According to the scale on our map, it was a little more than one hundred miles, half of it through the mountains, from Ridgeway to Cortez. It should take us about two and a half hours, with no problems. From Cortez we would continue south to Gallup, New Mexico, which would take another two or three hours. That would drop us halfway between the two likely base locations in Flagstaff and Albuquerque. There was plenty of forest south of Gallup, if we could just get there.
The first forty miles to Telluride were nerve-racking but went without incident. As we approached the small ski town, our road broke south. But before we could turn, we came upon another roadblock. There was something off with this one though. We could see jeeps parked beside the barricade, but there were no soldiers in sight. It was barely 10 p.m.; there was no way they were asleep. With four jeeps, there had to be more than three men at this one. What made things even more confounding was the gate being left up. We didn’t see anyone as we drove through. We continued south on Highway 145 towards Cortez, driving another hour without seeing any signs of life—beyond a million rabbits, that is. Man, how fast could those things repopulate?
Entering the small town of Dolores a dozen miles north of Cortez, we came upon another roadblock, this one with three jeeps. Once again, the gate was open with no soldiers around. What in the world was going on? We felt like we were driving into a trap, but we couldn’t stop. Right now we’d have done anything for a THIRST system, but we couldn’t afford the time to stop and check any of the jeeps. We had to keep going.
SEVENTY-FIVE: “General Direction”
General Roja had arrived in Durango before any other area soldiers had, but when the other troops joined them from Grand Junction, he decided he should set up his base somewhere else. That way, if anyone came through Durango someone else would slow them down, and after their fight the general would swoop in and kill them. It would be much easier that way, and he could stay a step ahead of the game.
He knew the Americans would be traveling at night. This was nothing more than reverse immigration. Several of the general’s family members had been working in America, mostly in Arizona, before the attacks. The general had pulled them all out safely, but they’d originally had to sneak their way into America. They always did so at night. The general knew the Americans hadn’t already passed him. They were still coming.
In Grand Junction they had a high-tech THIRST system, similar to what the drones and new helicopters carried. The Seven commanders had ordered it brought to Durango. The general pulled rank on the colonel from Grand Junction and insisted the advanced system go south with him another thirty-seven miles to the town of Aztec. It wasn’t a mobile system, but once set up it provided a fifty-mile range, and with that the general would be able to observe all traffic coming into both Durango and Cortez. From Aztec, at the onset of any action, he could move north to Durango if necessary, hold tight if anyone broke through—highly unlikely against one hundred men with jeeps and rocket launchers—or he could cut straight west towards Shiprock, and arrive before anyone from Cortez could get there. General Roja had it all covered from Aztec.
Another radar station had been set up in the town of Mancos, essentially halfway between Durango and Cortez. It was equipped with an aerial THIRST system—twenty mile range—and mostly being used to monitor traffic approaching Cortez through Dolores, and as a backup for the west exit from Durango. A vehicle had passed through Dolores, heading towards Cortez, around 11 p.m. It had stopped at the roadblock in Dolores for about twenty minutes before continuing slowly down to Cortez. One of the general’s officers had radioed the roadblock in Dolores after the vehicle had left, but he had received an “all clear” from the guards there. The colonel from Grand Junction had apparently relocated one of his jeeps from Telluride to Cortez.
Around midnight the station in Mancos radioed the general that there was activity in Dolores again. Two vehicles were pulling into town from Telluride. Before they made it to the roadblock, a third beacon suddenly appeared on the screen. It left the roadblock and moved towards Cortez. The other two vehicles were only a few miles behind it. This was definitely something. The general and all his men were immediately on their radios.
As the two vehicles passed the roadblock and continued south towards Cortez, six jeeps were sent west from Mancos. As the American vehicles came to the intersection with the road heading east to Durango, the six jeeps coming from Mancos were only two miles away. Also on the move—and having packed up the high-tech system in Aztec—the general was depending on the radar station in Mancos to keep him updated with all the movements. The officer on the radio in Mancos told General Roja the two American vehicles must have seen the lights coming because they had greatly picked up the pace. They were heading south towards Shiprock, but the six Qi Jia jeeps were rapidly closing on them.
The road from Cortez to Shiprock also had a two-way fork in it—directly south to Shiprock or diagonally west to Teec Nos Pos. The six Qi Jia vehicles were immediately behind the two American occupied ones now. The Americans were about to die.
SEVENTY-SIX: “Run. Stop. Run.”
Pulling into Cortez, Danny saw the lights. “Sam. You gotta fly now, man.” Danny slid open the window at the back of the cab and slid into the back. He yelled at me over the howling wind to get everyone else reversely inside the jeep. We scrambled to comply, through that same small sliding window. Directly behind us, Isaac could see what we were doing, and he told Blake to do the same. Blake slid into the back and urged everyone else into the cab of their jeep. Blake could see the lights gaining ground on them. Please, God. We couldn’t go fast enough. We were loaded down, and they were coming too fast.
We were coming up on an intersection in the road, intending to go straight south, when the southern road exploded right in front of us. I shrieked in a soprano octave I didn’t even think I had, but it nearly went unnoticed with all the other screams around me. We all looked frantically around for where the rocket (or whatever it was) had come from, but no one saw anything other than the jeeps closing in on us. “Uh, Danny,” I yelled out the back window.
“No, Dad, we don’t have time to stop at Four Corners,” he yelled back. In other words, “shut up.”
Totally was not going to ask that anyway. “Where do we—” I started to ask, but with no choice now, Sam swerved to the right fork. “Never mind,” I yelled back to Danny. Appropriately, he ignored me.
The sign on the right of the road had an arrow pointing the direction we were now going, with the words Teec Nos Pos, and the number 18. Crap. 18 miles?
I’m not exactly sure why that distance bothered me. We probably weren’t going to make it another mile or two anyway. The jeeps were right on us now, and Blake was starting to take fire.
He was giving it back too though, and he managed to take out the front tire of the first jeep. It swerved wildly off the road into the ditch and then launched into the air on the other side, flipping and landing on its back. That bought us a little time, but the next jeep was closing again as we now were approaching a bright light ahead of us. It turned out to be a fire from another explosion on the road. We were forced to take a county highway northwest from there. The Four Corners Monument was definitely out of the question now. But as Isaac’s jeep turned onto the county road behind us, there was another giant explosion behind him. The front pursuing jeep was a ball of screaming fire, and the entrance to the road was completely gone. The four remaining jeeps cut off the road and managed to find their way around the flaming jeep and back onto the highway, but they’d lost a full minute on us.