While Juan continued to drive, and Mark acted as lookout, Mike prepared for the final part of the operation, so when they finally cut the engines five miles from the border with Paraguay all their equipment was ready. The men slipped into their wet suits again and strapped the bulky Draeger sets to their backs. Juan overfilled his buoyancy compensators because he would be carrying the power cell.

After slicing open the remaining air bladders ringing the boat, they opened the sea cocks. The RHIB began sinking by the stern, dragged under by her heavy engines. They waited aboard her even after she slipped under the surface, making sure she settled on the bottom. The current had pushed them south another quarter mile, but they needed to ensure the boat stayed under. The bottom of the river this close to the bank was a jumbled snarl of rotting trees. They tied off the bow painter line to one of the more sturdy limbs and then started northward, propelled through the water by near-silent dive scooters.

Fighting the current, it took them the better part of two hours to reach the border, and another two until they judged it safe to surface. The scooters’ batteries were on their last bit of power and the rebreathers nearly depleted. But they’d made it.

The men took a break before starting out on the six-hour slog back to the elevated hut they had slept in thirty-six hours ago. There they had stashed a small aluminum boat with a motor that they had towed into place with the RHIB.

When they reached base, Mike set himself against a tree and promptly nodded off. Juan envied him. Though Trono had been closer to Jerry than Cabrillo, Mike wasn’t shouldering any guilt for his death. Just sorrow. Mark Murphy, with his love of all things technical, studied the power cell.

Juan moved a little ways off and pulled a satellite phone from a waterproof pouch. It was time to check in.

“Juan, is that you?” Max Hanley asked after the first ring. He could picture Max sitting in the Oregon’s op center since the mission began, downing cup after cup of coffee and chewing on the stem of his pipe until it was nothing but a gnarled nub.

The phones were so heavily encrypted that there was no chance of them ever being listened in on, so there was no need for code phrases or aliases.

“We got it,” he replied with such weariness it sounded as though he would never recover. “We’re six hours out from waypoint Alpha.”

“I’ll call Lang right away,” Hanley said. “He’s been bugging me every twenty minutes since you started off.”

“There’s one more thing.” Cabrillo’s tone was like ice over the airwaves. “Jerry paid the butcher’s bill on this one.”

There was almost thirty full seconds of silence before Max finally said, “Oh, Jesus. No. How?”