Even before the sun had a chance to send its rays across the horizon, Agamemnon was awake and getting his troops ready to move out. He thought briefly about Miki and how the fate of their cause rested in his hands. To delegate such authority surprised even him. But necessity dictated he go out and find his missing men, the woman and the sniper. Only then would he be able to return to his objectives.

He had ten men with him at the edge of the camp. Eight of them were from the camp itself and two were specialists he’d brought in for just this task. After thinking about it long and hard, he’d radioed in for some experienced trackers. They’d appeared before dawn and both of them looked lethal and capable—the kind of men Agamemnon preferred.

They paused by the head of the search team leader. His skull showed in places as the ants carried on their gruesome task of devouring the flesh. There seemed no end to the trail of them leading to their nest in the jungle. Twin lines of the tiny workers moved to and fro, some returning to the head and others ferrying bits back to the queen and her brood.

“If only I had men who worked this hard,” Agamemnon said, “we would have already toppled the government.”

One of the men waiting nearby vomited his breakfast on the side of the trail. The sight of his friend proved too much for him. Agamemnon frowned. If he hadn’t needed him, he might have shot him for being so easily upset.

Agamemnon wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Well, since there seems little point in basking in that ungodly stench, I suppose we’ll be off now,” he said.

The two trackers moved out. Each of them carried only a pistol and a long machete on his belt. Agamemnon himself plotted their course on the map. They would pick up where the search team had left off yesterday, but first they would have to find that point on the map. Every few hundred yards they would have to stop and reassess their position. Agamemnon had no intention of getting lost or vanishing amid the jungle vines.

After about a mile, one of his men waved him over. Agamemnon stopped by the trunk of a huge buttress tree. “What is it?”

The man pointed at the ground. “Here. Tracks, sir.”

“Whose?”

“The search team from yesterday. And before that, a woman.”

Agamemnon looked at the landmarks on his map and sent two more of his men off to find higher points to the east and west to confirm their position. They returned and told him the points were where he said they should be.

He marked their position on the map and then called over the second tracker. “See if what he says is true. The woman’s tracks start here?”

The second tracker knelt and studied the earth. After a minute he glanced up. “Yes. Her tracks are still evident. But there is another set, as well.”

“More tracks?”

“A man.”

“You’re sure it’s not a member of the search team from yesterday?”

The second tracker studied the ground for another two minutes and then looked back up. “Tough to tell, but the aging on them is different. The tracks I’m looking at are older than the search team’s. The age seems to match the tracks of the woman.”

“Who could he be?”

“The tracks correspond with the boots worn by members of the military, sir.”

“Filipino military or American?”

The tracker shrugged. “Impossible to say, sir. I can only tell you that the man who made the tracks stands about six feet tall and weighs about 175 pounds.”

“So it could be the American sniper.”

“It’s possible. Yes, sir.”

Agamemnon called for a water break and then turned back to his trackers. “According to the search team leader, they followed the woman’s tracks for about a mile before they vanished. Your job is to find them even if it appears they go missing. Can you do that?”

They both nodded.

“Then go.”

Without a sound, both trackers melted into the undergrowth. Within a few seconds, Agamemnon could no longer make them out. Their dark green clothing, mottled with bits of fabric and muddy brown splashes, helped break up their lines and better blend them to the jungle’s environment. Neither of them wore boots, but seemed to prefer soft-soled cloth shoes that resembled moccasins.

As long as they find the trail, Agamemnon thought, we will take care of the rest of the equation.

He looked back at the eight men he’d brought with him. Each one was armed with either an AK-47 or an AR-15. Both weapons were excellent in the jungle and required little care in order to keep operating.

But the jungle expedition was taxing. And his men weren’t necessarily used to trekking long distances through the dense canopy. Their clothes were already soaked with sweat and humidity.

Agamemnon himself felt the unbearable thickness of the air surrounding him. He twisted the cap off of his canteen and tilted it toward his mouth. The rush of tepid water refreshed him but only until he stopped drinking. As soon as he swallowed the last gulp, the heaviness of the jungle returned.

The sooner we get this finished, the better, he decided.

If the American woman and the sniper were together, so much the better. They would be able to deal with both of them at the same time. One of his men carried a video camera in his rucksack for just such an event. Capturing two beheadings on tape would help their cause.

Agamemnon smiled. This could turn out to be a good day after all.

The two trackers returned. While both of them were breathing heavily, they at least seemed better conditioned and used to the jungle than the rest of his men.

“The trail continues, sir,” one said.

“How far up?”

