Page 38 of Red Line

With the water bottles and hygiene kits provided, the men did what they could to clean up. Beards made the process easier. Once dressed, they threw their old clothes back over the wall, then took a minute to eat. Parked on a hill overlooking the town, they hoped to time their appearance to coincide with other traffic. But Nomad felt the pressure of the wait. His gut said to get to Red and get to her now. It took a sizeable amount of constraint not to rush forward.

T-Rex threw his paper napkin and spork into the empty paper bag, then lifted the binoculars. “Still not a lot of activity.”

“You know how it is with the heat,” Nomad said. “Folks are up and doing at night and sleeping in come morning. Still, I’d appreciate a coffee vendor.” Nomad dragged a napkin across his face, tossed it in the bag, then turned to look through the gear pack sitting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “No weapons. An advanced first aid kit. Of course, the documents and the fresh clothes might be the most important. The embassy folks did well for a middle-of-the-night call with a short window. Everything fits with the character profile of a concerned family member coming in with friends to find his cousin. Nothing here stands out as tactical beyond work gloves and a folding shovel.”

T-Rex stood on the running board, scanning. “Both hotels are on the main road. That means more eyes. It looks like there’s a street running parallel behind Red’s sleeping hotel.” T-Rex pointed. “And an alley here running perpendicular. If we come into town and turn to follow that parallel street with the van, we’ll call less attention to our presence.”

“They have barriers up,” Nomad said. “We can’t drive down that main road, anyway.” He lowered his binoculars. “They wanted us to check the flag Red dropped first.” Nomad pulled out his phone to get his bearings. Moving up to stand beside T-Rex, he suggested, “Park here. There’s only a two-minute walk from one pin to the other. We can use this alleyway just south of the bombed hotel.”

With his binoculars up, T-Rex pointed. “Do you see the heavy equipment parked at the north end of the road? They probably got in last night. My guess is that they’ll spend the morning shoring up the building to keep it from toppling. If they got the living out last night, I bet they didn’t take risks for the dead. That and they need to assess this forensically. The report said no one’s claimed credit for the bomb.”

“We need to beat them in,” Nomad said. “If the crew is pulling up, they’ll bar access.”

T-Rex dropped the binoculars, letting them hang from the strap around his neck. “Yeah, from the setup, it looks like the locals are letting the national government handle the site. And as we all know, there’s a certain pace to government intervention.”

“Molasses?” Havoc asked.

“Can be.” Nomad opened the driver’s side door. “I say let’s move.” He climbed in, and as the others found their places, he started the engine, anxious to get going.

They drove sedately into town and followed the plan for staging the vehicle on the parallel street for a quick exit.

Dressed in desert tan tactical gear from t-shirts to boots, they blended into the colors of the environment.

No matter how hard the townspeople worked to conquer dirt and dust, the debris rode the winds in from the desert. This morning, the shop workers hadn’t yet swept and watered the sidewalks to tame the powder, and the team’s boots left ridged tracks as they made their way to the hotel.

Once in front of the bombsite, Nomad took video of the area on his phone. There were bodies and parts of bodies laced into the construction materials. If Red was in the restaurant with her asset, there was zero chance she’d survived.

A guard walked over to him. “Peace be with you, brother.”

“And with you.” T-Rex placed his hand on his heart. “I am missing my cousin. I am afraid that perhaps she was here having lunch.”

“I hope this was not the case.” The guard had probably stood at this scene for hours. It was taking a visible toll on him.

“When they took survivors out, the wounded, were any found in this front area?” Nomad asked.

“Here?” The guard swept his arm to take in the front of the hotel. “No. There are no survivors here. Above, upstairs, some, yes, and the kitchen workers, yes.”

Grey had said she’d been sick. “Bathroom?” Nomad asked.

“The public bathrooms, no – the bathrooms were empty.”

Red had her CIA rooms on the sixth floor. Nomad leaned back and looked up to the top of the hotel. “How high up were the injured? All the way up?”

“One story up, there is serious destruction. Third floor and above, there are cuts from the windows and bruises from the shaking and falling, popped eardrums, we got them out the back of the building.”

Nomad adjusted the strap of the bag on his shoulder. “Thank you.” Nomad pointed toward the debris, raising his brows, and the guard walked away.

That was enough permission for Nomad. He pulled a plastic drink straw from the first aid kit, which he always kept in his left thigh pocket. He’d filled that straw with camphor rub and sealed it with a hot iron. Nomad used the masking smell of menthol on days like this. Slicing off the top of the straw with his multi-tool, Nomad rubbed a glob under his nose, offering the rest to T-Rex and Havoc. There were a lot of bodies. And the smell could be overwhelming. Vomiting on a crime scene was a no-go. “I'll take the blue suit,” Nomad offered, still aware that as “new guy,” he should be reaching for the shittiest of the shit jobs.

This fitted that bill.

“Fine.” T-Rex tapped Nomad’s chest with the back of his hand. “Document everything you find interesting. Havoc, you take the bathrooms and kitchen. I’m going to take a look in the back. But be aware, someone has eyes on us twelve o’clock, third floor.” They adjusted their baseball caps lower on their foreheads and dragged shemaghs from their pack pockets, wrapping them around their lower faces.

Coming in from the southeast corner, nearest the pin, it took patience to climb over the debris field in a way that avoided desecrating the deceased. But it took little effort for Nomad to find the guy in his blue suit. Nomad hoped against hope that he wouldn’t find Red in that tangle.

In his bones, he felt her alive and desperate. Still, any clue might point the team in her direction.

Right away, Nomad spotted a black drawstring pack. It was dust-covered but not buried like the things around it. Nomad guessed it was placed there after the explosion but before the debris cloud settled. He took a picture and imprinted the image with the GPS location.

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