Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

The only other African in the camp was himself a recent transfer—Amadi Ndiaye—and even he put in a special request to the general to be kept far away from those two. But the general had a different plan for him. He wanted the soldier to get information for him. “Stay close to brothers. Gain their trust. They will talk,” he’d told the man. Amadi was worried about abuse from the other soldiers, but the general made him a promise. “You’ll be abused. Yes. But maybe I make you captain soon? Yes? Captain Ndiaye.”

For a soldier with no rank, that was too good to pass up.

One night, when Amadi was washing the hallway floors outside the general’s office, he heard the general laughing, so he stopped to listen. “That fool is giving us everything we need. Soon we have enough to kill the gorilla.”

“But I make you captain,” he heard another man say.

“Yes, master. Okay, master,” came another voice, mimicking slave speak. Then a great deal of laughter.

Amadi almost dropped the mop he was holding. They were talking about him. They were mocking him. He was never going to be captain. The general would use him to get information on Eddie and Lazzo, and then he’d have them all killed.

Amadi was boiling mad and immediately sought out Lazzo. Privately the two of them had almost become friends the past week or so. Amadi wouldn’t say the same for himself and Eddie—he stayed as far away from the giant as possible—but the brothers roomed together, so going to one, took him to both. Eddie and Lazzo had their own room in the lodge. Amadi’s room was right next to theirs, but being linked to the brothers by the color of his skin, no one wanted to room with him either. So he had a room to himself. He tapped on the wall after he was sure the brothers were in bed. When they tapped back, Amadi opened the door to his room and slipped quietly to their door. He tapped twice again, and the door opened enough to let him slip in. Because Eddie suspected his room was bugged, they went into the bathroom and turned on the fan. Then Amadi told Eddie and Lazzo about everything the general was doing.

Amadi was clearly afraid Eddie wouldn’t understand, but Eddie understood perfectly. He wasn’t sure he could trust Amadi, but he figured he would give the man a chance. Eddie gave him a dangerous assignment and told him if he wanted to prove his loyalty, he’d have to complete it. Lazzo objected to putting their one ally at risk, but Eddie insisted, and Eddie typically got his way. Amadi needed to get Eddie a radio tuned into the same frequency as the general’s. There was only one that wouldn’t be in the general’s possession, and that was the one the former base commander had left where he always kept it, behind a false wall in the liquor cabinet…in the general’s sleeping quarters.

Two nights later Amadi brought the radio to him. He’d gone in to clean the general’s toilet, and the general had needed to use the bathroom. It only took Amadi a minute to find the radio and tuck it away while the general’s dogs barked at him and the general yelled from the bathroom at them to shut up. Amadi finished the job and returned to his room.

He had been searched entering the general’s quarters, but not leaving them. He still had his gloves on when he came out of the bathroom into the main room, and they were dripping wet. He wiped them on his shirt and raised his arms for the two guards at the door, but they wanted nothing to do with him. Perfect . When the hallway quieted down for the night, he tapped on the wall again, but instead of entering Eddie’s room this time, he just handed him the radio. In case the radio ended up being discovered in Eddie’s possession, Amadi was to stay far away. Eddie claimed he didn’t want Amadi to risk his life for them, manipulating the man’s loyalty even more. He then gave Amadi instructions on how to cover his tracks.

Amadi planted a bottle of whiskey in Eddie’s room in a corner of the closet. Amadi then went to the general and told him he’d snuck into Eddie and Lazzo’s room while they were out and looked for anything they might have hidden. He found a few pieces of paper with notes on them—which Eddie had provided Amadi to give the general—some cigarettes, and a bottle of whiskey.

Since the general forbid alcohol consumption except by his own officers, he had their room searched the next morning. Two of his men went through Eddie’s closet, without bothering to search the rest of their room, and found the alcohol and cigarettes. Eddie and Lazzo were taken outside and whipped a dozen times each in front of the entire camp. The other soldiers were allowed to “buy” lashes and took their turns whipping the brothers. Amadi even whipped both of them once at Eddie’s prior insistence. Eddie watched as Amadi celebrated with the other men and didn’t miss the apologetic glance he offered at the first opportunity. Amadi did what he had to do.

The general then threatened Eddie and Lazzo with more beatings if they were ever discovered hiding anything else. He told them he would be checking regularly. Eddie and Lazzo dragged themselves back to their room, where they listened to the general radio Denver and report the morning’s events to the Mexican commander. Their plan had worked to perfection.

Over the course of the last week, Eddie had listened with a great deal of interest to the military strategy being discussed on the radio. The general was privy to everything the Mexican commander knew. There didn’t appear to be any secrets between them. He kept waiting for any word of the Americans in Estes Park, but none came. Amadi kept playing his spy role to perfection. He asked for permission to plant a bug in the bathroom, and the general granted his request. While picking up the bug for the bathroom, Amadi also grabbed a blocking chip for the one in the bedroom, essentially reversing the places it was safe for them to talk and listen to the radio. From time to time Eddie and Lazzo would enter the bathroom and talk to each other about fake private matters and then return to their main room to listen to the radio. Eddie and Lazzo were each whipped a few more times for various things that came up in those conversations. Amadi was praised. The general was happy. And he kept right on talking on the radio.

Finally, the day Eddie had been hoping for came. It was before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26. Eddie had returned from cleaning out the camp trash, and Lazzo had left to go work in the kitchen. (They tried to make sure one of them was always by the radio so they wouldn’t miss anything.) Eddie was lying on the lower bunk with his ear to the radio, almost falling asleep, when he heard the words Estes Park. He sat up with a jolt, slamming his head on the steel frame of the upper bunk. He winced, but strained to make sure he didn’t miss a word… particularly since the Mexican Commander sounded so furious.

Apparently, two jeeps had been stolen from the cabin on Old Fall River Road. Nothing had been suspected at first, but when one of the two men remaining at the cabin went out for a smoke, he found a great deal of blood behind the cabin and even more partially buried off the front porch. Further inspection of the cabin area revealed no footprints, apparently washed out by a torrential downpour, but they did find three trucks over the side of the road about half a mile closer to Estes Park. They clearly hadn’t been there long, and one of the trucks contained the bodies of the three missing soldiers—without their uniforms. Clever.

The intelligence consensus was that there had been at least eight people in those three trucks, and they’d dumped those trucks to take the jeeps. Several soldiers at the alpine base had seen two jeeps pull up from the Old Fall River Road early that morning in the middle of the crazy thunderstorm, and one of the soldiers had even hitched a ride down to Grand Lake in one of the jeeps. They hadn’t yet been able to track down that soldier. He could even be dead.