Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

It wasn’t enough now to turn his guns on the general and his men. There was truly only one way he could adequately pay them back. He needed to help these Americans escape. If the general and his men died in the process… so be it.

Eddie rounded up Lazzo and Amadi and they left the Delta base, cruising for Ridgeway. He filled them in on his realizations, and they were as shocked as he was—equally as determined to reverse their course. They came upon a roadblock in Ridgeway with three soldiers, and given the heavy traffic in the area, they left those men alone. Lazzo used his Intelligence Division badges one more time to get them through that roadblock, and they continued on to Telluride.

In Telluride they came upon a roadblock with four jeeps and eight men. They parked their jeeps and casually got out, walking towards the guards. Amadi was in front, and he waved at them and asked if they needed any food. Given that Eddie, Lazzo, and Amadi clearly weren’t Americans, the soldiers “let their guard down,” and over the next ten minutes the three of them managed to take out all eight guards. They put the bodies in the back of their jeep and dumped them off the side of the road about halfway down to Dolores. “Coyote food,” Eddie said, without the slightest hint of remorse.

In Dolores they came upon another roadblock. Eddie knew from the radio conversation back in Delta that this town was being watched by the general, via a radar post in Mancos. Their one jeep, entering town on its own, wouldn’t be enough to cause alarm, but they were going to need more than one jeep from here on. They pulled up to the roadblock, killed the six guards, and then Eddie and Lazzo went ahead to set the explosives on the road by Cortez.

Eddie told Amadi to stay at the roadblock in case anyone called in, and to explicitly say, “The colonel had ordered us to come down to help.” Then as soon as Amadi saw any jeeps coming into town from Telluride, he was to drive south to the fork heading to Teec Nos Pos. Eddie handed him a detonator and told him to wait until he saw two jeeps approaching the fork, then blow the explosives. Amadi was then to continue towards Teec Nos Pos, where he’d find Eddie and Lazzo.

One of the general’s officers did radio in, and Amadi gave the explanation he was supposed to. It worked. Amadi followed the rest of Eddie’s instructions, and with their two jeeps they played out a relay race of sorts. They were setting, overlapping, and blowing explosives in front of the Americans directing them away from the path of the general and his men. Then they set other explosives behind to take out the jeeps pursuing the Americans.

Eddie, Lazzo, and Amadi successfully kept the Americans alive and guided them to the road leading to Goosenecks State Park. Eddie had hoped to be able to lead them south on 191 ahead of the general, but somehow the explosives must not have blown back in Shiprock. The general was way ahead of schedule and coming north on 191 as the Americans were approaching it from the east.

This was going to come to a head soon. Too soon.

Eddie directed the Americans onto the road heading into Goosenecks State Park as the general’s men caught up to them. The Americans only had about a three-mile lead. As Eddie and Lazzo approached the park in their jeep, Eddie noticed the Americans had stopped by the river. He could only hope they had some kind of boat, or this was going to be the end. Knowing time was going to be critical, Eddie had wired both jeeps full of explosives while they waited for Amadi. He activated them now, and they parked the vehicles about a quarter mile from the park, in the middle of the road. They ran away from the jeeps, across the park, and blew them up as the caravan pulled up.

The explosion was so huge it took out a couple of the lead vehicles and created a crater the other vehicles couldn’t pass through. The general’s troops quickly jumped out of their vehicles and pursued Eddie, Lazzo, and Amadi on foot towards the river. Gunfire broke out behind them as the troops closed in. At the same time Eddie saw the boats ahead of him, he also saw a man kneeling in front of him firing toward them. He hesitated a second until he noticed the bullets were coming nowhere near him. He looked behind him long enough to see a couple men go down; then, seeing Lazzo raise his gun at the man by the boats, Eddie yelled out, “No. Lazzo, don’t.” But it was too late. Lazzo had already fired off a shot, and the kneeling man spun to the ground.

Eddie reached Danny and helped him get up as Lazzo grabbed a boat, and Amadi grabbed two paddles. Eddie lifted Danny into the boat, and Amadi was pushing them off when he took two bullets in the back. He disappeared into the water as Eddie, Lazzo, and Danny drifted quietly down the San Juan River escaping, for the moment, into the cold dark night.

As the general and his men raced west from Aztec towards Shiprock, he continued to receive updates from various soldiers about explosions and blocked roads, apparently preventing the Americans from coming south to him. It was making him more and more furious, and he increased his speed. Driving through the roadblock in Shiprock, the lead jeep was demolished in an explosion. Given the amount of explosives they saw that hadn’t gone off as they drove past, the general realized they’d been lucky. He should have been dead too.

Again, in approaching Teec Nos Pos he learned the Americans had been diverted by another explosion. He’d even lost some of his own men. These were unusual events to be sure. Whoever was setting off these explosions was either a complete failure or was helping the Americans. Was that possible? When the general turned onto Highway 191, he learned of yet another explosion north of him, and he decided to take the Americans head on. He turned up 191 with the rest of his force and had closed to within a few miles of them when his radar showed them cutting west on another country road. How were they anticipating his moves so perfectly? Now he was furious.

Just before the river there was a huge explosion, and a couple of his vehicles were reduced to rubble. He ordered all of his men out, and they began pursuing three men on foot through the park. They were firing at the men but were also taking fire from someone near the building ahead of them. The general watched as more than a dozen of his men fell, including one of his officers and one of his dogs. The three men they’d pursued through the park climbed into a boat and pushed off down the river before the general’s men caught up to them. His men managed to hit one of them, but he’d fallen in the river and had been sucked immediately downstream.

The general’s men waited for him by the boathouse. Four of the nine boats left stacked were damaged beyond use. The general ordered two of his three remaining officers to take the other five boats down the river with twenty-three other men, paddles, vests, and weapons. “Try to find the body, too,” he ordered them as they pushed off.

He took his other officer and the remaining thirty-one men back to the vehicles with him to radio the nearest command base. He wanted four helicopters here before dawn. They were going to find these Americans. They’d evaded him once. Never again. And whoever was helping them was going to beg for a bullet when he was done with them.

An hour later as the general drove west, he started to make sense of what had happened. His men’s every move had been telegraphed the entire route. He was certain some of his own men had betrayed him. They had tipped the Americans off and essentially escorted them through the danger zones. Since most of his men had been with him, that meant it had to be someone else who had known exactly where they were going. Probably someone from the Buena Vista camp. Probably Eddie. But how? And why? For personal revenge? Why would he help the Americans?