Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

The second Sunday in October, just two days before the attack, Kaci had left by herself for a week on their island. They’d been building a couple houses there and had made monthly visits the past six months to check on the progress. Blake was supposed to join Kaci a week later, but he had first agreed to help a close friend paint her house.

Blake watched his sister board the plane without him. She called him from Denver later that evening, and then the attacks hit and he never heard from her again. He didn’t know if she made it. Didn’t know if she’d survived. But he was motivated to get to Hawaii and find out.

A couple American soldiers had passed through Medora before Danny and his family had, and told everyone about the attacks. Most of the people had dismissed their warnings but not Blake. He hadn’t been able to reach Kaci or Alexa or anyone else on his phone. Their words of warning made sense to him. He had intended to make the cross-country trek on his own, and then Nathan had volunteered to go with him. Then the Miners arrived in Medora and he listened to Danny speak at the town center. Blake was confident Danny was a guy who could help him get where he wanted. He could hopefully help him get to Kaci. He had no idea how skilled Danny, and Cameron, would turn out to be. They had thoroughly impressed him since, and this journey had given Blake a unique bond to the two of them… to all of them.

Still, Blake hadn’t mentioned a word of his hopes regarding his sister, except to Hayley, and she’d sworn herself to secrecy. Blake was reluctant to put any emotional investment in his sister’s survival. But the chance, however slim it might be, well, it was more than enough to keep him plodding through the chest-high snow right now. The girl he carried in his arms—he kept telling himself to pretend she was Kaci. Just as he’d done for years with his own little sister, he needed to take care of the vice president’s daughter tonight.

Blake glanced back at Hayley helping Cameron behind him. Blake was doing his best to make his tracks as wide as possible, to help Cameron as much as he could, but he knew the guy had to be absolutely miserable. This wasn’t the ideal way to travel even when you weren’t torn up and bleeding. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like when you were.

Danny was a short ways behind them, trying to cover their trail of footsteps and blood. He was hopeful the snow would continue to fall and mask it even more, but they weren’t moving nearly as fast as he wanted. It was almost six o’clock now, and they still had the two most treacherous miles to go, across the face of Bighorn Mountain to the cave. It didn’t matter that it was only Colorado’s 1,567th tallest peak; climbing even halfway up was as daunting as facing off with Mount McKinley at this point. Danny was just starting to wonder how much longer his injured friend could hold out, when Cameron collapsed into the snow.

Definitely not the answer he was hoping for.

At 6 a.m. sharp, Eddie gave his men their instructions. Plows were brought in to clear the roads alongside them as they walked the tracks. A dusting of snow had filled the footprints in, to an extent, but not enough to completely cover them. But then they reached Black Canyon Creek, and the tracks disappeared. Eddie figured they’d walked through the water for a ways, so he had his men spread out and proceed until the tracks picked up again.

They finally found a set of fresh tracks a half-mile north, about two miles from the hotel, where Devil’s Gulch Road broke east. But there were only two sets, and they didn’t look human. Big, but not human. Like lions, but not his lions.

Eddie contemplated the options. The tracks were fairly fresh, so the animals had crossed here recently. He decided to call in the helicopter for an overhead view. If there weren’t any signs of people up ahead, they were wasting their time. A few minutes later, the helicopter hovered above them, and Eddie ordered it to move on. The helicopter whirred up the canyon, and a minute later the pilot called in that he’d found bodies and a ton of blood about a mile ahead. Eddie ordered him to hold his position until they arrived, and he and his men picked up their pace to where the helicopter was waiting. There was nowhere for him to set the chopper down, and Eddie couldn’t handle the noise directly overhead, so he told the pilot to take a run five miles or so up the canyon and then come back down.

As the pilot followed his orders, Eddie and his men approached the bodies surrounded by the tracks they’d seen earlier and many other sets of tracks. Human tracks this time. The bodies were the lions, mountain lions, and by the looks of it there’d been one hell of a battle here. The cats had done their damage, but the guns had won. Although it struck Eddie the hole in the neck didn’t look like a bullet hole.

He knelt and examined it more closely. It had a thinner, knife-like slicing entry point, almost more like the wound from an arrow. He’d seen a hole like this once in the throat of one of his own men back in North Dakota. No question the wounds were one and the same. “Son of a camel humper,” he mumbled, nearly smiling. Lazzo gave him a questioning glance. “Laz, give me camera.”

Lazzo handed him the camera. “What is it?” he asked.

Eddie stared at the picture from the hotel again. The large black stick on the small person’s back wasn’t a stick at all. It was a bow . “Son of a mother camel humper,” he said loudly.

Then it all made sense. He knew exactly who he was following. He looked up the canyon. A trail of blood led away from the cats. A good amount of blood. Odds were the source wouldn’t last long.

He filled Lazzo in on what he’d realized and then walked to the truck to radio the helicopter. However, the pilot’s voice came over the radio first, and told Eddie he’d found signs of life up the canyon. As expected . He had traced some kind of trail to an overhang east of Bighorn Mountain, where his radar had detected three heat targets. Where were they going? Eddie scratched his head and looked at Lazzo. Three targets? Where were the other two? Had the lions killed them? More damn questions . He was curious.

Lazzo was quick to remind him that they had decided to let the Americans go for the winter. He was right. They had earned it, they both felt, saving both of their lives. While the Russian commander and several others he’d encountered here may not have abided by Eddie’s personal code—or any code for that matter—Eddie considered both himself and Lazzo to be men of honor. Where they came from, that meant something.

There didn’t seem to be a right answer—chase or let them go.

The other men looked like they were itching to get out of the snow. It was freezing, and they were wet—it was miserable. Eddie didn’t think they would object to calling off the hunt. But then, if this was indeed the Americans and they were just miles ahead and injured, they would be easy to overtake. Eddie ordered the helicopter to meet them at the base of the canyon road, find a place to land, and await their arrival. They’d be down shortly. Eddie and his men hopped on the snowplow trucks, riding them down to the helicopter. As the other men climbed into the helicopter, Eddie turned to Lazzo and said, “What you think, man?”

Lazzo shrugged. “Are you sure it is them?”

“Pretty much,” Eddie replied. “Has to be.”

“Doesn’t seem right, man,” Lazzo finally said, suggesting they let the Americans go.

Eddie nodded. Then the pilot yelled at him. “Major. It’s Russian commander.”

“Mother Russian,” Eddie muttered, taking the radio.

“Bring chopper here now,” the Russian said curtly.