Wes sighed. “I don’t know, Danny. This rain isn’t good.” I nodded in agreement. Wes continued. “The temperature has dropped ten degrees in the last two hours. It’s almost 5 a.m. now. The sun will be up in a little more than an hour, if the snow doesn’t come first.” So he was thinking it too. It was obvious Danny was trying to defer to our judgment, questioning his own a little more now. “Something else on your mind, Danny?”
He gazed out into the rain. “I get some people think I may not have done the right thing tonight, saving Eddie and those guys. I know it cost us Nathan, and I feel terrible about that. Bottom line, maybe I thought that would get them off our back. But we never got the chance for them to see us, to know it was us who saved him, his brother and those guys. So maybe my intentions were completely wasted.”
I interrupted, understanding a little more now. “So you thought if they knew you saved their lives they might let us go.” Danny nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I get that,” Wes said and patted Danny on the shoulder. “It was an impossible call. So let’s look at this both ways. If they’re still chasing us, what’s the right move? If they’re not, what’s the right move?”
Danny scratched his ear. “I think it’s the same move either way. If we get trapped down here in the valley, we’re in the heart of enemy territory, and without any road crews we’ll be stuck here for the winter. Denver and Colorado Springs are the logical defense keys to the entire heart of this country. Any military with intelligence would know that. We all saw that wall they’re building. There’s no way Denver’s not loaded with troops right now, and they’d expand out from there. If they have control of NORAD, we’re all screwed. Denver, Colorado Springs—either could be their command center.” Where had I heard that before? Any doubt he and Cameron were on the same page?
“We’re too close to all of that to stay here, and we can’t go back north into Wyoming. Eddie and his men were fighting against their own military troops, too, and there’s bound to be others out there looking for him now. You don’t wipe out an entire troop and not draw attention. Wyoming is way too hot right now.” Danny thoughtfully stroked the week-old stubble on his chin. “I think we have to assume two things. One, Eddie and his men, however many are left, are close to us. They have a pretty good idea where we’re going, and because of what they’ve done, they can’t exactly go into Denver, either. If anyone figured out who they were—or what they did—they’d probably all be executed.”
“And the second thing?” Wes asked.
“There is no American resistance. Given what we’ve heard and everything we’ve seen, it was foolish to think there might be.” He paused, letting the truth sink in for good. “We’re on our own.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Get everyone up,” Wes said. “We’ve gotta get to Estes Park.”
THIRTY-SIX: “Karma”
In case Captain Eddie was close by, Danny, Kate, Jenna, and I headed out before the others, minutes before 5:30 a.m. We made our way south on College Avenue, down to Lake Loveland at the intersection of Highway 34. Not having seen any signs of life, we waited there. Wes was driving the jeep with the radar, and he watched as we made it all the way to 34 without attracting attention. He led the others out and to our location. The rain was coming down heavy again, and the radar screen was basically useless, but there were no small dots visible on it, so even though it was bright red we weren’t too worried. Maybe we were in the clear.
We headed west and were coming up on the intersection of County Road 27, the back road to the reservoir, when we spotted three jeeps parked by the side of the road. As I raced by them, I heard Danny say one word, “Eddie.” He told me to move our truck over far enough on the road to let the two trucks behind us go by. I did as he asked, and Danny waved them up alongside us. He yelled out the window at them as they passed. “Go!” And they took off. Then Blake pulled up beside us in the last truck and Danny yelled at him, “You have to stay beside us, all the way up. You take the right lane; I’ve got the left.” Blake gave the thumbs up that he understood.
Ahead of us the two sets of taillights from our other trucks were fading into the rain. Behind us I could see all three jeeps approaching, closing the gap quickly. Considering they’d have to hang out of the jeep windows in this crazy downpour, Eddie’s men would have a hard time shooting us from their vehicles. It wasn’t nearly as hard for us to hit them, having two snipers, covered, guns pointed out the back windows. Captain Eddie seemed to be aware of that fact, and the jeeps settled back and maintained a consistent quarter-mile distance behind us.
The temperature was dropping as we climbed into the mountains, and the road was getting slick. The rain seemed to be getting heavier as well, and we started worrying about flash floods. Estes Park and this canyon road in particular had a history of terrible flash floods and washouts. The road had been rebuilt, but nothing was going to stand up to a wall of water. Travel was treacherous with even moderate weather on this road, given the sharp turns, falling rocks and limited visibility in some areas. It was starting to get light out, which was helping, but there was a heavy fog off the river limiting our visibility. We were going faster than we liked, but we didn’t feel we had much of a choice. As we rounded one particularly sharp turn, a giant boulder was lying in the middle of the road. I hit the brakes hard and swerved around it.
As I straightened the jeep back out, one of the pursuing jeeps got a little too close. He came around the bend and slowed for the boulder as well, crossing into Danny’s line of fire. Danny took out a front tire and the jeep continued its turn straight into the ditch and into a wall of rocks. Given his incredible accuracy, I knew he’d done exactly what he’d intended. He wasn’t trying to kill them. He only wanted to stop them. Whoever was in that jeep was probably bruised but alive. I’m sure Danny was hoping that message was delivered to the captain as well.
The other two jeeps backed off a little more, far enough to be out of range but still keep a line of sight. We raced past one of our favorite stops, the Dam Store, with its famous lookout tower. As we crossed the adjacent bridge, our hearts sank. The water was so high it was brushing the bottom of the bridge. There were several areas up ahead we knew to be more exposed and dangerous than this one. Only fifteen miles from Estes Park, Danny was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it.
Sure enough, as we came up on the tiny town of Drake, where the two branches of the Big Thompson River converged into one, the entire road was under water. We could see one of our trucks on the other side of where the road had washed out. They were safe, but something was wrong. Mom and Dad were out of their truck and pointing our direction. “Uh, Danny,” I said.
He glanced back as we pulled to a stop. “What?”
“We’ve got a pretty big problem.” I was looking around for what Mom and Dad were pointing at, and then I saw it. Pinned between large rocks on the other side of the river, at the base of a thirty-foot tall canyon wall, was another truck. Since Mom and Dad had Tara and Emily with them, this meant the truck in the river belonged to Wes, Sam, Isaac, and Hayley. “Danny!” I shouted. “Hayley’s out there!”
Danny took one glance and was out of the truck in a flash. “Cam, cover me!” he screamed. Cameron and Blake hopped out of the other truck with guns drawn and sought cover on the east side of the road. The jeeps behind us had stopped about a third of a mile back. However many men they had, Eddie didn’t seem comfortable enough to approach yet. He also didn’t seem to have figured out why we had stopped.