Chapter Twelve

Nomad

"Hey, Ty, hand me all the money under Rory's vest. We'll take it with us in case we need to bribe our way out of a situation." T-Rex reached out his hand and waited for Ty to pass the stacks of Syrian pounds. He shoved them into his thigh pocket. "All right. You three need to get Poole out of here. I don't know if they'll pop the sub up without the cover of darkness, and his meds aren't going to last much longer."

They waited to ensure their team got safely over the horizon, then returned to the car. "Havoc, you're driving."

Havoc slid into the driver's seat, pulled the night vision apparatus into place, and adjusted the straps on his head. T-Rex sat shotgun, and Nomad put the back seats down and climbed into the hatch where he could find more room for his legs without sitting like a frog on a lily pad.

T-Rex pointed. "Head back down the road and follow it around to the east. As they got underway, T-Rex opened his phone and dimmed the light. "Listen up – this is information on where we're going in. We're headed to the town of Tal Afaya in eastern Lebanon. It sits at the bottom foothills of the eastern mountains. That'll be good if we have to tuck ourselves away. The town is a jumping-off point for the Lebanese and Syrian borders. If we had taken the western road last night instead of our trek to Poole, we would have been to the town in less than an hour."

"Wow, close. Isn't that interesting?" Nomad asked.

"Put that thought on the back burner. Let me get through this data. All right, we're looking at around twenty thousand people. So that's not an insignificant number. The town is populated with U.S., Canadian, and French immigrants. But they're rooted here now. Looks-wise, we shouldn't have trouble fitting in. We'll see what the embassy does about our clothes. Lastly, it's not an industrial or tourist town. This is agricultural."

"Johnna Red. This is a member of Color Code, right? Grey's team? And this is the same Grey that sent us after Poole?" Nomad asked T-Rex.

"Same."

"And now we're looking for her only an hour away?" Nomad asked.

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"Okay, how about this," Havoc said. "We don't know what Red was doing on the Syrian border. But it's possible she wasn't in the bombing, and she was taken hostage. She might have tipped her hand as a field officer, or it's also possible that someone realized she was American and wanted a payday."

"Kidnapped." T-Rex's voice was flat.

Yeah, that was a scenario that no one wanted to have played out.

"You know what happens in the moments after an attack," Havoc said. "All hell lets loose. Someone grabs a woman, and she starts screaming. She looks like every other screaming woman. If she's not hurt, then the guy is dragging her away because he doesn't want her diving for a dead relative. No one is paying attention to that."

"In that case, they wouldn't have to suspect she was American. They could just see an opportunity for a slave. If she doesn't want to expose her skills, she might have to go along with the scenario to get to a place where she could free herself without blowing her cover."

"It would be nice to know what her cover is." Nomad leaned over the front seat,

"We have her fingerprints; what more do we need?" T-Rex laughed.

"So I take it you haven't worked an op with her before." Nomad settled back in the space, trying to figure out where to put his legs.

"I haven't crossed paths with her, no." T-Rex opened his phone's album. "But we have a photo of a hat."

"She has a chin," Havoc said. "Neck. Shoulders. Everything where it belongs."

"Lips," Nomad said.

Havoc turned his head, then focused back on the road. "Ah, but are they uniquely recognizable lips?"

"When I was in Afghanistan," Nomad ventured, "we trained some locals who were working for one of the CIA's Numbers Group, called Double Zero. Is this the same kind of thing as Color Code? Colors and Numbers…"

"Different character to those two groups," T-Rex said. "Color Code is more like you."

"How so?" Nomad asked.

"Color Code is polished," Havoc said. "A lot of their work involves conflict relics and the like. So we're talking about brushing up against a population of people with money to burn. Working in that world, Color Code has to fit in. High society, fine wine, five different forks at their table setting, seven different glasses. I'd stick out like a sore thumb. With your background growing up in the embassies, you'd call it Wednesday dinner."

"Interesting." Nomad flipped onto his back and scooted down to pillow his head on his laced fingers, bending his knees and planting his feet. "And yet there she was in a rat hole hotel room on the Syrian border, dodging terrorist car bombers."

"Yeah, I can't tell you what all they do," Havoc said. "But I can tell you that Grey is part of Echo legend."

Nomad lifted his chin to get Havoc in his view. "I was promised this story."

"Yup. Ready for some shit?" Havoc's grin was wide.

"I'm ready for some shit."

"We take off from an Iraqi FOB—" Havoc used the acronym for forward operating base. "And we're dividing into two groups to jump onto helicopters – Blackhawk and a Little Bird. Ty, T-Rex, and I are on the Little Bird. Our pilot flies us over the border into Syria. Broad daylight. Why risk it? We got word that Grey was captured and, like Red, what's between his ears cannot be pried loose under any circumstances. We save him or bless him with a triple tap, but the enemy would not get a chance to beat names and means out of him."

"Where was he being held?"

"Prison." T-Rex grinned.

"Prison ..." Nomad let the word drift off.

"Yup. fifth floor," T-Rex said, "eleventh window from the south corner."

"Keep going."

"The pilot on the Blackhawk hangs back," Havoc said. "The Little Bird—D-Day Rochambeau, a Night Stalker and—what was the co-pilot's name?"

"Nick of Time," T-Rex said.

"Yeah, Nick of Time. So D-Day flies her bird straight down the middle of Main Street.

"Broad daylight," T-Rex said. "She has balls of steel."

"Nick is trying to direct her," Havoc said. "It's hard to see with all the dust from the wash."

"I can imagine." Nomad actually couldn't imagine. That image was nuts.

"Someone came out of their shop," T-Rex said, "and was under us shooting."

