Sam knew Danny had to have something in mind, and Sam needed to make sure the soldier’s focus stayed on him. Danny was at far greater risk. He had no way of knowing if the soldier was looking back at him…if the soldier was suspicious of the pile of gear in the back seat. Danny was doing his best to keep still and stay covered, but a five-by-five-foot box doesn’t offer much shelter for a barely concealed, six foot four soldier.
The first two miles seemed to take an hour on their own. Fortunately, the guy in the front seat with Sam couldn’t shut up. He was going on and on about all the Americans he’d killed. He kept saying, “High five.” And Sam kept high fiving him. As we drove past Isaac, we were sure Isaac was wondering why we didn’t stop and why Sam didn’t wave back. He flashed his lights at us a couple times, but we kept driving. “What he want?” the soldier asked.
“Dunno,” Sam mumbled back.
“Idiot,” the guy replied. Then “High five!” Idiot indeed.
We were halfway to Grand Lake when the soldier finally looked in the back. He smacked Sam in the arm and asked, “What is it? Food?” He started digging through the backpack, even touching Danny’s knee at one point.
“No,” Sam said a little too strongly.
The guy gave him a hard look. Then he glanced back at the gear again. Something sticking out caught his attention. He reached into the backpack and pulled out a Springfield handgun. “Ah,” he said. “A gun.” He paused. “An American gun.”
Sam nodded, swallowing hard. Shoot him Danny. Shoot him already!
“Is nice,” the soldier continued, flipping the safety on and off. Then the smile disappeared from his face, and he pointed it at Sam’s head. “You dead, American,” he said.
From the back, Danny was pretty confident the man wasn’t going to shoot Sam at forty miles an hour driving down a slick curvy road, but it was all he could do to not peek out from under the coats and blankets.
Fortunately he was right, but no doubt Sam was sweating. “Bang!” the soldier said, and then he started laughing hysterically. He slid the gun back into the backpack and turned to Sam. “Is nice.”
Sam was afraid if he said a single word now his voice would crack. He wasn’t sure how Danny had known the guy was joking. Sam could only nod. Come on Danny!
“You sick?” the soldier asked.
“Yeah,” Sam replied quietly. You have no idea!
“Mountains,” the man replied, turning his focus out the window. “Make sick easy. My mom. She was sick all the time. Mountains, no mountains. Always sick.” He shook his head, then, “High five!”
Seriously? Sam definitely felt like he was going to throw up. He cracked the window, and the sound of rushing wind allowed Danny to shift a little. He was pretty sure every muscle, other than the ones in his trigger finger, was asleep.
The man started singing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Of all songs. “I love rock ’n’ roll,” he said to Sam, punching him in the shoulder again. “High five!”
“High five!” Sam mumbled back. I’ll high five you in the face, you bastard. He and Danny painfully listened to the soldier sing for the next twenty minutes—the same two lines over and over—until they pulled up to the guard gate at the south end of Trail Ridge Road.
The man punched Sam one more time in the shoulder, said “I get out here,” and then stepped out of the jeep and walked up to the guards. He either knew the one guard, or he was always that friendly, but he high fived the guard and talked to him for a little while. The other guard disappeared from view for a few seconds and then returned with a dog, presumably intent on searching our jeeps. He was walking towards us.
“Danny,” Sam murmured nervously.
“What?” Danny whispered back.
“I think they’re gonna search us,” Sam replied urgently. Danny started to sit up. “Hold on.” Sam said sharply. Danny froze.
Our former passenger had turned his attention to the man with the dog. They talked for a minute, and then the guard with the dog became rather animated, gesturing at our trucks, all the while restraining his lunging animal. But the soldier who’d ridden with us was clearly not backing down from his own position on whatever they were discussing. He pointed back at us, then through the gate ahead of us, and then reached into his pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, waving them before each guard, and stepped into the guard shack, beckoning for the two guards to join him. That seemed to do the trick. The guard with the dog pulled the barking animal away from the trucks and behind the shack. He came back around the corner and stepped into the guard shack with our former passenger. The other guard opened the gate and waved both our trucks through. Sam waved back as we passed them. That was way too close.
As we began driving again, Danny uncovered himself in the back seat. Sam hadn’t said a word since the soldier had gotten out, and Danny hadn’t known what to say. “You did good, bud,” he finally said to Sam.
“How did you know they were going to search our trucks,” Sam asked.
“I didn’t,” Danny replied. “Honestly. And we would’ve killed them if we had to.”
“I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Sam continued, his voice still shaking. “I almost took the gun out of his hands and shot myself.”
“How far into the song?” Danny asked, laughing.
“It’s not funny, man. Why didn’t we kill him once we left the parking lot?” Sam asked in all seriousness, looking back at Danny’s face.
“I thought about it. I really did.” Danny responded. “Easily twenty or thirty times on the way down. I can’t explain it.”
That wasn’t good enough for Sam, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Danny reached forward and patted him on the shoulder. “You did real good, man,” he said. “I’m sorry it couldn’t have been me up there instead of you.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah,” was all he could say.
“You good to drive until we need gas?” Danny asked.
“Sure,” was the soft reply.
“Okay,” Danny said, closing his eyes. “Try to get us to Copper Mountain. Should be about one hundred miles. Drop straight south to Interstate 70, and take it west to the Breckenridge exit. Should be gas there somewhere.”
From the second jeep Isaac and Blake had watched a man get out of Sam’s jeep in Grand Lake, walk up to the guard at the gate, and high five him. What the heck? Suddenly Isaac was glad he hadn’t continued to flash his lights at Sam, and he realized he might have put them in enough of a bad spot by doing it when he did. They had a soldier in their jeep the whole way down?
“Unbelievable,” Blake said. He ducked down in the back seat as Isaac drove through the gate, and the man waved at them. Isaac waved back and kept driving. “Wonder why they didn’t just kill him,” Blake muttered, and Isaac laughed. “That had to have been awkward.”
Awkward wasn’t a strong enough word.
SEVENTY-ONE: “Shortcut”
We pulled off Interstate 70 on Exit 195 and filled up with gas at a station next to the Copper Mountain Resort before 6 a.m. Danny checked with everyone in the back of the jeeps to make sure we all were okay. We still couldn’t risk moving up into the passenger seats, just in case. We were cold, but otherwise good enough. Several military jeeps had passed us a few miles back, heading the opposite way towards Denver, but they didn’t give us a second glance. We paused for a quick bathroom break at the west end of the Eisenhower Tunnel about fifty miles west of Denver but otherwise hadn’t stopped or been stopped since Grand Lake. It felt great—but strange—to move so freely, especially in the daylight.