2020: Emergency Exit (10 page)

If Eddie burnt the whole place down he’d find out. There’d be nowhere for the Americans to hide, and his soldiers could simply sit outside the fire and wait.

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We watched through the monitors as the soldiers doused the cabin above us, and the others down the road, with gasoline. As the flames leapt up and spread to the dry brush and trees around the buildings, a wall of fire spread across the hills and brought the world outside crashing down. We lost all of our visual aids. Wes manually flipped on each of the tree cameras, but the heat from the expanding flames rendered their sight lines useless. We were blind for now. And suddenly, we didn’t feel as safe.

Wes lamented not having put a camera out on a buoy in the lake. “If only I’d have known,” he said.

“If you would’ve known, you wouldn’t have been here,” I said with a smile.

“None of us would be.” I heard Kate say quietly behind me.

The smile faded quickly from my face. Those five words spoke volumes for all of us.
True. Very true.

FIFTEEN: “Blowing Smoke”

Tuesday, October 20, 2020.

North Dakota.

The fire raged through the night. As ordered, the cabins and the entire nature preserve on this side of the lake were burnt to the ground. Captain Eddie and his troops remained outside the burn lines, monitoring with their tracking equipment. They did flush out a couple of hunters who had been holed up beneath the floor of one of the cabins, and several hibernating animals that had somehow also escaped the chemicals, but Eddie was convinced he had not yet solved the problem. Eddie caught and interrogated the two hunters, but they gave him nothing he didn’t already know. They had never been here before, didn’t know any of the neighbors, and clearly weren’t the ones who had killed his men. They knew nothing of a woman named Suzanne—as the caller ID had read—and hadn’t spoken to the fat American whose phone Eddie had traced here from Grand Forks. None of it was adding up. There had to be more.

Eddie knew the man with the cell phone had been their best bet. His knowledge would have been both abundant and useful, but the bullet through the throat had ruined that. He couldn’t fault his men for their eager trigger fingers. They wanted American blood as much as he did. They also wanted to avenge their families. He understood, but he didn’t like it. It was sloppy. It was juvenile. It was the equivalent of the rite-of-passage pig hunts back in Africa. Young men were always so eager to prove themselves, to get that first kill fast, that they’d kill the baby boar instead of waiting out the much more valuable parent. At age fifteen, Eddie had taken his inaugural hunt. He’d found the baby, but he’d gotten the boar. Eddie’s men had killed the baby here. Eddie wanted the boar.

But his patience was wearing thin. He was already down to seventy-three men, in just two days. He stomped his foot in anger and kicked a chair across the tent. The killers were still out here, and they had to be close. As the sun peeked over the hills of blowing smoke, he gazed at the aftermath. Nothing but ash and ember. If the people he was looking for hadn’t already fled, they had to be dead. Nothing could have survived the blaze. He rounded up his troops and ordered them to search the area one last time. He had finished packing up all the surveillance equipment when one of his men radioed in. “Sir, you need to come see this.”

He drove his jeep to the coordinates he was given and joined his men adjacent a small enclave on the lakeshore. There stood three mud-lathered trucks with Minnesota license plates. Their camouflaging was brilliant, clearly by a military mind, and had they not been the only things to withstand the scorching flames, his men probably would never have discovered them.
So where had the occupants gone?
Had the fire killed them all somehow?
He looked around at the remains of the cabins. There was nowhere else to hide, and if they left their vehicles here, they had to still be somewhere nearby, dead or alive.

A sudden thought prompted a self-directed, verbal tongue-lashing. His men looked at him in confusion, and he shook his head. They had searched the bunker the two hunters had come from, but they hadn’t checked the ruins of the other cabins. It had never occurred to him to search below the other buildings as well. They didn’t have basements in Libya. He’d knocked here and there on the floors, but a proper bunker would have been built far more than a thin layer below the ground. If people were still here, that’s where they would be.

