Chapter Thirteen

Nomad

His back to the wall, hidden by the early-morning shadows, Nomad trained his binoculars on the horizon, scanning for any movement. T-Rex and Havoc ranged further out to keep from bunching into an easy target should things go south.

When Nomad signaled an all-clear, T-Rex raised his fist to his mouth and coughed three times.

A moment later, a rope ladder flew over the twenty-foot wall, placed exactly over the graffiti. T-Rex grabbed it before it smacked him in the face. He climbed in silence and once over the top, he signaled Nomad and Havoc to follow.

What limited gear they had chosen to bring with them was in a single backpack.

They left the Syrian cash in the car they abandoned at the designated GPS coordinate. Hopefully, it would land in the hands of the guy risking his safety and vehicle to accomplish the Poole mission.

It was best that they weren't carrying Syrian pounds in Lebanon.

Throwing a leg over the wall, Nomad took a moment, using the height to scan. He'd imagined that there would be a house and garden, a bit of an olive grove, and a dairy goat or two. But no, there was nothing and no one. Just dirt and a vehicle. "Who threw the rope over?" he asked.

"Cloud of dust from spinning tires was all I could see by the time I got over the top." T-Rex looked toward the van, which was unremarkable in every way imaginable. "Rory would come in handy right about now."

"If there are papers on the front seat like we were told," Havoc was making his way over to the passenger side, "I say we're golden." He put a gloved hand to his brow and looked in. "Good to go," he called.

The keys sat in the drink holder. There was a file with papers. On the second-row bench, shopping bags stamped with golden clothing store logos lined up in a neat row.

"I'm about starved," Havoc said, pulling out a bag and handing it off to T-Rex.

"Nothing new there." T-Rex dragged a pair of desert tactical pants out, held them to his waist, and then handed them to Havoc. "I hope like hell these are for you. What do you want to do about eats?"

Havoc dragged another bag over and handed it to Nomad. "Remi's been working with you on your accent, right T-Rex? Just go in and act like a local and grab us something."

"If he walks in and just glowers at anyone who wants to talk to him, I think they'll shut up," Nomad said, opening another bag. "Here we go. Extra longs, these are for us." Nomad looked over to Havoc. "Some bread and cheese would be easy."

"And a bottle of wine, we can have a romantic picnic in the mountains." Havoc opened a third bag. "Hey, hey, hey! Look what I found. Someone's taking good care of us!"

"What's there?" T- Rex asked, standing on the toes of his boots as he stripped down to his boxers.

"Let's see. The bread and cheese Nomad wanted. Olives … dolma, a bag of tomatoes. Another of dates. What is this? Anyone know what this is?" Havoc pulled the lid off a plastic container.

"Cherries with herbs." Nomad dragged his new pants up his leg.

Havoc used a plastic spork to shovel up a bite. He closed his eyes as he chewed. "Oh, man, wow. Hey, that's good."

Nomad looked up from clasping his belt. "Are you getting a little teary-eyed, Havoc?"

"I always do around food ever since that mission in Kyrgyzstan."

"That or you miss your mom's pot roast," T-Rex said. " I miss your mom's pot roast."

"Yup. Always." Havoc tucked the food back in the bag and worked on changing his own clothes. They kept their boots. There were new ones, but new hurt. And new stood out as unauthentic.

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.

Then Nomad picked it up and looked inside.

The banded stacks of Lebanese pounds had to be worth thousands of dollars.

Nomad slid that strap over his arm along with his other pack.

The other thing that had caught his eye was the table leaning on top of the debris turned to the side, exposing the man with the blue suit. Though the top and sides of the heavy wooden table were destroyed, the underside had withstood and was in pretty good shape. It seemed to have shielded the suited man's head and chest, but that didn't make him any less dead.

He was definitely in decomp.

Some flies were in the area, but with the cold desert night temperatures and the steady breeze, this scene was in better shape than he'd expected.

T-Rex moved over to Nomad's side.

Nomad pointed down at the man in the robes. "I know this guy. That's Imraan el-Jafri." Nomad used the man's sleeve to lift his hand and look at his fingers. "Might be able to get a print."

"On it," T-Rex said, moving forward. "Get photos. What was he known for?"

"Contraband funded terror activity. I thought he'd met his maker. I guess I was wrong."

"You're sure of his identification?" Using a gloved hand, T-Rex pressed el-Jafri's fingers one at a time onto the phone screen to be read by the Intelligence app.

