"Moving," Keller says into the bone-phone.

"Negative that," Downey answers.

Keller gets up into a crouch and sees Eddie Ruiz to his left.

Eddie nods.

It's on.

Keller dashes toward the school.

- Forty's bodyguards lay down a sheet of fire.

Eddie hits the ground and looks up to see a woman with a pink Uzi trying to spot him, but he shoots and blows Commander Candy away first. She clutches at her stomach as if she can't believe that this has happened, drops the pretty pink gun, and sits down and howls for her mother.

Then Eddie sees Forty make a dash for the jungle. Eddie leads and pulls the trigger. Forty stumbles and then goes down, gets up again, and Eddie's about to finish him when another spray of gunfire from the Zetas forces him to squeeze the earth.

Then there's a whoosh and an explosion and Eddie sees the bodyguards blown off the school's porch like toy soldiers in a kid's game. He looks to find Forty but can't see him.

He does see Keller get up and head for the church.

Ochoa.

Z-1.

El Verdugo.

Works for me, Eddie thinks.

He gets up and follows.

- Chuy's done.

He drops the rocket launcher and walks back into the brush. Carefully picking his way along the narrow trail he's walked so many times, he crosses the stone terrace of the Mayan temple, picks up his ftbol, and crawls into his cave.

There is nothing to fight for here.

Not Flor.

Not Nazario.

Not Hugo, or God.

One side will win, one will lose, and it doesn't matter which. He has his own mission now and he can't carry it out during this fight.

He curls up into a fetal position and hugs the ball tightly to his chest.

- Adn trips over a root and falls face first.

He hurts.

His right leg is burned and blistered, he's scratched and cut from the thorns and razorlike leaves, the soles of his feet are cut and bleeding. He's exhausted, and part of him just wants to stay down and sleep, but if he sleeps they might catch up with him, and he wants to live to see his sons again, to hold them. That's all he wants in the world, all he wants from life.

Nacho was right.

What are they doing this for?

If Ochoa survives and wants to be patrn, let him.

All I want is to live.

Adn fights to his feet and keeps going. The jungle is dark in the predawn and he can't see where he's going, he can only move away from the sound of shooting and hope that the North Americans find him before the Zetas do.

His only hope now is that Keller is winning and will come find him and get him out. That was their deal, and for all his faults, and they are many, Keller is a man of honor, a man of his word. But Adn saw the helicopter crash and wonders if Keller was in it, if he's dead, if even now the Kaibiles are cutting up his body.

As they'll do to you, Adn thinks, if they catch you. He's lost and has nowhere to go, but he keeps stumbling through the jungle, away from the sounds of shooting, trying to find a refuge.

- Chuy wakes up.

Something is coming, burrowing into his cave. He turns on his flashlight and sees- Forty.

He's bleeding, holding a wound in his stomach. An exit wound, Chuy sees. Forty was shot in the back and the bullet came out his stomach and now there's a big gaping hole that Forty can't cover even with his big hand.

Forty recognizes him. Croaks, "It's you. Thank God. Help me."

Chuy looks at his face.

Doesn't see the face grimacing in agony, but sees the face laughing at him, laughing at him while he hurts him, laughing while people scream.

"Help me," Forty begs.

Chuy takes his knife, plunges it into Forty's wound, and then rips the blade up through his stomach, up into his chest, just the way they taught him.

Forty bellows.

"Bitch," Chuy says.

Forty huffs in agony.

Chuy takes out the knife, makes a horizontal incision across the top of Forty's head, near the scalp line. Then he grabs the flap of skin and peels down as Forty screams.

The face won't haunt Chuy anymore.

Then Chuy grabs his ftbol again.

His mission is done.

Almost.

He takes a little sewing kit out of his pocket.

- Keller rushes the church.

Runs for the count of three, dives to the ground. Looks, fires ahead of him, gets up and runs for the count of two. Mixes up the rhythm so the four Kaibile guards firing from the church doorway and windows don't anticipate his move.

