by Rusty Young
Standing outside the sliding doors, however, were three men in plain clothes who I’d never seen before. One dug a pistol into my ribs.
‘Get in!’ he ordered while another bound my hands. I asked who they were and what the hell was going on, but they gagged me and pushed me into the back of the Blazer.
And from their forbidding expressions and silence during the drive back to La 50, I realised that although I’d just survived hell, my ordeal was far from over.
104
WE REACHED LA 50 at dusk. After all the unseasonable rain, the creek was now a swirling, thundering river. One of the men untied my hands and ordered me to strip to my boxers. Then they bound me again with thicker rope. My painkillers had worn off, my wounds were stinging, but I didn’t fight. A two-hour battle. Being hit by a bomb. The bulldog fiscal. And now this. If I’d had the energy, I might have laughed.
They carried me out into the creek towards the cascade, lowered me onto the metal pole that we used to hang onto during bathing time. And then they left me there.
But even with my wrists and ankles tied to a pole behind my back and the angrily rising creek reaching chest height, I considered myself lucky. La Quebrada was not the worst torture in the Autodefensas. It at least offered a sporting chance.
There were two ways you could die – drowning or hypothermia. But if you survived long enough and had proven to be a good soldier in combat, commanders sometimes took pity on you, as they had with MacGyver, and returned you to be retrained.
Part of the torture was not knowing whether the commanders intended it as a slow form of execution or merely as a protracted punishment. Another part was not knowing how quickly or how high the creek would rise.
I looked to the sky and then to the mountains behind me. Although the morning’s lashing rain had abated, the run-off would keep coming, causing the river to continue rising. Worse still, more black clouds had begun their sinister migration from the horizon, leaching like an oil spill across the sky.
At first I wasted a lot of my strength trying to escape my bindings. I wriggled. I rubbed my wrists together, hoping the rope would fray. I shimmied up the pole, only to slide back down. Alfa 1 had left no guards. A guard might have shared my suffering. However, with no one within earshot, I felt even more alone.
My body gradually grew numb while I formulated the excuses and promises I’d make to Alfa 1 in exchange for another chance. Not knowing what I was accused of made it difficult. Perhaps Alfa 1 believed I’d made a statement to authorities. But if so, why not ask me directly and let me defend myself?
After several hours, four boys arrived with coffee, hot soup and orders to lift me out. But twenty minutes later, they lowered me back in. The food was a good sign, I reasoned. It wasn’t logical to waste food on a condemned man. Then again, it might have been an effective means of prolonging my agony.
At dusk, Alfa 1 appeared on the bank. He stood in silence, hands on hips, watching me. I shouted to be heard over the rushing water.
‘What? What have I done?’
‘As if you don’t know.’ He bowed his head like a Roman soldier commiserating with Jesus on the cross.
‘I don’t. I swear.’
‘Try being honest with yourself.’
When he left, the water licked against my chin. Tiny splashes entered my mouth and nostrils, throwing out my breathing. I stood on tiptoes, trying to avoid sucking water into my lungs. As I spluttered desperately, a dark figure slipped through the bushes.
‘What are you doing? Go away!’
But Palillo didn’t listen. He stripped off and swam out. Then he dove down with two river stones, placing them under my feet. I was now twenty centimetres clear of the water.
‘You’re only prolonging this.’
‘Drink lots of water,’ he ordered, stuffing a Snickers bar in my mouth. He waited for me to finish chewing. ‘Give me time to get dry and be seen. Then use this.’ He wrapped my fingers around my penknife with its blade open.
When Palillo left, I could breathe again. But I couldn’t feel any part of my body. I became drowsy and disoriented, and I returned to the question of why I was here. I went through every infraction I’d committed since joining the Autodefensas. The list was long.
Without a doubt, my two most reckless acts had been shooting Ratón and crossing the Jaguar River in pursuit of Santiago. Not for a moment did I regret pursuing either of them. However, the way I’d done it was completely wrong. I’d ignored the warnings of others. I’d gone ahead and risked my life. And in doing so, I’d risked other people losing me – people who loved me.