"Where was D-Day trying to drop you?" Nomad asked.

"She wasn't." T-Rex skated a hand out to approximate the movement of the helicopter. "She flew us to his window."

"The prison window?"

"Yup, fifth-floor eleventh window. She flew us right up like we were ordering a hamburger at the drive-through," Havoc said. "We looked in the window and saw a guy. Nick holds up the photo for comparison and yells, ‘We've got him!' It was Grey. We pushed a ladder out to make a bridge from the heli to the sill."

"What?" Nomad barked a laugh.

"Swear on my grandfather's grave," Havoc held up a hand. "We stuck a ladder out the door and rested it on the window ledge. I was the lightest guy, so I went out. There's backwash everywhere, filling my lungs, sandblasting my goggles. There's a guy with a gun underneath me who fired his rounds, then loaded up and fired some more. Ty and T-Rex held down my legs because the windowsill was only a couple of inches wide. The ladder is rubbing and screeching against the rock. D-Day held us steady while I used the plasma cutter to slice through the bars. And I mean, one little twitch of her finger and we would have crashed and burned. There were buildings just feet away from her blades."

"Shit."

"So I'm through the bars, I broke the glass. Grey is standing there with the wildest look on his face. He had to think this was the acid trip to end all acid trips. I mean, who would believe that shit? I grabbed Grey, then Ty and T-Rex dragged both of us back onto the helicopter."

"Easy day," Nomad was still grinning. The adrenaline rush had to have been crazy.

"Not so easy. The shithead beneath us shot a hole into the fuel tank, so things got a little hairy from there. We set down. And we weren't alone."

"Grey was on the phone, so I guess you turned the fighters around?"

"In the end," T-Rex said. "Grey is alive and well, working to keep America safe by finding and stopping terror funding."

That whole thing of getting dragged out of the prison from a helicopter flying down the street? That was some wicked badassery performed by all. Man, Nomad would have loved to have been part of that mission. That would have been a story to tell his grandchildren when he was sitting in his wheelchair, eating mush with a bib tied under his chin. "So, honestly, you don't think it's a great big coincidence that we went into Syria after Poole, and she's working on the border?"

"I seriously doubt it," T-Rex said. "Hand me that water, will yah?"

Nomad uncapped the bottle and handed it forward.

After a swig, T-Rex added. "From what I know of Red—and these are things I picked up working with John Grey and John Green, Red's focus is on finding the western millionaires that buy conflict relics, thereby funding ISIS at the height of the Syrian war. Some of that money went into Afghanistan. But the relics that were being sold came mostly out of Iraq and Syria."

"Okay, that's how she rubs elbows with social circles."

"Rumint—" Havoc used the term for rumor-intelligence "—says that her father was from a royal family, and he worked for the American State Department."

"No royal blood in my family. But if she's about my age, then maybe I know her. Does the rumint place her in any particular location? Are we talking European royalty?"

"No. Jordan? Syrian, maybe?" Havoc shrugged.

"Grain of salt," T-Rex said slowly. "And don't spread rumint about Middle Eastern royalty around Ty."

"There's a story there?" Nomad asked.

"Not mine to tell, brother," T-Rex said. "But yeah, from what I heard Grey and Green saying, with Red's background, she could be your sister."

"I don't think so," Nomad said, "at least not from the shape of her lips and chin."

"We need a better photograph." Havoc reached up to adjust the lenses on his night vision.

T-Rex swiped to bring up the GPS map. "We're getting close to the turn, Havoc. I'll let you know. Okay, let's talk this through. You're Red; what would you do?"

"If I was in the field, hurt and disoriented," Nomad said, trying to imagine a polished socialite moving through this kind of situation. And he couldn't. "I'd go to ground until I could figure out how to reach out to my team."

"Unless you had a gaping wound," Havoc said. "Is this where I turn?"

"Almost there." T-Rex was focused on the phone. The men were silent until T-Rex said. "Okay, here."

"Depends on how gaping," Nomad said. "I carry a tube of bonding glue. Wash it out, stick it back together.

"The intel file says that Red's been sick and not containing the illness with the normal meds they carry." T- Rex pointed out his window. "And turn again here." He waited for Havoc to get on the new road. "It's straight on. So in about thirty minutes, you can start looking for a nice little space to tuck us into so we can get some shut-eye."

"Wilco."

"No more information about the illness?" Nomad asked. "This is before the bombing."

"About the same time," T-Rex said. "Grey noted that when they were on a video call, Red didn't turn on her camera to show her face."

"Did she think that if they saw that she was in rough shape, they'd make her stand down, and whatever she was up to wouldn't get covered?"

"If that's true," Havoc said, "she must have been latched onto something important.

She might know of a local doctor who would let her slip in after hours. That might be where she's holed up."

"Great, how do you suggest we find this local doctor?" Nomad asked.

"Wouldn't all the doctors be at the hospital dealing with the mass casualty event?" Havoc asked.

"Havoc, pull behind that hill. I see headlights coming up. If we get stopped," T-Rex said, "we have the bribe money. But let's try to talk our way out of this."

"If they ask about the night vision, I'll offer it to them as a gift." Havoc grinned. "And say that we wanted to go fishing, but our lights would scare away the fish."

"Yeah, fishing. That might work better if we had some poles or tackle and weren't heading in the wrong direction for finding water." Nomad had his binoculars trained on the truck. "AKs," Nomad whispered so they could focus on any exterior noises. "I'm counting seven in the back.

The men held their breath as an open-bed truck rumbled by.

Once the taillight moved over the next berm, T-Rex lassoed a finger in the air. "Let's move. The sky is brightening up. I want to be within shouting distance of that wall and hunkered down until our rally time."