door opened the general added, “I know it was you. You step out of line once. You’re dead.”

Eddie stopped, but he didn’t look back. He looked at the guard to his right, who couldn’t hold his glare. And then Eddie walked out the door.

SIXTY-EIGHT: (Ryan) “Trail Ridge Road”

Tuesday, May 25, 2021.

Leaving Estes Park, Colorado.

When it became evident the snow was not coming back, we knew we needed to move. We spent two nights packing the trucks, little by little, careful to make sure no one was aware of our presence. By Friday night, May 21, we were ready to go. We were hoping for some helpful awful weather, but we didn’t get it until the twenty-fifth,
which brought a warm front across the range with plenty of rain, thunder, and lightning. The combination of the high temperatures and rain created several potential problems. This was avalanche and washout weather further up in the mountains, particularly on our road, which was well known for both. But if we stayed any longer, the snow would be gone and troops would be coming down Old Fall River Road, perhaps even by tomorrow. It was a bittersweet feeling, blocking the entrances to the cave and walking away for the last time. We genuinely didn’t want to leave, but knew tonight was our best chance. It was now or never, all in or fold, make it or…
Yeah, I’ll stick with “make it.”
No one else was going to be out in this weather anyway.

We were wrong. At least I was. There was a lake eight miles up Old Fall River Road from our cave. After uncovering the trucks and moving them down to the road, we followed the Ford with the plow on the front slowly up the road for three hours. Coming around a corner by the lake, we saw a light and pulled to a quick stop. Upon further inspection, we spotted three jeeps parked in the road and a small cabin with the light we’d seen in the windows. The cabin was adjacent to one of the area’s formerly popular trailheads. None of us had seen the cabin before, and it looked like it had been built for this particular winter. The jeeps were clearly just blocking the road. There was no one in them. But there was also no way past them, and no way to move them without drawing the attention of however many men were in the cabin.

We backed the trucks slowly around the corner and out of sight about five hundred yards from the cabin. We were a little worried the sound of our engines coming up the hill might be heard, but the heavy rain appeared to have prevented that. It made sense now why Danny always preferred hunting in this crap. Everyone lost their advantage, and in this particular case, it may have actually given us one.

Danny was our only trained fighter now. The problem was, he didn’t want to be one anymore. He, Dad, and I had sat down several times since Cameron’s death and discussed Danny’s thoughts on war. Danny was tired of death, and tired of having to kill. He’d never wanted to kill anyone, under any circumstance, but he was decidedly even more against it now. It made him feel horrible inside, and watching Cameron go down like he did, even though it was from mountain lions…well, Danny wanted to be done with all the killing. That said, he knew what he had to do. My dad was great with him, particularly in getting him to see none of us would make it if Danny let his guard down. It was a lot to put on a young man, a heavy load to bear in every psychological sense, but we all needed Danny to shoulder it.

He understood. He had recommitted himself to the final goal. He’d trained Blake, Sam and Isaac in various military tactics in the cave, but this was the real thing, and Danny still wasn’t convinced Isaac could take the shot if he had to. Times like this might not have been when he actually missed Cameron the most, but it was certainly when he missed their “Digger and Dice” connection the most.

Hayley was willing to help too, but Danny wouldn’t hear of having her involved. It was clear he wanted to keep her the furthest thing from harm’s way. Asking Isaac to hang back with us, Danny huddled with Blake and Sam and told them what he was thinking. There was a pathway cutting through a small valley between the two hills they were hidden behind. It would come out at the trailhead by the cabin. Danny wanted the two of them to go that way while he approached up the road, so if there were anyone watching on a tracking system, the movements would appear less threatening. When they reached the end of the trailhead, they were to wait for Danny to approach the cabin and try to get a count of how many men they were facing. Then Danny would either take care of the men on his own or lead them outside where Blake and Sam could pick them off.

