Ahmet came out of the man’s pocket with a fold-out knife. He opened the blade and slid it under the leather strap that held her left hand. He sawed at it, and within a few seconds, the knife cut through, popping out away from her body. Then he did the same with the right wrist.

She put her hands on her wrists, getting the feeling of freedom into them. The ghost sensation of the tight leather straps was still there somehow.

Ahmet looked at her. He took her face in his hands.

“Run,” he said. “Run west.”

* * *

“The shooting has started.”

Ed Newsam had spoken. He was crouched near the open bay door of the Little Bird, peering out into the gloom with a pair of high-powered binoculars. The chopper banked hard right, flying eastward high above the ridgeline of the Sinjar Mountains. Behind him, the body of Greg Welch lay where he had zipped it into a bag and fastened it to sturdy metal eye hooks in the flooring.

Luke was on the radio.

“Swann? Swann, come on!”

The radio crackled.

“The signal went dead, Luke. That’s it. I don’t think it’s coming back. They must have figured out the satellite phone attracted us, and they destroyed it.”

Luke looked up and shook his head. They had gotten here five minutes ago. They had gone straight to the area where the phone seemed to be, and right away they had spotted militia activity. The militia had spotted them, too. They were based in the highest reaches of the mountains. Their location was along a sharp ridgeline, a dragon spine of jumbled rocks. There was nowhere to even consider landing. And if they dropped altitude, they were going to catch hell from militia guns.

This was a Little Bird. It was fast and as maneuverable as choppers came. It could land in the tightest spots. But it couldn’t land on a razor’s edge while taking enemy fire.

“Where was the signal again when it went dead?” Luke said.

“I told you. I plotted the location on a satellite map of the area. I also plotted it on a topographical map. It was near the highest altitude on the ridge, thirty miles from where the mountains cross into Syria. There’s some kind of old settlement up there. There’s a small building of some kind, which is the same color as everything else, and was probably built from local stone. It fades into the background very easily. It looks like somebody tried to do some terraced farming there once upon a time, but the terraces are too narrow to land. It looks like there might be an old well and a small freshwater spring. All of this is about half a mile east from some sheer cliffs. Find that building. The signal was coming from inside, or near, that building when it went dead.”

Luke glanced at Ed. “Are you hearing this?”