I listened in disbelief. Of all the threats we each had worried about, mountain lions were probably not on anyone’s mind. You had to almost feel sorry for the dumb cats now. They’d made an enemy of a man who wasn’t going to forget what they’d done. Two dead ones barely scratched the surface of how many lions Danny probably wanted to take down.
I was about to ask what we knew about Reagan’s dad when Blake started telling me about the helicopter. He told me Danny was absolutely certain the soldiers had followed their tracks up the valley to the ledge… that the people in the helicopter knew they were there and still let them go.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I argued. “They needed Abbey, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what this all was about?”
“Well…” Blake paused.
“What?” I asked.
“Maybe they didn’t need her anymore.”
I could see Blake actually believed that. “But the only way that would be true is if the vice president had already talked or if—” Then I paused.
“He were dead,” Blake finished for me.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“Danny says he’s dead,” Blake said, nodding up the tunnel behind us.
“But how would he know that?” I asked, aware someone was walking up behind me.
I glanced back as Danny brushed past us in a direct line towards Reagan. “Because I gave him the pill,” he said.
SIXTY-FOUR: “Never Safe”
When the helicopter landed back in Denver, Eddie instantly sought out the guard with the keys who had been in the room with the vice president. He wasn’t hard to find. He was back at his regular post at the base prison. He and Lazzo convinced his superior—with a case of beer—to allow him an early lunch, even though it wasn’t yet 11 a.m. “Thirty minutes,” the officer said. “He’s not supposed to leave.”
“No problem,” Eddie replied.
They took the guard around the corner of the building and Eddie pulled his gun, placing it against the man’s temple. “What happened in that room?”
The man spilled everything. He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t have a tough side. He was a prison guard because his brother was an officer in the Qi Jia military and volunteered him for the job. He accepted the post to satisfy his brother and contribute to the cause. That was it. It was all he could do to keep from crying. Eddie didn’t even need the gun, so eventually he put it away. His huge stature was more than intimidating enough. The man begged them not to share with anyone what he told them. Neither Eddie nor Lazzo had any intention of doing so.
The man told them the Russian commander had been eager to get information from the vice president. As soon as Eddie flew down to the Stanley Hotel, the Russian was in the room with the VP, telling him they were going after his daughter. When the first radio call came up about the gunfight, he burst into the room and told the VP they had trapped her in the lower level of the Stanley Hotel. The prison guard watched as the vice president began weeping. The Russian kept pushing him to talk, and finally the American man nodded and began moving his hand as if to indicate he needed a pen. Ah, the pen and paper.
Standard prisoner protocol in Russia—particularly for VIPs—mandated they wear neck braces and bulletproof vests so they couldn’t slit their throat or stab themselves in the heart. It was 99 percent foolproof. If they slit their wrists, the bleeding could be stopped. If they stabbed themselves in the eye or anywhere else, it would hurt, but it likely wouldn’t kill them. There was only one exposed area of the body that would work for a “way out.” The vice president somehow knew this before he was even moved up to the alpine base.
The Russian handed him a pen and piece of paper, demanding he write some sort of code on it. The vice president nodded, but never spoke. He took the pen and tried to write, but it was a struggle with both his hands chained. The guard was asked to unlock the vice president’s right hand, which he did, and as soon as the Russian commander backed away, the vice president stabbed himself just inside his left armpit with the pen. He quickly removed something from his mouth and inserted it into the pen hole. They fought to lift the vice president’s arm to access the wound and were finally able to remove a pointed capsule from the hole, but it was too late. Other than the metal tip, the capsule had mostly dissolved. Whatever poison it had contained immediately spread to his heart. He died a few minutes later.
The vice president hadn’t given them a single bit of useful intel. The Russian commander went crazy. A doctor had searched every inch of the vice president’s body when he was brought to the Endovalley camp, and again hours later just to be safe. No one knew where the capsule had come from. Somehow the vice president was given that capsule after both searches and he successfully concealed it until he was able to use it. It didn’t seem possible. The vice president had been guarded every minute in that tent by three guards. But somehow it had happened. And now, without him, they didn’t need the daughters…either one.
When they returned to Denver, the Russian commander had told the prison guard not to go anywhere because he would be summoned before the full panel of commanders this afternoon. The guard asked Eddie if that was a bad sign. “No,” Eddie said. It was a terrible one. The man had been quite relieved, and as he turned to walk away Eddie grabbed him. “One more thing.” The man nodded. “President write anything on the paper?”
“I love you, girls,” the guard replied.
Eddie let the man go and looked away. There was a lump in his throat. He really missed his own girls. He coughed and turned back to his brother. “Let’s go, Laz.”
Eddie and Lazzo returned to Eddie’s office in the Intelligence Center where there was a message waiting for Eddie. He was to meet The Seven commanders in the Command Room at 2 p.m. sharp. Lazzo asked if Eddie wanted him, Cabo, and Omar to go along. Eddie didn’t. It wasn’t safe for them. Might not even be safe for him. “Pack your things,” Eddie said. “Be ready to go.” He would do all he could to spare them and buy them time to flee, if it came to that.
Eddie dressed in full uniform before his meeting with the panel. He was searched prior to entering the Command Room, which they hadn’t done last time. Not good. He could actually be facing the same fate as the prison guard.
He entered the room to a solemn atmosphere, also entirely the opposite of his last visit. He was told to remain standing at the far end of the table. He listened for the next ten minutes as he was blamed for the vice president’s death. He had been responsible for security and transportation between the Endovalley base camp and the alpine base and had failed to secure the most valuable asset in this war. War? This was missiles against rubber bands. This wasn’t war.
The Russian commander “supposedly” had defended him and pleaded for his life, stating under those circumstances the same mistake could have been made by anyone. Yeah. Right!
Eddie knew he had made no such mistake. The vice president had the capsule before Eddie even reached the Endovalley camp. He was certain of that. He thought about divulging what he’d found in the tent at the Endovalley camp, but figured that would only make it worse now. They’d want to know why he’d kept such potentially valuable information to himself. Then they might actually kill him. Instead he listened as he was told the Russian’s “compassion” was the only reason his life would be spared. He was additionally being stripped of his post in the Intelligence Division and demoted to the lowest level of soldier. The same went for his brother.