“I don’t believe in battle fatigue. If you light a man’s bed on fire he’ll remember pretty quick where he is and that he wants to live.”

I didn’t argue because like any good soldier, my friend needed to believe that he could conquer any enemy—including fear.

It took about an hour and a half to cover the seven miles to the camp. Mostly we passed through blood orange groves but at the end there was a pretty steep rise where pine nuts took the place of citrus fruit.

The campsite was in a clearing and there was a cabin, just like Craig said. It was a crude affair constructed from uncured pine boards topped off with a tin roof. There had been a fire in front of the place; not so much a campfire but more like a trash burning. A few wisps of white ash still clung to the ground around blackened earth.

Christmas was already scanning the grounds when I headed for the lodge.

It was a simple room, sixteen feet by eighteen. The only furniture was a gray-and-white-striped wadded-cotton mattress on a single bed frame. The shelves held no larder. The floor was swept and maybe even washed down. There was no evidence of who might have stayed there and nothing of value or intelligence.

When I came out, Christmas was down on one knee using a twig to sift through the meager detritus of the fire.

I joined him.

“What about the cabin?” the security expert asked. He was looking down, his face enveloped by shadow.

I told him what I didn’t find.

“Motherfuckers,” he said. “Goddamned motherfuckers. Pieces of shit is what they are.”

“They?”

He looked up. Believe me when I tell you that you never want man, woman, or beast to cast that kind of gaze in your direction.

“Three sets of footprints, not counting your client. They swept the motherfucking ground. Cleaned it out the way we did it in ’Nam when the brass didn’t want evidence for a UN review.” Part of the rage was that he was angry at himself. “They got rid of almost everything. That poor kid never had a chance.”

“Three?” I said.

“The woman probably and two men. One of the men was wounded. He could have died and they just wiped out the signs, but I don’t think so. A man and woman left together, then you got two sets of men’s footprints walking through the dirt and grass. Not together. No. The woman and a man left first, then the other two—first one and then the other.”

Looking down, I saw a half-burned red, green, and black business card. No complete words were evident, but there was a curved green line indicative of some kind of snake or lizard that might have inhabited the burned part of the card.

“Motherfuckers!” Christmas’s muted yell was both a threat and a curse.