This was exactly where she’d thought they were going, but even so it seemed surreal and dreamlike to her: the sensation of cool fresh air on her skin, the smell of the cedars and of the mud, and, of course, the fact that she was surrounded by jihadists and that she had a chain padlocked around her neck. Now that they were out in the middle of nowhere, the jihadists had finally gone native and begun to carry weapons more openly. One of them was sitting cross-legged on the roof of the RV, which had been parked across the road, barring access to the turnaround loop, which was where they had dumped out and were sorting through their camping gear. This man had a rifle in his lap and a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck, which he picked up from time to time and used to gaze down the valley. To Zula it was clear enough that if any geocaching tourists or local cops came up the road to investigate, he would wait until he could see the whites of their eyes through the windshield and then shoot them dead.