Beta explained that the food drops were always dead drops − the location was known to both parties but there was a deliberate time gap between drop-off and pick-up. Therefore the informant never saw the faces of those who dropped off the food he picked up, nor those who collected the food after he left it. However, he’d confirmed the quantities of food, revealed the frequency of the deliveries and listed his drop locations. He’d also given up the alias of his squad commander and twenty names and descriptions of various compañeros.
‘Unfortunately, this man’s information is five weeks old. His sudden absence will have been noted and his commanders will have broken up his squad and rotated them to different parts of the country. However, our informant also gave us the names and descriptions of five civilians – boat drivers or donkey drivers who transport food into the jungle accompanied by Guerrilla squads. These men are poor, but because they own boats and donkeys they can’t change locations as easily as the guerrilleros.’
Beta pointed behind him to the map into which several red pins were inserted.
‘We now have seven known drop locations near fishing settlements along the Cristal River, and we plan to hit all seven simultaneously. Your squads will go door-to-door, questioning locals about these five men, their current whereabouts and the names of any family members, associates or friends. If anyone you question runs, shoot them in the leg and bring them in. If you suspect any person of concealing the whereabouts of these men or other significant information, bring them in. I want these people alive …’ Beta smirked again. ‘At least alive enough to talk.’
‘Remember,’ said Alfa 1, coming to the front, ‘these temporary river settlements are occupied by indigenous populations, seasonal workers and fishermen. Make sure you have solid evidence before bringing in a civilian.’
I understood his implication – once the Autodefensas began interrogating a suspect, that person would never be released.
‘If we start killing innocent people,’ added Alfa 1, ‘we’ll have a catastrophe on our hands.’
He looked squarely at Beta as he said this, as though challenging him to disagree. We could not afford any public relations blunders.
I raised my hand.
‘Comando, is there any indication of who owns the large camp?’
‘How did I know you’d ask that?’ Alfa 1 laughed. ‘Good news, men.’ He tapped the brown paper that concealed the enlarged photograph. ‘We are now certain of the camp’s owner. You have all seen this hijo de puta recently on television, pontificating articulately about peace and poverty and the good of the nation while prancing around like he’s the next president of Colombia. But make no mistake! This man is a killer, a drug trafficker, a kidnapper and a criminal of the highest order.’
As he tore back the brown paper my pulse raced with excitement. I was certain he was referring to Santiago.
But instead I found myself looking at the face of another famous guerrillero: Tirofijo, or ‘Sureshot’.
Several commanders exclaimed aloud and we looked at each other open-mouthed. Tirofijo was the grand prize – the Guerrilla’s supreme commander who’d started the insurgency in 1965 by arming peasants and organising them into militias. Eliminating him could change the course of the war, as well as Colombian history.
Despite that, I was bitterly disappointed. To me, Tirofijo was merely a face – more a historical myth than a real man. My hopes of finding Santiago plummeted.
Beta distributed copies of Tirofijo’s photo, which we were to show to everyone we questioned. Long after the others had departed, I sat staring at the photo. All my hopes now rested on a vague plan of finding Zorrillo in Puerto Galán and then somehow tracking Papá’s other killers during my future leave periods. But there was no guarantee of capturing Zorrillo and, with only two weeks’ leave granted every four months, the hunt for the others might take decades.
I stood sluggishly and dragged my heavy boots towards the door.
Alfa 1 called me back. ‘Close the door!’ he ordered.
I obeyed.
‘Did Piolín tell you about the captured guerrillero?’
I wasn’t surprised that Alfa 1 knew about our conversation. He kept himself informed of everything that occurred on his base.
I nodded cautiously.
‘It’s a shame she had to witness that,’ he lamented. ‘The Palace of Truth is no place for a pretty girl.’ Leaning back in his chair, he asked me philosophically, ‘You know the worst thing about torture?’
I shook my head.
‘It works.’
