Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

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.

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.

As we walked towards the rock bridge Danny told us Wes was gone. Hayley said he’d been swept out the door with her and never seen again. We were stunned—devastated—and walked the rest of the way to the crossing in silence. Unbelievable.

Across from us, Dad tied their two packs of rope together, and Tara used her roping skills from the farm to form a big lasso on one end. She flung the rope out into the river, upstream from the intended crossing point. After several attempts, she managed to get the lasso far enough out in the river so Danny could hook it with a long branch. He pulled the rope up on our side and secured it to our two packs. He then scaled the canyon wall behind us to tie the rope to a tree. Danny instructed his grandfather to fasten the other end to the base of a tree on their side. I watched Danny put on the fluorescent orange life jacket and take the large carabiner off his belt. He clipped it to the rope. Grabbing onto the carabiner with both hands, he invested all his faith in their knots and slowly zip-lined from our side of the river to the other. Clever. Insane…but clever.