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might die once in combat, die horribly of wounds they’d received on the field of battle; but the unarmed women and young children in this camp, in the hands of the Islamists, would die every day and live to remember it.
    Tracy felt the woman grab her shoulder.  She watched as the two men disappeared into a shack on the far right of The Yard.  Then she heard women screaming, high-pitched and terrible; and she felt the woman digging her nails into her bicep.
    “Now,” the woman said.  “Follow me.”
    Tracy, energized by her fear, bucked up with a renewed sense of urgency and mission, bolted into an upright position.
    The woman led Tracy around the side of the shack and towards the front door.  Up the rickety, wooden steps they hurried.  With one hand, the woman threw open the door and, with the other, she pushed Tracy across the threshold. 
    Right into the face of the camp commander.

{ 6 }
     
    Shaheed Abad, the camp overseer, was a dark-skinned, six-foot-tall, balding Islamist wearing a pair of designer jeans too snuggly and a yellow silk shirt printed garishly with palm trees and coconuts.  He wound up his hand-cranked halogen flashlight, flipped it on, and shined it right into Tracy’s eyes.
    The woman looked at Tracy, and with lightning speed, grabbed her by the back of her shirt and threw her against the door jamb.  Shaheed just shook his head.  The woman began to speak, but Shaheed waived for her to keep her mouth shut, acting like a magician trying to make a scantily-clad woman disappear.  She let go of Tracy and looked down at the ground.
    Tracy never took her eyes off Shaheed, mesmerized by the profound evil she saw – or maybe she’d just imagined it – and unaware of the consequences of maintaining direct eye contact with any Islamist.  She held his gaze for the next few seconds.  Had she wanted to do so, and she’d thought about it, she could have incapacitated him where he stood and then slowly killed him.  A fitting end, she thought, for such a half-life posing as a man.
    “I am looking for Susan Reid,” Shaheed said.  “And since no one in this barracks answers to that name, Mrs. Julia Parker, I assume this woman is Susan.”
    A sudden coldness hit Tracy, and she stiffened even more.  She cut her eyes over to the burka-clad woman.  Julia Parker?  Not the same Julia Parker of Mt. Zion Baptist church, the wife of Jason Parker, the preacher.  Her old high school Bible class teacher, a woman of conviction and compassion, and only ten years older than she was, could never have joined the ranks of Islam. She’d been Islam’s loudest opponent a few years earlier when the Muslim community tried to build a mosque south of town.  And it was because of her efforts the construction was stopped.
    “She was trying to escape,” Mrs. Parker said, softly and passively.  “I hope to please you, my master, and protect what is yours.”
    Shaheed slowly lifted his right hand.  Tracy saw it holding a coiled whip of dark brown, leather.  He put the coil under the chin of Mrs. Parker and gently lifted her head.  Then he said, “Tomorrow, before breakfast, you will remind Miss Reid, and the rest of the ladies in the camp, about Islam, about submission, won’t you?”
    Mrs. Parker nodded vigorously, her eyes never once looking up.
    “Now, you will take Miss Reid to my office, like you do the others,” Shaheed said.  “You know how I like them,” Shaheed said, cutting his eyes over to Tracy.  “Am I clear?”
    Mrs. Parker hadn’t stopped nodding since she’d felt the whip beneath her chin.
    “And when you are done whipping Miss Reid in the morning, you will take her place, and she will be revenged for what you have done to her.”
    Tracy’s lips trembled; and she could feel her face tingle as – she was sure – it turned ashen white.  She felt panic setting in, recognized it for what it was, and focused on breathing steadily and slowly.  She tried counting every breath, something