Through a thicket of brush, we push deeper into the forest. Our small group stops at the edge of a clearing. Mangled twigs lay across what seems like a path to the other side, where wild grass reaches skyward from the tree trunks: a haven. One of our group members, carrying a waist-high branch used during the first part of our exfiltration to check for antipersonnel and land-mine trip wires, kneels and looks at each of us as if to ask,