Nunez didn’t look happy at the sounds of gunfire ringing in our ears but he was pragmatic enough to shrug and then follow me. Charles, bringing up the rear, swore quietly under his breath, but he moved after us. Neither man had bought into a full-on war, thinking they had nothing better to do than play chaperone to the ones who were really going to pick up all the shit. But they were there and experience told them that they would most likely have to kill men if they were going to get out of this alive.

Both Jungla troopers were good men. I knew that the first time I looked at them. They would be top-notch warriors—no one who wasn’t made it into the Junglas, even men placed there by the CIA—but they were still cops and they were governed by a different rule book than me and my friends. I only wished that it was Rink and Harvey watching my six, except they were up on the cliffs. I trusted them to make the correct decisions based on what was happening in the valley below us: they wouldn’t be hiding and watching for Gutierrez to arrive now.

At the end of the cleft was a jumble of boulders that had fallen from the cliffs over the years. The jungle had got its hooks in, and bushes and vines made a tangled maze between the boulders, but Nunez pointed out a trail under the foliage that he’d used last time he was here. I had to go down on my belly to slither through, but then I could stand with the rocks obscuring me from anyone down below. As my Jungla friends joined me, I peered around the rocks and tried to take in the chaos below.

Five vehicles had made it all the way across the valley and had parked in a scattered formation before Cesar Calle’s house. Men in paramilitary uniforms used the Jeeps and trucks to shield them from the bullets of other men defending the buildings. Those with the vehicles had the edge on firepower, but Calle’s people held the advantage of position. From up on the cliff tops the sentries were firing at the exposed backs of the attackers, forcing them to fight a battle on different fronts. Suddenly, above me, the guns of the sentries went silent and I guessed that Rink had decided to take them out of the equation.

Nunez nudged my elbow.

“That man there.” He indicated a soldier on the back of a Jeep, a round-faced man with black wiry hair, who was manning an M240 machine gun with devastating effect. “That is Manuel Cervantes. Known as Guarapo. He is an officer of Organizacion Halcón de Roja, one of Alvaro Silva’s top killers.”

The Red Hawks I’d heard of, but Alvaro Silva’s name meant nothing to me. “I take it they’re enemies of Calle?”