Gibson was a thick man, a college quarterback once upon a time who now seemed to carry most of his weight in his chest and shoulders by sheer stubbornness. He was about twice the size of the Haitian who broke from their line to square up to him. This Macoute looked the same as the others—his uniform shirt was unbuttoned halfway, revealing his lean, muscled chest. But unlike the others he now let his gun hang on its strap across his shoulder, and had a pistol clipped to his belt. He didn’t need to be ready to defend himself against the Americans; his men would do that for him.

‘We were told he wouldn’t be harmed,’ Gibson said, gesturing at the battered man with the rope digging into his wrists.

From her position at the mouth of the cave, Bennett could see that the Macoutes’ prisoner wasn’t as terrified as Asselin, but not by much. She also had no idea who he was, and she didn’t like that.

The Macoute leader just stared at Gibson.

‘Give him to us,’ he said eventually.

His accent was a mix of French and Haitian Creole, and his mouth glinted in the torchlight—both of his rows of teeth were completely gold.

Gibson looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he blinked first.

‘Let’s get on with this,’ he said, seemingly to everyone in the cave.

Two CIA agents pulled Asselin off the ground, holding him up as his legs refused to carry his weight.

‘This isn’t right,’ Bennett said to Warren. ‘We have to stop this.’

‘That isn’t our job,’ Warren replied.

Bennett and Warren’s orders had been to keep watch in case more Macoutes were waiting for their friends out in the night. They shouldn’t even have been watching what was going on in the cave, but neither of them had been able to keep their eyes off the Haitians since they’d arrived. And now Bennett couldn’t just keep watching, or stop her legs from carrying her into the Cerro de San Francisco.

The sound of her boots added another echo to the Macoutes’s, who were already turning away from the other CIA agents, two of them dragging Asselin between them. The others gripped their Kalashnikovs tighter as Bennett got closer.

‘Stop,’ she said, her voice reverberating around the two groups of men.

The Macoutes kept walking.

‘Stand down, agent,’ Gibson said. His voice was as loud as hers, and as angry.

Bennett stood her ground, but the mouth of the cave was too wide for her to block the Macoutes. They just snaked around her. Their leader was the last to leave the cave. He gave Bennett a wide, golden grin as he passed her, and made a show of pulling his pistol from his belt.