Once I’d added up the column of numbers and tipped the returned bullets into a bucket, I relaxed. The fraud was buried. During any future inventory count, the bullets would be out by one, but it would be impossible to determine when or how the error had occurred. Nevertheless, I needed many more bullets to fill a pistol’s magazine. And I needed them within ten days, before the promotion course ended. Next time I’d have to be braver.
As we locked up for the afternoon, Palillo came to the container to ask me to swap my 6 pm guard duty shift for his 10 pm shift. Since drinking was not permitted until after guard duty, this would allow him to start partying earlier.
‘Sure. Take these too,’ I said, handing him my beer tickets.
When Culebra realised I wasn’t drinking, he pressed the container keys into my palm.
‘Guard these with your life. And no matter how much I beg, don’t give them back to me until tomorrow.’
‘Why not?’
‘When I drink, I get crazy. On New Year’s Eve two years ago, I opened the container and fired eighty-two rounds into the air at midnight.’
If he’d been a recruit, he might have been executed. Instead, Alfa 1 fined him twenty dollars per bullet – several months’ salary. But this year, with me minding his keys, he could get properly drunk.
After dinner, the party began. Music blared from the office loudspeaker. Recruits and guards became more raucous as the night wore on. Meanwhile, the commanders were having their own private party in their dormitory, where they’d retreated with four of the girls and several bottles of rum.
I tried to join the festivities, but the effort to appear cheerful was exhausting. Guard duty came as a relief, although the perimeter guard who was partnered with me kept grumbling. Standing under a copaiba tree, listening to the music blaring and looking across at the brightly lit mess hall where a hundred soldiers were celebrating, I felt more alone than ever.
I prayed to God and told Papá I missed him like a loco and that I knew he missed me too. I told him I was working on a plan to get justice against his killers.
Although I’d left my lucky bullet casing at the dump, I had put another in my pocket. Rolling it between my fingers, I started analysing how to get my stolen bullets off the base. I couldn’t simply throw them into a trash can then collect them at the dump. Earlier, when I’d inspected the black bags of garbage lined up against the kitchen wall, several were ripped and leaking. My bullets, being small and heavy, might drop through the holes when the guards carried them to the dump. The bags were also identical, and it might be a week before I could next get to the dump. How, among hundreds of bags, would I recognise which was mine?
When my hour was up, I returned to the mess hall to find the others drunk. Palillo was on a table, trying to impress Piolín with an invented dance he called crossover, which involved tap dancing to regaetón with two spoons in his mouth. Ñoño was demonstrating how a magnet affects a compass needle. Only MacGyver remained on the group’s edge, looking pensive. Then the commanders sent Tortuga out of their dormitory with a message: beer rations were now doubled. The dormitory door slammed shut, the lights went out and a cheer went up for the commanders – Paisa, Mahecha and Mona were still inside.
‘At least someone’s getting some action,’ muttered Silvestre.
Only a few days earlier, after the deserters were chopped and packed, the girls had bawled. Now, three of them were having sex with the perpetrators. In a way, it made perverse sense. The girls were frightened and being with a commander implied protection. No matter what mistakes they made from now on, the commanders would presumably not execute their lovers. Tortuga, having just been excluded from the dormitory, appeared worried. Whereas Piolín, with her boyfriend back in Barranquilla, looked serene.
That night, Paisa, Mahecha and Mona’s decision might have seemed good. But now that the commanders had gotten what they wanted, they wouldn’t need to work so hard for it in future. The girls didn’t know the many things they’d have to endure in order to maintain that protection. And if they protested, the protection could be withdrawn at any time, making them worse off than before.
I went to the kitchen to look again at the garbage bags. It occurred to me that wrapping the bullets in newspaper or food scraps would prevent them from falling out. Ñoño was passing around a plate of watermelon slices – their thick rinds would be ideal.
