by Rusty Young
When I suggested we try to find a family to adopt him, Ñoño rebelled. ‘Iván’s going nowhere,’ he said, snatching up the boy’s hand. ‘He’s already got a family, right here.’
Meanwhile, we set up camp at the old Díaz finca and began converting it into a proper base. Humberto Díaz’s former home was unliveable. Squatters had used the ground floor to shelter livestock; the carpets were soaked with pig and chicken faeces. But the caretaker’s cottage had fared better. The peeling green wallpaper had darker, rectangular patches where pictures once hung, but some furniture remained. This is where Beta and I would sleep. Our supply room would be the barn. The milking shed, where we hung twenty hammocks, would house our soldiers and be the communications and command centre.
Around the shed’s perimeter we erected a one-and-a-half-metre high brick wall and, over the coming week, my soldiers cleared low-growing shrubs out to a radius of four hundred metres and cut the grass using machetes.
For additional security, I stationed puntos with handheld radios in strategic places to give warning if anyone approached, and set up four guard posts on the fence line. Four German shepherds were chained at the hacienda’s perimeter in the spaces between each guard post, and were trained to bark at the slightest disturbance.
Surveying our defences, I felt happy with what we’d achieved. But when I thought of my own family finca just over the hill, I also felt sad. I missed Mamá, but she was hopeless at keeping secrets and I needed to be discreet until the Autodefensas were properly established. I also missed Camila. During one of my supply runs into Garbanzos, I phoned to tell her that I’d soon be working permanently in Llorona.
‘That’s incredible!’ she said excitedly. ‘Did Javier offer you a job?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘But you did quit?’
‘No, we’re moving here to make the town safe.’
‘I see,’ she said sceptically. ‘But where exactly will you be?’
‘Near our finca. We can’t see each other yet, but I’ll phone you soon.’
Camila, however, was stubborn and determined.
Around sunset, as I was making my new bed, Pantera, the punto I’d stationed on the dirt road leading uphill to our base, announced over the radio: ‘Pedro, you have an incoming visitor. Pretty. Five foot five. School uniform.’
Camila had ridden up from Llorona on her bicycle. She threw her arms around me.
‘I’ve missed you so much, baby,’ I said, hugging her back. ‘But you can’t be here.’
‘I guess you know about Zorrillo,’ she said, glancing around at the bullet-pocked farmhouse. ‘Is this where it happened?’
‘Yes,’ I said tentatively, worried she’d ask for details about my role.
But Camila had already moved on and was looking around with interest. ‘So this is your new office?’
I nodded. ‘But I’m still on duty and—’
‘And I’m still your girlfriend, so don’t you dare ask me to leave!’
I took a deep breath and led her back to my quarters, away from the curious glances of my men. When Camila saw the photos of us I’d hung above the bedhead, her hand went to her chest and she smiled. We kissed for minute and I felt myself becoming aroused.
Suddenly, she stiffened and pushed me away. I followed her shocked gaze and realised, to my horror, that she’d spied a list of five names taped to the wall beside the desk – Ratón, Zorrillo, Buitre, Caraquemada and Santiago – all of them except Buitre and Caraquemada accompanied by a photo. The names of the two dead men were crossed out in red.
‘You put photos of these … these murderers … next to mine?’
‘I’m sorry – I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know you’d come here.’ I stared at the ground, feeling stupid for not remembering the list I’d put up only yesterday.
‘That’s not the point! When, Pedro? When will you see that what you’ve started never ends?’
She burst into tears and beat her fists against my chest. I caught her wrists and drew her close to me.
‘It will end,’ I said grimly, ‘when Papá’s killers are gone.’
She looked at me aghast. ‘But you promised you wouldn’t. Under my house that night, you promised.’
‘Ssshh. Ssshh.’
She let herself be embraced. She put her arms around me. I kissed her tears and then her nose and then her lips. And although she was angry and initially resisted my caresses, eventually I felt her heartbeat quicken and heard her breathing shorten and I managed to coax her towards the bed.
