“Karl-Heinz, are you all right?” she whispers.

“I am alive, at least. I would have worn my hiking boots if I had known this was part of the conference program.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says and then one of the kidnappers comes along and tells her to be quiet and get to her feet. When she doesn’t move quickly enough to suit him, he jabs her in the ribs with the muzzle of his AK. She stands up and looks him in the face. There is still just enough light to see he is a young man, in his late teens at most.

She says, in Pashto, “How dare you strike me, you little pisser! I’m old enough to be your grandmother. Does your mother know you’re out in the night beating women?”

The boy’s eyes widen. He raises his weapon to firing position. “Move!” he says.

Sonia raises her voice. “How? I am tied to this man.”

The boy kicks at Schildkraut, producing pitiful groans. It is unbearable to watch and Sonia throws her own body over his, crying out for the abuse to stop. A moment later, Annette Cosgrove rushes forward and also flings herself down to protect the old man’s body. “Don’t hurt him,” she shouts, and she has a carrying voice. Sonia hears Annette’s husband call out her name from forward on the line. The other prisoners now also call out; there is a commotion, guards and prisoners shouting. Their cries echo from the now-invisible rock walls of the gully.

Sonia adds her voice, louder still: “Look, this is an old man. He must rest, or if you want him to move at this pace, someone must help him, and we can’t if we’re tied up like this. Do you think we’ll try to escape? How could we? From twenty armed men when we don’t know where we are? If you untie us, the stronger will be able to help the weaker ones and we won’t fall as much and you will go faster to wherever it is you’re taking us.”

Sonia hears a voice calling out in Pashto, “Patang! What’s going on back there? Shut that woman up!”

Sonia says, “Patang, talk to him! Tell him what I said! Believe me, you will move more quickly. Otherwise, you might as well shoot us all now.”

The boy hesitates, then leaves briefly and returns with a thin man in a large black turban and a sheepskin jacket. Sonia listens while the boy Patang explains the problem as she had expressed it, to which the other man replies, “Cut them loose and shoot the old man. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

Sonia cries out, “Oh, I see I was mistaken-I thought you were mujahideen. I prayed you were mujahideen. But now I see you are only bandits, and accursed of God.”

With that, she drops down again on Schildkraut, covering his head and shoulders with her body while Annette Cosgrove lies across his legs and lower back.

“Now you will have to kill three of us,” Sonia says, in the same loud voice, “and then you will have to kill her husband too, and that will be four of nine hostages you won’t have, and who will make up the ransom for them? Think, man! Nine hostages delivered on time in reasonable condition against five, and maybe fewer than five, because no one can walk through this country tied together with their hands bound. What will you do if there are broken legs or broken necks?”

Sonia cannot see the man’s face, but she does not think he will shoot them, nor does she think he will order the boy to shoot them, or that the boy would obey such an order. She has spent a good deal of her life among violent men of this type and she is betting three lives that she has judged them correctly. A minute passes. She can hear Schildkraut’s heavy breathing and the lighter breaths of the other woman. She is deeply grateful that Annette backed her play. That was another quick assessment that worked out. She hears low voices and the sound of retreating footsteps and then shouts from the head of the column.

The boy bends over her and grabs her arm. She sees the flash of a knife and her hands are free. The boy says, “You women will support the old man. If he cannot keep up then we will shoot him.”

Now he stares at her, because she is not moving to help the other woman. Instead, she has broken a branch off a small bush and is sweeping the dust from a flat area to the side of the trail.

The boy looks baffled. “What are you doing?”

She says, “Since you have taken my prayer rug, I must clean a portion of the ground, as is permitted.”

“You’re going to pray?” the boy asks, staring.

“Yes. The sun has gone down and it’s time for the Maghrib prayer.” With that, she begins the ritual ablutions, using sand, as is allowed in the absence of clean water. Patang observes this in silence for a moment and then runs off. Sonia rubs the designated parts of her body with the flinty sand, reties her head scarf, and, facing east, prays the du’a.

She hears footsteps, whispered conversation, and then the murmur of two dozen men praying. Interesting, she thinks, when the prayer is done; they were going to skip it to save time, and wonders what fallacious reasoning had been put forward to allow that grave sin of omission.

Schildkraut is somewhat revived by the brief rest. Sonia and Annette throw his arms over their shoulders to support some of his weight, and with the rest of the party they move off down the narrow track. The kidnappers have taken all their watches, but the sky is clear and full of needle-sharp stars and by observing their motion Sonia can estimate the time elapsed after sunset. She thinks it is about four in the morning when they reach what appears to be an actual road, narrow and rocky. The mujahideen assemble their prisoners along the road, commanding them to be silent and once again binding their hands. They wait; the stars wheel overhead, the captives shiver where they sit. Sonia discovers that the man sitting next to her is William Craig. She can see his glasses glitter in the starlight as he shivers.

She asks him how he is.

“Terrific. I twisted my ankle and I’m freezing to death. Who the hell are these people?”

“They’re mujahideen. Self-proclaimed Islamic warriors.”

“What do they want with us? Is it ransom?” “I think they want to make a political point. We’re from the West, and the West is the enemy. So we’re fair game.”

“But who do they answer to? Surely they’re open to negotiation at higher levels.”

His voice has risen and this attracts the attention of one of the guards, who comes over and tells Craig to shut up, and although Craig does not speak the language and has not recently been told to shut up by anyone, the message is conveyed, and Craig falls silent. Sonia hadn’t a good answer to his question anyway.

After perhaps an hour, they hear the sound of an approaching engine. It is a five-ton truck with the high arched frame typical of the region standing above the truck bed. The mujahideen swarm around the truck, speaking softly and working at something Sonia can’t quite make out but which involves off-loading large bales and crates. Then the prisoners are made to stand, and they are gagged with rags and hustled into the empty bed of the truck. There they are arranged to lie supine in three rows, head to toe, like sardines. Ropes are passed over their bodies securing them to bolts in the truck frame so they can’t move at all and then a plank floor is laid over them, and on this floor the men reload the crates and bales.

The truck starts. After a few minutes, the discomfort of the prisoners becomes real pain, then what seems unbearable pain, as the motion of the truck on the rough road smashes them up against the false floor and then down on the unyielding ribbed steel of the truck bed, but as the hours pass they discover that more can be borne than they had imagined. Sonia hears muffled weeping, but she can’t tell who weeps.

It is like being in a coffin, without the peace of the grave. She fights the instinctive panic, controls her breathing, welcomes the pain, concentrates on freeing her hands; it takes what seems like hours to do this, and when they are free she pulls the gag from her mouth and reaches out. Annette Cosgrove is next to her and she pats the young woman’s thigh, which is all she can do for her; she is still lashed rigidly to the deck of the truck, and even if she were free there is not enough clearance above her face to enable her to move from her slot.