Reamde

They crossed into the United States, a fact discernible only because of a moss-covered boundary monument that one of the jihadists nearly tripped over. The falls were just ahead of them and to the right. They worked their way downstream of the falls by crossing a high shelf of rock that looked down upon it from its east side. This terminated in a cliff that obliged them to descend to the riverbank in order to make any more southward progress. As Richard now explained, there was a way to scramble down from here; there had to be, or else it would never have been possible to make the return trip. But when going in this direction, the descent was considerably easier if you just used ropes. Richard had warned Jones of this well in advance, and so Jones had made sure to bring some good long ropes along. They paused up there for a short while so that some could enjoy the view down while others, who were good at such things (or claimed to be) made the rope fast to a giant cedar growing near the edge of the cliff. Half the men went down to reconnoiter. Then they sent Richard. Then the rest of them went down. He got the sense that this had been carefully thought out; they were becoming nervous that he might make a break for it and wanted to make sure that there were a few people at each end of the rope to keep an eye on him.

As soon as they reached the bottom, Jones gave an order to Abdul-Ghaffar, the white American jihadist, and nodded significantly at Richard. Richard was still absorbing this when Abdul-Wahaab (“the other Abdul” to Richard; apparently Jones’s most senior lieutenant) drew his pistol, chambered a round, and aimed it at Richard’s chest from maybe eight feet away. “I’d like you to stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart,” said Abdul-Ghaffar in his flat midwestern accent. Out of his pack he was pulling a sheaf of black heavy-duty zip ties: not the skinny ones used to restrain unruly Ethernet cables in office environments. These were a quarter of an inch wide and a couple of feet long.

None of which seemed like the beginnings of an execution. Richard, tired and taken by surprise, had been caught flat-footed anyway. He stood as Abdul-Ghaffar had asked him to, and Abdul-Ghaffar knelt behind him and zipped four of the big zip ties around the top of each of his boots, stacking them to build a heavy cuff around each ankle. He slipped more zip ties under those cuffs and linked them in a chain, joining Richard’s feet with a sort of hobble. When he was finished, Richard could move in six-inch steps, provided the ground was level. A similar treatment was then inflicted on his wrists, leaving maybe eight inches of space between them, but in front of his body, presumably so that he could open his fly to urinate, or convey food and water to his mouth.

This had all happened fast enough that his brain didn’t really catch up until it was all over. They weren’t going to kill him, at least not yet. But they seemed to have read his mind and anticipated that he might have thoughts of escaping. They searched him thoroughly now, presumably to make sure he wasn’t carrying a pocketknife or nail clipper that he could use to cut his plastic bonds during the night.

And night came soon, for they were deep in a bowl and the sky was a slot above them, traversed by the sun for a mere few hours each day. They pitched their shelters on a flat shelf of rocky ground a quarter of a mile downstream of the falls and used river water to cook up a generous repast of instant rice and freeze-dried backpacking chow.

Richard could think of nothing else to do and so he went into the tent that been assigned to him, wriggled into his sleeping bag fully clothed and booted and, without much trouble, went to sleep.