Afterwards, lying naked, I didn’t want her to leave, although I knew she had to.
‘You shouldn’t be here, Camila. I love seeing you but it’s too dangerous. Caraquemada probably knows we’re here by now. What if he launches a counter-attack?’
‘I want to stay.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like. Bullets ricocheting everywhere. You could be killed or kidnapped.’
‘Or you could be,’ she retorted. Then, snuggling up to me, she added, ‘If they take you, I’m coming.’
Two weeks after Zorrillo’s death and the capture of seven of his guerrilleros, I met with Buitrago to finalise the military plan for Phase Three: the occupation of Puerto Galán to eliminate the remaining nine members of the Bolivarian Militia plus another twenty members of the Guerrilla’s secret logistics, intelligence and recruitment networks who’d been identified by the captured guerrilleros.
After our successful trekking mission and the leaflet drop, Buitrago’s trust in us had deepened. Enemy sympathisers had now been given fair warning. Anyone who chose to stay had sealed his own fate.
‘Here’s the full list of enemy collaborators,’ he said, ‘along with their last known addresses.’
Buitrago also agreed to temporarily hand over three of the guerrillero prisoners, bound and gagged. Their role would be to identify the milicianos. With Rafael also giving us valuable intelligence, Beta and Trigeño became hopeful that Caraquemada’s entire underground network could be wiped out in a single, devastating strike.
For thoroughness, Puerto Galán would need to be occupied by a large force of Autodefensas for two or three days, during which time questions could be asked and witnesses called in order to thwart any attempt by the guilty men to disguise themselves within the village’s population. To isolate the village during the occupation and make it difficult for the collaborators to escape or phone for help, a large tree would be felled across the highway between Llorona and Garbanzos behind the advancing Autodefensas, and the electricity and telephone wires would be cut.
Buitrago reluctantly agreed. He knew these were illegal tactics – mass detentions, interrogation of civilians without judicial basis, house-to-house searches without official warrants and summary executions without trial. However, provided it was done thoroughly, it would only have to be done once.
To ensure he could later deny any collusion, Buitrago arranged to have trusted men place explosives on a distant oil pipeline and then call in a sighting of ‘hundreds of enemy’. On Friday morning he’d then lead three-quarters of his men away to deal with the ‘attack’. By the time he returned, the Autodefensas would be long gone, leaving him a village cleansed of insurgents.
I fully expected to be part of the occupying force, but when Trigeño called me on the Friday morning, he told me I would not be included in the mission.
‘Bloque Norte will do the job. Afterwards, you and Beta will be running these towns. I don’t want blood on your hands.’
‘My girlfriend, Camila, lives in Llorona. Will she be safe?’
‘Warn anyone you care about living south of Garbanzos to depart for a few days. Be discreet. Tell them to keep their mouths shut.’
Anyway, that was the plan.
116
PALILLO IMMEDIATELY WARNED his mother to take his siblings and flee. Diomedes wasn’t there to oppose her – he was off picking coca leaves in the Guerrilla-controlled fields.
‘Maybe he’ll get killed in the cr
ossfire,’ Palillo said wryly.
When I visited Old Man Domino, he refused outright to leave. ‘I’m a viejo with only a few years left in me. I’ve already run once when Bogotá burned in 1948, and we settled here. I’m not running again.’
On my way to conceal two chainsaws in the bushes near the large Brazil nut tree that was to be felled, I also stopped at Camila’s place.
When Señor Muñoz answered my knock, he was shocked to see me in uniform and tried to slam the door in my face. I blocked it with my boot.
‘Don’t act so surprised,’ I said, still resentful towards him for opposing my relationship with Camila. ‘You already know what I do.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To warn you. To protect you and your family. Something heavy is about to happen.’
‘What do you mean “heavy”?’
‘I don’t have details. But lock up your store and take a week’s vacation. And not a word to anyone.’
‘It’s only two-thirty. Camila’s still at school.’
