CHAPTER FIFTY
11:15 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (6:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Hassan I Airport
Laayoune, Western Sahara
Morocco
The water along the Moroccan coastline had been sucked out to sea. It still hadn’t come back yet. People, many carrying flashlights, walked around on the seafloor half a mile out from the beach.
The four-seat Spanish Coast Guard chopper flew in low over the city of Laayoune, a sprawling, low-slung outpost bisected by a wide river. Streetlights lit up the urban grid, sparse traffic moving along empty streets. The lights of distant settlements twinkled at the far edges of the city.
“Even the river looks dry,” Ed Newsam said. “That’s amazing.”
“The river is always dry,” the chopper pilot said in English. “This is the Sahara.”
Ed nodded. “Ah.”
Luke sat in t
