They weren’t particularly good as it turned out—taken surreptitiously by his followers in bad light and from less-than-ideal angles. What they lacked in quality, though, they made up for in number. Enough that a good composite could be stitched together, he guessed.

“Where’s the information you were given on Ward’s compound?”

Auma retrieved a large envelope as the shouts of the people outside intensified. It sounded like Ward’s scientists weren’t bullshitting—they really did know how to turn out some high-grade product. Rapp ignored the din as he shuffled through the photos of Ward’s compound, schematics on his defenses, and detailed attack strategies written in English but sprinkled with grammatical errors common to native Arabic speakers. There was no question that these had been downloaded directly from the CIA’s secure database. By whom, though, was still a mystery.

Rapp had insisted that the light remain on and was sitting with his back against one of the cave walls. Gideon Auma was lying on a bed fifteen feet to his left, fully clothed, motionless, eyes closed. Given his dire situation and the party exploding outside, though, it was unlikely he was asleep. Screams, singing, and the shouts of people goading on hand-to-hand combatants bounced around the confined space with no sign of abating.

Gunshots, though, were conspicuously absent. Rapp had peeked outside earlier and discovered that all weapons had been caged up and were being guarded by two men who didn’t appear to have joined the festivities. Of course, the drug-frenzied mob could have easily overwhelmed them, but so far there had been no attempts to do so. Their prophet had undoubtedly laid out the safety protocols for these events long ago and the penalty for not following them would be sufficiently biblical as to discourage noncompliance. A rare stroke of luck in Rapp’s favor.

He lifted his head and looked into the confused eyes of the girl sitting in a similar position across from him. Auma had refused her desperate attempts to provide him sexual favors and she now looked even more terrified than when they’d arrived. It seemed likely that she was thinking that he’d become bored with her. That after barely making it into her teens, she was going to end up nailed to a cross or tossed to his men.

Rapp let his eyes go out of focus but remained alert. He hated everything about caves. The darkness, the smell, the thick, still air. While he had learned to control his claustrophobia, it was still there, scratching at the back of his mind like a cornered rat. If he had any aspiration for his death, it was to go down in an open desert beneath a blanket of stars. He had the next billion years to lie in a hole.