2020: Emergency Exit (40 page)

The first few weeks of May were pretty tense. Leaving the cave for anything more than a bathroom break wasn’t an option, considering the amount of traffic around and over us. The drones were back out in force. We didn’t know how long they would keep this up, but we felt pretty confident they would do so until there was absolutely no resistance.

A construction crew was sent in to check out and rebuild the entry to our road. We kept a close eye on their progress. Tension was peaking again. We had to get to Hawaii as soon as possible, because as every day passed the enemy was likely to be focusing more and more of their presence on the last remaining piece of the puzzle. Eventually there would be no way to get there. It would normally go without saying we had to be there before that day came, but to double emphasize that point, I’m saying it anyway.

We’d come to know each other pretty well throughout the past five months. That tends to happen when there are fourteen of you trapped in a cave barely larger than the size of your average living room. Given the tight quarters, Tara and I didn’t want to serve as a constant reminder to Jenna of Cameron’s absence, so we cooled things off a bit physically, which was probably for the best. Extenuating circumstances are known to cause some pretty volatile relationships. We wanted to do this right, so if we survived we could take the relationship somewhere. We sat and talked for hours every day, and we still slept beside each other, but there was no more hand holding and very little kissing, even in private. We didn’t want to be disrespectful to anyone. We’d come to know nearly everything about each other. She was more than I ever dreamed I’d find…again.

When Tara wasn’t with me, she was with Reagan. They’d spent hundreds of hours in conversation as well, and I could tell how much Tara’s personal experiences were helping Reagan battle her own emotional demons. Reagan turned twenty-five in February, and she said it was the most friends she’d ever had at a birthday party. Daughter of the vice president had to have been some kind of life. And clearly not all positive.

Jenna had been spending a lot of time with Blake. There was nothing romantic there—yet—but Blake was there when Cameron died, and Jenna knew how much Cameron thought of him. For her, it was probably best there was no room for romance either.

Blake, Isaac and Sam were learning how to shoot a bow from Hayley, and Danny was giving them all lessons on knife throwing. Everyone was making time indoors as productive as possible, but it wasn’t all peachy and perfect. Isaac was driving Danny crazy. He was a quick enough learner, but largely uninterested in anything military. Sam was constantly on his brother to pay more attention and to participate more. If there was any friction in the cave it was Danny and Sam’s frustration with Isaac, but Hayley and Blake were great peacekeepers. They constantly tried to make the learning more fun for Isaac, and to keep Sam and Danny’s intensity away from him. Their intervention definitely helped. Still, I knew it was bothering Danny, even more than it was Sam. Danny was looking for people he could count on when he needed them. He didn’t think he had that in Isaac.

Dad always kept a watchful eye on all matters in the cave. He’d intervened on Isaac’s behalf a few times, and talked Danny down a few times, but mostly he stayed out of it. All things considered, he and Mom were still doing pretty well. They’d always been avid outdoor people, which seemed to help them adjust to the cave after awhile. Mom either made or helped make our meals every day, and Dad was always playing with Emily and Abbey or talking strategy with Danny.

I could tell that helped Danny, as those were conversations he’d always had with Cameron. Dad knew his stuff, and Danny trusted him. I’m sure it was good for both of them. And speaking of good for Danny, that girl, Kate, she was a definite keeper. She’d absolutely been his rock. She’d been there for him every way he needed her to be. Her soft-spoken nature and persistent love was perfect for Danny.

He did his best to push her off for most of December, but you could tell—on Christmas Eve no less—he finally realized she wasn’t going anywhere, and that was the first time I saw him put his arm around her since we’d left Minnesota. They’d spent a lot of time together, just the two of them, talking, laughing, and even occasionally holding hands.

It was good for him to be able to relax now. He wasn’t going to be able to keep that guard down for long, as we’d be on the move again soon, but while he could, it provided yet another example of how we all managed to make lemonade out of the lemon groves we’d been given. I guess you could say, in a few ways, I was honestly thankful we’d been stuck in this cave. This hole in the mountain, in the middle of the country, was a welcome eye in this crazy storm. For a while at least, it sure beat being outside on the run, trying to outsmart the African captain and a million other madmen.

