Chapter Four

Red

With her hand pressed against the electrical panel and her head resting on her upper arm, Red realized she was on an elevator when suddenly, the downward momentum stopped with a thump as the car settled.

She blinked as she lifted her gaze, watching the door slide open.

The elevator rumble must have been just enough to coax her brain into Neverland. Hadn't this been her same reaction on the way up?

Time had jumped forward, and Red had no recollection of exiting from her hotel room, shutting the door, or locking it. She tried to believe that muscle memory meant that she'd done everything as it should have been.

As the doors slid wide, Red's hand jerked to her shoulder as a sudden jolt of adrenaline shot shock waves through her system. She grabbed the backpack to assure herself that the strap from the black bag full of asset funds came with her for the ride. She lifted it just enough to assess the weight, checking that all seemed as it should be.

It was fine.

She was fine.

Red stepped into the hallway, spreading her arms wide as the walls whirled in her vision like some kind of funhouse illusion.

These sensations were recognizable. She'd learned during her time at The Farm that if her body ran on autopilot, her consistent application of tradecraft over the years would manifest in steering her zombie-like self through whatever maze presented.

Conversely, it was also essential to change everything up all the time so that her movements weren't predictable to anyone who might be watching.

Which strategy was best?

One never knew until one knew.

She touched the wall to reorient.

To her left, the door stood open to the back alley. The kitchen waste, decomposing in the hot sun, struck her nostrils, and it just seemed mean, like a kick when she was already down. Waves of nausea and cramps hit her again.

The action plan: Get to the table, drop the bag in Moussa's lap, turn toward where the ten-o'clock hand would point, find the front door, find a car—probably any car would help her under these circumstances—ask for the hospital.

Yes, that had to come out of her mouth first in Arabic, then French. H?pital. H?pital. H?pital. She practiced as she took a step forward, only to stumble sideways with a cramp.

Appendicitis?

She'd rather not die of something that stupidly banal. She'd much rather go out in some legacy-making shitstorm.

Not shitstorm! She shouldn't have thought that.

Pressing off the wall, she changed her plan.

Women's toilet.

She needed to sit again and rest in private.

Yes, sitting and panting were very high on her needs pyramid.

Red realized she was on the very lowest rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Then, she'd splash cold water on her face before she made for the front door.

No! Moussa came before the door, drop the bag in his lap, then the front door. Say h?pital, then probably the good people from this area would take care of the rest.

"I'd rather be back in SERE training," she muttered. "I could tap out. And there would be relief." Gripping her stomach, Red rolled a shoulder against the women's room door, slammed her way into the stall, reaching for her belt and then her zipper. She pushed her pants down and sat, closing her eyes and tipping her head back, not knowing how to handle her predicament.

Red once again went through the last few days. And once again she remembered being in that Beirut restaurant with the Russian businessmen.

Was it possible they'd figured out that she was a CIA officer?

Was she brushing too close to one of their operations?

They could have dropped something into her food. She could be poisoned.

Novichok? Polonium?

Yeah, not only did she not have those kinds of symptoms, but they wouldn't risk using something like that on her.

If the Russians wanted to take her out of the game, they could stage a mugging gone wrong and call it a day.

Novichok, for Heaven's sake. "Get yourself together."

She'd been gone from the table way too long.

Anxiety-filled, Moussa would be panicking. He'd think she took the information and disappeared without paying him. He'd think he'd risked his safety and his family for nothing. She could imagine him twiddling his fork in his fingers, rubbing sweaty palms down his thighs, looking around furtively. He'd remember this distress and weigh it against his desire to feed her more intelligence.

For better or for worse, the pills were doing the job, and she sat there without relief. "Move forward," she muttered under her breath. "Moussa, then the hospital. Up we go." Red forced herself to stand. She tugged her panties back into place and was reaching for her pants when the ground beneath her shook her off her feet. She tumbled into the door and was flung back against the toilet bowl.

She would have thought this was her own balance issue if it weren't for the roar of a blast.

Red had been near enough explosions that her body knew how best to survive, and she dropped down until her cheek was on the colorful floor tiles.

The outer door to the bathroom slammed open with a blast concussion that toppled the metal partition of her toilet stall into a triangle over her head, then crumpled downward as a portion of ceiling plaster collapsed on top.

With her hands packaging her head, Red wrapped herself around the toilet so the ceramic structure would take the brunt of any further building collapse, perhaps guarding her chest from being compressed under the weight. She'd survived by hugging a toilet before. There were far worse places to be. This was fine, she told herself. She was fine.

After a moment, the building materials seemed to settle, and there was stillness.

She heard nothing past the ringing in her ears and muffled chaos.

Red blinked, feeling the heaviness of the dust weighing on her lashes and caking her skin.

Stay calm. Act fast. The mantra wiggled her lips with the repetitions.

She had labeled the situation— explosion . Possible suicide vest? Possible gas from the kitchen?

She'd figure that out later.

What was her priority?

Safe distance.

No! It was Moussa!

Red crawled forward then pushed herself upright, dragging her pants into place, buttoning the top button, leaving them unzipped and unbelted. Red tapped her shoulder to make sure her pack was still in place. Then she tapped her thigh to assure herself that her phone was still with her.

She forced herself to carefully place her feet amongst the sharp edges.

Agony forgotten, masked by adrenaline surging from a system that clearly read this situation as life-or-death, Red made her way painstakingly toward the tearoom, climbing over the ceiling tiles, dodging the electrical wires that sparked and snapped, Red's brain was hard focused and astonishingly clear.

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 identify why he 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 a thwab —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 and very 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.

She pulled her phone from her pocket, and under the cloud of dust, she surreptitiously captured his fingerprints in her app then took pictures of what there was to photograph. She'd look at them later and probably hand them off to one of the Langley teams, which spent their time building understandings of connections. Maybe he was a known entity. She'd send the pictures of Moussa as well. Though, Red didn't like sending people pictures like this or asking them to focus on the details. There was no framing the target images without capturing severed and charred body parts.

Red couldn't imagine what studying them did to someone's mental health.

With her back to the street, Red touched the man's arm that snaked under his body. Without rolling him, she followed his sleeve under the weight of his unsupported chest. He gripped a phone. She dragged it out from under him, swiped it open, and held the phone to his face, angling it down so the software could register his biometrics, his eyelids half open in death. Once she had access, Red changed the security code and added her own facial recognition information to maintain access, then tucked it into one of her tactical pockets.

People began to move into view, forming the ring she had predicted.

With the dust settling, they'd remember someone taking pictures and patting pockets instead of trying to help.

Crouch walking closer to Moussa, Red thrust her weight into her heels and heaved the table top up with enough of an angle that she could roll it to the side. The thick wood tabletop was heavier than expected—or she was weaker than she was used to.

For Moussa's sake, Red didn't know what to hope for as she pressed the table away—not that her hopes had any power here. If he had survived, his life would be forever changed.

Look at this place. Look where he is. Look how he's lying.

Blinking down, Red saw that Moussa's face was recognizable. His torso, where his ribs protected vital organs, seemed fine, and his white shirt was still very white.

But he was very clearly dead.

Dead.

Of course, he was.

And she had only survived because she had the shits.

Wasn't that a strange twist of fate?