It was midmorning before Casius emerged from the jungle on a rise that fell slowly to the Orinoco Delta. A village below housed a small population of fishermen who also ran cargo and passenger boats up and down the river for extra income. Casius carefully wiped the calf-high mud from his legs with wet leaves and unstrapped the bag still lashed to his back. He donned a pair of shorts, and over them, slacks. Then he slipped into a pair of light brown loafers, put on a large loose-fitting, wrinkle-free shirt, and covered his head with a baseball cap. He shoved a pair of sunglasses into his shirt pocket, buried the plastic bag that had kept the clothes dry, and headed for the small village in the distance.

Casius approached a pontoon boat tended by a fisherman who sat scrubbing its hull. “Excuse me. Can you tell me how I might find a fare to Soledad?” he asked.

The man stood from the boat and regarded him. “You are a tourist, no? You like feeshing? I catch a very large feesh for you.”

“No fish, my friend. I need a ride up the river.”

“Si, señor. Two hundred pesos. I tek good care of you.”

“You’ve got a deal,” Casius said.

The fisherman ordered two quickly appearing sons around as if he had just been appointed the general of an army, and readied the boat in five minutes flat. Ten minutes later he piloted the screaming forty-horse Evinrude upriver toward the small but relatively modern town of Soledad. Casius sat near the rear, studying the passing jungle, arms crossed, his gaze fixed, a thousand thoughts spinning circles through his mind.

ABDULLAH WALKED into the concrete shipping room and saw Ramón bent over one of the logs prepared for the night’s delivery. The Hispanic man caught his look and nodded, still speaking to the worker who stuffed the hollowed log with cocaine bags. Across the room, conveyor chains ran into the mountain toward the large pipe that would deliver the log into the river far below. Abdullah walked up behind the two men and peered at their work.

The shipping method had been Jamal’s idea and thus far they had lost fewer than ten logs to stray currents. The logistics were simple: Fill the buoy- ant Yevaro logs with sealed cocaine, shoot the lumber through a long, three-foot pipe that ran through the mountain to the Orinoco River, and collect the logs when they spewed into the ocean, two hundred miles east. The river delivered with unwavering consistency, spewing its littered waters into the ocean unceasingly. Homing beacons attached to each log assisted the pickup. The logs had passed into American lumberyards without incident for five years now. The tree’s thick bark hid the panel cuts exceptionally well, rendering detection virtually impossible.

“How many tonight?” Abdullah asked, and the worker started at the sound of his voice.

“Three, sir.”