2020: Emergency Exit (32 page)

He moved his head in front of the man’s mouth and the vice president replied softly, “You have to leave me and find my daughter.”

Danny paused a few seconds to make sure nothing around them had changed and then whispered back, “We have her, sir.”

The vice president turned his head sharply, surprise spreading across his face, and then he seemed to realize who Danny was talking about and shook his head. “Not Reagan. But thank God you have her…I meant my little girl, Abbey. I came here last night and took her to the Stanley Hotel.” He was wheezing and wincing with each deep breath. His face was bruised and bloody.

So it was
him
in that first jeep
. Danny thought.
He had come for his daughters, Reagan and Abbey
.

“Are you sick, or shot?” Danny asked, trying to determine the primary source of the VP’s physical pain.

“Shot,” he replied, before redirecting the conversation back to the Stanley Hotel. “I took Abbey in the front door of the hotel but you can’t. It’s lit up. Way too bright. They could be watching it. You have to find another way in, a side staircase in the dark somewhere. There is a supply closet in the basement with a ladder…” He stopped as the men outside had stopped talking suddenly and seemed to be especially silent. The man on the cot was still snoring.

A couple minutes later the men continued their conversation, and Danny put his mouth to the vice president’s ear. “I got it. But what am I supposed to do about you, sir?” He had a feeling he knew the answer.

“Leave me,” he replied. “Save my little girl. If you try to take me, neither of us will make it. If you kill me, they’ll know you were here.” He was right, of course, but Danny hated it. “You must save my little girl.”

“Okay,” Danny whispered back. “You’re a brave and honorable man, sir.”

“I’m not,” he shook his head slightly. “Remember this number. A76845B940. And if you make it to Hawaii, ask the governor for the Elephant’s Box.” Danny took the mental notes he needed, wrote the number on his forearm with a Sharpie from his pocket, and tapped the vice president’s knee twice to show he had the number down. Danny then pulled a syringe from inside his uniform. The VP recognized it as morphine. “Where?” Danny asked.

“Lower right ribs,” he replied. Danny gave him the shot. “Thank you, young man,” the vice president whispered.

Danny nodded. “Anything else?”

“Take care of my girls.” He grabbed Danny’s sleeve. “And tell them I love them.”

Danny was close enough to the vice president to hear his tears hit the tarp floor. Danny took a small sharp object out of his own pocket and squeezed it into the man’s hand. Moore was ex-Special Forces, he knew what Danny had given him. With one final squeeze of the VP’s hand, Danny dropped flat to the floor. Danny slowly backed out the cut he’d made as the vice president coughed, and the men around the fire out front yelled at him. It was all Danny needed to get away clean.

He made it back to Cameron a few minutes before five. It was snowing heavily again, which worked with the darkness to help them move more easily. They retreated through the elk that were starting to get up and move around. They weren’t as keen on being disturbed this time. The boys moved quickly through them.

Blake and I watched them come all the way back without the vice president. They passed under the bridge below us and cut upstream until they disappeared around the corner again. We climbed down the rope, slid across the ledge, and crawled down the tunnel to let them in.

As they entered, it was easy to tell Danny wasn’t happy. My dad came out to join us. “We know who the driver of that jeep was last night,” Cameron said. “And we know where Reagan’s sister is,” he added before anyone could say anything.

“At the camp?” Dad asked.

“No,” Danny said, shaking out of his wet clothes. “She’s at the Stanley Hotel. Her dad took her there last night.”

“How—” Dad replied.

“The jeep?” Blake cut in, putting two and two together for us all.

“Yes,” Danny nodded.

            “She’s there alone?” I asked.

The boys nodded. “If I read him right, he took her there and then led the troops as far away from her as possible before giving himself up,” Danny explained.

“So you talked to the vice president?” Dad redirected.

“I did,” Danny replied.

“And?” We all wanted to know more, but Danny was focused on something else.

“I need to talk to Reagan,” he said.

