Page 106 of Red Line

“Here’s one way this could play out: one guy will dismount. He’s going to get the camel to lay down so Simone can climb on. We’ve already figured out that the phones are in her backpack. You’re going to get the backpack from her.”

“I’m going to get the backpack worth forty million euros from that woman. Sure. Piece of cake.”

“You are. You’re going to sit on the garbage bag and slide onto the scene. We have surprise on our side. They won’t know what’s going on. They’re not ready for this.”

“Weapons?” Red asked. “If so, we’re just going to have to track them on foot until they set up their camp for the night.”

Nomad spent some time assessing that possibility. “No weapons are out. My experience is they carry knives and AKs, but this area is empty of anyone and anything. There’s nothing they need to defend against. They’re not ready for combat.”

“Are you sure?” Red asked.

“They look bored.”

“All right. So I slide down to Simone.”

“After the camel starts to go down, and everyone has their attention on the process, I’ll go in from the east side. All I have to do is get their photos, and then we’re out of there.”

Red blinked at him. “You know that makes no sense.”

“Doesn’t matter. We have a mission to complete. Use your trash bag as a weapon. I know you know this, but I feel compelled to say it out loud. If someone gets control of the bag and puts it over your head, don’t try to move their hands and fight your way free. Preserve what air you have while you puncture a hole so you can breathe.”

She held her eyes wide.

“I’m calling them by their shirt colors. Brown, Blue, Green. If you hear me call out a color, you know whom I’m looking at.”

“But not Red.”

He kissed her nose. “There are no Reds out here, just a Cassie.”

She breathed in and held it.

Nomad waited for her to exhale. “Good?” he asked.

“We’re about to find out.”

He patted her thigh and made his way to the position he’d chosen for himself, where the men would have to look straight into the glare of the sun to see him.

The eastern dune was shorter than the others, which worked for his plan. Nomad was on his plastic bag, ready to go, when Simone started her sidestep over the dune.

That Simone was walking up and down each hill in sand that came up to her ankles meant that he and Red had the opportunity to get out in front of her by using their thick black garbage bags as sleds at a distance that kept them out of her line of sight. It not only cut their time, it saved their energy. Simone had to be exhausted. She was moving from west to east, with her head hanging, watching her steps.

Red was lying on the northern dune.

The six camels and three men were in the basin below.

Nomad was counting on Simone being worn out because, no matter the front Red put up, Red hadn’t fully recovered from her bout of typhoid.

Laying at the top of his dune, camouflaged in his Sahara-sand-colored tactical wear, he watched the scene unfold.

As Simone approached, Blue called out the commands to get his camel to lie down. As soon as the camel’s front knees touched the sand, Nomad slid down the slope, aiming straight for the man wearing a green T-shirt who had twisted away from the glare of the sun. Nomad grasped Green’s ankle and jerked him from his camel. Green yelled out as he slid over the top, stopping his call abruptly when he saw the size of Nomad hovering over him. Grabbing at the man’s robes, Nomad pulled Green far enough off the ground that his strike would do the most damage. Nomad chambered his fist and then let the punch fly to the full extent of his arm so the physics of the strike to the man’s jaw would whip his head fast enough to put him out.

Though Nomad’s knuckles slid along the man’s beard, diminishing the impact slightly, the man was unconscious when Nomad released Green’s robes. Doubling into a crouch, Nomad moved under the belly of Green’s anxious camel.

“Mohammed, what did you do? What are you doing?” Brown demanded.

Blue had his camel halfway through the front back, front back shifts of getting to the ground where he could dismount. Neither up nor down, Blue was twisting his head, looking at his comrades and then at Simone, ankle-deep in the sand, as she moved slowly down the slope.

Green’s camel didn’t like Nomad underneath her and pressed sideways into her herd mate, trapping Brown’s leg.

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