I drew back my M16, then shoved it forward, buttstroking the center of his forehead. There was a nasty cracking sound and his head jerked backward, but he did not loosen his grip. Now ugly gurgling sounds were erupting from Bian's mouth.

I once again drew back my weapon, buttstroked him harder, and I knew I had hit the sweet spot, because a loud "Ooof" popped out of his throat. He released Bian and sank to his knees, groaning.

Bian also collapsed to her knees, heaving and coughing.

Now Sean Drummond also had stopped paying attention to the threat in the wings, and I swung around and directed my weapon at the two men against the wall who were edging toward me. "Don't." They seemed to understand, if not my words then Mr. Automatic Rifle, because both froze.

Eventually, Bian pushed herself off the floor, stood, and straightened up. She picked up her weapon and turned her gaze to Hardy Hardass, who was transfixed by his own problems, such as the torrent of blood flowing down his forehead. She said something short and sharp in Arabic. Slowly he stumbled to his feet and moved back against the wall. I asked Bian, "Are you okay?"

"I'm…" That answer stopped in midsentence, and she stared off into space.

"Are you-"

"Yes. I'm fine. A little dazed… out of breath…"

Before I could say another word, she swung to her right and- bang, bang, bang-first one, then another prisoner crumpled to the floor. I looked at her, and I looked at them. Two of the prisoners, like Nervous Nellie, now lay on the floor holding their hands on their left knees, writhing and howling from pain. The other, Joe Cool, sort of sank to the floor, staring at Bian, in no apparent pain, just mildly surprised.

I, also, stared at Bian. She avoided my eyes.

"What did you just do?"

After a moment without a reply, I told her what she had done. "You just shot unarmed prisoners."

She glanced at me, and for a moment I wondered if I was next.

"Hand me your weapon, Bian."

She did not hand me her weapon but did say, "I didn't kill them."

"Your weapon-now."

"I did what was needed. And it worked."

She straightened up and for a moment seemed to contemplate what she had done. I examined her face, and did not like what I saw; she should have looked shocked, or enraged, but instead she struck me as completely in control of her emotions and senses. Aloof, actually. Finally, she said in a surprisingly calm tone, "Sean, please. Go downstairs. Tell Eric we need him and his men up here right away."

"You go downstairs. I'm not leaving you alone with these men."

Instead of addressing that thought, she said, "Give me your chador, please."

I thought she was going to use it to sponge or stem the flow of blood from one of the men she had just shot. So I handed it to her, keeping a spring in my step and an eye on her weapon. Instead she bent over and used it to gag Nervous Nellie, who was making whiny noises and looked ready to empty his bowels into his pants.

Then the door burst open and the argument was settled about either of us going downstairs. Eric and two of his men came barging through the doorway, weapons directed at us.

"It's safe," I yelled before anyone made a nervous mistake. "We're in control."

Eric lowered his weapon and examined the bodies on the floor. He said, "What the fuck?"

He was not expecting a reply, and continued, in a furious tone, "Didn't I tell you two to keep your weapons on safe? Holy shit-those shots were heard for ten blocks around."

I looked at him, then at Bian, and suddenly I understood what- and more to the point, why-she had done what she'd done. The message from Charabi to Daniels had described Ali bin Pacha as having lost his left leg, and therefore Bian had fired into their knees, a field expedient method for determining whose legs were real and whose were not.

I faced Eric and said, "Dress their wounds, and cuff and gag all of them."

"The hell with that. Those shots alerted every jihadi in this sector. Time to leave-now."

"Do it." I pointed at Nervous Nellie, and then at Joe Cool-aka Ali bin Pacha-who was observing me with a look of calculation from the floor. "They're the lucky two getting the all-expenses-paid trip."

"Are you nuts? Listen, in about two minutes the whole city is going to kick our asses."

I stared at him. He stared back.

He shook his head and turned to his two men. "All right. Hurry."

But Ali bin Pacha had other ideas. He suddenly pushed himself to his feet and launched himself at Bian, who was paying too much attention to our conversation and not enough to the guy her back was turned to.

He yanked the M16 from her hands and spun. It happened so suddenly that, before I could move, I was staring down a gun barrel.

I saw that it was pointed at my face, and in the brief instant I had to observe his eyes and face, I saw that his diffidence had disappeared; his lips were curled into a nasty smile, and his dark eyes were blazing with intense hatred.

I squeezed shut my eyes and heard a shot, amazed that I didn't feel my brains fly out the back of my skull.

When I opened my eyes, bin Pacha stood with his weapon pointed at the floor, and he was looking back at me with equal amazement. He sank to his knees and the M16 fell out of his hands.

I was yelling, "Don't shoot him. Shit… don't shoot him." Well, Eric had already shot him.

I walked over and kicked the M16 out of bin Pacha's reach. He was teetering on his knees, and he stared into my eyes, then down at his stomach at the dark blood leaking out of a small hole in his shirt. He looked a little surprised, and a lot annoyed.

I shoved him on his back and got down on my knees and pressed down hard with my right hand on his wound. I said to nobody and everybody, "Get me a field dressing. Now."

Bian handed me a dressing. She asked, "How bad is it?"

"I don't know. It's not pumping, right? So it's not arterial. That's good. But something vital inside might be punctured." I tore open his T-shirt and examined the location of the wound. He was going into shock, mumbling incoherently, perhaps curses, perhaps prayers.

The hole was about three inches to the left of his navel. I tried to recall from my high school biology days which internal organs were located in this region. Kidneys? Spleen? Intestines, probably, and that meant a high likelihood of infection. Also, I remembered from personal experience that, as wounds go, this one really hurt.

I reached a hand underneath him and felt around. No exit wound. So the good news was there was only one exterior wound through which he could bleed to death; the bad news was he almost certainly was bleeding to death, internally.

I placed the field dressing over the hole in his stomach and wrapped the tie-offs around his back, then knotted them tightly.

As I did, Eric and his men used green rags to gag the men, field-dressed their wounds, and attached police-style plastic cuffs to their wrists. In less than a minute, everybody was gagged and wrapped, and their bleeding was stemmed, which would put one point back on the board at a war crimes tribunal.

I glanced at Bian, who looked back and nodded. This was neither the time nor the place to discuss it, but we both knew our relationship had just changed.

Eric's men hoisted Nervous Nellie and Ali bin Pacha over their shoulders and hauled them out of the room. We departed directly behind them, leaving behind a corpse, two wounded men, and a bad memory.

Evidently, Eric had already alerted his people that it was time to egress, because two cars-the silver sedan and the cramped red Corolla-were idling curbside by the entrance.

Nervous Nellie was thrown roughly in the trunk of the silver car, and I helped place bin Pacha upright in the backseat of the Corolla, where I could keep a close eye on his vital signs.