Marking the bag, however, was riskier. More identifiable marking would be easier for others to notice too. Then I remembered the heavy-duty garbage bags Culebra kept in the container. They were identical in size and colour to those used for kitchen waste but had bright yellow ties. The yellow ties would be distinguishable from hundreds of others at the tip but not suspicious. And I had the keys to the container in my pocket.
Although I didn’t yet have all my bullets, I could start experimenting with the empty casings right away. Everyone was drunk. The commanders were out of the way. It was the perfect opportunity to execute a dummy run.
‘Cheer up,’ said Ñoño, offering me the fruit platter. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve.’
I snuck away from the mess hall with two slices of watermelon on a paper plate, stopping only to collect the other bullet casings and my pocketknife. In the container, moonlight shone brightly through the mesh window, throwing a trapezoidal patch of light onto the floor. The garbage bag took only a moment to retrieve.
I was about to leave when it occurred to me that this was the most protected place on La 50 to conduct my trial. I bit into the watermelon, chewing the fruit until only a bite and the thick white rind remained. Then, crouching on the floor, I inserted my pocketknife, twisted it, and slid the empty bullet casings in, just as I’d seen Mamá do when she stuffed garlic cloves into turkey.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel outside. Keys jangled. I froze, too panicked to think where to hide the watermelon and remaining casings. Then Ñoño’s voice sounded nearby.
‘Comando,’ he called. ‘They’re asking if they can open the rum you keep in the office.’
‘Who is?’ It was Beta. He was right at the container door.
I looked up at the desk and saw the brown paper package containing the Viagra and condoms that Culebra had forgotten to take with him. In another second, Beta would find the padlock unlocked, the container door open and me crouched inside. But Ñoño’s drunken response confused him.
‘The rum in the office. They want it. And the aguardiente.’
‘What? Who’s asking?’ demanded Beta.
‘Up at the office,’ rambled Ñoño. ‘The lights are on.’
‘Shit!’ Beta’s footsteps sprinted away.
I quickly slid another two casings into the watermelon rind and pushed both bits into the bottom corner of the garbage bag. Then I slipped out of the container and closed the padlock.
I was shaking. If Beta had walked in, who knows what punishment he’d have ordered? If he thought I was stealing, that was punishable by death. Quite possibly, Ñoño had inadvertently saved my life.
Still trembling, I rejoined the group and began collecting beer cans and other rubbish to fill the bag.
‘Stop being so responsible,’ yelled Palillo. ‘It’s New Year’s!’
I dumped the garbage bag with the others and headed towards La Quebrada for some air. After a short while, I heard footsteps again.
Piolín sat down beside me with two cans of Aguila, the beer from her home city of Barranquilla. Beta must have landed her best friend, Mahecha, since he’d lent Piolín his cell phone. She balanced the phone on her knee and offered me a can, flicking her fingernail against its side.
‘Happy New Year.’ The aluminium clinked and her voice sounded lonely. Two beers hissed open, but I didn’t take mine. ‘You escaped from the party too?’
I’d seen Palillo annoying her earlier. They seemed to be getting close, although he was doing all the talking. I shrugged.
‘You don’t talk much,’ she said.
‘Don’t you ne
ed some privacy to phone your boyfriend?’
She glanced at my lips. ‘I made him up.’
I could see she wanted me to ask her why. Instead, I accepted the beer and looked at my knee.
‘Girlfriend?’ she asked.
I nodded. ‘Camila.’
She slid her arm across my back and held it there for an entire minute, leaning her forehead against my ear. I could hear her breathing. Then she placed a hand on my knee, kissed my cheek gently and whispered, ‘What I’d give to be Camila.’
Girls are such wondrous creatures. In six weeks I hadn’t spoken to Piolín. I’d barely even looked at her. She was beautiful as a tower-bound princess. She could have her pick from her three jailers or the hundred men beneath her with skyward eyes and lolling tongues, many of them taller, older, funnier and better looking than I was. As her footsteps receded, I noticed she’d transferred the phone to my knee.