He wouldn’t be able to find the entry now, with all the cabins burnt to the ground, so he’d have to have his men dig up each of the floors. Deciding against waiting for heavy digging equipment, he ordered his men to divide up into groups of fifteen and begin digging up the foundation of each of the five cabins.

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Below the demolished lodge, Wes was trying to activate as many cameras as he could. He managed to get some form of feed from five of them, but only one blurry camera allowed us to see the area near us. It was enough. It showed a dozen or so soldiers digging up the foundation of an adjacent cabin. That told us what was probably taking place above us, too. They were digging up the floors. They hadn’t left. If the fire hadn’t convinced them we were dead or gone, they had to have found the trucks. They had to know someone was still here. They just didn’t yet know where.

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The men dug for several hours before they hit the ceiling of the bunker. It was close to four in the afternoon when they had cleared enough to know for certain what they’d found. In response, Captain Eddie ordered several of his men to bring in explosives and mining machinery from a nearby construction site. They arrived slightly before six and spent a half hour clearing the rest of the dirt off the surface of the main bunker room. Eddie continued to use his radar and heat equipment to try to find signs of life, but there were none.
Surely he would have found something!
Unless, of course, they’d been cooked by the fire.

Eddie nodded. That was probably it. He’d find out for sure soon enough. His men continued the demolition prep for nearly two more hours, carefully packing the entire surface with explosives. Eddie ordered in spotlights and prepared to blow it up right then, but Lazzo reasoned with him to wait, “so they could see better in the daylight.” It made sense. It was already close to nine at this point, and there still had been no signs of life. His men had earned some intermittent rest. If it were as he suspected, the people in the bunker would still be dead in the morning.

Nonetheless, on the off chance he was wrong, he set up a half-mile perimeter around the bunker, with his men in active patrol around it. They would keep watch throughout the night, just in case. This would guarantee no one escaped before dawn. After verifying the existence and identities of the bodies, he’d be comfortable continuing their assigned loop through North Dakota. Captain Eddie went back to the tent where he’d set up the enhanced THIRST system—combining two systems increased the range and power by 50 percent. He looked at the screen and saw nothing. That seemed reasonable now. They’d wiped out the entire area. There was only one place the people could still be, and dead bodies wouldn’t show up on the screen. He shut the system off and lay down on his cot. A few hours of sleep would do him good. No one would need him before morning anyway.

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The five remaining cameras confirmed our fears. We were surrounded well beyond the boulder exit. As far as I knew there was no way out.

I stared at a family photo on the wall, of Sam, Isaac, and their wives, the six grandkids, Wes and a beautiful young woman on his arm. He had clearly robbed the cradle. His wife looked no older than me, which explained the youth of his sons. I felt bad for Wes and his boys. They had already lost a lot in this and definitely didn’t have to step out and bring us here. If we’d have tried to run or refused to come here he wouldn’t be in this situation now. I felt like I needed to apologize to them.

Wes would have none of it. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Ryan. We’re all in this together. We made a choice,” He motioned to his sons. “And all three of us believe it was the right one.” His boys nodded.

He went on to explain that there weren’t many black people in rural North Dakota, and they were used to being treated quite differently by the locals. He and his boys appreciated that we hadn’t seemed to care what color they were.
“
Good people are good people, regardless of skin color.” He said. We were all on the same page there.

I could tell he’d raised his family with the same philosophies as ours. He seemed fine with putting his life on the line with ours, trusting us, and leaving here with the rest of us.

“All or nothing,” I heard him mutter to himself.

“Dad?” Sam asked.

“Nothing.” Wes patted him on the back. “Everyone come with me.” He led us down the short hallway towards the lake. “There may still be a way out of this.”

