After the killing

摘要

We fell through the cloud deck at sunset, exchanging a vista of ruby cloud tops for a rolling carpet of darkening jungle in northern Guatemala. The jungle scrolled beneath the descending 737 at 300 miles an hour, uninterrupted by artificial lights, roads, pastures, or settlements. A single dirt track wound through the landscape, but no automobile headlights groped their way along it. The only signs of human activity were wispy plumes of smoke rising from tiny fires here and there.