They burst inside. It was dim inside the building, and motes of thick dust and feathers hung in the air. Weak light streamed down from high, narrow windows at the top of the building. Someone or something slid through a hole in the ground just as they came in. Small hands came up and slid a wooden board over the hole. The board was a cut-out of the wooden floor in an area where chickens would normally be fed their grain. Scattered piles of grain still lay on the floor.

When the board was back in place, it was hard to see where the hole had just been.

Luke, Ed, and two SAS men moved to the spot.

Ed reached down, pulled up the board, and darted backward with it.

The SAS guys stepped up, rifles trained down the hole, laser sights on, headlamps shining brightly.

Luke stepped up with them, hand raised.

“Wait!” he shouted. “Steady! Steady!”

In the darkness down at the bottom of the hole, two small children, a boy and a girl, were crouched, huddled together.

“Don’t shoot.”

* * *

“What is he saying?” Luke said.

A young SAS guy was translating the boy’s Arabic. The SAS guy had removed his balaclava, helmet, and goggles, revealing a fresh-faced, blond-haired kid with pale blue eyes and fat cheeks. Hardly the fearsome storm trooper that the helmet and mask made him appear.

The boy, perhaps twelve years old, was being strong. The girl, maybe half that age, had given up entirely. She was being held by another SAS guy with his helmet off, hugging him tightly, pressing her face into his chest.

“He says a group of men came just before sunrise. They immediately set about killing everyone. They launched rockets at the houses, and shot down anyone who came out. There are more bodies down by the river of people who tried to escape out the back way. The elder imam, Muhammad al-Barak, was taken from the main house, forced to his knees, and shot in the head. The boy and his little sister had been trained to hide beneath the chicken coop if anything like this ever happened, and that’s what they did. They made it there without being seen. When he heard the helicopters, he climbed out to see what was happening, and that’s when we found him.”

Luke was relaying the news to Trudy and Swann over a satellite phone. He winced at the news of al-Barak. The old man who had come to thank him and Ed personally had met a bad end. It was the kind of thing that happened all too often around here.

“Does he have any idea who the men were?”

The SAS guy said something to the kid in Arabic.

The kid nodded, his dark eyes hollow and empty. He said something and pointed to the north. He continued speaking for several seconds.