SIXTEEN: “Take It and Leave It”

We listened with awe, and renewed hope, as Wes showed us the lake escape and explained how the hatch system worked. There were a few limitations we’d have to adjust for. Only four of us would be able to leave at a time, so if anyone noticed the first group leaving, we’d probably all be killed. They wouldn’t hesitate to blow the roof in then. Once the first group left, the power in the rest of the bunker would be permanently out, or we’d all be electrocuted. Likewise, there was no way back in once we left. The scuba breathing gear would work for us all, but there were only six adult wetsuits. The six suits for his grandkids would be useless to us, but we could use the tanks and masks. Danny and Cameron each had their own military diving suits, but that still only made eight. Three of us would have to make the journey without wetsuits, and that water was near ice. We wouldn’t last long, and it was a long journey across the lake to the highway. There was a used auto dealer on the outskirts of Fort Totten. If we could get there, surely we could find the keys to some vehicles and flee. But that was a big “if” at this point. Other than Wes and Sam, none of us were convinced this would work—but what choice did we have?

Kate and Jenna were both swim team veterans and, with Danny and Cameron, were probably the best swimmers, so they volunteered to go without wetsuits, using only their insulated tights and tops to provide some cover. Danny and Cameron had to keep their diving suits because they were going out first and intended to stay in the water the longest to ensure we all made it out. Grandpa Dan and Grandma Ollie both needed suits, and Sam wanted Hayley to take his. He would go without. Danny tossed Sam a Marine issued insulated top from his own pack. Everyone else was good. Danny and Cameron bound as many supplies as they could in waterproof duffels. We were going to have to leave a lot of gear behind, so we reasoned through the process of whittling it down. Finally, close to 1 a.m., we were set.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020.

North Dakota.

Danny, Cameron, Isaac and Hayley were going first. They were taking the biggest load of equipment with them, albeit the lightest gear, and Isaac and Hayley would have to drag it across the lake while Danny and Cameron hung back.

Jenna exchanged a quick hug with Hayley and a kiss with Cameron. Danny was reassuring Kate he’d be waiting for her and instructing her to keep her group quiet. He looked at me and nodded. “I’ll see you in a bit, Dad.” Then the four of them stepped into the chamber.

Wes gave Danny a thumbs-up. Danny returned the gesture, took a deep breath, pulled his mask down, and pushed the button. There was a quiet whir as the chamber filled with water and the face of the hatch opened, releasing the four of them into the cove. Danny made sure the hatch door closed behind them, and, as an additional precaution, they all dove deep, moving out into the middle of the lake before surfacing. Looking back, it was obvious no one was aware of their escape. The soldiers still stood around their campfires and the spotlights. A couple men were patrolling the shoreline in front of the cabin, but they hadn’t stopped or redirected any spotlights. No one was looking for them in the lake, and their heat signals would be impossible to detect in the ice bath. Twenty minutes later, the second foursome surfaced, and they weren’t doing well. Jenna and Kate were shivering uncontrollably, and Mom and Dad were struggling with the weight of the items they were towing. Danny made a judgment call to have Cameron accompany Jenna, Kate and Mom to the shore to join Hayley and Isaac. Dad would stay with Danny in case the final group needed any help.

Wes, Sam, and I made up the final group. As the chamber filled with water one last time, I knew it had to be a bittersweet moment for Wes. He’d told us about the millions he’d poured into this place, and all of that would now be going down the drain. But it had served its purpose, and it could potentially save us all. As we were released out into the cove, I watched as Wes turned back and locked the hatch open. This way when the soldiers blew up the bunker, it would instantly fill with water, and they wouldn’t be able to salvage much from the ensuing mess. It was an ingenious design, something his former supervisors would have been proud of.

“It worked, Dad,” Sam chattered when we surfaced, giving him a fist bump. “Worth every penny.”

“Yes, it was.” Wes agreed.

“We’ve got to go, guys.” I whispered, a tad reluctant to break up the moment of pride between them.

We joined Danny and Dad in heading to the opposite shore. As we got out and changed, we did our best to restore the body heat of the three without wetsuits, wrapping them in thick blankets and instant heat packs. Soon everyone was dressed again, head to toe in black, and we were ready to head towards the car dealer.

Well, almost. “Guys,” Hayley spoke up. “We have a problem.”