A roll of thunder shook our truck, followed by a brilliant flash of lightning, startling us all. The storm was right on top of us. Danny insisted Blake and Sam not leave whatever cover they found by the trailhead. He would bring the soldiers right to them if he had to.

Blake and Sam found their spots well before Danny reached the cabin. Blake took a position from a slightly higher perch, about twenty feet above the road and to the west of the cabin. Sam took a lower position above ground level to the east of the cabin. They watched Danny approach through the night vision scopes on their rifles. He crept up to the side of the cabin and peered into a corner of the window. He looked in their general direction and held up five fingers. He indicated that four of them were sleeping. The other was flipping through a magazine. There didn’t appear to be any radar or computer screen in the cabin. They weren’t expecting anyone. Danny could see a set of keys on the desk by the door.

 Danny scratched the window once with his finger. The man with the magazine didn’t move. Danny waited a minute and did it again. Still no movement. The rain was going to make getting the man’s attention a little more difficult. Finally, Danny tapped on the window. The man glanced up from his magazine and turned his head towards the window but remained where he was.
Come on
. Danny looked at the four sleeping men. They still hadn’t moved. He tapped the window one more time. This finally got the man out of his chair.

He stood up, walked to the window, and tried to see outside. A flash of lightning helped, but not enough. Danny couldn’t afford to look in the window now, with the man standing right there, but he heard the door open a minute later, and he readied himself. He could hear footsteps approaching his position. He knelt down and prepared to make his move when there was another bolt of lightning, and the man saw him.

Danny lunged and grabbed him, pulling him quickly to the ground and slitting his throat. He heard the man behind him before he saw him and didn’t have time to turn around. A split second before the butt of the gun glanced off the side of his head, there was a hollow-sounding impact, and the man fell backwards as he swung his gun down. Danny hit the ground, his head pounding, but a quick look to his side showed the other man down too.
Chalk another one up for Blake
.

Danny tried to clear his head enough to stand but couldn’t, so he crawled over to check the pockets of each of the men for keys. Neither man had them.
Seriously
. He rubbed his head and pulled himself across the front deck of the cabin. The front door was slightly open, and he dragged himself up next to it. The other three men were still inside and still asleep. Danny shut off the light in the cabin, waited a minute, and then with each roll of thunder he crawled around the floor to inspect the pockets of the three sleeping men. Conveniently, the smallest of the three men had a set of keys in his pocket. Danny easily suffocated him during a lengthy thunder roll, keeping him still enough to not disturb the others. Danny then picked the man up and grabbed the set of keys on the table. He slipped out the front door and closed it tightly behind him.

He waved Sam and Blake over. They helped him carry the three dead soldiers back to our trucks. We stripped them of their uniforms, and loaded their bodies into the back of one of our trucks. Danny ordered us to grab all we could carry and follow him to the enemy jeeps. We did, loading our gear into the back of the two jeeps he indicated.

As Blake and Sam watched the front door of the cabin for the other two men, Danny and Dad went back to the trucks. Danny found a cliff about a hundred yards behind them with thick bushes and trees and they pushed the trucks off the side of the road into the deep ravines. They watched as the trucks fell and slid to a stop a few hundred yards down the hill.
No explosions. Thank God
. They’d be visible to whoever passed in daylight, but it might appear as if an avalanche had deposited them there. If anyone went down to inspect them they’d find the three dead soldiers, and that could prove to be a problem, but hopefully we’d be long gone by then.

When Danny and Dad returned, Dad filled me in on what they’d done. Isaac suggested that he and Sam be the drivers from here, as their skin was the darkest. I could tell his offer surprised Danny, but seemed to work for him. They dressed in two of the soldier uniforms and got in the driver’s seats of the two jeeps. Sam would lead with Danny covered in the passenger seat behind him. Isaac would follow with Blake in his cab also lying low, covered, behind him. Mom, Dad, Reagan, Jenna and Abbey crawled into the tarp-covered back of Isaac’s jeep and buried themselves under the blankets and sleeping bags. Hayley, Tara, Emily, Kate and I got into the back of the other, under similar cover. The sleeping bags, rafts, tents, blankets, and supplies would not only have to provide the cover we need, but hopefully sufficient warmth. We’d be traveling in open air, other than the jeep’s tarp, so it would be freezing in the back.

