2

Rain sounds reached the ground long before the drops. A peccary rooting in the humus looked up, wrinkling its nose. The stalking jaguar froze, watching his prey sniff the air.

Drops fell through the top layer of the rain forest canopy, hit the second tier or the third in the two-hundred-foot fall, breaking into mist. Fog swirled white against the deep shadows. The peccary resumed snuffling for food.

Hidden in a cave of matapalo roots, doom twitched his tail and resumed his slow stalk. Water drops beaded on the jaguar’s whiskers and fell, finally, to the ground.

The peccary pushed its pig-snout deep into the composting forest floor. The jaguar crept forward a few more inches. When the peccary paused to look for danger, the cat froze.

Something moved at the edge of the jaguar’s vision. He looked. Nothing. Sniffed the air. Nothing. The jaguar squinted, still bothered, as he resumed stalking.

“Great picture. From ten miles away,” said Bill. Wearing another of his large collection of gaudy Hawaiian shirts, he sat in front of his monitor in the control room. The incongruous floor-length curtains and spidery crystal chandelier were all that remained of the dining room on the first floor of the mansion. Crammed with computers, monitors and technicians, it looked like a miniature version of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.

“Yeah. Amazing,” Clyde yawned. As the military deputy director of the project, Clyde was not interested in technical details. Clyde did not understand how Bill made any of this work, and did not c