I can’t tell if they understand or if they’re just scared into silence. They stare at Bomber and me, wide-eyed and trembling.

I try the keys on the shackles around their ankles, but none seems to fit. Instead, I wriggle a rock out of the wall and lay their chain over top. Bomber smashes it with his rifle butt until the links part. I can’t remove the metal manacle around their ankles, but we can slip the chain out at least.

Putting my finger to my lips to remind the girls to stay quiet, we hustle them down the hall to the kitchen. Bomber peeks his head in first. He sneaks up behind the cook and hits him over the head with a serving platter, knocking the man onto one of the rice sacks Kambar brought just that afternoon.

I drop the girls down the refuse chute, one at a time. It smells fucking horrible.

Bomber wrinkles his nose.

“I don’t wanna go in there.”

I hear shouting up on the upper floor of the building. I think someone just found Nur’s body.

“Stay here and take your chances, then,” I tell him.

Holding up my rifle to keep it out of the muck, I drop down into the chute.

I slide down the dark, foul passageway, hoping against hope that it doesn’t narrow at any point. I can’t imagine anything worse than being trapped like a cork in a bottle in this disgusting place. Luckily, I slide all the way through.

“Look out!” I call ahead to the girls, not wanting to plow into any of them.

Now their clothes are filthy, streaked with grease and rotten food. I grab the hand of the smallest one, saying to the others, “Go!”

Bomber grabs two more by the hands and we run away across the barren ground, praying that the dark and the sparse scrub will conceal us. It’s good that the girls got so dirty—it helps mute the bright white of their socks and blouses.

I can hear the commotion back in the compound. The insurgents are running and shouting, searching the building for us, but lacking organization now that their boss is dead.

I’m trying to run as fast as I can, but the girls are slow. They’re limping along, barefoot and stiff from however long they were trapped in that room. They probably haven’t eaten.

“We’ve got to leave them,” Bomber barks at me. “We have to be at the pickup point in forty-one minutes or they’re gonna leave without us!”

It’s five miles away. There’s no chance these girls are going to be able to run at that pace. Not in their current state.

“We’re not leaving them,” I growl.

The soldiers are in chaos, but soon they’ll reorganize. They’ll head out with their Jeeps and their spotlights, trying to find us.

Crouching down, I motion for the biggest girl to climb on my back. I grab two more girls and set them on either hip.