2020: Emergency Exit (29 page)

I could only imagine what Tara was going through, sitting beside the girl, reliving her own worst memories, and then looking at Emily and imagining it all happening to her daughter as well. How Tara could sit still beside that girl without exploding was beyond me. But then, I knew there was another side to that coin too.

Tara didn’t want her to feel alone, not even for a second. No one but her parents had been there for Tara. No one had saved Tara. It took her almost twelve years to even look at a man and hope for something good. Yeah, Tara knew how to handle this because she’d lived it. She’d carried a shame with her over something she hadn’t even done wrong, and been burdened by a guilt she never should have had. Tara knew what this girl was going through and how long it would take for these wounds, emotional and physical, to heal. The rest of us had the luxury of not knowing.

We were “fortunately ignorant.”

Hayley finally gave a voice to our rational side. “We can’t do anything about this, guys.”

Danny agreed. The rest of us continued to fume.

“I’m serious,” she continued. “If we go down to that camp now, and let’s say we can even take all of them out, what good would that do us? We don’t have a way out of here. They’ll just send more troops. Way more.” She let that sink in a little. “I know this may be hard to even imagine right now, but what if they haven’t done anything to the little girl?” She was right about one thing. Not one of us found that thought the least bit imaginable.

“Hayley, seriously,” I cut in.

“She’s right,” Tara spoke up behind me, making me jump. “If anyone goes down there now, we’re all dead.” She looked at the floor. “It kills me to say this, but the best payback may just be escaping all this.”

“You can’t really mean—”

“Maybe,” Danny cut me off, also not totally agreeing. “But I can’t leave that little girl there.”

“Okay,” Tara said with an edge to her voice. “So what? How are you going to save her without losing your own life, or costing all of us ours? What if you go down there, and it’s too late? What if any of us does something that ends up hurting the rest of us? If we save one little girl, would it honestly be worth it?”

Emily probably shouldn’t have been listening to this, but she was, and none of us were ready for her question. “What if it was me, Mommy? Would you come get me?”

Her question gave me chills. I swear I even saw Dad shudder. I saw tears start to form in Tara’s eyes as she knelt beside her daughter. “Emily. Of course I would, honey.” She hugged her tightly. “Of course I would.” She was looking right at Danny then.

I looked at Danny too as he nodded.
Message delivered and received
. Just because she said what we all were thinking didn’t mean that’s how she really felt. But it needed to be said. She didn’t want us to leave that girl down there, either. “Midnight,” Danny said to Blake. “Wake me up at midnight.”

FORTY-EIGHT: “Zero Dark Forty”

Saturday, November 28, 2020.

Estes Park, Colorado.

Danny always loved Capture the Flag. The goal of the game was to somehow get into the enemy base and take the other team’s flag without getting caught. Danny, of course, was a natural. He and his friends played it at school when they were young, using flag football belts to determine “life” or “death.” Lose the flags Velcroed to your waist, and you were “dead.”

As they grew older, they upped the ante and played it in the “back forty” at our rural Pine Island home—though it was more like twenty acres than forty—with paintball guns. A shot to the chest or back, and you were out. Hit someone in the face or head, and the shooter was out.

Tonight’s version was upping the ante even more. The “flag” was a twelve-year old little girl. The “back forty” was more like a million acres
and
professional soldiers with assault rifles were guarding it. Any kind of shot whatsoever, and you were probably dead. Permanently. Shots to the face or head were fair game. It was a very different game, indeed.

Danny and Cameron got up at midnight. They pulled on their “ghost suits” and covered those with the Soviet white-camo snowsuits from the army surplus store in Fort Collins. I handed them each their R11 and handgun, gave them both a fist bump, and they exited the cave. Blake and I headed up the tunnel to our lookout ledge and crawled out as far east as we could for the best visual of the road to the camp. It was windy and snowy, making it too slippery to reach the level we normally could watch from. As a result, we unfortunately wouldn’t be able to see their progress much past the falls, probably no more than a half-mile away.

