The old man, whom Eduardo had nicknamed Balut due to his proclivity for eating the black aged duck eggs as he tracked, turned and held up his hand. He spotted Eduardo and called him forward.

Eduardo approached. “What is it?”

Balut shushed him. Eduardo frowned and then took a breath before whispering, “What?”

Balut sniffed the air. “Can you smell it?”

Eduardo sniffed. “Smell what?”

Balut continued scenting the air as if he were some type of bloodhound. “A woman. I can smell her.”

Eduardo frowned. Agamemnon had mentioned that an American woman had escaped from his camp. Was it possible they had stumbled on her trail?

“She’s nearby?”

Balut sniffed the air again. Then he moved off the trail and poked his way through the dense undergrowth. Eduardo watched as he poked his nose here and there before settling on a log on the ground close by. He turned the log over, got down on all fours and proceeded to stick his nose right into the ground.

When he came back up, he wore a smile. “This is fresh.”

“What is?”

“She has pissed here recently.”

Eduardo rolled his eyes in disgust. “You just stuck your nose into her waste?”

Balut came back toward him plucking another black duck egg from the pouch he wore, peeling the shell and popping it into his mouth. “A good tracker knows the surest way to find his prey is to study their waste.”

He chewed slowly, letting bits of eggs fall around his mouth. Eduardo felt repulsed. Not only did he hate balut as an edible substance, but the manner in which the old man devoured the eggs was sickening.

Still, if the American woman was close by…

“What about the sniper?” he asked.

Balut frowned. “He will, no doubt, be tougher to track.”

Eduardo looked overhead. The rain continued to sluice down through the trees. The mud all around them was thick and mucky. Eduardo was amazed Balut was able to smell anything over the strong scent of fresh rain.

Eduardo waved his men forward. When they were around him, he smiled through the rain pouring down his face. “Nice day for a walk, eh?”

The men grinned. Eduardo knew he had their confidence. All he had to do now was get the woman and then the sniper.

“The old man here says there is a woman close by. Agamemnon told me about an American woman he had kidnapped for ransom. She escaped yesterday. And it is very possible we have stumbled onto her trail. She is close by, according to the old man who has…smelled her effluents.”

Balut cracked a smile. “She smells lovely.”

Eduardo sighed. “Be that as it may, you are to fan out from here and we will attempt to catch her. Agamemnon wants her taken alive, as well. She is unarmed and should be relatively simple to catch. Alone out here, she is probably very weak.”

Balut frowned. “I doubt that.”

Eduardo ignored him. “We will form a line with each of us four yards apart and then proceed. She will not be able to escape the line and we will catch her. Be sure to take your time and check everywhere. If she knows we are close, then she will try her best to elude us.”

Eduardo turned back to Balut. “Can you give us a bearing of which way she went?”

Balut turned and walked farther away. He came back and pointed. “Perhaps ten minutes before we arrived here.”

“That’s it?”

Balut nodded. “You ask, I show.”

Eduardo checked the safety on his gun. His men fanned out and they waited for his signal. When he saw they were all in position, he waved them forward as one.

The fact that they had come across the woman’s trail surprised him. He would have thought that they would come across the sniper’s trail first, but then again, as Balut had said, he would no doubt be tougher to track.

And much tougher to corner.

“Eduardo!”

One of his men from the left waved him over. Eduardo pushed his way through a tangle of vines and then looked at the ground where the man pointed. “Do you see it?”

Eduardo nodded. There on the ground were what appeared to be two sets of tracks.

Balut appeared next to them and knelt in the mud, feeling the tracks with his hand. He glanced up. “They are fresh. But the rain is washing them away. In this weather, they were probably recently made. I believe they are close.”

“The woman?”

Balut nodded. “And the one we sought originally.”

Eduardo breathed. “The sniper.”

“Yes.”

Eduardo waved for the men to fan out again. If the sniper was close, that meant things were a lot more dangerous than if they’d just been after the woman. The sniper could turn the tables on them if he thought they had found his trail.

He grabbed Balut. “Be extra careful from here on out. If he sees us, he will kill you first.”

Balut smiled. “He would have to be able to see me.”

“Maybe he already has.”

Balut shrugged. “I’m an old man. I’ve had a good life.”

Eduardo shoved him away. “Find the trail and keep us on it. If you think they are close, then signal and we will take over.”

Balut nodded and stalked off.

Eduardo readied his AK-47 and then moved on. In his peripheral vision, he could see his men moving ahead with him. Their distance was still such that they could keep visual range.

Balut disappeared from view ten yards ahead of them. Eduardo frowned. Figures, he thought. I tell him to stay close and he goes and does what he wants. Well, just so long as he gets results. That was all that mattered.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eduardo saw the man farthest away to the left suddenly vanish.

