Ever Hayes - Redemption

Turned out to be a good call. When it sealed shut, we watched—on the screen—as one of the guards stood and peered into the cell. Something had caught his attention, but he didn’t seem to know quite what. He looked around for a minute and then said something to the other guard and sat back down. I turned to Silas and Keena and whispered, “Go.”

Silas crawled out the door on the right—into a storage room. Oddly, we couldn’t see him on one of the screens—which had to be by design. He came into view a minute later on a screen two guards had just passed through. We watched him walk down a hallway after them and then wave for Keena to follow him. She did with Hayley right behind her. Silas appeared on the screen in the computer room. We saw a man at one of the computers stand and stretch. The other guard in that room walked out another door into the hallway—directly into Keena’s knife. She pushed the man back into the computer room—hand over his mouth, knife in his throat—and Silas instantly tackled the guy at the computers. After a brief struggle, Silas stood up and took position by the door. Keena was typing feverishly on a laptop and I watched the monitors around her fill with code and rapidly cycle through screenshots like a slideshow.

I quickly scanned all the feeds on our big screen and saw Hayley enter the one showing the prison cell. One of the guards spotted her immediately, but she was ready for him. An arrow through his throat put him down. The other guard bolted up and turned toward Hayley, drawing his gun, but before he could raise it up, one of the prisoners behind him grabbed his arm, knocking the gun free. With his other arm the prisoner grabbed the guard’s head and slammed it into the bars, rendering him quickly unconscious. Hayley grabbed the keys off the guard she’d taken out and opened the cell door.

The six sleeping guards in the map room still hadn’t moved, and Keena still hadn’t closed the front door. Fortunately, there was no sign of Baker, his men, or any other soldiers. I punched in the code to open the door behind the cell, and it slid into the wall again. The man who had taken the handgun from the guard spun toward us, pointing his gun at Blake as Blake crawled into the cell.

“It’s okay,” Blake said standing up. “We’re here for you. Get everyone in here.”

The man with the gun glanced at Hayley, and she nodded at him. “They’re with me. Go.”

“Ava,” the man whispered at the girl holding the general’s head in her lap. “Get your dad up.”

We helped General Niles slide into the tunnel, and I took another look at the screen. For some reason, the front door to the bunker was still open. Come on, Keena. Shut that damn door . “Keena,” I spoke into the headset. I could still see her but she didn’t reply. “Keena.”

“Danny, you want me to go back and check on her?” Hayley asked through the other headset, since she couldn’t see me at the moment.

“No.” I slipped into the cell with Hayley. “She’s okay.”

The girl named Ava was assisting another prisoner. He too was severely beaten—almost unrecognizable—but I saw the tattoo on his arm as she helped him by. It was distinctively Navy SEAL. One of Baker’s guys? “Get him in, quick,” I whispered to Ava.

The prisoner who had taken the gun from the guard stuck his head into the cell from the tunnel. “Those other three are already dead. Just leave them.”

“Kellen, we can’t do that,” Ava hissed at him. “I won’t leave John here.”

“Ava, he’s dead. He—” A gunshot cut off Kellen’s reply. I dove back into the tunnel and looked at the screen. It was blank. Keena had cut all the feed. We were blind. Crap . I heard shouting and more gunshots. I reached back into the cell and grabbed Hayley’s leg. “Get in here.”

Hayley basically shoved Ava in before her, then slid in as I entered the code to close the door.

It slid into place, and I turned to look at everyone. Ava was standing right behind me with tears in her eyes. “You okay?” I put my hand on her arm. She nodded. I looked at the others then down at the door on the right. We were going to have to close that one in a minute.

“Blake, Kellen, you two go see if you can get to Keena.”

Kellen shook his head. “I can’t leave the general.” Blake, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He dove into the storage room.

“Kellen, go.” We all heard the general’s whispered order.

Kellen gave him a questioning look, then nodded and followed Blake through the small square door. I knelt down and watched as Blake opened the door on the other side of the storage room and glanced out. He put his arm out immediately and held Kellen back. They came back to the tunnel.

“What’s going on?” I asked, searching Blake’s face.

“I can’t get to Keena.”

Shit . “How do—”

“She’s in the hallway… Silas too. He’s dead. Two soldiers have Keena—gun to her head. Baker’s in there…”

“Blake, we have to—”

“I’m sorry, Dan.” He crawled past me into the tunnel. “The place is crawling with troops. She must not have gotten the door down.”

I wanted to go see for myself, but Blake seemed to sense that. He was blocking my path. I sighed and punched in the codes to the open door, and it shut tightly.

The loss of Keena was devastating. I was sure Eddie would feel the same about Silas when he connected the dots in a minute. And clearly the Ava girl felt the same about the John we’d had to leave in that cell. To make matters worse, I had no idea what Keena had accomplished in the computer room. Maybe she wasn’t able to do anything at all .

In the dimly lit tunnel, people’s expressions were a mixture of pain, sorrow, and devastation. Kellen was kneeling beside General Niles, whispering to him. Ava was giving the badly injured SEAL some water. Blake and Hayley had moved down the hall a ways, likely to try to find Eddie, Flynn, and Cera. Ava glanced back at me, stood, and approached. “Who are you? And why are you here? How did you find this cave—this place—whatever it is?”

As first impressions went, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t see her well in the darkness, but she had a stunning outline. She also seemed angry—very angry—and we’d pretty much saved her life. “Take it easy… I’m—”

Kellen walked up behind her. “The general would like to speak with you.” He pointed at me. “With both of you.” He nodded at Ava.

We knelt beside General Niles. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

“What’s your name, son? I feel like I recognize you,” he wheezed.

He was badly beaten, perhaps even had some broken ribs. “Yes, sir, I’m Captain Danny Miner.”

“You were in Hawaii?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Son, I’m not going to make it—”

“Daddy, don’t—”

“Ava, hush. I need you to listen.”

“Daddy.” Ava took his hand.

“Ava, please, let me talk to Captain Miner.”

She bit her lip and nodded, tears pooling in her eyes.

“Captain, I need you to promise me you’ll take care of my daughter.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll do what I can.” I gently patted his shoulder.

“That’s not good enough.” The general coughed and winced—both from the pain and from how loud his cough sounded in here. There was enough noise in the adjacent bunker now I wasn’t too worried about being overheard, but it was a good reminder that we could be.

“There are no guarantees, sir, but if I can keep her safe—trust me—I will.”

He looked me in the eyes for a minute, then nodded. “You must be someone special if you knew about this tunnel. I guarantee you less than ten living people even know it’s here, and half of them wouldn’t know how to access it—not from the back. So, whoever you are exactly, I have instructed Kellen that he is to fulfill the same duties for you as he would for me. If you get my daughter safely back to Hawaii, the governor is to promote you to major—”