2020: Emergency Exit (21 page)

The other two jeeps backed off a little more, far enough to be out of range but still keep a line of sight. We raced past one of our favorite stops, the Dam Store, with its famous lookout tower. As we crossed the adjacent bridge, our hearts sank. The water was so high it was brushing the bottom of the bridge. There were several areas up ahead we knew to be more exposed and dangerous than this one. Only fifteen miles from Estes Park, Danny was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it.

Sure enough, as we came up on the tiny town of Drake, where the two branches of the Big Thompson River converged into one, the entire road was under water. We could see one of our trucks on the other side of where the road had washed out. They were safe, but something was wrong. Mom and Dad were out of their truck and pointing our direction. “Uh, Danny,” I said.

He glanced back as we pulled to a stop. “What?”

“We’ve got a pretty big problem.” I was looking around for what Mom and Dad were pointing at, and then I saw it. Pinned between large rocks on the other side of the river, at the base of a thirty-foot tall canyon wall, was another truck. Since Mom and Dad had Tara and Emily with them, this meant the truck in the river belonged to Wes, Sam, Isaac, and Hayley. “Danny!” I shouted. “Hayley’s out there!”

Danny took one glance and was out of the truck in a flash. “Cam, cover me!” he screamed. Cameron and Blake hopped out of the other truck with guns drawn and sought cover on the east side of the road. The jeeps behind us had stopped about a third of a mile back. However many men they had, Eddie didn’t seem comfortable enough to approach yet. He also didn’t seem to have figured out why we had stopped.

Danny scrambled down below the road beside the river. The water was moving so fast there was no swimming across it. He was trying to see any signs of life in the truck, but waves were crashing against it. Danny looked frantically around for any way to get across. Down the river about two hundred yards there was a giant tree half in and half out of the water, and what he saw next took his breath away. “Hayley!” he screamed.

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Hayley was on the tree in the water, clinging to it for dear life. She didn’t hear Danny. The river was so strong she wasn’t going to be able to hold on for much longer. She and Wes had been in the front seat when the twenty-foot wall of water descended from the canyon to their right and crushed them, spinning their truck through the air like a baton and dropping them on the far side of the canyon. The impact had smashed open the driver’s door and nearly snapped the truck in two. Hayley and Wes had been swept out the driver’s door. Hayley hit her head and didn’t see where Wes went. She didn’t know what had happened to Sam and Isaac either, but she hoped they’d managed to stay in the truck, as it appeared to still be somewhat above water and stuck up the river behind her. There was at least a chance they could still be alive.

She, on the other hand, wasn’t going to be for long. If she let go, she was going over the thundering rapids below and would be dashed on the rocks or drowned by the current. As she tired, she closed her eyes and thought of the last conversations she’d had. Her dad was going to have a tough time with this one. Her brother knew she loved him. He’d want her to hold on. She could almost hear him screaming at her now. She had to try.

Ten minutes later, unable to hold on any longer, completely drained of strength, she felt her hands give way. The river devoured her and rushed her downstream. She felt her head slam into a rock, and she blacked out. She didn’t feel strong arms grab her a few seconds later, lift her up, and carry her to the shore, a hundred yards south of the tree.

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When Eddie saw the man running down the road towards them with no weapon, he didn’t know what to think. He raised his binoculars and noticed the man wasn’t even looking his direction. His eyes were on the river, focused on a fallen tree in the middle of the swirling waters. Then Captain Eddie saw what he was looking at. A girl hanging on to the tree.

A noble man would do much to save a woman in distress, but disregarding his own welfare, directly in the line of enemy fire, for the sake of another…well, that was either a move for love or a move for family. And the way the man was screaming, this person in the water meant a great deal to him. Behind the running man Eddie saw another man coming their way with a gun in his hand, aimed directly at them. He hadn’t yet fired though. One of his men opened the back door on Eddie’s jeep, and the approaching man fired. His bullet hit the center of the door, and Eddie’s man dove back into the jeep. Eddie yelled out, “Hold fire! No shoot! Close doors.”