“I’ll have Tara get her up,” I volunteered. I went inside and knelt beside Tara. I wanted to just watch her sleep. Instead, I kissed her on the lips and she opened one eye, then the other. Then she propped herself up onto her elbows. Admittedly I was a little distracted by her shirt.
Or what was under it.

“Hey now,” Tara redirected my hand and attention.

“Sorry,” I smiled.
Not really.

“Are they back?” she asked tiredly, trying to focus.

“Yes. Can you get Reagan up?” I whispered. She leaned in for another kiss and then nodded. I went back out to the main room, and she brought Reagan out a minute later.

“Did you find my Dad?” Reagan wanted to know immediately. “Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

Danny held up both his hands. “Reagan…easy. Okay? Yes, I found your dad.” He met her in the middle of the room. I couldn’t read anything from his facial expression. “I’m going to be honest with you. Okay?”
That didn’t sound good
.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay.”

Danny reached out awkwardly to take Reagan’s hand, but Tara quickly pushed his away and took Reagan’s hand herself. “He’s not well,” Danny began quietly. “He was bloody, bruised, and really weak. He’s been shot at least once.” Reagan reopened her eyes as Danny continued. “If I had to guess it happened last night when he came to get you and your sister.”
That would explain the gunfire we’d heard before the jeeps raced past
.

“He did what?” She was shocked.

Danny let it sink in for a second, then continued. “Somehow he found out they had you. You were right about that. And somehow he found out where. He came to find you both last night and managed to get away with your sister. He took her to the Stanley Hotel and then led the troops as far away from her as he could. They caught him and brought him back. Best as I could tell, they haven’t tortured him at all yet, other than the gunshots he received last night.”

“Why didn’t you—” she started to ask.

“Reagan, I couldn’t bring him here. I couldn’t move him at all. In fact, he ordered me not to. Normally, in this kind of situation I would be sent in to help him die, so no one could get information from him, but I did
not
kill him. That too would have drawn a lot of attention to how it happened and even more attention to this particular area. Your dad told me to go get your sister and to take care of the two of you.”

“So you left him there?” she asked in disbelief.
She clearly hadn’t listened to any of what Danny had said
. “How could you?” she screamed. Tara jumped to cover her mouth, to muffle the sound, but Reagan had already lunged beyond her reach to Danny and was pounding on him with her clenched fists. He stood there and took the blows, protecting only his face as Tara grabbed her and pulled her away. By now everyone was awake and had come out to the main room. Jenna and Mom were helping lead Reagan away, and Danny just stood there. It was easy to see he understood and didn’t like it any more than she did.
The kid is twenty! What twenty-year old could take all of this?
But he insisted he was okay.

As we listened to Reagan’s sobs subside in the adjacent room, Danny turned to Kate and asked if she’d go switch places with Hayley, and stay with Emily. Dad volunteered to watch the monitor by the door. Danny asked Isaac to position himself by the ledge entry, to watch and listen for anything on that end. Sam, Cameron, Blake, Danny and I gathered in a corner of the main room where we’d set up a giant whiteboard, with a hand drawn map of everything we knew about the area: trails, camps, roads, lakes, waterfalls, etc. Danny put an “X” where we knew the Stanley Hotel was and, as Hayley joined us, we began to plot the move to get to Abbey.

Tara came and sat by me about an hour later. Reagan had fallen asleep, finally. Kate was playing games with Emily, and Mom was reading one of the dozen half-burnt books she’d “borrowed” from a store on our initial supply run. The rest of us continued to discuss our possible options for several hours. The snow lasted throughout the morning, and then around 1 p.m. Isaac came down and told us a helicopter was coming down to the valley, not from the visitor center, but from the other direction. We knew it was here for the vice president. We watched on the big screen as it landed on the road down by the camp. It was a different kind of helicopter, all black and heavily armed. Because of the technology the other choppers had already proved they had—and this one looked much more hi-tech—we couldn’t afford to go out on the ledge for a better view without taking the risk our movement would be detected. Even if they thought we were mountain goats, that wasn’t acceptable. For that matter, Danny decided we should remain basically motionless until the helicopter left. Beyond the cave walls, mattresses, glass, and insulation, we added an additional layer, wrapping ourselves in the low radiating “space” blankets.