He stopped.

The man closer to him on the left saw Eduardo stop. “Sir?”

“Where did he go? The one on the other side of you?” Eduardo asked.

“I don’t know. He was there a second ago.”

“Go and find him!”

The man turned and ran off into the jungle. Eduardo frowned. He didn’t like this. Not one bit.

Balut still hadn’t returned. Eduardo called a halt to the advance. Had the sniper picked off the man on the far left?

No, it couldn’t be. They would have heard the shot. Unless, of course, he had a sound suppressor on his rifle. Eduardo frowned. It was possible, but did it make sense? Suppressors could affect the accuracy of the bullets, he had once heard.

Whether it was true or not was another matter.

He called his men in close to him. He knelt on the ground and tried to figure out how to best approach the situation. The man on the left came back from the jungle shaking his head.

And only one man came from the right.

“Where is the other one?” Eduardo asked.

The man from the right turned. “He was behind me as we came in. I heard him walking behind me.”

Eduardo swept the area with his rifle, ready to fire. The two men with him looked scared. Eduardo had seen them both in action enough in the cities to know they didn’t frighten easily.

“What’s going on, sir?” one of the men asked.

Eduardo shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“We have to find them.”

Eduardo nodded. “All right, we’ll go together. But slowly and stay close. I don’t want either of you disappearing.”

“What about the old man?”

“Leave him,” Eduardo said. “He can find his way around these parts. He doesn’t need our help.”

They rose and moved toward where Eduardo had seen the first man vanish. As they crept through the jungle, all of them kept their rifles up at their shoulders. It was a drill they’d been taught over and over again. With the rifle stock in their shoulder it was much easier to bring the gun to bear on an enemy.

Eduardo saw it before the men with him. “No.”

A smear of fresh blood coated the trunk of a buttress tree. Eduardo felt the sticky blood and knew that one of his men had been hurt.

But where was the body?

The area around the blood showed little sign that anyone had been there. Eduardo could see evidence of his man’s presence, but beyond that, nothing.

If the sniper had shot him, then there would be a body. There was no way the sniper would have exposed himself just to come and get the body. Was there?

He thought about what to do. “We’ll move to the other side and check for the other one,” he said.

Again they rose and crossed back over the area they’d trekked through. On the right flank, they found another smear of blood but nothing else.

Where were his men? And where was Balut?

The old man had vanished just like the men on either side. Eduardo frowned. Was it possible that Balut had led them into some kind of trap? Was he working with the Americans?

Rage flooded Eduardo’s veins. “If the old man has betrayed us, we will kill him, as well,” he said.

Both of the men with him huddled close by, ready to shoot at anything that moved. One of them turned to Eduardo. “Now what, sir?”

Eduardo felt his heart hammering in his chest. “We go forward.”

“Sir?”

“We need to find out who is doing this.”

The other man frowned. “Whoever it is, they are able to kill without making any noise. That means they are accomplished and skilled. Very dangerous.”

Eduardo took a hand off of his rifle and laid it on the man’s shoulder. “You, too, are also accomplished and skilled. And you, too, are dangerous. We will go forth and find the people who did this. And we will kill them.”

Both men looked unsure but rose with Eduardo. He nodded at them both. “Let’s go.”

But as he took his next step, he heard what sounded like two big breaths swishing past his ear. Instinct took over and he dropped to the ground, squeezing off a burst from his heavy AK-47 as he did so. The relative silence of the jungle exploded as the rounds tore into the undergrowth.

Eduardo lay there breathing hard. He could see the man on his right also lying flat. Eduardo crawled over to him.

“Did you see anything?”

He got no response.

Eduardo nudged the man with the butt of his gun. The body shifted and then separated from the head. The head turned over and Eduardo was face-to-face with the dead man’s stare.

Blood pumped out of the body into the ground. Eduardo covered his mouth and choked back the rising tide in his throat.

He crawled away from the corpse and moved to his left. He heard the angry buzz of insects before he got close enough to know that the man on the left was dead, too.

Decapitated.

Eduardo huddled in the vines with his rifle. What could possibly have taken their heads off? He knew of no bullet in the world that could do such a thing.

It was as if their heads had been cut with a very sharp blade.

But who had done the cutting? And had the blade been thrown?

Eduardo knew that he would be the next to die unless he acted. With a rush of adrenaline, he got to his feet and screamed as he pulled the trigger on the AK-47. Shells tumbled out of the ejector port as his bullets tore into the jungle. Bits of leaves, branches and bark exploded as the bullets found their marks.

Eduardo raked from side to side until at last, the magazine was empty.

Click-click-click.

He breathed long and hard. Sweat had soaked him through.

And when he heard the next sound, it was almost too late for it to register before Eduardo felt something bite into him.

And he saw nothing but blackness.