Page 107 of Red Line

Brown leaned over to press the camel away. And when Nomad saw Brown's leg shift downward, signaling that he was off balance, Nomad wrapped his hand around the guy’s ankle and jerked hard.

The guy landed between the two camels, clinging with one hand to the saddle cloth, jaw slack with astonishment.

The call of warning from Blue signaled that Red was sledding down the dune toward Simone.

Brown reached up and pawed at the blankets, and Nomad knew he was looking for his weapon. Nomad didn’t have the angle for a jaw strike. He wrenched the guy around as he squatted to tuck Brown into the crook of his arm. With his free hand, he clasped his wrist and tightened the pressure on the man’s artery. At the same time, he pushed into his heels and stood. The man dangled a foot off the ground, kicking and flailing. But that didn’t last long.

Nomad dropped the unconscious man to the ground.

With a hand wrapped into the belly strap of each of the camels to keep them as cover, Nomad walked forward.

Two down, one to go.

But that one had a knife to Red’s throat, looking around wildly, trying to figure out what was happening.

Simone had decided she was out of there and had turned around. Using hands and feet, she was scrambling up the dune.

Blue focused on Simone, beseeching her in Arabic to come back.

He was clearly the youngest. And he was lowest in rank, or he would not have been tasked with getting the woman saddled up.

Red called in Arabic, “Friend, may God’s blessing be upon you. Why are you treating me with violence?”

“Are you … Who are you? You are not the woman we are to meet.”

“Two women. You were told two women, were you not? Do you think I would let my niece travel alone in the desert with men who are not her kin?”

“You are her auntie?”

“Of course. You know this. Take your blade from my neck. This is inhospitable.”

She was pitch-perfect. Nomad would have believed her. A mix of incredulity, kindness, and offense. But he also saw that she was twisting the black plastic garbage bag into a rope, getting ready.

The knife hadn’t moved.

“Then why is she running?” The man’s voice was pitched an octave higher, and he seemed wild-eyed and desperate that he was suddenly here in a situation he didn’t understand, and his comrades had disappeared.

“Would you not run if a stranger took out their knife and held it to your aunt’s throat? What else is she to do—a woman?”

Green was moaning. And that made Blue shift toward the sound.

That was all Red needed.

Wrapping the man’s wrist in her bag rope, she was able to get control of it while giving herself space from the blade. She used the hard edge of her sole to scrape the length of the man’s shin, hitting all the pain points. Lifting her knee to chest, shestomped his toes, unprotected in his leather sandals. That would have been a better move on a hard surface, but it still had to hurt.

Nomad was at her side, relieving Blue of the knife.

Once Red saw the weapon had been cleared, she reached between the man’s legs, grabbed what Nomad had to assume was the man’s scrotal sack, and twisted her hand as she pulled her elbow back like she was starting a lawn mower.

In sympathy with the man who must be seeing his life flash in front of his eyes, Nomad winced, drawing one knee over the other as he bent protectively. “Shit, Cassie.”

“He had a knife to my throat,Nicholi.”

“Fair.”

The man was on all fours, vomiting into the sand.

Catching Nomad’s eye, Red asked, “Did you get their pictures?”

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