Three hours later Court knelt by the lake, his head down in accordance with the orders of the men with the guns all around him. Once every forty to fifty seconds he heard the crack of a rifle, and the splash of a man falling into the lake.

A cameraman stood on the edge of the pier, and a second was positioned in a rowboat in the water. The gunmen were mostly behind the prisoners, except for the two walking the condemned up the pier and the lead executioner himself.

Eventually Court felt the guards cut him off the long rope lashing the prisoners together, then they yanked him to his feet by his shoulders. He was pulled through the brush at the water’s edge, his feet just skimming the ground for the first few feet before he found his footing. Cord was wrapped tight around his wrists in front of him.

Behind him Basset shouted to him, but in Arabic, and Court missed most of it.

He’d picked up the words “friend,” “fight,” and “die.”

Yeah, Court thought. That encapsulated the situation well enough.

He heard the crack of an AK’s stock as it pounded into a head, and he figured the poor interpreter had taken another beating for saying good-bye.

Court ignored what was going on behind him and listened to his footfalls on the pier, counting them off. He passed the photographer on his right; the man was bored now, beyond the thrill of killing, just focusing on his job.

Then he looked up to see the executioner beckon him on.

At the end of the pier Court was pushed down to his knees; they slipped in the slime a little, but he caught himself.

The executioner was off Court’s right shoulder; the two guards were each a step behind him, one on the right and one on the left, and from the sound of the movement of the sling swivels on their rifles, he could tell the muzzles of the weapons were within a foot of the back of his head, at 45-degree angles, equidistant.

The executioner himself raised his weapon and the sling swivels told Court where it was in relationship to his right ear.

Court relaxed the muscles in his back and legs, brought his shoulders back and his head up, and fixed his eyes in resolution.

“Here we go.”

Court launched up from the kneeling position, pushing off with his left knee, spinning him in the air to his right. His arms fired out, the cord he’d managed to untie an hour earlier fell to his side. His hands swept around while he spun, and when he faced up towards the sky he arched his back, pulling his head back and down towards the dock, and his fingers clutched the barrels of the guards’ AKs, holding them tight near the front sights. He shoved the weapons up and formed an X with them, and as part of the same movement he jerked both rifles hard.

The executioner had been startled by the blur of movement in front of him but he pulled the trigger now, just as both guards fired their weapons at the exact same moment. The executioner’s bullet passed within four inches of Court’s face, scorching his beard and cutting his lip with tiny bits of unburned gunpowder racing out the weapon’s muzzle at two thousand feet per second.

Because of the X orientation of the two guards’ weapons at the moment their rounds discharged, the men shot each other. Bullets ripped point-blank into one guard’s lower torso and the other guard’s genitals. They both teetered backwards off the side of the dock, and as soon as Court landed on his back on the wooden slats, he grabbed the executioner’s rifle with both hands and yanked hard across his body, tipping the executioner over his body because he was caught by the sling around his neck.

The two guards splashed into the water as one, and just as the executioner shouted out, he, too, fell face-first into the lake.

Court rolled off the dock to his right, following the executioner off the boards. He crashed into and then disappeared under the bloodred surface of the water.

* * *

? ? ?

Basset had heard the gunshot, then the splash, and he knew it was his time to die.

Then he heard the shouting . . . and the second splash.

He looked up, his eyes focused on the end of the dock just when the American rolled from his back off the pier, fell one meter down, and belly-flopped into the water.

Around him the ISIS fighters began spinning towards the dock, their guns rising in front of them.

Basset had two guards just behind him; they were taking him to die next, after all, and now they opened fire on the lake at the edge of the pier. Both weapons were extended over Basset’s kneeling form, so he stood up between the guns, leapt back, and yanked other men tied to him as he went. The two ISIS gunmen fell to the ground under the scrum of prisoners, and the prisoners kicked and bit and elbowed and shouted as they fought with them. Other men on the rope line fell back or jumped back, knocking into gunmen standing close to them.

* * *

? ? ?

Underwater, Court grabbed at the eyes of the executioner with one hand while he pulled on the AK with the other hand. The water was fifteen feet deep here, dark and brown, so Court felt his way forward, vying for the rifle before the man recovered and thought to reach for one of the ornamental knives in his belt.

It was clear the executioner did not swim; the panic in his actions had nothing to do with the fact that he was in a life-and-death struggle with another human, and everything to do with the fact he was underwater and unable to breathe.

Court pulled the weapon away as the executioner reached out for it, and then the American spun the barrel towards the thick man, pounded the muzzle into the man’s solar plexus because he couldn’t see him and needed to be sure of his target, and pulled the trigger at contact distance.

The weapon fired; the bullet slammed into the man’s chest and blew out his back.

Court’s feet hit the lakebed now, and he shoved off with them, launching back up towards the surface. His head broke the water and he sucked in a huge breath of air, but instantly he saw he was ten feet from the edge of the pier, and at least four men were running up it now, heading in his direction. The fighter in front opened fire, raking the water around Court with brass-jacketed lead.

Court dove again, kicked his legs, and shot under the pier. Here he spun onto his back while still below the surface, and he reached up with his AK. He kicked along, a backstroke without the arm movements, and he opened fire on the wooden dock right above him, sending dozens of rounds up, splintering slats, tearing through the legs and torsos of the men running down to the edge of the pier.

A man fell off into the water on the left, and Court tossed the empty AK in his hands and swam after the rifle that had been held by his newest victim.

* * *

? ? ?

Basset slammed his head back twice into the nose of an ISIS fighter lying under him on the lakeshore, and when he was certain the man was dazed from the pounding, he drew a knife from the man’s belt. He cut his bindings free in seconds, although he also sliced into his own hand doing so, and then he grabbed the man’s rifle and eviscerated him with a long burst of fire to his abdomen.

Up the row of prisoners an ISIS gunman shot two Kurds at close range and was aiming at a third, but Basset shot him twice in the pelvis, dropping him where he stood. The prisoners alive near the wounded man fell onto him, tearing at clothing and flesh with their hands. One man got the AK off the doomed terrorist while others in the line began untying one another’s bindings by picking at the knots with their fingertips.

Basset and a prisoner nearby both had weapons now, and they poured fire into the ISIS gunmen near the Ural truck as well as those fighting amid the line of prisoners. The ISIS fighters fired back, of course, and soon the man next to Basset went down with a cry of pain.

Basset emptied his weapon and lunged for the gun dropped by the fallen prisoner. He got his hands on it and spun around but saw two gunmen aiming at him from higher on the hill. He knew he didn’t have time to get off any shots before they gunned him down.

Gunfire cracked from behind, and both men launched backwards onto the rocky hillside. Basset looked over his shoulder and saw the American, fifty feet from the shoreline in the bloody water, firing his Kalashnikov, using a floating body to rest the weapon on.

Basset spun back to the ISIS men scrambling around the hillside and he fired, and by now two more prisoners had taken weapons and were in the fight.

* * *

? ? ?

Court staggered out of the water when the crazed shoot-out was over, then fell into the salty mud.

Basset limped over, holding on to his own right forearm with his bloody hand. The young Syrian had been shot in the arm and the foot, and he also bled from where he’d cut himself. But he ignored his injuries, dropped to his knees next to the American, and put his hand on the man’s back. “My friend! We did it! You did it! But more Daesh will surely come. We have to go!”

Court looked up at him, coughed lake water, and vomited into the dirt. “How . . . how many did we lose?”

Basset helped Court to his feet. “I don’t know. Many. But many more of us are left. We will take the truck and go.”