Proofed by an unsung hero.

Roberto Quesada, commander of El Ejercito de los Guerreros Blancos, greeted the young Salvadorans with handshakes and abrazos, the Latin American embrace of macho friendship.

Each of the six young men — all wide-shouldered, with the close-cut hair and straight posture of soldiers — spoke for a moment with their commander, then filed through the double-door entry of the ultramodern Miami mansion of concrete and plate glass.

Quesada followed the last man through the doorway, as the limousine drivers unloaded suitcases from the trunks of the Lincolns and Cadillacs parked on the circular driveway.

Across Ocean Avenue, in a rental car parked in the night shadow of a flowering silk tree, a reporter braced a motorized Nikon on the car's steering wheel. He scanned the mansion's windows. Dwarf palms and ferns screened the interior from his sight. Finally, he took his eye from the camera's viewfinder. He watched the chauffeurs carry suitcases inside. Snapping the cap onto the 400mm telephoto lens, Floyd "The Cat" Jefferson carefully set down the camera. He noted the time and exposure details in his notebook: 9:38 p.m. Color Kodak 1000 ASA.

He checked a schedule of airline flights. The evening flight from El Salvador had arrived in Miami less than an hour earlier. Floyd Jefferson knew the six soldiers came from El Salvador. To double-check his assumption, he worked out the crosstown travel time from the airport, added time to clear customs. El Salvador.

Who're they here to kill? Or perhaps they are here only to talk about murder. And torture and mutilation.

Parked a mere hundred yards from the leader of one of El Salvador's most feared death squads, Jefferson leaned back on the car seat to wait. He wanted more photos. Even with the high-speed emulsion of the film and the camera's expensive optics, night photography of subjects in motion remained an exercise in luck.