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standing on the other side of a small, bushy shrub.  “Aqua Velva,” she whispered, waiting for the counter password.
    “If only,” the woman replied, answering her challenge correctly.  “These Muslims sure could use it.  They smell so bad I could faint – but I haven’t had a bath in two weeks, so---” The woman, dressed in a dark-colored Burka, stood up from behind the shrub, took a few steps, and knelt down beside a wooden fence post.  She pulled back the square mesh wire – how it was fastened to the post, Tracy couldn’t tell – and Tracy slipped into the compound.
    Tracy handed the woman the plastic-wrapped Glock 33.  “There’s an extra clip in there – you’ve got nine rounds in each clip and one in the chamber.  Nineteen total shots – make them count.”
    The woman gave Tracy the once-over and nodded.  Her manner seemed disinterested and hostile.  “I’ll make them count,” the woman said.  “You just do what I tell you if you want to live past tonight.”  She reached into her pocket, pulled something out, probably a small stone, and threw it against the wall of the nearest shack. 
    A woman, tall, with a shaven head, came quickly from around the side of the shack.  She carried a small satchel with her, and she was dressed in dark jeans and a white tee shirt.  Without a word, she slipped through the fence and disappeared down to the river bank.
    “If it’s that easy, why don’t you all just leave?” Tracy said.
    “You really don’t have a clue, do you?  If anybody disappears from my section, I get killed.  If there’s an extra girl in the morning, I get killed.  That’s all I’m going to say to you now except to tell you that you are now Susan Reid.  Once you get settled into your bed, don’t look at or speak to anyone.  Let’s go.”
    The woman looked up and down the long fencerow and, convinced no other guards were close by, she grabbed Tracy by the arm and pulled her along behind her.  She hurried towards the shack nearest them, stopping at the corner of the building.  She leaned her head forward and scanned the part of the camp known as The Yard, the grassy assembly area between the shacks.  She turned to Tracy and said, “Give it a minute.”
    Tracy knelt down and looked around the corner of the roughly built shack, squinting into the dimly lit compound.  Less than two years old, the camp looked like a ruins.  Even up here, the hot, humid air reeked of human filth and sweat.  She saw two men.  One large, heavy-set man with an AK-47 slung across his back, and one skinny guy without a weapon, limping as he walked.  They were crossing The Yard at the far end, near the shacks opposite them.  “What’s . . . what’s up with those two guys?”
    “Booty call,” the woman said.  “Just be glad you’re in section C, where they keep all the ugly chicks.”
    The woman didn’t move, and both she and Tracy kept their eyes focused on the center of The Yard, not moving a muscle, not daring to breathe.
    Tracy hadn’t looked forward to this part of her mission, and she was surprised at how quickly she became fearful for her own life.  The urge to grab the weapon she’d given the woman, shoot the two guards, and bolt back the way she’d come seemed like the only reasonable thing to do.  But she reminded herself she’d be here for only a day.  Two at the most.  Zafar Katila would get word of her arrival in just a few short hours – or maybe he already knew she’d arrived – and he would send for her.  Tracy closed her eyes for a moment, then she opened them.
    As she looked out across the camp, trying her best to shut it all out, Tracy suddenly felt herself in the middle of the war in way she had never felt before.  She wasn’t at a desk or on a “safe” recon mission, but right in the middle of the crap, right in among those who needed her most: the vulnerable, the powerless, the endangered.  Then it hit her.  Armed soldiers had a chance.  They