I’d also taken a series of smaller risks such as stealing bullets, the Taurus and the Galil. I’d made phone calls, taken the Blazer and photocopied the intelligence files, all without authorisation. If discovered, any one of these could have gotten me executed. Did it really matter which one I’d finally been caught for? They were all part of a pattern. But what exactly was I doing wrong? Not the list of infractions I might’ve been caught for but the real causes.
At first light, the water reached my chin once more. I stopped guessing and I stopped thinking. I was about to drown. What did it matter why? And perhaps it was because I was so broken and had given up on analysing that the reason finally came to me.
In truth, I’d repeated the very same mistake over and again: I had tried to do everything completely on my own and refused to rely on anyone else.
This, I realised, was the oath I’d sworn on the day of Papá’s death. I had kept that oath. But in keeping it I’d acted against the Autodefensas whenever their interests diverged from mine. This was the true cause of my undoing.
I still had the knife in my hand – my last chance of escape. But they’d guess immediately that Palillo had brought it. As I felt myself losing consciousness, I opened my hand. The last thing I saw was the knife see-sawing underwater as the current dragged it away.
105
IT WAS MORNING when I came to, and the creek’s angry flow had slowed. The sun had muscled its way through the oil-spilled clouds, and the renewed light allowed me to see the creek bed clearly.
The river had peaked, and the water had wiped from me everything it could – all the anger, hatred, blame and regret.
I was ready to apologise for everything I’d done. I was ready to obey the rules. I was ready to be truly loyal. That is, if I got the chance. If not, I’d accept whatever came to me. Whether it was death or more torture, I would accept all consequences.
‘Had enough?’
Alfa 1 stood on the bank with his arms folded. As the same four boys lifted me out, I kicked away Palillo’s river stones so they wouldn’t be discovered in the dry season.
My hands were white and my fingers wrinkled and blue. They dragged me to the parade ground and tied me to the new flagpole as the much-diminished troop began assembling.
I scanned their faces for my platoon and located my men at the back. It felt strange not to see Tortuga, Yucca or MacGyver there. I couldn’t rid myself of the sensation that they might simply be late for parade. Any second they’d come running from the new bathroom block calling their apologies. But they didn’t.
Alfa 1 arrived with Trigeño. I didn’t know whether this signalled the end of my punishment or whether Alfa 1 now intended to execute me publicly as an example.
Trigeño’s speech to the troop that day was sombre.
‘We paid heavily at Río Jaguar,’ he said, pointing to the gold, red and blue flag above me, hanging at half-mast. ‘But the Guerrilla are on notice – we’ve trodden where no government soldier has stepped foot in thirty years. And we will do so again!’
He talked about duty and courage and the sacrifice of those who had not returned.
‘Rest assured,’ he said, ‘their families will be looked after.’
He insisted that The Company was expanding into neglected parts of Colombia. Another intake of one hundred and fifty recruits would begin training next week. The tide of communism would be stoppe
d.
Then he stepped down from his crate and turned his attention to me.
With Alfa 1 now standing on one side of me and Trigeño on the other, I felt like an accused criminal trapped between prosecutor and judge while the troop before me acted as the packed public gallery, hanging on every word.
If this was indeed a trial, there was hope. I’d been a good soldier in combat – killing two men at Puerto Pescador and taking out the Guerrilla M60s at Río Jaguar. That surely counted for something. And although I wasn’t popular or funny like Palillo, I had my peers’ respect. After the disastrous battle, our soldiers looked crestfallen and defeated. Publicly executing a commander in front of them would decrease morale further. Perhaps Trigeño would be merciful; I simply had to give him a reason – or an excuse – to let me live.
Clearly, Alfa 1 wanted me dead. His disgust with me was so great that I was no longer worthy of eye contact. I also sensed tension between him and Trigeño. Perhaps they blamed each other for our losses at Río Jaguar – Alfa 1 for his poor planning and Trigeño for giving the order to cross – and that might also work to my advantage.
