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Zula was free to move around as long as she gave the impression of doing something useful, such as cooking or cleaning. At one point when no one was paying much attention, she took a yellow pad and a few pencils back into her room and hid them under the mattress. Later, when she’d been nailed back into her room for the night (having begged for and been given an extra ration of blankets), she sat by the light of a candle (these, at least, were abundant) and wrote a letter in the same general vein as the one she had scribbled on a paper towel and stuffed into the disconnected drain trap in the safe house bathroom in Xiamen. This one was a little more discursive, since she literally had all night. When she was finished, she slipped it under the mattress. Her body was showing no interest at all in going to sleep. She tried to tire herself out by doing all of the exercises she could think of that would not make a lot of noise: push-ups, dips, squats, and a gallimaufry of half-remembered yoga moves. But this only jacked up her energy level and made matters worse.

Consequently she was wide awake at about four in the morning when the building was slowly pervaded by the rumble of an approaching engine. This was not a steady drone, as of an overflying plane, but a patternless sequence of sharp rev-ups and die-downs. After a while it became loud enough to wake up Ershut. Through gaps around the edge of the wood they’d nailed over her window, Zula could see that they were being strafed by the headlights of, she guessed, some wildly veering and bucking vehicle that was headed toward them. Ershut pounded on the (apparently locked) door of the room where Mahir and Sharif were spooning. Then she heard feet thumping, magazines being jacked into guns, bolts being drawn back.

Then a horn honked just outside the building. A vehicle door opened. Men began to shout in Arabic, but the sound of their voices was buried under an eruption of gunfire. The high-pitched noise was filtered by the walls, but the deep concussion came right through, making her nostrils sting. She dropped to the floor with a thought of crawling under the bed, then came to her senses and understood that this would do her no good whatsoever. But then she heard the men outside laughing giddily and calling out “Allahu akbar!”

They were not in a gunfight. This was celebratory fire. The jihadists had themselves a vehicle; and since it had gotten in to the camp, it must be capable of getting them out.

ZULA WONDERED WHETHER the jihadists were simply out of their minds, firing guns into the air as a way of expressing joy when they were deep behind enemy lines. Or did they understand something about this place that she didn’t? Could they really be so isolated that random bursts of automatic weapons fire in the middle of the night would go unheard by human ears?

She would find out soon enough. When the cops came and turned this place upside down—which she assumed had to happen sooner or later—they’d certainly find her letter. This improved her mood greatly, since she had been fretting the last day or two about the hell her extended family must be going through. They would continue in that state of unendurable not-knowing until the snow melted and the plane was exposed. Someone would notice it. Maybe in a month and maybe in a year. But the letter would ultimately be found and her family would be able to read it and understand what had happened and grieve properly and, she hoped, be proud of her.

They let her out of the room, apparently with the expectation that she’d be happy to prepare breakfast for them. She pretended that this was the case. But it was not until everyone had eaten and she was cleaning things up that the sky grew bright enough to let her see outside and get a load of the vehicle that Jones and Abdul-Wahaab had stolen.