I crawled forward to where he lay. Tried to get a better look at him by the flickering light of the discarded torch, rolling this way and that on the uneven floor so as to cast air-raid lights upon the big, star-scattered sky. I used my good hand to check his pockets. He was wearing black combat trousers tucked into gleaming military-issue boots. American, as far as I could tell. He wore a black all-weather jacket and his belt contained a sheathed blade and half a dozen jacketed rifle bullets, not far off three inches long. I checked his pockets for ID but found nothing. I had to pull the fork from his guts to be able to open his coat, rummaging around in the cooling blood for anything he might be carrying. I found nothing. Only when I rolled down the face mask and pushed up the black hat did I get a real sense of my attacker. He was no more than thirty years old; handsome beneath the black face paint, with fine cheekbones and a pleasantly symmetrical mouth. He was well-built, too: muscled but lean, as if he were an athlete accustomed to living on meat and raw eggs. I almost didn’t see the tattoo. The blood leaking from the holes in his chest obscured much of the definition of his torso, but as I was pulling his jacket back down I saw the symbol, inked amateurishly just above where his heart would be. It was a flaming torch held in a fist. I recognized it at once. This man was part of the Kaibiles, jungle warfare specialists and elite fighting unit. I’d read about them in the briefing report. They were the unit most feared by enemy combatants and recognized as one of the most dangerous and deadly in the world. They were trained through extreme force, hardship and suffering and were taught from day one to remove all sense of compassion and humanity. From somewhere, their motto rose into my consciousness.

If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.

I recalled reading something about their members being told to raise a puppy to adulthood and then being forced to kill and dismember it as a test of their loyalty to their unit. Their initiation into the full brotherhood involved drinking a cocktail of rum and gunpowder from a spent mortar shell.

And now they were here. They were taking orders from a disgraced member of British intelligence, and they had found their way to this desolate wilderness in a little fold of cold, rugged land.