As the turbine engine driving the rotors wound down, Jedidiah slid open the cargo door in the starboard side of the helo and he and his team stepped out, followed by Campos. Gayle undid her lap belt with trembling hands and disembarked last. As soon as she stepped out, a blast of cold mountain air greeted her, sending a chill up her spine. She immediately zipped her jacket up to her chin and joined the others, who were standing in a frozen huddle but not from the cold. Even the cocky, jovial Campos now stood slack-jawed as he looked out at the scene before them.

A single hut remained of the once-thriving village—the rest burned to the ground. And scattered between the ruins, she saw conical piles of charred . . .

Dear Lord, are those bodies?

The piles of ash looked like blackened versions of the towering anthills she’d seen in the outback of Australia while traveling one summer during college, only these were a bit wider at the base. As she shuffled in a trance toward the closest one, the sound of crying children reached her. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Campos cross himself.

“There’s no impact craters,” Eli said as he walked toward the closest of the smoldering structures.

“And no blast pattern,” Jedidiah added as he surveyed the scene. “No scattered debris . . . no signs of flying shrapnel.”

“I think these huts burned to the ground in place,” Eli said. “Like somebody lit them on fire from inside. This looks like arson, not an attack.”

“Are those piles of ash . . . people?” Nisha said, her voice seeming to catch in her throat.

“No way,” Eli said. “Not possible.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” the contractor called Bex said, kneeling next to one of the conical piles.

Gayle listened as her “guests” took the lead, doing exactly what they had been sent to do, which was good because she was far from an expert in such things. Her job involved intelligence collection and asset management, not battle damage assessment or crime scene investigations. Nonetheless, so far, she agreed with what she was hearing. She saw no impact craters—no twisted metal or even small fragments suggesting this had been done by a bomb or missile.

Movement caught her eye as a woman—with both fear and anger on her face—strode toward her, a crying infant on the hip. The woman wore gray baggy slacks and Nike tennis shoes beneath a brightly colored woven poncho wrap. Strands of black unwashed hair jutted out from under a similarly brightly colored woven cap. She marched straight up to Gayle and berated her unintelligibly.

“I don’t understand,” Gayle said and looked to Campos for help.

“It’s Quechua,” he said and then told the woman, “Por favor, hable en español.”

The woman turned to Campos. “Tu Dios hizo esto?” she demanded in Spanish this time. “Fue tu Jesús?”