‘Then pack her suitcase and meet her outside the school gates.’
An hour later, Palillo and I met Beta at the Garbanzos airstrip, an expanse of dried grass and compacted earth with three large corrugated iron hangars. Dark clouds were gathering as we handed over the three handcuffed guerrilleros who’d be used to identify the milicianos.
‘Buitrago wants them back without a scratch,’ I said, handing him three black balaclavas for concealing their faces.
Beta nodded grimly. ‘And the chainsaws?’
‘Hidden near the tree like you wanted.’
Lightning flashed on the horizon and thunder growled in the distance as two Antonov airplanes carrying the Bloque Norte troops touched down one after the other and taxied to the nearest hangar.
‘Return to your base,’ Beta ordered us. ‘Don’t leave for any reason until I radio you.’
As Palillo and I drove off, I turned to see ramps lowering from the back of the planes and row after row of battle-ready Autodefensas descend. Each carried a rifle, grenades and four magazines. None of them wore face paint. Instead, every man held a balaclava.
As we passed the army’s permanent checkpoint in Garbanzos – already deserted – I felt a strange sense of foreboding. But my doubt was only momentary. We were committed now and there was nothing I could do.
117
CAMILLA CALLED ME on my way back to base. She’d locked herself in the bathroom of her aunt’s house in Garbanzos – where Señor Munoz had taken the family – so that her father wouldn’t overhear.
‘Why did you tell us to leave, Pedro?’ she whispered. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be! It’s just a precaution. Once the Guerrilla are gone, you’ll be safe and we won’t have to hide our relationship anymore, I promise.’
In spite of the storm raging outside, I slept soundly, secure in the anticipation of the new phase of my life that was about to begin. With Caraquemada’s network of collaborators eliminated, perhaps Camila might change her mind about Llorona being such a shitty town. Perhaps she’d defer university. She might even decide to stay permanently.
I awoke refreshed on Saturday, blissfully ignorant of events that had begun the previous night and were still transpiring several kilometres to the south. We worked intensively finalising the headquarters, joking around and teasing each other. During breaks, I sat on an upturned wooden crate, sipping tinto by the small VHF radio and awaiting news. I had no inkling that anything was amiss until mid-morning on Sunday when I received a frantic radio transmission from Pantera: ‘Army truck approaching rapidly. Be ready!’
A moment later, a green truck screeched to a halt by our headquarters. Colonel Buitrago got out, slammed the door and charged towards me like a wounded bull.
‘Hijueputa liar! We had an agreement! No innocent people were to be touched.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve just come from Puerto Galán. Your men were drunk and torturing people in the abattoir. They cut up corpses and threw limbs into the river!’
‘That’s impossible, Colonel. You must be wrong.’
‘Wrong, am I?’ Buitrago’s rage spiralled out of control. He seized me by the throat and marched me backwards, ramming me against the cabin of his truck.
‘What’s this then?’ he said, indicating something in its tray.
I prised his hands away and doubled over, gasping for breath, before I was finally able to look.
It was the body of a dead woman. She was slightly bloated, her hair was wet and her skin a greyish blue. At first I assumed she’d drowned. But then I noticed two entry wounds – one in her stomach, the second shot to her left eye.
‘This woman was an innocent seamstress with a six-year-old daughter. And witnesses say a small boy was killed by gunfire from a helicopter.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Colonel. I haven’t moved from here or spoken to my superiors since we delivered your informants to Beta.’
When he saw that my astonishment was genuine, Buitrago calmed down slightly.
‘Then get changed and get in the truck!’ he ordered. ‘When we reach Garbanzos, call your boss. I want answers.’
We drove full speed to Garbanzos Hospital, where I phoned Trigeño, who called me back on a landline at the nurse’s station so that our conversation wouldn’t be intercepted. I described the dead woman and repeated Buitrago’s claims about the helicopter and the drunken bloodbath.
