Out of the handful of operatives the United States had working in Paraguay, Naylor produced the best reports. Not only did he bring back grade A material from the field every time, but his sources continued to feed high-quality intelligence back to him when he was in Ciudad del Este.

When the man walking in front of him suddenly stopped, Naylor, whose mind had been wandering, chastised himself for not staying focused. Even though the jungle was monotonous and the heat stifling, it was no excuse to get lazy and let his guard down. He knew better.

Two men at the head of their column were having a discussion. In the distance, Naylor thought he could hear a river. Breaking ranks, he walked up to them. “What’s going on?” he asked in Spanish.

“The others don’t want to go any farther,” said one of the men. “I will take you the rest of the way myself.”

“Wait a second. Why?”

“Because they’re afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Sickness? Whatever the people there died from?”

The older man shook his head. “From what we were told, the people there did not die from sickness.”

Naylor had no idea what the people had died from. All he knew was that a villager had stumbled across several dead bodies in a remote part of the jungle, a place no one lived in. The bodies belonged to foreigners, the man had said. Shortly after recounting his tale he had stopped talking. It was almost as if he had slipped into shock, though some sort of catatonic state was more likely. Naylor wasn’t a psychiatrist, but whatever the man had seen had deeply disturbed him.

The area they were now in was rumored to have housed an al Qaeda training camp at one point, though no one could ever say exactly where. Add to that a report of “dead foreigners,” and that was all Naylor had needed to hear. He had no idea what had so spooked the villager who had stumbled upon the bodies, but his interest had been piqued, and once his mind was set on something, it was impossible to dissuade him from it.