Page 77 of Red Line

By sheer luck, Nomad made it in time for his flight to Amsterdam. He’d come with his toiletries, boxer briefs, and an otherwise empty roller case that needed filling. He'd dumped the rest of his things in an alley trash bin. After deplaning, Nomad grabbed lunch on the go. Barbershop and then clothes shopping. It was guesswork to know how to pack to fit a persona he wasn’t sure of. He went for quality travel wear that had a decided urban tactical feel. A couple of dressier silk button-down shirts and a pair of slacks that would blend. If he needed something more along the way, he’d grab it on the go.

Now that he was set, Nomad would spend the layover working through tutorials that explained the difference between Moroccan Arabic and the Egyptian Arabic that Nomad had learned in his travel-with-State childhood.

Sitting in a lounge area, glad the design had bench seats, Nomad’s phone buzzed in his thigh pocket.

“Side quest,” T-Rex said when Nomad answered his phone.

“Yeah? What’s that.”

“You ready for some shit?”

“I don’t know, should I brace?” Nomad stood and moved to a quiet corridor to talk.

“Red tried to convince Elena that she was private security for Kamal.”

“Risky,” Nomad said. “That could be blown with a phone call.”

“Which is what I think happened. Red was on a plane with Elena this morning from Vienna to Amsterdam. They were standing in line to go through passport control to catch their flight to Casablanca. Are you through passport?”

“Not yet, I wanted to keep my options open. Sounds like I’m going to need to exercise those options. What happened in passport control?”

“Elena told the good security officers that she’d overheard Red talking on her phone about bringing a bomb onto her plane.”

“What?” That was some brazen stuff. Elena wasn’t playing.

“Red’s spent the day in interrogation.”

Nomad started toward the ticket gate to check his roller bag. He had a feeling that he’d need to have his hands free. “What’s State doing about this?”

“Staying the hell out of it until absolutely necessary. This is ongoing but is being monitored via her phone’s mic. The DIA thinks it’s winding down. Color Code got her a new ticket for tomorrow’s flight and a hotel room for tonight. I’m sending the hotel information to you now. The game plan is for you to introduce yourself to Red as an ally before she shows up in Morocco. Once you’re both boots on the ground, everything has to flow like a married couple.”

“Got it. So what’s the phrase or signal to let her know I am what I say I am?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Red

Red held off calling for an ambassador because it was all just so stupid.

Elena’s tactic had been a surprise. And Red was begrudgingly impressed.

It could have backfired on Elena. It could have gone very much against her. It was probably against some law to make a false bomb accusation. Things could have snowballed if Elena had been traveling on a fake passport.

But they hadn’t. And Red was tucking this experience into her mental file of desperate escape plans.

Despite rescuing Elena twice last night, apparently Elena didn’t buy Red’s cover story of working for Kamal’s security.

As Red had navigated the new twist with Amsterdam airport security, her team, of course, knew what was happening. Even when handcuffed, she was able to tap the panic button on her phone, which opened her phone’s mic to her support. They had listened in from the point that the guards marched Red to their offices.

Color Code didn’t send anyone from State, so they must have wanted her to handle the situation on her own.

Red had been detained for hours now.

Hours.

She’d missed her plane, though she was assured that her luggage had made it through.

The guards found her suitcase and brought it into the interrogation room, where Red followed the instructions to open it and remove every article. Tampons be damned. Everythingwent through machines and scanners. Gloved professionals wiped down the contents with towelettes to find explosives residue. Dogs were sniffing through her stuff, and one of them locked onto her personal toy—which, granted from a dog’s point of view, probably looked like a throw toy—but, still, disconcerting as hell.I mean, what the actual heck?

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