He focused on the face of the man with the gun and saw him yelling “Danny!” over and over. The other man, the one named Danny, either couldn’t hear him or was ignoring him. As Danny reached the tree, the woman holding on to it lost her grip and slipped into the water. Eddie didn’t have time to think about what he did next. He threw the door open on his jeep and lunged out. A gunshot ricocheted off his door, but he ignored it. He ran down the embankment to the river and took three large steps into the water as the girl’s body went by him. He reached out and grabbed her leg. Her momentum almost knocked him off his feet, but he managed to get another arm on her and pull her out of the river. He picked her up and carried her to the shore as the man named Danny ran up to him. Danny raised his arms, and Eddie waved him in. There was a gunshot from Eddie’s jeep. Eddie and Danny both looked at where it had come from and its intended target.

Danny saw Cameron point his gun at the jeep, and Danny yelled, “Cameron, no!”

The captain screamed at his men, “No shoot!” He glared at Cameron, who held his ground, gun still locked on the jeep. Danny knelt beside Hayley. She was out cold. He began giving her mouth-to-mouth, and a few seconds later she began spitting up water. She didn’t open her eyes, but she was breathing. As Danny lifted her head, he turned to look at Eddie. Cameron had approached, but Lazzo had also stepped out of the jeep and had his gun on Cameron.

“Why?” Danny asked Eddie.

A crack of a smile appeared on his lips as he tapped the side of his head and replied, “Karma.”

Then Danny understood. The captain had put the pieces together. He had figured out it was him in Cheyenne. Captain Eddie pointed north. “You. Go.” He turned to Cameron and repeated himself. “You. Go.” Cameron didn’t move. “Who is?” he asked Danny, nodding towards Hayley.

“Sister,” Danny replied, his eyes never leaving the captain’s.

Eddie nodded. “I see you again,” he said matter of factly. “You a dead man. Clear?”

“Clear,” Danny lifted his sister off the ground. “Thank you,” he said to Eddie’s back.

Captain Eddie heard him but didn’t reply. He climbed into his jeep and directed his men to turn around and head back down 34. They picked up his three other men on the way and set off towards Denver.

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When they pulled out that morning, Captain Eddie wasn’t sure what he was going to do when, or if, he saw the Americans. He was nearly certain it was these Americans who had saved his brother’s life and his last night. He hadn’t yet met a Qi Jia soldier with that clear of an American accent. Then he had to ask himself why, when they knew he was chasing them? Why, when they knew he was trying as hard as he could to kill all of them? It was an irrational war move, in every way.

But it was the move of a man who had joined the military to do good. To save people and not kill people. An ordinary soldier would have thought nothing of it, perhaps even thought it foolish or cowardly. Eddie, on the other hand, was pretty familiar with that honorable ambition.

He decided to keep their radar off that morning and follow his gut instinct. It turned out to be right, and when he saw the Americans go past he followed them, still unsure whether he would kill them or let them go. When the man in the truck took out his lead jeep, but clearly spared his men’s lives by how he did it, Eddie was certain he was right, and he nearly stopped and turned around right there. But as they drove on and the roads became more treacherous, Eddie thought there might be a chance he’d get to see the man who took that shot at sixty miles per hour and did so with such precision. He thought maybe he’d get to hear that voice he’d heard last night. Then he would know whom he was up against. Maybe then, if the chance came for him to blatantly let them go, the Americans would understand they were even.

Eddie was given that opportunity. As much as he wanted the blood of these Americans, and every American for that matter, he half wanted to shake this one’s hand and say thank you. But there was no shaking hands with enemies in war. Instead, he saved the life of the man’s sister. That was thanks enough.

Now, he, his brother, and their nine men were going to leave these Americans alone. They were going back down the mountain towards Denver. He had been working on a story to tell command there, to hopefully be reassigned another company or join one. He had every intention of being on the other side of the mountain when these Americans came through, and every intention of killing them all when they did. But until then, if he was being honest, he was pulling for them. He wanted them to get through the mountains and away from everyone else who pursued them in the meantime. Eddie wasn’t going to give away their location. Not now. It was information he was going to use to keep him and his men alive and to hopefully prove his value to command. If he couldn’t do that, he knew he and his men would soon be dead.

