Even so, I make more noise than the forest ninjas on either side of me. They slither between trees and over ferns as silently as serpents, and when I make a tiny noise they all freeze and throw me cautionary glances.

We are moving parallel to the river. Every so often through a gap in the foliage I can see green water and the canoes that are trailing a few hundred feet behind us. I spot Eko in one of the lead canoes, looking very anxious.

Gisco and Mudinho are a little way back, and the devious dog is a much better actor than the High Priestess. I’m sure he’s also worried about me, but he’s slouched down in the canoe with a nonchalant, tired expression as his droopy ears flick flies off his face. He looks like a bored tourist.

A hand touches my shoulder. It’s the warrior leading our attack. He brings us all to a halt and points. There’s a clearing up ahead, and thickets of what look like the nastiest thorn bushes in the world.

Then I see something move inside one of them, and realize that they’re not briars but rather camouflaged fortifications. This is the ambush the colonel has set. He’s hidden big guns facing the river, manned by soldiers ready to kill everyone in our flotilla. Our leader waves his hand and our platoon creeps forward.

I can taste the metal knife in my mouth. I’m thinking of P.J. and what she must have felt when the first bullet struck her from above. As we near the gun emplacements I remind myself that one of these soldiers could have been in the helicopters that attacked P.J.

There’s no way to keep behind cover when you have to cross a clearing, so for the last twenty yards we break out of the brush and run.

Sprinting through low grass. Expecting to hear someone shout out an alarm at every step. Shots will ring out. I’ll feel the sting of bullets in my neck or my chest, and stumble down to my final resting place.

But there’s no alarm. The low grass softens our footsteps, and no one hears us coming.

I’ve always been a fast runner. The same legs that once carried me more than three hundred yards in a high school football game now drive me first across the clearing. I spot a leafy door built into the wall of a hut, and I push in as quickly and silently as I can.

Two soldiers are inside. One is sleeping. The other stands next to a machine gun, sipping from a cup as he peers out a narrow slit of window at the river.