Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

The Mexican commander told the general he’d update him when he had more information, and a little less than two hours later Eddie heard him call in again. Two jeeps had been stopped at a patrol station in Delta. The drivers of the jeeps were wearing Qi Jia uniforms, and the African soldiers who stopped them said the drivers were black. But they didn’t seem to be African. Unfortunately, they hadn’t searched the vehicles and had let them go on. At least they had called it in, and given that Denver had sent out a nationwide report of two missing jeeps, they were connected directly to the Intelligence Division.

Intelligence figured they had to be Americans and could even be the same ones who had taken the jeeps up in the mountains. If so, they had killed three—and maybe even four—Qi Jia men and were making a run for it. They told the soldiers in Delta to sit tight. More soldiers would soon be on their way to Durango to capture the Americans.

The Mexican commander requested the general take this hunt on personally. The general was to take his four officers and his forty best men and go directly to Durango. He was to call back in as soon as he arrived there.

Eddie was convinced these were his Americans. His lions. He scrambled to find Lazzo and filled him in on what was going on. They dressed in uniform and headed down to the main lobby, where the entire company had been called together. When the general entered the room, everyone stood at attention. As soon as the general saw Eddie and Lazzo there he smiled. “Not you two,” he said. He commanded them to go clean the trash out of the rooms. Eddie pleaded to stay and hear what was going on, but—as anticipated—the general would hear nothing of it.

He and Lazzo were escorted to the other lodge building. A week earlier Amadi had inserted a tracking device—with a twenty-mile range—into each of the four officers’ combat packs—knowing they would never be scanned. Amadi had brought Eddie the tracker for those four coded chips a few nights ago, in case they were ever needed, and Eddie had packed it away back in their room. As the soldiers came in, grabbed their gear, and left, Eddie and Lazzo headed back to their room. That tracker would come in most useful now.

General Roja was so insistent on rubbing his power in Eddie’s face that he took eighty soldiers with him instead of the forty the Mexican commander had requested. He made a point of walking smugly by Eddie’s room before he left to make sure he was there.

“Make sure you clean all toilets before we get back,” he ordered Eddie. “All 160.” He smiled with contempt.

Eddie saluted weakly in reply, intentionally allowing his dejection to be evident. One of the general’s officers, stuck his head into Eddie’s room as the general walked away and smiled. “Sit. Stay,” he said. “Good boy.” That drew a laugh from the other officers and a mock sad shake of the head from Eddie. They had it coming .

After all the turnover at the camp the past few weeks, this massive troop movement was going to leave only a dozen soldiers there with Eddie and Lazzo. As a demonstration of how little the General actually thought of Amadi, he was making him stay behind as well. That was just as well for Eddie. He and Lazzo could use another man.

The general, his four officers, and the other eighty soldiers left an hour later on the four-hour drive to Durango. It took Eddie, Lazzo, and Amadi less than fifteen minutes to kill the remaining eleven men at the camp, and then they quickly packed and got in a jeep themselves, tracking the chips in the officers’ backpacks. It was a big risk leaving the camp, knowing orders were to kill him if he ever left. Or if he killed eleven of the general’s men! Eddie smiled. The general’s orders had been crystal clear. Eddie simply had no intention of following them. He’d been waiting half a year for this day.

Sit? Stay? Ha! Eddie seethed, shaking his head and gripping the steering wheel, a cunning smile curving the corners of his lips. You’re not poaching my Americans!

It bothered Eddie a little the Americans hadn’t gone the way he’d expected them to. He felt certain they would come out of the mountains and head directly south towards Mexico. He considered himself fortunate he’d been tuned in to the radio and caught the deviation, and had been prepared to alter his own course and plans as necessary. In that regard, all the whippings had been worth it.

Part of him was unsure whether these were the same Americans. It had given him a moment’s pause before he and Lazzo killed the eleven soldiers. But their moves were a little too strategic, too military, to be random chance. These had to be his lions. Sure, it was possible there were more Americans hidden in Estes Park over the winter, but it wasn’t too far to Durango from Buena Vista to go check. If he went there and it wasn’t them, he’d improvise again. He still had the radio, and it was on the same frequency as the Mexican commander’s. As long as he was near any of their communication towers, he would be able to get the same feed as the general. The only soldier who knew he and Lazzo had the radio was in the back seat with them. The radio and the tracking chips were advantages you usually didn’t get in a hunt. This was almost going to be too easy.

The general and his men had gone straight south, presumably a hundred miles down to Monte Vista, where they’d then turn west towards Durango. It was the shorter route, but not how Eddie wanted to go. He wanted to go directly west to Montrose and then south. He didn’t trust the Americans would do as they’d told the guards in Delta. If these were the same Americans, they didn’t tend to show their cards like that.

Eddie pulled into a gas station in Montrose just after 4 p.m. As Lazzo filled their jeep up, Eddie looked over his maps. Delta was a short ways north, and there was a small station with a radio tower there. Eddie decided to head up there.

When they arrived in Delta, he stayed in the jeep with the radio while Lazzo and Amadi went in to talk to the guards and congratulate them on their good work. Lazzo claimed he’d come straight from Central Command in Denver and since he still had his Intelligence Division badges, he made sure they were visible for the troops at the post. Lazzo took down some information from each of the guys and told them they should expect to receive commendations in the near future. They were thrilled. Anything to keep them from calling us in . Eddie laughed to himself in the jeep.

Lazzo and Amadi sat down for a lengthy celebratory late lunch/early dinner with the other soldiers while Eddie listened to the radio chatter. There was a lot of it. The Mexican commander, fortunately, loved to talk. The drones had been flying back and forth between Montrose and Durango all afternoon and had yet to pick up the stolen jeeps. Either the Americans were hiding somewhere waiting for darkness, or they had gone a different route. Eddie anticipated it was the latter. They never seemed to follow the main roads. That meant they had to have headed through the mountains, through Telluride. A few drones had flown that pass as well, but nothing was seen there either. Still, that made more sense to Eddie.

Between 6:30 and 7, as Lazzo and Amadi sat around having tea with the guards, Eddie heard the general radio the Mexican commander. They talked back and forth for a while. The general had set up a wide net around the Durango area. There was no way the Americans would get past him. The military base at Grand Junction had sent two hundred more men. Half of the men swept through the mountains down to Durango and, not having found the Americans on their sweep, had joined the general’s forces there. The other half remained posted ten miles south of Ridgeway State Park, at the entrance to a place called Rotary Park. They would stay there to block the Americans if they decided to turn back.