‘I’ve had no reports back on this yet, Pedro, since this limpieza was conducted by Bloque Norte,’ Trigeño said. ‘But none of it sounds accurate. First, the Autodefensas don’t own a military helicopter. Second, it’s against our statues to drink alcohol on duty. As to the woman, having a child doesn’t automatically make her innocent. I seem to recall a seamstress on Rafael’s list who was supplying the Guerrilla with camouflage uniforms.’
Trigeño was confident that there had been no mistakes. Every ‘disappeared’ person fell into one of three categories: they were on our list; they were named by Rafael in advance or pointed out by the three captured guerrilleros; or they were fingered by other villagers interrogated during the limpieza.
‘But what do I tell Buitrago?’
‘Tell him that I’ll investigate this thoroughly. If excesses were committed, the perpetrators will be severely punished.’
From the nurse’s station I wandered the white-tiled corridors, searching for the colonel. I found him seated inside a ward with the door closed. When I entered, I saw three beds occupied by two men and a little girl of about seven years old. Two nurses tended to their wounds, attaching saline drips and heart-rate monitors.
Buitrago raised his eyebrows and came outside. I conveyed Trigeño’s denials.
‘And you really believe your boss?’
‘I do, Colonel. I trust him with my life.’
‘Well, I don’t. The Autodefensas have a military chain of command. How could your top commander not have ordered this?’
‘But, Colonel, this was not our unit, this was—’
‘Enough!’ Buitrago held up a tape recorder and pointed sternly to a chair inside the ward, indicating I should sit. My explanations could wait; he wanted me to hear these witness accounts first-hand as he recorded them.
The first bed was occupied by a middle-aged man with a bandaged hand, a broken nose and two black eyes that were so swollen he could hardly see. When he gave his name and profession I turned away in shame. He was Juan Ricardo, our family mechanic from ever since I could remember.
The second bed was occupied by a pale-skinned but badly sunburned man named Pablo Ruben, a cabinet-maker with a bullet still lodged under his clavicle. Buitrago’s men had discovered him lying injured in a field, beneath the body of a woman.
In the third bed was the small girl, Margarita, who was wearing steel-rimmed glasses. Shaking and crying, she was being treated for shock.
It took two hours for these witnesses to give their statements.
I
sat listening with increasing dismay and then revulsion. Not for a moment did I doubt their testimony. The details were so graphic and gruesome that not in a million years could they have invented the description of the suffering they were forced to endure over a harrowing thirty-six hours.
Combining their testimony with my own knowledge of the mission preparations, and other evidence from witnesses Buitrago had spoken to in Puerto Galán, I was able to form a stark mental picture of how the horrific events unfolded.
118
ALTHOUGH THE PEOPLE of Llorona and Puerto Galán don’t know it yet, their fates are sealed at 7 pm on Friday, when a convoy of five SUVs and four mini-vans drives south from Garbanzos through the abandoned army checkpoint. For anyone caught beyond this point, there is no escape – they are about to endure the most terrifying two days of their lives. Many will not survive.
No one is present to witness the passage of the vehicles, but their numberplates have been removed and their headlights are off, despite the fact that dusk is falling.
The vehicles speed towards Llorona but, several kilometres before the town, the last SUV in the convoy screeches to a halt. Soldiers wearing balaclavas alight and use chainsaws to cut down a huge Brazil nut tree. It crashes through telephone and electricity wires and falls across the highway, blocking the only road connecting Garbanzos to Llorona and the river villages to the south.
Shortly afterwards, thunder cracks overhead and torrential rain pours down. The wife of Juan Ricardo, our family mechanic, is cooking dinner in Llorona when the lights go out. Power outages are common and Juan Ricardo fetches candles and peers out the window.
There is just enough light from the rising moon to illuminate the convoy of vehicles travelling slowly down Avenida Independencia. One stops on the opposite side of the street. Four men knock on his neighbour’s door. Juan Ricardo is shocked to hear the loud pop of a pistol. The men drag a body to their vehicle, hurl it in the tray and then do a U-turn.