Page 13 of Red Line

The kitchen walls had buckled and warped with the pressure but still held the ceiling up. Anything that had been hanging on the walls was now on the floor. In her mind’s eye, she saw a scene with knives flinging through the air. The workers lay stunned on the floor, dust-covered and in shock. She didn’t see blood. Nobody looked like they needed CPR. But she did that triage with a glance, the mere turn of her head.

Stumbling up the corridor, Red fought her way over the debris, trying to get to the front. The damage was worse moving forward. The epicenter had to have been the front of the hotel.

She tapped her leg again, assuring herself the phone was there. Help was a phone call away. Did she need to set Color Code into action? Just knowing she had options buoyed her.

“Eyes on the prize” became the phrase for her left foot while she kept up, “Stay calm. Act fast,” with her right steps. Lifting her knee, kicking out her leg, searching for a solid footing, setting her boot tentatively down, shifting her weight forward, and pulling up her back foot was a process, and the words helped.

Moussa was her goal.

If Moussa survived, she’d get him whatever help he needed. It wasn’t probable; it was merely possible. She’d been pulled from such a situation before and had the scars to prove it.

The other thing that needed protecting here was the integrity of her mission. Dead or alive, there could be nothing with Moussa that might identifywhyhe was in this hotel today beyond stopping for lunch as part of his business trip.

And certainly nothing that could identify her.

Arms wide to increase her balance, Red’s gaze swept across the space where she had been watching out the front window just minutes ago. There was no support wall to do its job. This was a six-story structure, and the beams around her screamed with the sudden weight shift.

Would it hold?

No one was outside. She imagined they’d all dived for cover, waiting to see if more blasts would follow.

Soon, a ring of people would gather outside, hands over their mouths, looking toward each other, looking up at the structure, clearly stupefied by the unexpected event. That was the way this would unfold. It always did. Moments after that, someone—despite the obvious dangers of approaching–—would take those first tentative steps forward. In the cell structure of a good portion of humans was the nuclear impetus toward the survival of a species. It would make them braver than they could have imagined acting as they drank their tea and ate breakfast that morning.

Others would follow like ants sniffing the pheromone scent trail.

And others would wait in safety to receive the stunned, the wounded, and the broken.

There was a reason that everyone was born with a role to play.

Hers was to get to Moussa.

And there was movement—a shift in the debris. Gravity, most likely.

The wind was sweeping the particulates down the road, clearing the view.

Look at this place!She pulled her hand away from a sparking electrical cord. Moments ago, the laptops were rata-tat-tatting with ideas and information. Now, there were random hands, strewn body parts, and fires.

But never say never. Red had been in situations where, if assumptions had been made, life would have been overlooked and help left unrendered.

Coughing up the dust as she stumbled forward, Red remembered the solidity of the thick tabletop and the heavy construction of the metal central leg.

Excitement bubbled through Red’s system. Hope.

Springing forward, she clawed through the debris to find Moussa’s legs. His shoes were gone. His socks didn’t match; one was blue, and one was black. But now, they were both powdered with grit. He must have sensed something and ducked; he was indeed under the protection of the table, though the table seemed to have separated from its central post and lay on top of him. Her hands patted up his legs, following along to third-degree burns of his charred hand that held the melted remains of his phone. Red pocketed it.

The area smelled like pork barbeque.

This is why Red declined those Fourth of July picnic invitations back home with the smells that lit her memory with images of atrocities.

She shuffled her feet to get a flat surface under her toes. The color of athwab—the traditional robes worn in this region—caught her eye. It stood out as different from the tactical garb. Red stopped, giving her brain a moment to take in the man woven into the debris. He didn’t look hurt, merely dusty andvery much dead. She looked at his sandals and thought that when he’d bent that morning to pull the strap over his heel, he had assumed he’d be placing them outside the door that evening.

But no.

This was the man she had photographed crossing behind the donkey cart.

When he’d stood outside the hotel, she’d focused her attention on him for some reason.

If she thought he might be a suicide bomber, she was wrong. This man wasn’t the epicenter of the blast that had come from over by the front door.

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