Time is now 1330. Heat is beyond my capacity to describe. I’m hunkering with Rachel in the shade under Ben-David’s deuce-and-a-half. We have left the bypass road and turned onto a bypass-of-the-bypass. Unpaved, unmarked. I can’t find it on any map or on my phone. The Jordan Valley desert—the Ghor—sprawls below us on the right. Temperature down there must be 150. Across the entire expanse, which is barren as a floor of linoleum, heat lightning crackles—scores of strikes every minute across a vista of what seems like at least thirty miles.

West, the grade descends through rugged hill country to the coastal plain and the Mediterranean. The result along the summit is an east-to-west gale like a furnace blast. Wind-driven sand and gravel howl up from the desert floor with the force of an industrial abrader. Did I mention it was hot? Dana, with her head wrapped in a checkered kefiyyeh, ducks into the shade under the truck.

When she sees Rachel she stiffens.

DANA

You still here?

RACHEL

Fuck you.

DANA

Tell us something. You have to tell us something.

RACHEL

About what?

DANA

Him.

Dana wears a pistol on one hip. She carries her Uzi on a sling over her shoulder.

DANA

What are we up against? Do we have a chance? Will our tunnel-busters do anything?

RACHEL

What am I, a weapons expert?

DANA

You’re why we’re here. You’re the cause of all this.

Manning appears, kneeling on the windward side. He has to hang on to the flank of the truck, wearing gloves now, to keep from getting blown over.

He tells us the trucks are ready.

We’re moving out.

An hour later, in a gale that has only increased in fury, our convoy grinds to another halt, this time on a knife-edge crest beneath a limestone crag.

“Goats!” comes the squawking voice and image—Dana’s—from the Humvee #1 tablet screen on our truck’s console. Through the chalky windshield I can make out a flock of hundreds, driven by Bedouin herders, shambling in the gale along the road crest.

Giora and Ben-David are waving from ahead. The convoy lumbers off the road into a bulldozed cutout on the slope beneath the crag.

Shelter.

Temperature drops immediately to about 110. Crazy as it sounds, this feels cool.

Giora, Hemi, and the soldiers pile out and scramble to top off their radiators, check their loads, and tighten down all lashings. Dana dismounts from the lead Humvee and comes back to us.

DANA

(to all)

Hydrate! I mean it. Get some water in you!

Rachel clomps past me with an odd expression. She stalks toward the front of the column. When I call to her, she doesn’t answer. I chase her.

Some kind of commotion has broken out ahead. I see Ben-David’s chest and shoulders above the milling goats. Two Bedouins in robes are speaking to him in an agitated state. Manning crosses toward them.