Every day U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and their Peruvian colleagues train their binoculars on the Upper Huallaga River looking for drug traffickers in the world's largest coca fields.
Often they see bodies - many with their heads and hands cut off - floating down the river next to their fortified base in the jungle."They want to scare us with the bodies, but we are ready for them and they will take a heavy toll if they attack," Maj. Jose Villar, a base commander, said during a recent visit by a group of reporters flown in from Lima, 500 miles away.
Villar believes that the bodies that wash down the river in the remote, tropical valley known for rampant lawlessness and violence are those of drug dealers or informants.
"We expect an attack and the place is full of terrorists over there," a Peruvian policeman said as he pointed to the bank of the river across from where the DEA agents and their Peruvian colleagues hid behind sandbags, their M-16 rifles cocked and ready to fire.
Guerrillas of the Maoist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) group vie for power with the smaller pro-Cuban Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in the Upper Huallaga Valley, considered the world's largest single production center of coca, the raw material for cocaine, most of which ends up in the United States.
The Santa Lucia base, considered the biggest of its kind in Latin America, was built at a cost of $3 million near a bend in the winding river. It has the same layout as a typical U.S. base in Vietnam, said a U.S. Embassy official.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia calls the anti-drug drive "our Vietnam drug war."
However, Americans are likely to die in the war - a fact acknowledged by the American agents here and the man in Washington who heads the overall U.S. effort against drugs.
"Is it likely some Americans will die? Yes, this is likely to happen," William Bennett, President Bush's chief drug enforcer, told a Senate committee hearing last month.
"All of us have volunteered to come here and help to fight the drug trade," said one of the DEA agents at the base. "We know some of us will die but the same happens when you fight drug dealers on the streets of New York."