Several men exited the helicopter and walked towards the camp, fourteen of them by our count. We lost sight of them, but about forty minutes later they were back, escorting a man we assumed was the VP back to the helicopter.

The vice president and the fourteen men climbed back into the helicopter, and it lifted off. Instead of heading towards Denver, though, the helicopter climbed to the top of the mountain, presumably to the alpine base. We could see massive cloud formations south of us, and we assumed they didn’t deem it safe to head back that way yet. They might even have to spend the night up at the visitor center if the storm was as big as it appeared. Danny didn’t like the idea of having that helicopter anywhere near us, not knowing what it was capable of, but we didn’t exactly have a say in the matter.

FIFTY-THREE: (Eddie) “Caught in the Storm”

Major Eddie arrived in Colorado Springs and was directed to Captain Kubar’s office. As he was reaching for the handle the door opened and the captain nearly plowed right into him.

“Captain,” Eddie said, holding out his hand. “Major Eddie.”

“Major,” the captain replied. “Sorry, I’m off to NORAD. We think we finally may have found a way in.”

“NORAD?” Eddie asked. “What’s NORAD?”

“It’s the North American defense command center,” Kubar explained. “We’ve actually taken control of NORAD itself, but there’s an associated bunker with additional missile controls that we haven’t yet breached.”

Eddie hurried after him. “A bunker?”

“Yes,” the captain replied. “A giant cave. The Americans call it Cheyenne Mountain.”

“And there are Americans in this Cheyenne Mountain cave even still?” Eddie’s tone revealed his surprise.

“We think.” Kubar nodded. “But we’re not certain. They would have control of thousands of missiles across the country from inside that bunker, if Americans are in there. We know many of them were fired already, but probably not all. They haven’t fired any more since the initial attack, but we’re afraid they still could. We’ve been trying to get into the bunker all along without success. Our mechanics finally think they’ve found a way. If this fails then our only hope is to get the entry codes from the vice president. I understand you’ll be going to pick him up?”

Eddie was very interested in learning more about Cheyenne Mountain. Qi Jia had been trying for over a month to get in and hadn’t yet. That was an impressive fortress. But he had to get back to Denver. He nodded and handed Captain Kubar the special request papers for this assignment. He told Kubar he needed four of his men, and given the official documents, the captain didn’t object. “I hear you had three men from Wyoming with you. Supposedly they fought in the battle with me there?” Eddie asked.

“No. They didn’t fight with you,” Captain Kubar replied. “They arrived as the fighting was ending. They found an American in the parking lot and another of our soldiers who was barely alive. They took them to Casper, but the American died before they got there.”

It was all Eddie could do not to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
That could change everything
. “Ah,” he said as calmly as possible. “We could have really used them. And you said they found an American there?”

“Yes.” The captain looked at his watch. “Major, I really need to go.”

“Oh. Okay. So, command suggested I take them with me,” Eddie said. “That okay?”

The captain nodded, while quickly stressing that the men were exhausted. “One is sick. You take the other two and two of my other men.”

As relieved as he was that these men from Casper likely wouldn’t know who he was, Eddie still didn’t like the idea of potential loose ends. Accordingly, he wasn’t happy with leaving one of the Wyoming men here, but an objection would raise eyebrows now, and the captain clearly didn’t care what he did with them at this point. “Good,” he said, shaking the captain’s hand and telling him to have the men at the hangar in the morning at 0900.

Eddie and the captain split in opposite directions and Eddie began to process all he’d just learned. He climbed into his jeep and drove back to Denver, his thoughts scattering along the way. His instincts seemed to have been proven even more correct by the American the soldiers had found in the parking lot. A faint smile crossed Eddie’s lips. And then his mind drifted off to the bunker.

Eddie made a mental note to try to gather as much information as he could on Cheyenne Mountain, back at the Command Center. The concept of a bunker, or secured hole in the earth, was fascinating. His lions had used one in North Dakota to hide and eventually escape from him. He wondered how many Americans might be hiding in this one, and how many alternative exits they might have.