We all were wondering where Eddie was at this point. Was he ahead of us? Behind us? Alive? Dead? I looked at the map on our makeshift dining table and followed the route we’d traced down to Mexico: over Trail Ridge Road down to Grand Lake and Granby, then down to Buena Vista and on to Montrose. We’d then cut through Telluride, Colorado, and directly west to the Colorado River in southeast Utah. We’d try to stay off the high-traffic open roads where the drones would always be circling and try to maintain mountain or canyon cover whenever possible. It was genuinely our only hope for survival.

I looked from the map on the table to the whiteboard, where a number of things had been tracked all winter. It was completely covered with notes now. Originally, we’d had the date scrawled in huge numbers and letters across the middle. Now, the date had been reduced to a small number in the upper corner. May 18. Danny’s birthday. He was twenty-one today. Mom made a cinnamon rice cake for him. It was pretty good, but probably not the way Danny had intended to spend this day. He should have been off in the Middle East somewhere looking for terrorists in caves rather than hiding from them in one. He should have been somewhere with Cameron.

Oh well, what can you do? We didn’t have any gifts for him, but he had one for Blake. In a roundabout way he’d heard the story of Blake shooting the elk to save him and Cameron. Danny wanted to show his appreciation for everything Blake had come to mean to us. He gave Blake Cameron’s Kevlar military uniform Mom had patched up and Cameron’s R11. It was a pretty cool gesture, and I could tell Blake was honored. All in all, it was at least a semi-happy birthday for my Danny. He deserved more, but I was glad he at least got to have this.

In a matter of days we’d be leaving this cave behind. I looked around at my friends and family laughing, talking, shooting arrows, and playing cards. Once again, I felt a twinge of sadness about leaving and imagined others were feeling the same. I smiled and wondered if we’d ever be back.
What if this cave were famous someday? Like Anne Frank’s house
. I envisioned tourists lining up to look inside and laughed aloud. Hayley asked what was so funny. “Nothing.” I said, clearing my throat and glancing in her direction. It wasn’t really funny. It was a ridiculous thought. “Nothing,” I repeated, although she wasn’t listening anymore. I shook my head and looked back down at the map. What still lay ahead of us wasn’t humorous at all. Our current security was a fading illusion. Life was about to get real again.

SIXTY-SEVEN: (Eddie) “Camp Buena Vista”

Eddie picked the camp at Buena Vista because the Americans had to come through here. There was only one other option for them, and that was an interstate littered with roadblocks and monitored heavily by drones. Only the military would be able to make it along that pass. They’d be coming here. He was sure of it.

The town did have a beautiful view…if you liked mountains, snow, rivers, and tons of small animals. Eddie missed Africa. He didn’t care for this continent. He hated the snow, hated the cold, and hated all the annoying deer, birds and rodents. How so many of them had survived was beyond him. He couldn’t eat a sandwich without being attacked by a jay or set any food down beyond the reach of a dozen chipmunks. Those sneaky little bastards were everywhere, and had ferocious appetites.

It had been almost six months since his demotion—six months since his reassignment to this hole. He wasn’t a fan. His base commander here was a stupid drunk fool, on his best days, but it was hard for Eddie to hate him. He was almost a nice guy—though definitely not worthy of his post. The military had to have been desperate, or this base commander was related to someone important. Eddie and Lazzo had feared a backlash when they arrived, that certain information would be shared with the commander, but that had never seemed to be the case. If he knew about what Eddie was accused of, he never let on. In fact, he didn’t pay any attention to them. In order to get the commander’s attention, Eddie would have had to be a bottle of whiskey.

Given Eddie’s size and intimidating glare, most people left him alone. But Sergeant Agos at the base was a real pain in his side. The loud but diminutive man was constantly bossing him around to do the smallest, simplest tasks. He seemed to enjoy his power a little too much, and the absence of leadership from the base commander gave the sergeant a void he intended to fill. Sergeant Agos was only five foot one, from Mexico, and clearly not a fan of those with darker skin than his. Eddie and Lazzo were two of three Africans at the hundred-man base. The sergeant, other than bossing Eddie around, had never crossed the racial line with him. But Lazzo had been directly subjected to many racist comments and noises from the sergeant. Lazzo, a generally peaceful man, was ready for blood. But in this army, as in any, you had to fall in line for your superiors, regardless of their lack of class or character. So Eddie and Lazzo sucked it up and dealt with it.