He hears the chopper come over him and realizes that the wounded are up and off. Thirty minutes, at least, before it comes back to get them. Downey would have sent the medic with it, and seven others. Ten of us left. Downey's reconfigured his men-four screening the line from the Zeta camp, four covering the village and the Zetas coming back from the attack on the Sinaloan camp. Ruiz and I moving on Ochoa.

Ruiz dives to the ground five yards to his right.

Ochoa is in the church. Keller knows it, feels it, because otherwise the Kaibiles wouldn't put up a fight there. But they have him and Ruiz pinned down and will kill them the second they get up.

"K-1, this is D-1."

"Acknowledge."

"Wait for my 'go.'"

"Acknowledge."

Keller listens to the traffic between the team members. "Target acquired. Target acquired. Target acquired. Target acquired."

"Joy."

Four shots, four hits.

"Go!"

Keller gets up and runs for the church. Shots come at him from the left, but he keeps running, and then bursts of fire from the team cover him and he makes it to the church doorway and steps over the two Kaibile bodies, neatly shot in the head. He flattens himself against the wall and sees Ruiz come up right behind him.

Keller pivots, swings his M-4 in front of him, and goes in.

The church is small, more of a chapel. Two more dead Kaibile lie by the windows. Some of the rough wooden pews have been torn out, a small bedroom built in their place, a bed, a nightstand-very basic. Oil lanterns hang from the walls and cast the church in a pale golden light.

A woman crouches by the side of the bed, clutching a baby.

She looks up at Keller in fear.

"No one is going to hurt you," Keller says.

But she doesn't believe him, clutches the baby tighter against her, and waits for him to do whatever he's going to do.

Keller moves past her, down the center aisle.

He doesn't see Ochoa.

Then he does-a slim shadow behind a cheap plaster statue of Mary, the baby Jesus in her arms.

Eddie sees it, too.

No respecter of saints-or for that matter, virgins-he blasts away at the statue, and chips of the Madonna and child spray the wall.

Ochoa rolls away and fires.

Keller feels a round hit the protective plates in his vest, like the blow of a baseball bat. He drops to his knees behind the wooden pew and swings his M-4 to find Ochoa, now slithering across the base of the altar, and fires.

The bullets rip into Ochoa's feet, then up his legs, across his knees.

Eddie's burst takes him in the stomach.

Ochoa lies by the front of the altar, his .45 in one hand, his other clutching his stomach, trying to keep his guts in. His eyes are half open, his legs twitch, his once handsome face is distorted in agony.

Keller knows that a bullet has snapped his spine.

Then Keller sees Eddie look around, and then spots what he's looking at-a tin of paraffin, used to light the lanterns. He should stop Eddie, but then he thinks about Erika's and Marisol's mutilated bodies and decides to let Eddie Ruiz do what he's going to do.

Keller turns his back and holds his hand out to the woman. She takes it, and he helps her up, then puts his arm around her and leads her and the baby out of the sanctuary and into the doorway. The shooting outside has slackened-when the Zetas saw that Ochoa was captured, they started to withdraw back to their camp.

Eddie takes the tin and pours the paraffin over Ochoa.

Eyes wide, Ochoa stares up at him.

Helpless.

"You think you hurt?" Eddie asks. "You don't hurt yet."

He tosses the match on him.

Keller steps out of the church.

But he hears Ochoa's shrill screams, like a strong, fast wind scouring stone.

- The sun comes up, red as blood, fire, and raw truth.

Adn sees it as good and bad.

Good in that he can see, bad in that he can be seen. Sheltering in the jungle like a small animal, he wonders if prey is grateful for the end of night. He's tired and sore, the burns on his skin raw and painful, his head throbbing, his arms cut and scratched from the thorny branches, his bare feet a raw mess.

He's walked in circles and figure eights, avoiding the Zetas, trying to discern what's happened in the village, if his men have won or lost, if Keller has succeeded or failed. The shooting has faded into sporadic desultory bursts, but trucks have roared by on the narrow dirt road, men have trotted through on trails, and Adn has been afraid to lift his head and call out.

The bitter irony is that he's waiting to see Keller.

His persecutor has become his savior.

He staggers ahead.

Lost.

- Eddie comes out of the church. "I was lighting a candle."