Danny figured it would take them about an hour to walk the mile and a quarter to the camp. It had started to snow around ten and was coming down pretty heavily now, which they both did and didn’t like. Progress would be achingly slow, but at least there weren’t likely to be any troops out in this.
There’s no way Middle Easterners could like this weather
. On the other hand, Danny and Cameron knew if they went the easy way—maintaining cover under the trees—those tracks wouldn’t fill in as well, perhaps not even by morning, so they had no choice but to approach the camp in the open. That made the two of them easy targets if anyone were sitting outside on watch. They were being mindful of their steps and had methodically made it about halfway to the camp when all hell broke loose.

When Blake and I heard the first two gunshots, they made us jump all the way back on our ledge.
Crap
. Downwind from the camp, every sound in that direction was considerably amplified tonight. It was almost as if the shots were fired right next to us.

Then a barrage of shots in rapid succession echoed around us. We could see small flashes of light in the direction of the otherwise dark camp, but we had no idea what they may have been shooting at. Then we heard what sounded like a car, followed seconds later by headlights cutting down the dark road towards us. The camp was starting to light up in the distance, and we could hear a crescendo of yelling.
What was going on?

“There’s no way Danny and Cam made it there yet,” Blake whispered, and I nodded.
Agreed
. It had only been thirty to forty minutes tops, since they’d left. We were frantically trying to find any sign of them through our scopes, with no success. The first set of headlights approached below us, belonging to a military jeep. It raced past our perch, whipping dangerously back and forth on the snow-covered road. Two minutes later, two more sets of headlights approached and two more jeeps raced by. The initial vehicle had turned right. The next two split up. It almost seemed as if they were chasing that first jeep. There was still no sign of Danny or Cameron.

“Are you watching this, Blake?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “But I don’t exactly know what I’m watching.”

He was right. This was crazy. They clearly hadn’t been after Danny and Cameron, unless somehow the boys had made it to the camp in half an hour, found the girl, taken her in the jeep and raced off. But there was a better chance of the entire invading army surrendering to Blake and me than there was of that in this weather. Whatever was going on probably didn’t even involve Danny and Cameron, but they were stuck out there now, and I could only imagine what they were thinking.

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The first gunshot froze them in their tracks. “Get down!” Danny whispered to Cameron, and they both dropped flat into the thick snow as another shot rang out. The first two shots were followed by a storm of others from throughout the camp, a half-mile or so ahead.
This wasn’t good
. A set of headlights was rapidly approaching. They were out in the open ditch by the road with no cover.
Also not good. They couldn’t have known we were coming. What is going on?

The approaching lights made the boys worry about their exposure to thermal imaging. If detected, their only hope was to pass as deer, elk, or some other animal. They didn’t move an inch. The first vehicle raced by. It didn’t seem like it was looking for them. It was a military jeep swerving all over the place, barely managing to stay on the road. Then Danny and Cameron saw two more sets of headlights coming not far behind the jeep that had just passed—two more military jeeps. The second two were far more in control as they drove by. It was almost like the person in the first jeep didn’t know how to drive. Danny glanced at Cameron with a questioning look. Cameron just shrugged.

Danny waved Cameron to follow him as he climbed up onto the road and began jogging back towards the cave in the compacted tire tracks. They were moving fast and had run for several minutes when Danny glanced behind him to make sure Cameron was still there. That’s when he saw another set of lights coming, cutting through the falling snow. “Cam, run!” he urged. Danny took off, Cameron right behind him, and they raced all the way to the Alluvial Fan’s first stream and leapt off the road into it. “Down!” Danny barked as Cameron hit the water. The headlights behind them had slowed to a crawl and were inching towards them from a hundred yards away. A spotlight scanned the area, even settling directly on them for a few seconds.