The months went by, and the treatment only worsened. It was almost as if the sergeant was realizing they couldn’t respond to his taunts. He started to push the line further and further, and he often pushed it so far he began to alienate some of the other Mexican soldiers. There was a growing sentiment within the camp something needed to be done. The pompous bigot needed to be put in his place, and Eddie could feel the troops looking to him. The problem was, they didn’t know he was on thin ice. They had no idea why he put up with Agos’s behavior, and he couldn’t afford to explain the dicey position he was in.

One afternoon in late April, Eddie had been sent to get water from the river next to the Liars’ Lodge where their camp was set up. Before he even reached the river, it occurred to him every time he’d been sent to do something, the sergeant had come to yell at him when he hadn’t done it quickly. Here, down by the river, there was no one around. So Eddie took his time. Sergeant Agos was so obsessed with demeaning the troops, especially the Africans, he wouldn’t let anyone yell at the Africans but him. Sure enough, about twenty minutes later Eddie heard the sergeant yelling at him as he came cruising down the hill.

Eddie didn’t respond. He didn’t turn around. The sergeant came up behind him and hit him with his nightstick. In a flash, Eddie spun on him and lifted him off the ground. He only intended to scare the man, but as he spun full circle to hold him over the river Eddie lost his grip. The sergeant fell from Eddie’s grasp and, upended, smashed his head against a rock. Eddie looked around, but he saw no one else nearby. He looked down at the sergeant halfway in the water and elected to push him all the way in. The river engulfed him and dragged a dead Sergeant Agos downstream.

As Eddie reentered the camp, it didn’t matter that no one had been there to see what had happened. When the sergeant didn’t come back with Eddie, the entire camp knew the man was dead. The base commander was already passed out drunk for the night. He wouldn’t know Agos was gone until the next day, and even then he probably wouldn’t care.

But this wasn’t what Eddie had planned. He didn’t want this target on his back. He was trying to lay low and wait. This wasn’t going to help. Eddie didn’t bother to explain to anyone other than Lazzo that it had been an accident. No one else would care. He had to hope the sergeant didn’t have any friends.

It turned out he did. Turned out the base commander hadn’t attained his post by knowing someone—he was just that incompetent. The one with connections was the dead sergeant, who was a cousin of the Mexican commander in Denver.
Of course
. And although the Mexican commander hated the man, it didn’t make him anything less than family. When it was reported to him a week later that the sergeant was missing from the Buena Vista camp, the Mexican commander became invested in the situation himself. His personal chief of security, Roman Roja, was a general in the Mexican army, and the commander assigned him to Buena Vista. The drunken base commander was sent packing to another remote location.

General Roja arrived with four of his own men, all officers, and two German shepherds. A new chain of command was rapidly established at the camp. The general was also a big man, although a couple inches shorter than Eddie. Word spread quickly through the camp that the general had been in charge of interrogation for Mexico’s Military Intelligence Division for a decade. He was one bad hombre. His four men were the Mexican equivalent of the Texas Rangers. If they felt they had any reason to shoot you, they would, and no questions would be asked. They lived by their own rules. In a way, Sergeant Agos had been multiplied by four. This was much, much worse.

The day after the five of them arrived, Eddie was called into General Roja’s office. Eddie stood at attention as the general looked him over. “I don’t like you,” were his first words to Eddie. “I know what you did.”

Eddie said nothing, unsure of which of his many supposed offenses the man was addressing. The general continued. “Because of you and your sloppiness, American president is dead.”
Ah, that one
. “You leave a mess and others have to clean it for you. You don’t deserve to live.”

He seemed to be waiting for an apology of some sort, but when Eddie didn’t give it to him he continued. “The men say you were with Agos when he was last seen.”
That didn’t take long
. He was standing directly in front of Eddie now, looking him in the eyes.