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.