The morsel of flesh, as he chewed it, was rubbery, like a pencil eraser that had hardened over time. He contemplated what he was doing, as his finger dripped blood. He brought his hand up to his face, staring in fascination at the patterns the blood made as it dribbled across his skin. He waved his hand to make lines of blood across his palm. He giggled, dipping his finger into the blood and writing on the wall, red smears on clean white plastic. He wrote letters, formed them into words, into a concept he should have seen all along. It was so simple, so perfect. He admitted the line he’d written was crudely formed, blood not being as easy to work with as paint, but the meaning was perfectly clear.

Mime Goering for crow Nicole.

Some instinct, some sense of self-preservation buried deep in his brain, told him to clean himself before he went to find what he needed to carry out his plan. With his finger wrapped in masking tape from his desk and the worst of the blood wiped from his lips, Andy Gangle checked that the hallway was clear and stepped from his room.

FIVE

JUAN HELD UP A HAND WHEN HE HEARD THE DISTINCT sound of approaching helicopters. The noise was muted by the jungle canopy, and he couldn’t hope to spot them through the dense foliage that hung over the ground like a living shroud. But the best hunters in the world can spot the tiniest movement in the riot of vegetation, and he had no doubt that these were military choppers. They didn’t have that refined sound of executive helos built to deliver the pampered. These sounded raw, stripped down to the bare essentials in order to pack in as many men and as much gear as possible. Yet the human eye perceives motion better than pattern, so the men waited, crouched along the game trail until the sound faded. Ominously, in the direction they were heading.

“What do you think, Chairman?” Jerry Pulaski asked.

“Our welcoming committee has arrived. Let’s make sure they don’t have time to set up the party.” Juan checked the handheld GPS. “The trail is taking us slightly east of where we need to go. Time to hoof it cross-country. Same formation.”

By staying low, the men could duck under the thicker leaves and fronds, though Jerry, with his six-inch height advantage, found himself at a disadvantage in the jungle. After ten minutes, razor-sharp leaves had cut his face as though he’d been shaving with a month-old razor, and insects dove at him with the abandon of kamikaze pilots, in their hunger for such an easy meal.

To add insult to already injured bodies, the terrain started to rise. They were heading into foothills of mountains they’d seen on the recon photographs. And the smell of burning brush was growing stronger. The slash-and-burn logging operation was only a few miles away.

Juan did the best he could blazing a trail through the underbrush, and when he spotted what looked to be a large opening ahead he made the mistake of rushing through rather than checking it out first. He stepped onto a dirt road at the very instant a semitrailer went roaring past, its engine beat muffled by the bend it had just rounded. Had Juan emerged a second later, the driver would have seen him though not in time to brake.