Juba had no time for coaching. He snatched up the man’s weapon, a short-barreled semi-automatic shotgun, pivoted, throwing its bolt even as he lifted it to his shoulder, and stormed down the hall. Another figure, in the full animation of urgency, appeared, Glock in hand. But he was way behind the action curve, and Juba put what had to be six gallons of buckshot into his center chest, shredding it, and him, lifting him off his feet, where he bounced against the doorframe and went to the floor like a shock of wheat.

The ear-stabbing blast of the gun, and the acrid smell of burnt powder, snapped Jared free of his trance, but also set his ears to ringing like all the alarms in the world. Following Juba, he raced down the hallway, while struggling to get his hoodie wrapped around his skull, and he ended up looking more like a bedraggled mummy than Juba, whose wrapping was tight and efficient.

Juba reached the doorway out of which the man had come. Instead of bursting through it, he went prone and snaked around it low. Whoever was in there expected no such move; for his misinterpretation, he got his own six gallons of buckshot in the knee. He went down, tried to rise on his one good leg, and Juba sent buckshot in an angry cloud into his genitals. Juba rose, strode in, and Jared heard the headshot.

But he became aware of scurrying upstairs. He had paused halfway down the hall at the foot of the stairway.

“Stop!” he screamed in English. “If you come down, we’ll kill you. Stay upstairs and hide until we’re gone.”

But suddenly a large woman materialized at the head of the stairs, her face bulging out with fury, and she came leaping down the stairs at Jared. She was immense and full of adrenaline. He swallowed as she launched from five steps up and filled the sky like a crashing dirigible, huge enough to squash him. But some instinct caused his legs to spring, and he jumped to the right. She thundered past and landed with what sounded like meat smashing into wood at three hundred miles an hour. He knew if she got her hands on him, it was all over, so his cowardice poked him into action, and he kicked her, hard, in the face. And then he kicked her again.

She went prone, but was still breathing and struggling to move, rolling over like a large farm animal caught in the muck, and, the next thing he knew, he was using her face as a trampoline—up, down, up, down. And then Juba pulled him back.

“Good,” Juba said, “you are warrior now. Allahu Akbar! God is great! Now, come on, we have to get the fuck out of here.”