Holding it, I looked up at the black sky with stars splashed against it like specks of silver sand. There was a half moon and I could distinguish my favourite constellations of Orion and Capricorn. I wondered whether they could see Camila and what she was doing right then. I had her photo in my pocket. I wondered whether there was some wild party that she’d snuck away from for fresh air, and whether the most guapo guy from the dance floor had followed her out, and then what she’d think and say as his hand inquired against her knee.
My thumb hovered over the phone’s keypad. The temptation to call Camila was overwhelming. I reached into my pocket for her photo, but my fingers touched instead the one remaining bullet casing. My resolve strengthened and I turned the phone off.
The feeling would pass. It was simply New Year’s Eve nostalgia. It must pass. I had a job to do and that job was like grief. Six weeks in. Painfully hard. And only just beginning.
36
ON JANUARY 1st, we exchanged our wooden cut-outs for proper rifles – Galils and AK47s – which we called our novias.
‘Think of your rifle as your new girlfriend,’ said Culebra, our firearms instructor. ‘Do not let another man get his hands on her. You must sleep with her, know how to undress her in the dark and keep her well lubricated at all times.’
He paused until Palillo’s laughter died down. Palillo still laughed the loudest, but he no longer interrupted with stupid questions, instead saving his comedy for when the instructors weren’t around.
‘Have any of you fired a rifle before?’ Culebra asked.
Ñoño raised his hand. I didn’t, although I’d fired Papá’s .38 Winchester many times. The Winchester was good for scaring foxes or for putting a dying cow out of its misery. But firing a farm rifle – a .22, a .38 or even a shotgun – was nothing like firing a military assault weapon. Thinking that one qualified you for the other was plain dangerous.
The first shot knocked Ñoño backwards. He dropped the rifle and was punished with a two-hour pack run in place of dinner.
The Galil was heavier than Papá’s gun, required a bigger cartridge and had a bigger kick. We learned to fire on semi-automatic mode, in which one round was fired per trigger squeeze. From the start, accidental rifle discharge earned us an instant day of El Soleado. A week later, simply being caught with your rifle off safety earned the same.
Beta encouraged us to give our new novias names. Silvestre called his rifle Piolín ‘after a girl he once loved, but who didn’t love him back’. Officially, Piolín still had a boyfriend back home. But thanks to me, Palillo had inside information and now worked on her with greater intensity. She liked him, but he ruined it by playing the clown.
‘You don’t always have to be the centre of attention,’ I told him. ‘Ask her about her.’
But Palillo thought winning a girl was about being funny, spending money on her, telling her she was beautiful and hoping she’d cave in. Since our shoulders became stiff from the rifle strap, Palillo offered to massage Piolín’s knots. She arched her spine, leaned back against him and closed her eyes. Palillo proclaimed loudly so that everyone would hear, ‘Did you know that ninety per cent of massages lead to sex?’
Piolín’s eyes shot open and she stood. ‘Then ten per cent of men are inept.’
Carrying four-kilogram rifles strapped to our shoulders also made the obstacle course harder. Beta reduced the minimum time by three seconds per day and added a creek crossing, during which we had to hold our novias above our heads.
Ñoño’s speed had improved, but the addition of the Galil and the creek triggered a major setback. By the time he reached the monkey bars, he was exhausted. He leaped but kept missing the bars until Beta shouted at him to continue with the course and punished him afterwards with extra kitchen duties.
After training ended one day, Ñoño again sought my help. All his previous efforts seemed in vain; he was right back where he’d started.
‘Teach me to jump like you,’ he pleaded.
Since I secretly owed him for New Year’s Eve, I agreed to help him practise. But after ten failed attempts on the bars, I could see no amount of training would be enough.
‘What if I don’t graduate?’ he asked despondently.
‘Perhaps your father has forgiven you,’ I suggested, trying to put a positive spin on being sent home.
But that wasn’t Ñoño’s worry.
‘The trainers hate me. Do you really think they’ll let me go home alive?’