‘You know why you were in La Quebrada?’ Alfa 1 asked me sternly.
‘I didn’t tell the fiscal anything. I promise.’
‘Then why was this in your pocket?’ He produced a business card belonging to the bulldog fiscal.
‘It’s a trick. I tore up the one he tried to give me. He must have slipped in a second card as payback.’
‘Then why did he tell you to phone him about you know what?’
‘Because I refused to talk and he wants to make you think that I did.’
‘He’s lying,’ Alfa 1 said to Trigeño, drawing his Colt from its holster. ‘Why should we believe any of this?’
‘Because it’s the truth,’ I insisted.
Alfa 1 flipped the card and read aloud a hand-written note on its back: ‘Pedro Juan Gutiérrez González. Signed statement taken on May 2.’
Somehow, the bulldog fiscal had found out my full name and then written it on his card to make me look like a sapo. That was the bulldog’s final trick, and it was effective.
Alfa 1 flicked the Colt off safety and cocked it. ‘You have three seconds to change your story.’
‘I can’t change the truth. But I can prove it, if you lend me your phone.’
Trigeño nodded. Alfa 1 freed my hands and reluctantly passed me his phone.
I dialled the number on the card and put the phone on loudspeaker as the bulldog fiscal answered.
‘It’s me. Pedro. From the hospital.’
‘¿Sí?’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you offered …’
‘And?’
‘And I’ve changed my mind. I’m ready to talk.’
There was a pause. ‘I knew you’d come around. Who can you give me?’
Trigeño snorted and snatched the phone. ‘Me, you hijo de puta.’
‘Who’s me?’ asked the fiscal, apparently confused by the change of voice.
‘The invisible man. Enjoy your transfer.’ Trigeño hung up, removed the phone battery and then snapped the SIM card between his fingers. For good measure, he hurled the phone into the river. Alfa 1 was not impressed; he’d just purchased a new phone and having it destroyed gave him one more reason to hate me.
‘Even if Pedro didn’t talk, that doesn’t change the reason he was captured,’ he persisted. ‘He was rescued inside the Guerrilla base. I have witnesses who saw him swimming across after I gave the retreat order. How can he possibly explain that?’
Alfa 1 was right, but I knew begging for mercy would be useless. Men of power don’t respect that. They respect displays of strength, particularly when there is little strength left to display.
‘I had Santiago in my sights and took the shot, but I only hit his leg. So I risked everything trying to finish him. Our original plan was to go after Santiago, and that’s what I did.’
‘No,’ boomed Alfa 1. ‘What you did was disobey an order. You knew that your second-in-command was dead and you put your remaining platoon members’ lives in danger by depriving them of a leader. You were this close to being captured by the enemy. But instead you got yourself captured by the government. Hundreds of my men died in that battle doing what they were told to do. But you decide to play the hero and then you expect us to come and save you. Do you have any idea of the strings we had to pull to get you out, not to mention the girl whose job you lost and how much it all cost us?’
I latched onto this final comment as a positive sign. Surely they wouldn’t expend money and effort to rescue me only in order to kill me afterwards?
The issue of my disobedience at Río Jaguar, however, remained unresolved, owing to an interruption from Beta. Evidently, Alfa 1 had sent him to fetch something and he now returned smiling menacingly and casting dark, triumphant looks at me. He covered his mouth with his hand while whispering to Alfa 1. I only heard the final part as he handed over several papers: ‘My contacts in the Fiscalía are certain it’s Pedro.’
While my mind raced to think what this new information could possibly be, Alfa 1 took the papers, skim-read them and shook his head gravely.
‘Bad news, comando,’ he said, addressing Trigeño again. ‘Your vehicle has been implicated in a double homicide committed in Villavicencio in March of last year. The Blazer was used as the getaway vehicle. At the time, Pedro was entrusted with the keys. Now that the government has his photo on file, it’s been matched to an eyewitness’s description of the driver, who they also believe was the shooter.’ He swivelled towards me, leaned in close enough for me to smell his sweat and shook the papers in my face. ‘Answer me straight! Did you make use of the Blazer without permission? And did you have anything to do with these homicides?’
