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“You can be staring at a mountain goat in the Rockies and not see it.” I probably could have explained myself better but I could see Blake nodding.

“Do I even have to say it?” Danny asked. “We are not—”

“Actually, Danny, she has a point.” Blake agreed with me.

Danny opened his eyes and sat up. “Dress up like mountain goats?”

“No.” Blake shook his head. “But we put three of us in our ghost suits and cover them with dirt, leaves, branches, etc.…”

“Three suits?” I asked.

“I’ve got Axel’s too.” Blake patted his backpack.

I turned to look at Danny. He was actually nodding now. “Okay, maybe. So…we try to sneak down the sides of the dam. Then what?”

“We blow that bridge,” Eddie cut in. “You still have the C-4 in your pack right?”

I looked at Eddie in surprise. He’d remained incredibly quiet for the man I knew him to be. I expected Danny to shut that idea down, but he didn’t. Instead he turned to Blake, who nodded.

“Yes, we still have the explosives.” Danny looked at Eddie. “We’d still have to swim from the base of the falls to the bridge though—right under their noses.”

“Okay.” Eddie nodded. “But if you could do it, then maybe we get all the soldiers on one side of the river somehow and blow the bridge,” Eddie continued. “It cuts off their speed—levels the field.”

Danny was nodding now. “But how would we—”

Eddie pulled something out of his backpack. A radio. “With this,” he replied. “I took two off the dead snipers.”

Danny was hearing him out but clearly remained unconvinced. “We’d need an officer to get them to move all those troops, and we’d need to know where to send them.” Danny was shaking his head now. “We wouldn’t know where to start.”

“What if I went down there alone? If I didn’t speak English maybe they’d know I wasn’t American. Maybe I could tell them you’d tried to kill me and direct them to where you supposedly are.”

“No way, Eddie,” Blake objected immediately. “They’d see through it and kill you.”

“I agree with Blake. I can’t let you do that.”

“You don’t trust me?” Eddie looked at my brother with a sudden twinge of anger in his voice.

“No, Eddie. This is not about trust.”

“Explain then.” Eddie was staring coolly at him.

“You are too valuable. I know you lost your brother, your wife, Cera—pretty much everything. I know you’re angry, and you want to get these guys back. But you’re too valuable. I have big plans for you back in Hawaii. You are critical to our future, the kind of man America needs—that the world needs. We can’t jeopardize that if we don’t have to. And…” Danny put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “There’s Isabelle. What if she’s still alive?”

Danny’s words gave me a glimpse into the depth of his mind, and the forethought he was putting into all of his—all of our—actions. You need to listen to yourself, Danny. I watched Eddie nod as he accepted his role in the bigger picture and the possibility Isabelle was still out there.

“So what other option is there?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t know that there is one,” Danny muttered, glancing back over the ledge at the soldiers below.

“Isn’t it at least worth a shot?” Blake asked him.

I was waiting for him to say no. Instead Danny shrugged. “Why not?”

I saw Blake open his mouth to say something, but he closed it when Danny answered. By the look on his face Blake hadn’t been expecting that response either.

Danny shared his plan. “I think I’ll take Blake, Hayley, and the radios with me. I’d like to move us all down to the base of the dam, but even if they’re not using thermal up here with the fires, I’m sure they are down there—where there’s nothing. We’re only safe in the ghost suits.” He looked around to see if anyone had any objections and—seeing none—he went on. “We’ll sneak down the north cliff and put Blake in position on this side of the bridge, in case we have to fall back or need cover fire. I think we can get him a good spot about five or six hundred yards from the bridge, swim past these guys, and blow the bridge. We’ll draw their attention and get them to come after us. Blake, you and Eddie use that distraction to get transportation—however you can—and you get Flynn and Ava to Disneyland. Ava says the bunker there is somewhere near a lagoon, and it’s been there forever, so it’s not at the California Adventure park. That narrows it down to Tom Sawyer’s Island or Pirates of the Caribbean.”

I saw Ava nodding, although it was also obvious she didn’t like the idea of being away from Danny. Danny, for his part, wasn’t even looking at her. Whether something had happened between them or he was just intensely focused, I couldn’t be sure, but I did find it curious he wanted me with him instead of her.

Danny pulled Blake and Eddie away from us for a few minutes, and I took that time to do the same with Flynn. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You stay by Blake, okay?”

“I will.”

“Blake is a great guy. In my family, we don’t make promises when we can’t control the outcome, so I won’t guarantee anything.” I took her hand. “But Blake would give up his own life before he’d let anything happen to you—that I promise.”

The reassurance worked. “And Flynn, try to get a gun if you can. Keep yourself alive.” Flynn squeezed my hand. “And her too,” I added, nodding at Ava.

Flynn smiled. “Are you sure?”

I smiled back. “Yeah.”

“You might regret that later.”

“You’re probably right.” We watched Danny, Blake, and Eddie crawl back toward us. “Flynn,” I whispered, pulling her head against mine.

“Yo.”

“You probably haven’t heard this a lot recently.” I kissed her cheek. “But I love you.”

She turned toward me with a smile. “Thank you, Hayley.” Her eyes teared up. “I love you too.”

I playfully nudged her. “You ever been to Disneyland?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But I heard it’s the happiest place on Earth.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t help but smile. “Something like that.”

SIXTY-TWO – Plan B (Hayley)

---------- (Thursday. August 11, 2022.) ----------

I slipped into Blake’s “ghost suit” and tightened the straps to make it fit me as snugly as it could. It was still big, but it would have to work. Danny and Blake set to covering me with branches, leaves, and a variety of earthly debris—sticking the natural camouflage to the little Velcro straps that covered the suit. Blake switched packs with Danny since Blake’s only had the explosives, some ammo and a cold weather compact sleeping bag. The explosives were sealed in a waterproof pouch, but Danny took it a step further sliding the pack inside his ghost suit. Then we covered him up as they’d done to me.

We said our “goodbyes” and “good lucks,” split off from the group, and slowly inched our way down the side of the hill—around the waterfall—our eyes never leaving the soldiers. We edged our way back over to the river and slid into the water. So far, so good.

Blake’s ghost suit wasn’t quite tight enough on me to keep the water out so—as we entered the pool below the falls—the freezing mountain drainage chilled my skin. I’d have to live with it. Danny carefully helped me remove all the leaves and brush from the suit replacing them with floating sticks and branches we found at the base of the falls. The goal—if anyone saw the debris attached to us—was to look like we belonged in the river.

He placed one end of a long, clear, narrow tube in my mouth and wove it through the sticks connected to my hood. “Breathing tube,” he whispered. “Keep your face in the water, your mouth shut, and breathe normally. If you get water in it don’t blow it out forcefully, okay? And lift your eyes up as little as possible.”