“It’s in the book. Everything is in the book.”
TWENTY-NINE – Misdirection (Hayley)
I looked around the hanger. There was an old pickup truck, a small plane, a US Forest Service fire truck, some farm equipment, and an office. We’d moved most everything out of the way to fit our C-130H in the back. Now we needed to move it all back and somehow hide the plane. We had to make it look like no one had been here since the attacks. We managed to pack the front of the hangar with the big equipment. We broke all the windows to allow airflow through the hangar, and to give anyone who searched the area an alternative to going inside. Hopefully they’d just look in the windows—not see or hear anything—and move on. We backed a Bobcat up against the back door—so no one could come in that way—and maladjusted the rollers on the giant sliding doors at the front of the hangar. That might convince them to not look inside for a plane.
We figured if the troops had landed two miles west of us, they’d continue west toward where the radio signal had come from before regrouping and sweeping back. This terrain was anything but flat. They’d cover those five to six miles in three hours or so—four at the most. We uncovered the jeep from our plane—having parked it outside under the trees—and loaded our gear into the back. We drove slowly out to the road, careful not to stir up dust or leave noticeable tire marks.
At five miles per hour, it took us almost ten minutes to reach the blacktop road. I hopped out quickly and tore down the US Forest Service Smokejumpers sign then got back in and turned us south on Shelf Road. We raced alongside the canyon containing Fourmile Creek as fast as I dared. The goal was to get the engine as hot as possible as quickly as possible now. I needed whoever was monitoring the area to pick up our heat signal—to notice us somehow. I needed them to see us away from the hangar—to hopefully keep anyone from searching Long Hungry Gulch and the base where we’d been hiding.
Shelf Road came to a T intersection where Fourmile Creek met Cripple Creek and I turned left—north—following Cripple Creek towards the town of the same name. As we passed a sign for Grouse Mountain, we saw another plane pass overhead, and more paratroopers filled the sky ahead of us. They found us.
Lazzo insisted they’d have radioed our location in for sure now. Drones would be on the way shortly. We followed a trail off Shelf Road for a mile or so and dumped the truck at the base of Grouse Mountain, continuing east on foot. The sun was setting as we crossed Wilson Creek and hurried across the rocky terrain south of Straub Mountain. We made it to the base of Brind Mountain just before the first of three drones flew overhead. We were too exposed. There’s no way they missed us. A whole lot more troops would be on the way soon. By morning, this whole area would be swarming.
We could only assume they’d been tracking Lazzo’s radio call and didn’t trust him to turn himself in. Not sure what else he has to do to prove his loyalty. The Libyan commander seemed intent on not giving him any other options. This was an unexpected and unwelcome tweak to Lazzo’s plans, and he wasn’t handling it well. He had to be thinking about his family. If the Libyan commander doesn’t trust Lazzo to deliver, can Lazzo trust his word? Or is Lazzo’s family already dead too?
A web of roads converged at the Skaguay Reservoir a mile or so ahead of us. Our goal was to get past the reservoir and up into the canyons before stopping for the night—or before they could cut us off.
THIRTY – Lost
Commander Boli returned to Puerto Rico on August 6. The helicopter landed on the roof. The tiny red light went off on the camera in the corner of Eddie’s cell. The commander came alone—no squad of men with him. He wasn’t in a good mood, but this time there was no venom in his voice—no hatred in his eyes. He spoke calmly. “Your brother… he tells me that you don’t read the note. He tells me you don’t know what he’s doing.”
Eddie resisted a sarcastic retort. Instead he just listened.
“If that’s true, then you don’t lie to me. You don’t know my plan, do you?”
“I don’t,” Eddie finally answered. “I don’t know anything.” It was the commander’s turn to listen. “If this is about the note—if the note had the information on it that you thought I knew—well, General Roja told me not to read it. I gave it to Lazzo. I did not read it. Next thing I know I’m being shot over and over again, but not by real bullets. Rubber bullets. Next thing I know I’m knocked out. Next thing I know I’m here. I don’t know why I’m alive. I don’t know why you don’t kill me. You beat my wife. You—”
“We had a plan—Lazzo and me. I thought you knew everything. Your brother he says he tell you the truth, but he don’t tell you what I think he tell you.”
What the hell? “What? What truth?”
“It don’t matter now.” The commander waved his hand casually around in the air. “I know now you don’t know. I keep you alive for your brother. I meet with him before you go Buena Vista. He and I talk. He tell me Americans have information on bunkers, on missiles—important things. Powerful things. He says he will get that information for me. Then he don’t do it. He and you… you blow up Roja’s men. He gets in a boat with you to escape. I send your wife to trap you. Roja gives your brother the note. Your brother leaves for Hawaii with Americans, and I think he played me for fool. He’s not coming back. I was going to kill you then. But Lazzo calls me and tells me he has the note from you… from General Roja. He tells me he will get what I want, but he must continue with the Americans to Hawaii. He tells me of a man named Danny who has the book with codes, with American hideouts, with all I need for Hawaii and Colorado and everything. I must have that information at all cost.” The commander paused to see if Eddie was still with him. “So I promise him… you know? I offer him his family and your family if he bring me this book.”
“Wait, you and General Roja—”
“It don’t matter.”
“But—you two hate each other.”
Boli’s glare silenced Eddie. “Sometimes. But it don’t matter. Now I think your brother is dead. I think he died two day ago. He kidnapped Danny’s sister and brings her to America, but his plane gets shot down. But he is not dead. It is not his plane that gets shot down. It is the American’s.”
“So Lazzo is alive,” Eddie asked, bewildered—trying hard to follow the commander’s story. “But the American is dead?”
“I speak to him yesterday, yes. Lazzo is alive.”
“But Danny is dead?”
“No. Maybe. I hope not. His plane, it was shot down. But maybe he not dead. If he is dead, you are also dead. So I wait and see.”
Eddie understood that much. His life hinged on Danny getting Commander Boli the book. Everyone’s seemed to. “So why did you come here—to Puerto Rico?”
The question caught the commander off guard. “Consider it apology. I was wrong about you. Maybe both of you.”
There had to be more to it. He wouldn’t come here to explain himself—and definitely not to apologize. He was here for something else. “What do you want from me? You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Commander Boli shook his head. “No. But I promise you brother I don’t kill you until he bring me the book… if he bring me the book. I need you for—how do you say—the proof of the life. That is all. But I bring you bread and wine. My apology.”