“I doubt it,” said Alice. “Even if they heard the explosion, they’d probably think it was soldiers or another gang. I don’t think they’d turn back with a whole load of cocaine.”

Joel added, “They wouldn’t know where to find us anyway.” His voice seemed to have regained its confidence and authority, but none of them responded and they walked on for some time in almost complete silence.

When the ground started to climb, the undergrowth also became thicker. Tom walked in front, holding a flashlight in one hand and the machete in the other, but progress was slower and the dog stayed behind him now, walking alongside Alice.

Tom was just reaching the point of suggesting they might need to backtrack and try a different route when Alice pointed and said, “Wait, shine the light up there, to the right.” He aimed the beam in that direction. “Is that the bluff we stood on today?”

“It might be.” And the more he looked, the more sure he was that they were standing below it.

He pushed on, the dog barking once, in exuberance it seemed, perhaps picking up on his change of mood. He was more certain when they finally got onto the bluff itself, even seeing it in the unfamiliar dark, and then they found the beginning of the path they’d trampled and hacked to get there.

Now that they knew where they were, they stopped for ten minutes and had something to drink. The dog explored the area around the bluff. No one spoke at first and Tom felt a sense of peace falling over him, realizing only now that he hadn’t quite relaxed since leaving the cocaine factory.

But they were within reach of getting back to the others now, and Joel’s voice floated out of the dark, saying, “We probably shouldn’t tell the others too much about what happened this evening. It might upset some of them.”

His thinking was fairly transparent, and Tom could detect some humor in Alice’s voice as she said, “You mean, we don’t need to tell them you messed up?”

But Joel’s voice came back forcefully. “We didn’t mess up, we took a risk, for the sake of everyone else, and maybe that risk didn’t pay off, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong to take it.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that, Joel, because I think it’s the most stupid thing you’ve done, and that’s saying something.”

For a moment there was no response, and then he said, “All I’ve done from the minute we crashed is try to help everyone, and that’s what Chris and I were doing when we walked into that camp. I just think it could upset people if we tell them too much about it.”

Alice sounded furious as she said, “Fine.”