“Very close. The man tried to conceal their tracks as much as possible by choosing difficult ground to cover.”

“Meaning?”

The second tracker cleared his throat. “If they walked over the dirt and mud, it would be easy to find them. But their path goes over rocks and lot of dead leaf fall. It also twists and turns in unpredictable ways, making it difficult for us to follow. In places, their tracks seem to disappear so we have to cast around for them and then pick up the trail farther on.”

“But you can find them. That’s what you’re telling me, right?”

“Yes. We can find them.”

Agamemnon replaced his canteen. “Good. Take a quick water break and we’ll get going.”

“We’re all set, sir.”

Agamemnon frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. You need water. Make sure you hydrate.”

“We’ve already had our drink, sir. We cut some tube vines farther down the path as we tracked. If we can keep moving, we’ll be able to find them by nightfall, we expect.”

Agamemnon raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

The other tracker nodded. “Absolutely.”

Agamemnon spread his hands. “Well, then, lead on. I look forward to watching you both work.”

The trackers bowed and then waited as the rest of Agamemnon’s men got themselves ready to move. Agamemnon watched them glance at the trackers with a mixture of fear and distrust. He smiled. His troops disliked outsiders. Especially outsiders who made them look like fools.

He knew the memory of the team leader’s death was still fresh in their minds. Failure was unacceptable and Agamemnon had made that abundantly clear in his final judgment. But now here were two outsiders who showed an ease, both with the jungle and the task of tracking the woman and sniper, that unsettled his men.

“Come on, now, get yourselves up and moving. We’re not out here to waste any time. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to camp and enjoy the evening,” he said.

Agamemnon’s thoughts moved to Miki again. If everything was going well, the young man would be preparing to move the device from the safety of the camp to the posh section of Manila.

When he’d thought about where the bomb should be placed, Agamemnon had considered RooseveltPark, an area lined with exclusive housing compounds. But then he figured that exploding the bomb in Makati, where a number of powerful banks and businesses were based, would be a more crippling blow. Not only would he destroy the businesses, but also the people who worked there.

Instead of killing a bunch of lazy residents, he could destroy the backbone of the country. The government would be powerless to respond.

Agamemnon grinned. Traffic was a nightmare in the Philippines, and if the government couldn’t even get that under control, there was no way they’d be able to respond adequately to a nuclear incident.

His men passed him down the trail. Agamemnon felt good and clapped each on the back as he walked by. He offered words of encouragement.

“Doing okay?”

They would smile and nod and say, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Keep going, men. Keep going. We’re going to get these infidels and then kill them for all the misery they’ve caused.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re with me?”

More men grinned. “Yes, sir!”

Agamemnon nodded. “That’s what I like to hear.”

They made their way through the jungle, and the men, unconcerned with leaving a trail, used their machetes to hack into the thick vines and move through them.

Yards ahead, the trackers worked in perfect time to each other. One tracked ahead of the other, and they would change roles frequently so neither tired too much. Agamemnon marveled at how easily they moved through the jungle. Neither of them hacked through the vines the way his men did.

They simply melted through them.

Agamemnon called a break to get his men watered and to apply more mosquito repellent. As he lathered the stuff on his skin, he noticed the harsh scent and frowned. It would take a good long bath to get truly clean after this outing.

His men all breathed heavily, their lungs heaving from the increased humidity. As the sun grew higher in the unseen sky overhead, the heat increased, as well. Soon enough, they would run out of the water they carried.

Agamemnon called the trackers over.

“We will need to stop and replenish our water supplies soon.”

The first tracker pointed at a nearby tree. “We are surrounded by tube vines. Your men can cut into them with their machetes and then bleed the water off into their canteens.”

“Will it be enough to sustain us?”

“For the rest of the day, yes. If we are forced to spend the night out here, we will find an alternative source of water.”

Agamemnon frowned. “You told me you’d find the trail and we’d be done with this by nightfall.”

“We will be, sir. But we also plan for contingencies. Just in case.”

“Very well.”

Agamemnon took another sip of his water and felt his canteen was growing light already. He wasn’t used to long treks any more than his men, but to keep up appearances, he had to minimize any discomfort he felt.

If his men thought he was slacking, they would lose respect for him. And even threats of death by ants would not rouse them if they believed him to be weak.

He waved his men on. “Let’s go. We have people to find and kill.” He glanced overhead and wondered how much hotter it could actually get under the canopy. Surely the woman couldn’t survive in this heat.

He frowned again and hurried on. If she was still alive, once he caught up with her, she’d wish she wasn’t.