By now everyone had caught onto the meat of Danny’s plan. We had left two men alive in the cabin and concealed the other three. The hope was, when the others woke up, they’d simply think the three missing soldiers had gone up to the alpine base during the storm. If we were lucky, that would satisfy them until at least morning. We’d ditched—literally—our trucks and loaded up the jeeps. We were going to quietly pull away from this cabin and drive up to the visitor center, which would be crawling with troops even at this hour. We were hoping Isaac and Sam would look the part enough, and no one would think twice about our movement. We were going to try to drive not just past them, but right through them…and hope they didn’t notice.

It was crazier than it sounds.

SIXTY-NINE: “The Passenger”

Wednesday, May 26, 2020.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

The Old Fall River Road dead-ends at the top of the mountain in the Alpine Visitor Center parking lot. There’s no way around it. You have no choice but to drive past the two main buildings and directly through the parking lot to get to Trail Ridge Road on the other side. There was no question we felt better about the prospects of doing that in these jeeps than we had in the trucks. Even in the pouring rain, had anyone seen the trucks, it would have drawn all the wrong kinds of attention.

As we approached the end of Old Fall River Road, we could see a makeshift gate ahead. We had the lights on now because not doing so would have been about the biggest possible red flag. There was a jeep parked by the gate, and a soldier stepped out, walked up to the gate, and opened it.
Yeah, we never would have made it with the trucks.
He waved as Sam drove past, and Sam repeated the motion. Isaac did the same, waving as well, following us through the parking lot. Had we been soldiers coming up from the cabin, we’d definitely have stopped here for something. We couldn’t afford to do any different. Sam pulled into a parking spot within view of the main building, where a group of about ten soldiers was standing out on the porch. Isaac pulled in beside us. Danny told Sam to get out of the jeep, walk around to Isaac’s jeep, and talk to him for a couple of minutes. The hope was if anyone saw us, which we figured they had, they would see someone get out in full uniform and ignore us after that. Sam was supposed to tell Isaac to go ahead and head down Trail Ridge Road until they reached the Continental Divide. They were to stop there, and we’d catch up to them and take the lead again.

Sam followed Danny’s instructions to the letter. Danny could see one of the soldiers step away from the others on the porch and watch Sam carefully for a minute before slowly going back to the group. But as Danny watched him through binoculars, the soldier kept glancing their way. Then the soldier suddenly spun and went inside. He came back out twenty seconds later, gun in hand, and started walking quickly towards them. Danny frantically tapped the window and rolled his finger to tell Sam to get going. Sam walked away from Isaac, and Isaac backed out. Sam hopped behind the wheel and put their jeep in reverse. The man started running towards them then. “Danny…” Sam whispered.

“I see him,” Danny replied. “We can’t just pull out. You’re going to have to talk to him.”

“You’ve got to be…” Sam muttered, backing the jeep up so it was facing directly out of the parking lot. The man ran up and tapped on his window. Danny had his Springfield out, ready to fire if necessary, though he was completely buried under a backpack and blankets. Sam rolled the window down. It was still pouring, so the soldier had his head down to shield himself from the rain. “Hey. Where are you going?” he asked in decent English.

“Valley,” Sam replied, pointing.

“Why? Why now?” he asked. “Where’s Ortiz?” He glanced into the back of the jeep.

“Cabin.” Sam said pointing again, this time in the direction they’d come from, hoping that answer would satisfy.

It seemed to. The guy nodded and looked back at the other soldiers on the porch. “Ah,” he said. Then suddenly, “Hey. I go with you.” It didn’t sound like a request.