PARLIER LIFTED his hand and peered over the rim with the night-vision goggles sticking from his eyes like Coke bottles. The valley dipped below him several miles before breaking abruptly at a formation he thought might be the cliffs they had been warned about. But in the jungle night, the formation was difficult to make out clearly.

Graham dropped to his belly next to him. “You see it?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Not sure. I think so. We got us a valley and some kind of rock formation halfway down there.” He pulled away the glasses and swiveled to Phil. “What do we have on the GPS, Phil?”

“That’s gotta be it. We’re 5.2 clicks north, northeast of the compound.”

Parlier twisted back on his elbows. The others joined him along the rock outcropping. He peered through the glasses again. “Then that has to be it. We have, say, a couple miles to the cliff and then another couple to the bottom of the valley. There must be a clearing in there somewhere, but I’m not seeing it with these things. Anyone else see a clearing?”

They peered ahead, some through goggles, others dumbly into the night. A mile behind them Beta and Gamma teams waited for their first intel report before taking up their positions. By the look of things, the airdrop had put them on the money.

“Nothing,” Phil said. Someone slapped an insect from his skin.

“So our man is supposed to come out of this valley?” Graham asked. “He’ll have to cross those cliffs. That’s where we nail him.”

Phil grunted. “And we’re supposed to sit and wait for this guy up here? I say we cover the top of the cliffs.”

“Can’t,” Parlier said. “We have orders to stay back. Graham, get on the horn and tell Beta to make for a position one mile due east. And Gamma one mile west. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance on that cliff, starting now.” He turned to his sniper. “Giblet, you think you could put a round where it needs to go from this distance?”

Ben Giblet studied the jungle below them. “It would be tight. Yeah.”

Graham looked at Parlier with skepticism. “We gotta get down there, Rick, and you know it. What’s the big deal? We got us a compound with a bunch of druggies down in the valley. I don’t see the danger in taking the cliffs.”

“That’s not the point. We have our orders.”

Parlier peered into the dim light below. Graham was right, of course. But the orders had been to stay away from the cliffs. Meaning what? Meaning the face of the cliffs or the lip of the cliffs? If it came down to it, he might do some interpreting of his own on this one, he thought.