The Islamists had heard about me through the grapevine and on the news. The word was I’d betrayed the Homelanders, a group of Islamo-fascists who recruited disgruntled Americans to pull off terrorist attacks on our home soil. The Abingdon prison Islamists had vowed they’d take vengeance on me. They’d see to it that I was punished for trying to protect my country. This was their time.

The first one came at me with a shiv-a knife he’d made by sharpening a piece of hard plastic he’d smuggled out of the cafeteria. He strode up to me from the right and drove the point in low toward my side.

I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye. I swung around fast, blocking with my forearm, blocking instinctively with the reflexes I’d developed during all those years of training at the dojo. Those reflexes saved my life-for the moment anyway.

My forearm hit the killer’s arm. The plastic shiv sliced in front of me, missing my midsection by inches. Off-balance, I managed a weak kick at the attacker’s leg. It hit him high, above the knee, and only knocked him back a step or two.

Then the others grabbed me from behind.

There were two of them. Big, strong. I never got a good look at them. I just felt their breath on the sides of my face. Each one grabbed one of my arms, wrapping his own arms around it, holding it fast. They pressed their bodies hard against me, blocking off my legs with their legs so I couldn’t kick again. I couldn’t move at all. I was helpless.

The man with the shiv came back for me.

I got a good look at him now. He was enormous, tall and broad-shouldered, with huge muscles that pressed through the prison grays. He had a long, thin face that reminded me of a wolf ’s face. His eyes were bright with wolflike hunger and bloodlust.

He grinned as his friends caught hold of me.

“Hold him,” he told them. Then he said to me, “Now you die, traitor.”