THIRTY-SEVEN: “Tragic Luck”

We should have lost more people that morning. As Danny ran down the road towards Captain Eddie, I was screaming at him to stop. No way he could hear me. But Cameron was screaming at me to get back in the truck, and I could hear him fine. As the driver, I had to do what was asked of me, or I could put us all at risk. I knew that, but that was my son running towards the people trying to kill us. Never taking my eyes off Danny, I crawled back into the truck as slowly and grudgingly as humanly possible.

From the front seat I watched Cameron follow Danny down the road towards the captain.
What was going on?
I didn’t take my eyes off the scene through our back window. I saw the door open on one of the jeeps and then slam shut again. Then I saw the driver door open, some sparks fly, and a large man tumble out of the jeep and down the riverbank.
Was that the captain?
I wanted to get out of the truck and at least see what was going on, or turn the truck around and try to give Danny some cover, but for some reason no one was shooting at Danny. And for some even stranger reason, Danny didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the jeeps he was approaching. There had to be someone in the river, and knowing which truck had ended up in the water, I was convinced the only person who would make Danny disregard all safety and common sense was Hayley. I couldn’t stay in the truck any longer.

I opened the door and stepped out as a bullet hit the back of the truck. I raised my hands but didn’t move, ignoring the conventional wisdom to seek cover, watching from several hundred yards as Cameron stood in the middle of the road with his gun pointed at the jeeps. I heard Cameron yell something back at me that sounded like, “Some other fish, Ryan!” The words meant nothing to me. I stayed where I was. Another man had dismounted from the jeeps and was pointing his gun at Cameron. Danny was nowhere in sight.

A couple minutes later, I saw Danny climb up from the river with a body in his arms. I wanted to run, but Cameron’s hand held up towards me and the fact I’d just been shot at kept me in my place. I knew it was Hayley, and as soon as I saw the man get back in his vehicle and the jeeps turn around and drive away, I ran towards Danny to help.

Danny handed her to me, and I carried her back to the truck. He said nothing more than, “Get her warm, Dad.” Then he was off again. Jenna and Kate made room for her in the back of our truck, and Jenna—being our resident nurse—began the process of warming her up. I turned my attention back to Danny and Cameron as they tried to figure out some way of reaching Wes’s truck in the water, on the other side of the river.

Mom and Dad’s truck was still safely on the road, about three hundred yards north of us. The flash flood had left a wide, debris-filled river in its wake and effectively cut us off. There were easily two hundred yards of churning water between our truck and Dad’s. From what we could see, it appeared as if the wall of water had descended from the eastern canyon. It had to have caught Wes by surprise, carried their truck across the river and slammed it into the far canyon wall.

It seemed there was only one way to get to Wes’s truck, and it would involve basically making a full circle. Whoever went would have to go north from our truck to Dad’s, then somehow west across the canyon before coming back south along the steep cliff walls above Wes’s truck. If everything went as intended, they’d rescue whoever was in the truck still and eventually end up back at our truck. I was pretty confident the rescue party would be Danny.

Fortunately, we had plenty of high quality climbing rope. Four sixty-meter packs in fact, a little over two hundred and fifty yards. The problem was, half the rope was in Dad’s truck and the other half was in ours. Somehow we needed to connect the two halves.

About a half-mile upriver, the sudden rise in water had washed out the base of a canyon wall, which had crashed into the water, creating somewhat of a natural rock bridge that reached partially across. Danny signaled his grandpa to take the rope in the back of his truck over to that point. Dad could easily handle the thirty pounds of his two packs on his own, but Tara helped him anyway. Mom and Emily stayed back in the truck.

Danny stopped to talk to Blake for a minute. Blake got out of his truck and pulled his pack out of the back end.
Danny’s letting Blake do this?
He dug through the pack for a minute and then handed Danny three of his climbing carabiners. Danny clipped them onto his belt.
Nope.
I was right.
Danny’s going
. Danny grabbed a life jacket out of the back of Blake’s truck; then he, Cameron and I headed off to meet Tara and Dad.