They looked at crossing the border into Canada or Mexico. Driving through a border-controlled checkpoint seemed far too risky, so they decided they would have to make the journey on foot, hiking through rugged wilderness. Karim was confident that they could handle the physical aspect of the trip. The real problem would be finding someone they could trust on the other side. Their resources were stretched too thin already. They would have to turn outside the group to find help. Hakim, knowing the depth of his friend’s paranoia, offered his counterintuitive suggestion of driving to America’s heartland and lying low.

Like Saudi Arabia, America was an immense country with large cities as well as vast open spaces that were sparsely populated. While it was true that America was a melting pot, especially compared to a closed society like that of Saudi Arabia, it was not exactly as open as it looked on paper. All those various groups tended to cluster together, which nullified much of the potential for concealment. Karim had originally thought his friend meant driving to a city like Chicago. With over ten million people in the metropolitan area, they would be the proverbial needles in a haystack. Having actually spent some time in America, Hakim had to explain why going to Chicago was a bad idea. There were too many eyes and ears in a big city and there would surely be reward money offered. If everyone was looking for them, the best solution was to find someplace where they could let the storm blow over in absolute privacy. Karim loved the idea and gave his best friend the approval to find such a place.

Hakim stared out the small kitchen window toward the river and the rising sun, and watched a single wild turkey strut across the yard toward the woods. He looked to his right in search of the others. Five mornings in a row he’d seen the seven turkeys strut along their little trail and into the woods.