Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

The next morning the four men from Captain Kubar’s troop were waiting at the hangar. Despite his newfound security Eddie decided to proceed with his original plan for the Wyoming men. He communicated it to Lazzo on the way to the hangar.

When they arrived Lazzo addressed the troops on the significance of this mission while Eddie discussed the itinerary with the helicopter pilot. The fourteen soldiers on this assignment were divided into pairs. Lazzo partnered Omar up with one of the Wyoming men and Cabo up with the other. They flew into Estes Park and landed on a road adjacent to the Endovalley camp, where the vice president was being held. As they landed in the valley, it began to snow again. Snow had lost its novelty with Eddie now. Now it just pissed him off.

Lazzo ordered two men to make a loop along the mountain edge of the camp and two more to make a loop around the river boundary. “Guard the perimeter,” was all he said. Cabo and Omar, as arranged, volunteered, and they set out with their partners.

Fifteen minutes later, they met by the river. As they turned to loop back, Cabo shot Omar’s partner in the back, and Omar took out Cabo’s. They cut a hole in the ice on the river and shoved the two men under. Then they returned together to the front of the camp.

Lazzo meanwhile entered the command post with his brother. While the Endovalley base commander took Eddie to see the prisoner, Lazzo took two transfer forms off his desk and forged the commander’s signature on each. Lazzo got two soldier’s names from Omar and wrote them on the transfer papers. The papers were delivered to the men and they were congratulated on “receiving a priority assignment” back in Denver. Omar and Cabo stressed the importance of not talking about the assignment, since the orders came from the Command Intelligence Division. The soldiers understood. Eddie asked the base commander if he could borrow two of his men for the transport to Denver, in case The Seven commanders had any questions about the vice president’s capture.

“No problem,” the base commander said. Knowing the Endovalley station was going to be abandoned soon, now that they’d captured the vice president, the men wouldn’t be missed. Eddie intended to transfer the two men to Captain Kubar’s troop to replace the two Wyoming men he’d taken. The captain wouldn’t care which two men he got back. Bottom line, the helicopter would return to Denver with the same number of bodies it had originally departed with. There would be no questions and no visible loose ends. So far, Major Eddie’s plan to avoid getting caught in his lies about Cheyenne was worked to perfection. It was almost too easy. He still had to take care of the remaining Wyoming man somehow when he got back to Central Command. But he wasn’t going to worry about that now.

As the soldiers untied the vice president and dressed him for the cold, Eddie looked around the tent. A dried mud streak on the floor led towards the back of the tent. Odd . He knelt down and rubbed the dried streaks of dirt. What had caused these streaks? Boots? A body? Why would someone have been crawling across the floor? He stared at the back lining of the tent and could see a part of the canvas moving lightly in the wind. Eddie was convinced someone else had been in this tent. But who?

The base commander turned away from the vice president and saw Eddie staring at the tent wall. “Problem Major?”

Eddie grunted. “No.” He stood up. “No problem.” They escorted the prisoner out towards the waiting chopper.

Eddie and his men climbed into the helicopter with the vice president right before 2 p.m., expecting to be sent back down to Denver. A giant snowstorm was heading east down the Rocky Mountain corridor but they easily could have made it. Instead, for some reason, they were rerouted to the base at the top of Trail Ridge Road for the night. “Orders,” was all the pilot would say. Orders? Whose? As they climbed through the sky to the Alpine Visitor Center, Eddie looked into the vice president’s eyes. He wanted to ask him who had visited him in the tent, but there were too many ears around. Eddie would wait for a more private moment.

The storm was massive. It expanded up both sides of the mountain corridor, down to Pike’s Peak and up to Estes Park and beyond. It dumped a foot of snow per hour for the first three hours and then several inches each hour after. Danny wanted to sit it out and make sure the helicopter was gone, but he also knew the vice president’s little girl was locked under a storage closet in a freezing cold building. There was a short way and a long way to the Stanley Hotel. The short way was eight miles along the highway, which they’d never be able to walk without a snowplow. The slightly longer way was almost twice as difficult with a steeper off-road climb across the face of Bighorn Mountain followed by a descent down the Black Canyon. They didn’t make snowplows for that terrain. Danny had initially planned on going the long way each way to maintain some kind of cover, but the blizzard had changed his plans. Try walking eighteen miles through six feet of snow . Now, if the snowplow didn’t clear the shorter way, they’d have to move the white truck we’d hidden in the woods to make it to town. Once they did that, there would be no driving it back.

The snowplow came through before 10 p.m.. It seemed we’d lucked out. Again. The snowplow drove all the way down to the camp, then turned around and drove all the way back. By the time it returned, Danny, Cameron, Blake, and Hayley were crouched under the bridge near our cave. As the plow reached the intersection with the main road, for the first time ever it didn’t turn. Instead it went straight, shortening the route to the hotel from eight miles to seven. Danny and the others would be grateful for that unexpected deviation. I saw the four of them emerge from under the bridge and begin running up the road after the snowplow.

It was pitch black out—no moon tonight—and freezing cold. Thank God for extra layers and thick ski masks. The cold wasn’t keeping the wildlife indoors, though. Skunks, deer, elk, coyotes, rabbits, and raccoons cut across the road in front of the rescuers, and every one they saw freaked them out a little. It took them almost two hours to cover the seven miles to the Stanley Hotel, and when they arrived it, too, was a snow-covered pile of burnt rubble. The white, castle-like, Georgian-style structure used to tower above Estes Park. It had a well-documented history as the area’s “haunted house” with a “King” suite in room 217—the inspiration for Steven King’s novel The Shining —several other “ghost suites,” and even its own on-site psychic, Madame Vera.

They circled the rubble, careful to avoid the bright lights illuminating the main entrance, and searched in the darkness for any kind of side entry to get them to the lower level. It was a nearly impossible quest in these blizzard conditions. After about an hour of searching and poking around in the deep snow, Blake stumbled upon a pile of bricks with a sizeable gap in it. The pile turned out to be a staircase, but excavating it was a tedious process. The deeper they dug the tighter the gap became and the rubble became more and more unstable. Knowing this may be their only way in they took their time carefully removing bricks and boards out of the stairwell until they could all safely squeeze through. They’d already lost another hour. It was almost 2:30 a.m.

When they reached the bottom level, Danny and Cameron pulled out their military flashlights, and the other two followed them through the lower floor of the building, which was amazingly intact. The walls were charred, but the structure was almost totally made of concrete and had held up well in the blazing fires. Hayley found the supply closet, after another half-hour of searching, and whistled for them to join her.