The desert floor was rough and insubstantial in the half-light. We filed along after the rat-catcher as though we were adrift in some refractive, underwater dimension. Not a word was said, but only Yussuf was silent. Abdul’s shotgun slapped loudly against his sweaty shoulder whenever he lost his footing, which was often. Qazwini snorted like a beast of burden, weighed down by his arsenal, and bellowed, absolute in his conviction that if he bellowed loud enough the raiders would hear him, and in a frenzy of fear return Val to us, roll over, and beg his forgiveness. I tripped and sprawled with a great deal of noise, which was lost, along with the din created by Qazwini and Abdul, in the tidal winds wailing and flailing the wasteland. Outcrops had the unnerving habit of taking on the guise of crippled giants with claws clutching at me while I, their not so nimble prey, floundered to elude them.

Yussuf led us on, his long body under the Pooh blanket bent over the trail, his nose inches from the ground, scarcely breathing.

“Watch out for snakes,” Abdul said. “This place is full of snakes.”

Don’t think about them, it can only impair your feeble efficiency, I told myself. My mind swung back to Valerie. I felt she was threatened not only by the men who had snatched her, a reinforced regiment, for all I knew, but by her dubious rescuers as well. Yussuf had only his sword and my flashlight; he was defenseless against firearms. With Grady’s .38, I couldn’t hit water if I fell out of a boat. What worried me most was the General and his bullets. Once he started firing, Val would be vulnerable even if she were thirty feet from his target. The same was true of Abdul’s scattershot.

The moon came up, throwing a white radiance over the sandscape. Yussuf hesitated on the trail, fussing, sniffing, sweeping the beam of the torch in front of us like a windshield wiper, while we waited, as we would for a trusted bloodhound. Qazwini made the most of the delay, peeing where he stood, guiding the spray with one hand, the other cocking and uncocking his pistol. Abdul leaned against a tree and I collapsed where I was, beside a rock, among the snakes and God knows what else. I knew if I closed my eyes, the chances of opening them ever again were pretty slim; I resolved not to shut them at all. Then Abdul was shaking me roughly. “Wake up,” he said, “you’ve been screaming in your sleep.”

Yussuf straightened up; he had found tracks. He started off again, chewing on a strip of rat jerky. We fell in behind him. I glanced at the luminous hands of my watch: nine fifteen. “How long was I sleeping?” I asked Abdul.

“About five minutes.”

Yussuf pulled up short and stood motionless.

“Lose the track again?” Abdul asked.