And then it was just switchbacks and switchbacks, seemingly forever. She struggled, every second, with the desire to slow down, to stop and take a rest, reminding herself over and over that the men behind her were used to scampering around Afghanistan like mountain goats. For all she knew, Jones was putting guns to their heads to force them to go faster. So she tried to remember what that was like—Jones putting a gun to her head—and to use that to eke out a little more speed. As much as fear told her to keep looking down, her brain told her to keep looking up, trying to make out the next leg of the switchback on the slope above her. For sometimes these things were designed as much for erosion control as for hiking efficiency, and there might be places where she could dash straight up the slope for, say, fifty feet and thereby cut off hundreds of feet of a switchback’s apex. She perceived a few such opportunities and took them, arms flailing and legs scrambling as some part of her mind told her, If I had only stayed on the trail, I’d already be long past this point! Listening to that voice, then, she ignored a couple of such opportunities and then heard another voice saying, If you had taken the shortcut, you’d be way ahead . There was no getting away from those voices, so she tried to take each opportunity that looked worth it. The jihadists, she knew, didn’t have to make such choices; they could split up and send half the group one way and half the other, let the best men win.