"See the Big Dipper?" Nomad pointed to the man's brow. "How many guys have eyebrows like his and a big dipper of moles perfectly positioned to frame his eye?" Nomad crouched to get a picture of the left side of the man's face. "He worked with ISIS to move their goods along trade routes to the Mediterranean for the European market."

"A true believer?" T-Rex asked.

"My take was that it was financial, plus they offered him a consistently refreshed choice of slave women. Girls. He preferred girls. May he rot in hell." Nomad snapped pictures of the right side of el-Jafri's face.

"I have what I need." T-Rex swiped his phone down his pants leg. "What have you got in that bag?"

"Looks like an asset payout." Nomad pointed to the man in the blue suit. "He's not going to be spending it now."

"Hopeful sign. If he was paid, maybe Red was already gone." From his squatted position, T-Rex looked over to where Havoc clambered over debris toward the front of the building.

"Nothing back here. The bathroom and kitchen were destroyed but survivable. The back door goes out to an enclosed yard with an open gate door. It's where they dump their trash. Unless she was upstairs—and upstairs doesn't look affected. No sign of her here?" He glanced around.

"If she's in here, it's going to take heavy equipment to find her." Nomad's gut clenched.

"After we check the hotel up the street," Havoc moved toward the sidewalk, "we can start down the list of hospitals where they've sent the wounded. When the crew starts putting the victims in body bags, we can check them."

"The guard's signing for us to clear out." T-Rex raised a hand, then brought it to his chest to signal gratitude, and the team moved clear of the bombsite. "Let's get back to the vehicle and make our way over to her hotel. Look for a back exit we can avail ourselves of."

Havoc took the black bag from Nomad and looked in, letting out a whistle under his breath. "Whatever information she was given must have been significant." He opened the van door and threw the money bag in before sliding the door shut with the tiniest click.

They continued up the street, running parallel to the main drag.

"I mean, that's a ton of money," Havoc said, "Maybe not life-changing, but it certainly would be life-enhancing. What do you think he was handing her? Could that be part of the reason she disappeared?"

"My guess is she didn't know what she was getting and had a bag to mete out the appropriate payment." As a Green Beret, Nomad had been involved in similar scenarios.

T-Rex turned his head, keeping an eye on the surroundings as they moved. "Fact is, we don't know that it had any connection to Red."

"Are you kidding me?" Nomad pulled his brow together. "I found it at the pinned location. It was hers. And from here, Damascus is only an hour away," Nomad reminded them. "Poole's farm host is even closer."

"But was it a payment for Poole?" T- Rex asked, lengthening his stride. "That time frame's too short. When this happened, we were getting a phone call to head out. She would have been involved with this event at the same time we were getting rerouted."

"The farmhouse is waking up now and checking on him," Havoc said, turning into the alley.

"He's an American; they probably think he's tired, so let him sleep in." T-Rex stopped and looked at the building in front of them. "Here it is, room six, second floor. Let's go knock on the door."

The men walked right in the side door.

Nomad noted that Red could have come and gone from the back staircase without having to smile and be pleasant to the front desk.

The tradecraft was good. This hotel was clean but run down. The kind of setup where they'd have a sink and a toilet. Visitors would go to a hammam—a public bathhouse—to get cleaned up. There would be none of the modern amenities that the hotel up the street would have. No one would look for a Westerner here.

A huge step down in quality of stay. It would be tough to be sick in a place like this.

Not seeking relief from air conditioning and a shower would take fortitude.

Nomad knocked and then put his ear to the door lest someone mutter or moan in response. But the only thing he heard was the drip, drip of a leaky faucet.

The lock used an old-fashioned brass key. Their pickpocket tools weren't going to work here. After examining the situation, the men decided that they weren't getting into that room by kicking down the door, especially if Red had put her locking systems in place. They'd need a C4 blast, which was a no-go.

"Ideas?" T-Rex asked.

"Sob story to the front desk?" Havoc suggested. "We could always use some of the cash from the money bag. It's just sitting there in the van."

"They were adamant about preserving her cover. We need to keep our faces separate from her."

"Look in the window?" Havoc asked. "Maybe there's a ladder?"

"That might be wishful thinking," Nomad said, "but why not come down from above?"

"I'll go see if I can't rent the room above hers." T-Rex went down the outside stairs so he could enter through the front door.

Havoc and Nomad waited in the hallway.

Standing there, Nomad knew Red was inside. Knew it . And he knew it was for him to get to her and save her.

Hang in there, Red. I'm coming.