Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

We were moving down the river already by the time Danny got his rifle up to see what was going on behind us. The long procession of lights had caught up to the flames and the hole in the road, and men were scrambling out of the vehicles and firing their weapons into the trailer park. Danny scanned around frantically through his rifle scope to see what they were firing at, and he saw three men sprinting towards the boathouse. With the night vision it only took seconds for Danny to recognize them, and the reality of who they were took his breath away. “Holy—”

Before we could ask “What?” he’d jumped out of the boat with his gun, into the river. “Danny!” I yelled. “What the—”

He turned his head towards us and screamed, “Keep going. Just keep going.” Then we lost sight of him in the darkness. We could still hear the gunfire as we rounded the first bend and continued down the San Juan River, on an eventual collision course with the Colorado River and beyond that, the Grand Canyon.

At first he had missed it. Well, he heard it, but it didn’t register. Not to the extent it should have, for sure. Eddie was exhausted but trying to remain attentive in Delta, listening to the Mexican commander tell the general about a man he’d had to kill. He’d explained how defiant the man had been, how he’d refused to command his troop anymore, and how he’d demanded that the commanders needed to tell the truth to all the men. The general had laughed. They made a few jokes, and then the commander told the general how he had to set the man up again and how easy it had been to get the other commanders to agree to execute him. The general laughed along and at some point asked him how many that was now. The commander told him it was well over a hundred. Eddie was dwelling on the “executed a hundred men who didn’t deserve to die” part when the general said, “What difference does it make who started this war? We won. This land is our land now. It’s the soldiers’ land. These men could all be rich. They can have whatever they want!”

Somehow the significance of the conversation hadn’t yet grabbed Eddie. Had the general not continued talking, it probably never would have. “If they were better soldiers, they wouldn’t have been so easy to manipulate. Stupid cowards.”

Wait a minute . Eddie froze. Manipulate? Why would they have to manipulate them into war? Manipulate was a strong word. That made Eddie stop to think and rehash what he had heard in the last ten minutes. Wait. What if America didn’t start the fight? Son of a camel humper… The truth couldn’t have hit Eddie harder if it had been fired directly into him from a cannon five feet away.

These hundred men that had been killed—they’d found out about what the commanders had done. They’d somehow found out about the actual sequencing and intent of this Qi Jia movement. But how? How had they? Eddie cursed his own naivety. The “how” didn’t matter right now. The point was these men who had been executed had learned they’d been fooled and decided to stand up for what they believed in, even in the face of certain death. They weren’t stupid cowards. They were men of principle—heroes. So what the hell does that make me? Eddie preferred stupidity over a lack of principles. Yes, he was stupid.

He thought back to his meeting with the officers when he’d been informed of his family’s death. There had been a man in that room taking notes. He had done it with every single officer who had been brought in. Why? If it was the same story every time, why did they need that man there to take notes? That act alone wouldn’t have been enough to make him question it now, but the questions he’d been asked to prove his value to the cause, those were starting to click back through his head. Those questions—and so many little things he’d seen and heard since his arrival in Mexico—started to deal Eddie emotional body blows. This entire time he’d been a fool. He’d fallen for it all!

The Libyan Commander had interviewed Eddie a year ago—in his own home, no less—prior to his troop being sent to Mexico. They’d been sent to Mexico in advance of the attacks, along with hundreds of other leaders and their men. Then they all sat and waited, completing basic drills they could have done anywhere. Not because someone got wind of an impending American attack. America wasn’t going to attack. Not the innocent anyway. The commanders knew what was going to happen to America because THEY were going to be the ones to do it. They knew, somehow, Mexico was a safe zone…that Mexico would never be suspected. These people built an army of who knows how many million and prepared them to move when THEY started it all. When America was attacked, America retaliated. That’s why their defenses were down. That’s why there was so little left. America NEVER SAW IT COMING.

The evidence was swarming Eddie’s mind, burning through his veins, boiling his blood. Eddie wanted to scream. How could he have been so stupid? Of course he’d been manipulated.

The Libyan commander was sitting in that room in Denver right now. The casualties of this war meant nothing to him. It was no different than any other civil war, where thousands lost their lives for a cause they would never get to live for. It was the ultimate worthless sacrifice. But this Libyan commander had handpicked Eddie and a dozen or so Libyan officers and their troops. He knew where every one of Eddie’s weaknesses were.

As the highest ranked officer in the Libyan military, the commander had direct access to all his files, to everything that made Eddie who he was. He knew what would make Eddie cave. They took the thing he loved the most—his family—and made sure he lost them, because they knew that would permanently secure his allegiance. They knew, because of who Eddie was, exactly how much that allegiance would be worth. Eddie was a powerful man. Fueling him with vengeance only made him more so.

That was going to backfire on The Seven commanders now.

They had to figure he’d never find out the truth, and even if he did, it probably wouldn’t matter anymore. His eagerness to prove himself to the Libyan commander in Libya, and then likewise to the Qi Jia commanders in Mexico, assured his violent vigilance for the first stage of this war, and that was really all they had needed him for. It had worked…until Danny had thrown him for a loop. The commanders, like Eddie, wouldn’t have counted on an American potentially sacrificing his own life to save one of the people sent there to kill him. Only a truly noble man would consider such foolishness. That nobility, that same belief in what was right, was what had led Eddie to do the right thing by that river in Colorado, saving that girl. That man—that was the Eddie he always thought he was. Not this one.

Eddie pounded his fist over and over again on the steering wheel. Everything he’d ever stood for he had thrown away in an instant at the news of his family’s death. He had been so gullible, so fueled by revenge. When these Americans attacked his men, he took the entire fight personally, too personally. He had made it his personal mission to kill the Americans, especially these lions. He had played right into The Seven commanders’ hands, even far more specifically than they’d ever intended. He now had to figure out a way to reverse, or at least stop, the damage he’d done.

Everything changed for Eddie in that instant. No more! His own people had killed his family to get him to kill Americans. This family he was chasing didn’t deserve to die. They had done nothing wrong. They had done nothing to him or his family. They had only killed to stay alive—to keep their own family alive. But the general and his men—they deserved to die. They killed his family . Over a hundred men were smart enough and honorable enough to figure it out before him. Shame on him!