Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
A labyrinth of back alleys in a North African capital.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SAY?", Winston thundered. Impressive, since he was gasping for air at the same time. One of the skills he had perfected in the years of working with Guerrero. And Chance, for that matter, who could drive him up the walls just as well.
"Dude, seriously, I didn't…."
"Well, you must have said something since there's an angry mob after us!"
They rounded a corner and stopped, both panting heavily. Time to consider their options.
It was early evening and the streets were slowly coming to life. Not good. As two foreigners they were easily recognizable and now, with more and more people coming out into the open, it was getting increasingly difficult to get away.
Shouting and screaming, not far off. The pounding of feet. Guerrero briefly wondered if he had maybe confused a certain crucial word with another that – uh – was quite a grave insult, but did it matter now? He made a mental note to brush up his Arabic once they were back home. There was this Egyptian professor who still owed him a favor…
Well, if they made it home, that was. The sounds of the mob were coming closer and they hurried on, ran down the street, passed a couple of market stalls, turned around another corner and…
…were faced with at least a hundred camels, resting on a huge square in the middle of the city.
Most of the animals were dozing in the shadows the surrounding buildings provided, some were munching lazily on thin, rather dry looking hay or straw someone had distributed in small heaps among them. A shepherd of some kind was nowhere in sight, but there was a small café on the far end of the square. He could probably be found there.
The camels were not particularly upset by the visitors. They were huge creatures that could kick hard and run fast. No need to make a fuss out of two small humans zig-zagging between them.
"Come on, dude, I've got an idea", Guerrero told Winston, yanked a wooden stake from the ground and produced his cigarette lighter.
"What are you… No! You are not going to cause a stampede!" Winston tried to take the lighter away from him, but of course Guerrero was faster. "In these small alleys the camels might trample each other to death! Can't we just take two and ride away with them? Escape into the desert?"
"First you give me a lecture on camel protection and then you suggest you're going to ride one? Talk about breaking the camel's back, dude…" Guerrero lit the stake.
The plan worked beautifully.
At the hint of smoke in the air the camels' ears began to twitch, their tails started swishing a little faster and the first nervous snorts could be heard from the fainter hearted ones. When Guerrero started waving the now brightly burning stake around, the animals jumped to their feet, making those deep rumbling noises that warned one another that grave danger was impending. Finally they started spinning, rearing, galloping panicky, the first one broke through the tacky fence that had kept them on the square, then the second one…
Guerrero had masterfully managed to herd them directly into the direction of the mob. Their pursuers definitely would have to face other problems now than chasing Winston and Guerrero.
Unfortunately Winston and Guerrero had another problem than getting away from the mob now, too. They were still watching the fleeing camels when suddenly the hard muzzles of machine guns were pressed into their backs.
The men who were holding the guns silently disarmed them, then nudged them forward, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of narrow alleys that formed the oldest part of the capital. Not even in the more stabile colonial and pre-colonial days had law enforcers set foot in here without reinforcement. Nowadays they called the army, did the need arise to carry out an investigation in this area, but given the rest of the country's state, that hadn't happened in a long time.
After a walk of about ten minutes they arrived at the top of a long and steep flight of stairs that led to what looked like a cellar door. Everything in Winston screamed against walking down that stair, but there was no other option: Guns pushing against their necks, they were all but shoved towards the cellar door.
"Next time we use an App!", Winston snarled at Guerrero as he bent down, hands held up in an uncomfortable position behind the back of his head, to fit through the door. He groaned as he noticed that the cellar's ceiling was just as low as the door. Great. The day was really looking up.
At the far end of the room a man with a stubbly beard was seated on something that looked like a carpeted pedestal, between heaps of pillows, smoking a sweetish smelling cigarillo with a turquoise band.
"Look", Winston addressed him for he was obviously the leader, "whatever my…partner…said, we are foreigners, we don't speak your language perfectly, it was a misunderstanding, nothing more…"
When the man showed no visible reaction, just kept smoking his cigarillo, he hesitatingly added: "You do speak our language, don't you?"
This earned him a dark stare and both of them kicks in the backs of their knees.
"Very diplomatic, Mr. Mediator", Guerrero hissed.
"You did know that you were asking about Ardeshir, didn't you?", the smoker said. "Questions about Ardeshir are forbidden. Punishment: Death. Tonight in the desert you'll die."
"Damnit Guerrero, you said you knew what you were doing!" Winston wondered if mentioning Ilsa's name would help somehow. She could provide ransom after all and money was quite the universal language.
"Wait, you're Guerrero?" Suddenly the smoker's interest was piqued. He got up and walked over to his captives. Guerrero, who, unlike Winston, could stand upright under the low ceiling, pulled himself up to his full height.
"Yes", he said, locking eyes with the smoker.
The man stared right back at him, face hard and unreadable. The only thing moving in the room was the gray smoke rising in lazy curves from his cigarillo.
"Brother!", he suddenly yelled, lunged forwards and pulled Guerrero into a tight embrace. "You, a couple of years ago, you saved my father's life during an ambush on a convoy of relief supplies in Northern Sahara, remember?"
Two minutes later they were sitting on the pedestal with him, sipping sweet tea and smoking cigarillos, too. "Now, what do you want to know about Ardeshir, my friend?", he asked.