The vehicle passed and stopped no more than ten yards ahead on a small wooden bridge. The driver turned the engine off, and they heard the doors open. Danny and Cameron couldn’t risk moving or they’d surely be seen. From where the two of them lay shivering in the icy water they saw four soldiers come into view. They were shining their lights into the river up ahead and spreading out, covering the area all around them. One of the men was approaching Danny and Cameron, and the boys sank down into the freezing water, eyes never leaving the troops. The man above them was shining his light just a few feet behind them. He was turning his light back towards the tire tracks in the road—and likely about to discover their footprints—when suddenly there was a roar and a thrashing commotion ahead of them in the water.

The man above them spun his light towards the noise and took several steps back towards the jeep. One of the men by the jeep was shouting at him, and he shouted something back. He shone his light down at the water below one more time and then walked briskly back towards the other three soldiers.

They were talking and pointing as a herd of elk snorted and plowed their way through the thin ice, trying to get away from the intruding lights. Something had disturbed them. The animals ran noisily up the hill. The men initially followed the elk with their guns, but then they started talking, one of them laughed, and they all climbed back into the jeep. The engine roared to life, and they moved the jeep forward.

Cameron knew they had to have seen him running down the road or at least diving into the stream. Thank God for the near-blizzard conditions and the elk. No matter what the soldiers thought they’d seen, the elk’s presence must have satisfied their investigation. The jeep drove all the way to the corner of Old Fall River Road and then turned onto the highway towards Estes Park. Danny and Cameron rose from the water and trudged upstream, ascending as quickly as possible back to the cave.

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Blake and I had watched as Danny and Cameron raced frantically down the road below us and launched themselves off the road into the stream. The fourth jeep closed quickly on them, then slowed and pulled to a stop above their location. We counted four soldiers get out with flashlights and thought for sure that was going to be a problem. One of the soldiers seemed to be no more than a few feet from where the boys were hiding. He had his gun out and was looking around below him. Then Blake tapped me and said, “There’s elk sleeping down there by the river.”

“Seriously?” I asked, scanning for them.
Sure enough. About twenty yards from the boys.

“Ryan, do I do something?”

“Like?” I was unsure what he was asking.

He didn’t answer. He tightened the silencer on the front of the rifle, made sure there was a bullet in the chamber, and cocked it. He squeezed off a shot that whispered off the ledge and hit one of the elk in the rear end. The elk roared and started thrashing about in the water. His sudden lurch and ensuing cry caused the others to start snorting and stampeding up the hill. I watched the startled soldiers through my scope as they gathered on the bridge and aimed their guns and lights at the elk. Then they started talking to each other, one of them laughed, and they climbed back into the jeep. They started it up and drove off, following the others towards Estes Park.
Man, that was close
.

“Good work.” I clapped Blake on the shoulder.
I would have never thought of that
. I was certain Danny and Cameron could hear my heart beating from below us.

We watched them climb through the stream and up around the falls before disappearing around the corner. Blake and I slid back into the cave and had the lights off and front panel removed, waiting for them when they arrived. They changed out of their soaking clothes, and we covered them with blankets. They were freezing but otherwise fine.

“What in the world happened?” Dad asked, coming out into the main room with us. Tara and Hayley were right behind him.

“No clue,” Danny replied through chattering teeth. “We were going to ask you the same thing. Were any of you watching?”

Blake and I nodded. “Something happened at the camp,” Blake said. “You guys couldn’t have been gone a half hour when it all went crazy down there.”

Cameron nodded. “Tell me about it.”

“Any idea?” I asked. I could tell Tara and Hayley wanted to know about the little girl, but none of us had seen anything to help with that.

Danny shook his head. “Didn’t see the girl. We didn’t even make it halfway there. Sorry,” he added apologetically. Tara nodded. “I thought for sure we were dead,” Danny continued.

“Thank God for those elk,” Cameron agreed. “Did you guys know they were there?” He looked at me, and I looked at Blake.