‘Why not? Everyone’s allowed to go home for two weeks’ leave once we’ve …’
‘Once we’ve graduated.’
He looked at his boots. I shook my head sadly. If Ñoño had short arms and couldn’t jump high enough, it wasn’t my fault.
Midway through the first week of January, Culebra sent me to Puerto Bontón for supplies, giving me a chance to stop at the dump. The garbage bag with yellow ties was easy to find. And when I ripped off one of its bottom corners, the two pieces of rotting watermelon rind tumbled out with the bullet casings still in place. I was now ready for the real thing.
I continued falsifying the bullet inventory, and by the time the perimeter guards finished their pistol training I’d under-reported sixteen of them – even more than I’d hoped. I’d remove all sixteen from the armoury in one go, insert them in watermelon rinds and place them in a single, yellow-tie trash bag.
I’d also need to steal a pistol, which I’d send out via the same route. But a pistol was larger and riskier to smuggle and would require more ingenuity to obtain. In the forty-foot container there were enough pistols to start my own shooting range, but each one was registered in the inventory with a unique serial number, and Culebra looked after them like they were his babies.
By mid-January, the trainers were calling us soldiers rather than recruits. The perimeter guards had finished their advanced course and departed, and we were now solely responsible for guard duty. It was the thick of the dry season, and training days were long and hot and gruelling. During breaks we gulped down litres of water and watched lizards skirmishing over scraps of shade. Afternoons ended with the obstacle course. We were more careful leaping from the jetty now since the water level had dropped, leaving shallow rocks exposed. When we returned to the mess hall at dusk, mosquitoes descended and crickets flitted through the browned, withered grass.
My muscles no longer ached and I no longer felt tired. The cement had dried around our routine and our bodies had moulded to the expanding training regime like new school shoes around growing feet. We woke automatically at 5 am without an alarm. We ate at the same table and sat in the same seats. We knew our places and we knew the rules.
My only worry was Ñoño, who continued to fail on the monkey bars. Each punishment wore him down, making him even less likely to succeed the next time.
‘Thanks for trying,’ said Ñoño at the end of one practice session. ‘I owe you.’
‘You don’t owe me anything,’ I said. Then, without thinking, I added, ‘We’re even.’
‘You mean because of New Year’s Eve?’ He seemed embarrassed to mention it. ??
?It was nothing. I didn’t want Beta to catch you.’
‘Catch me?’ I tried not to sound defensive. Whatever Ñoño knew, or thought he knew, I couldn’t admit anything. ‘I was just working.’
‘With the lights off? I don’t know what you were doing with those watermelons, Pedro. And I’m not asking. But you should be careful. If I can see what you’re doing, the trainers might also.’
And he walked off, leaving me to contemplate the monkey bars and whether I’d truly done my utmost to help him. I knocked my forehead repeatedly against the wooden pole and then kicked the pole hard.
This was exactly the reason I’d avoided being friends with Ñoño. I knew I’d end up taking on his problems and that he’d eventually get in the way of my plans. Besides, what did he expect me to do? Lower the monkey bars? Beg the trainers to make an exception for his height?
Seven thick rusted nails jutted outwards from the wooden upright. If I repositioned just three of them together on the inside, they wouldn’t look out of place and Ñoño might use them as a foothold. I’d have to do so without anyone knowing, not even Ñoño. If the trainers discovered the nails, he’d be the first to be blamed and would need to deny everything convincingly.
That night, I took a clawed hammer from the container and swapped shifts with Palillo, who was on the guard post closest to the monkey bars. Before tapping in the rusted nails, I hesitated. Repositioning nails was no big crime, but helping the weak was a risk I’d sworn never to take. People had to save themselves and make their own decisions. Once I’d started, where would it stop?
But the trainers did hate Ñoño. Beta’s bullets were getting closer and closer. And while hammering in three nails might mean nothing to me, they were three nails that could save a boy’s life.