I was trapped. There was nothing I could tell him except the truth.
‘I did, comando, but—’
Alfa 1 raised his pistol and pushed it hard against my temple. My mouth opened but no sound came out. Trigeño held up his hand and pushed the Colt lightly aside.
‘Wait! I want to hear him out.’
Alfa 1 turned on him and spoke with a fierceness that I’d never heard anyone use toward Trigeño. ‘With all due respect, comando, there’s nothing more to hear. Maybe he didn’t talk to the fiscal. Maybe he did try to kill Santiago like he said. But he’s admitted to stealing the vehicle. Now let’s get this over with.’
‘You can shoot him in a minute. But I want to know who he killed and why.’
I gulped and spoke as clearly as my chattering teeth allowed. ‘Both were guerrilleros, comando,’ I said, lifting my chin high and meeting his gaze. ‘Alias Ratón was the head of the Milicia Bolivariana attached to the Guerrilla’s 34th Unit operating out of Puerto Galán. The other one was his bodyguard.’ I told Trigeño how I’d discovered the Guerrilla battery supplier using radio catalogues and the intelligence files. How I knew Ratón’s political alias and used it to lay a trap. ‘You can check their identities with the Fiscalía,’ I finished. ‘And I didn’t steal your vehicle, comando. I repaired it while on leave and returned it with a full tank of fuel.’
Alfa 1 stamped his foot angrily.
‘These shootings were not authorised by La Empresa. His actions go against the statutes that you wrote, comando.’
Trigeño jerked his head to indicate he needed a word in private with Alfa 1. While they stepped away to confer, I stood there thinking like crazy. My life hung by a thread. There was no longer a chance in hell that Alfa 1 would be swayed. I’d betrayed his trust.
For eighteen months, Alfa 1 had been my mentor. After my disobedience at the obstacle course, he’d spared my life and promoted me against his better judgment, telling me that I needed to be a team player. I’d promised him I would be a team player and yet, all along, right under his nose, I’d done exactly the opposite: I’d acted purely for myself. I’d stolen a pistol and bullets. I’d taken a vehicle registered in Trigeño’s name, used it to commit murder and th
en escaped with the numberplates in full view of witnesses. I’d also stolen a Galil that they didn’t know about. And at Río Jaguar, after Alfa 1 had kept his promise to me about Santiago and specifically reminded me that my position was one of great trust and responsibility, I’d disobeyed his direct order. Normally, any one of these infractions would earn me the death penalty. But with all of them combined, by what possible right could I ever ask him to spare my life?
I could see Alfa 1 slicing and chopping his hands violently through the air as he made his case privately to Trigeño; judging by Trigeño’s nods, Alfa 1’s arguments were gaining traction.
When they returned, I drew on every grain of sincerity I had within me. ‘Give me a second chance, comando. Please. I’ve admitted to what I did and explained why. In both cases, I did it to kill our enemies. I’ve been a good soldier and I promise that if you give me another opportunity, you won’t regret it.’
Trigeño closed his eyes. He was thinking. After a long deliberation, his eyes reopened and he spoke quietly. It was time for my sentencing.
‘Pedro, I’m afraid Alfa 1 is correct,’ he said sadly. ‘Although you may have had the right reasons for doing the wrong thing, how could we ever trust you again?’
I was completely desperate now. I’d burned up every ounce of goodwill and exhausted every argument in my arsenal. I had only one piece of ammunition left – one I’d repeatedly resolved never to use. I lowered my voice so as not to be overheard by the troop.
‘I can help you. You need money, right? I can get you money. And you said you’ve always wanted to enter Llorona. I can get you into Llorona too.’
Trigeño’s ears seemed to prick up. ‘Money? How?’
I pointed to Beta’s cell phone, which hung on his belt, and signalled my desire to borrow it. When Trigeño nodded, it was Beta’s turn to mumble about how much it had cost him.