5
Azadah stared into the small fire and wondered at the enormity of what she’d done. The two cars and a truck had departed and the echoing silence of the evening settled over the house.
For three days the six men had been constantly here, at least some of them. She’d never been alone except during the short walk to the well or the long walk to market. Often they went out in ones or twos on lazy “patrols,” ambling along just like any local. But she’d heard the reports when they returned and how they were familiarizing themselves with an impressive amount of detail about the city. Two hundred thousand people in a rectangular area roughly three by five kilometers, yet they soon knew it as well as many who had spent their lives here.
Now, there was only her own breathing, the bleating of a