Alfa 1 slid a facedown photograph across the desk, his palm covering it. ‘The photo I asked Beta to distribute of Tirofijo is part of our counter-intelligence. We ask the Guerrilla sympathisers some pertinent questions, but we also throw in some misleading questions to keep our enemy guessing about what we know. The last thing we want is this man,’ he slapped the back of the photo, ‘the real target, moving his base.’
He lifted his hand and I turned the photo over. It was Santiago. My smile stretched from ear to ear.
74
WITH INFORMATION FROM the tortured guerrillero, Alfa 1’s patrols now had purpose and direction. Leaving a reduced guard protecting the fincas amigas, he ordered squads to each of the dead drop locations identified by Efraín. We hoped that with seven squads asking questions along a thirty-kilometre stretch of the river, one of the collaborators might lose his nerve and try to flee. Alfa 1 had set up hidden checkpoints on the road and placed an undercover man on every bus. The army would monitor unusual boat movements.
By sending in small squads as deliberate provocation, we’d also test the Guerrilla reaction times and assess which of their drop zones they guarded most strongly, hoping to find a weakness in their defences and a possible route into Santiago’s camp.
My squad reached the ramshackle fishing settlement of Puerto Pescador at dawn.
In the gathering light, we saw a few dozen wooden shacks strung out along the bank of the Cristal River. The settlement wasn’t marked on any map and most of the shacks were only occupied during the rainy season.
As the fishermen pushed their boats out into the river’s slow-flowing waters, we began our first round of ‘door knocks’, targeting the women. They regarded us with suspicion, hanging back in the shadows of their doorways with their naked, brown-skinned children crowding around their skirts. They must have been accustomed to armed men asking questions – perhaps from the army or Guerrilla passing through – and claimed not to recognise the names we read out or the photo of Tirofijo.
Around midday, when the fishermen returned, we visited each dwelling a second time. The men were scaling fish and mending their nets, while their wives washed clothes in the river and stretched them out to dry on the rocks. The fishermen shook their heads, grunted and responded to our barrage of questions with perplexed looks and few words. When shown the photo of Tirofijo, some said they’d seen him, but only on television.
After a day of door knocking, we set up camp approximately five hundred metres west of the riverbank, in a thicket of jobo trees atop a small knoll. The knoll itself was in the centre of a treeless, grassy field, giving us clear views for two hundred metres in all directions. Now that we’d questioned the fishermen, we needed to be on high alert. We were on the border of Guerrilla territory and they might retaliate. In the event of an attack, the trees would provide cover, and the elevation would give us superior firing positions as well as a strong radio signal back to base.
By late afternoon, dark clouds had gathered and it began drizzling, decreasing visibility. I sat against a tree trunk, thinking, while half my men remained on watch and the other half stretched out and tried to sleep. Even with confirmation that the base belonged to Santiago, I realised we were only beginning to scratch the outer perimeter of his security rings. The base itself was deep in the jungle, towards the Venezuelan border, through fifty kilometres of wide rivers and dense jungle. But at least we were advancing.
Suddenly
, I heard Palillo hiss twice – the signal for danger. I hissed back and belly-crawled towards his tree. While Palillo leaned his forehead against the trunk and aimed his Galil, I peered through his binoculars east towards the river. At the limit of our grassy field I could see little at first. Then I caught flashes of movement in the woods and the metallic glint of rifles. After I made out the first shadowy human figure, the others became easier to spot. There seemed to be dozens of them, scurrying through the trees in all directions. With the fading light and the stress, it was hard to estimate their number, but I guessed around forty.
‘Ready,’ whispered Palillo, confident he had them in his sights.
‘Wait,’ I answered, tossing a rock to wake MacGyver, who shook the others by the ankles. I took aim also and waited tensely as my men wriggled towards their assigned positions, but the enemy must have realised we’d detected them. They opened fire first.
The noise of their rifles was like a jet engine. Bullets hurtled towards us, kicking up sprays of earth, sending bark flying and causing shredded leaves to cascade down upon us. Palillo returned fire, but my heart pounded and I froze up completely. During training, we’d always fired one shot at a time to conserve ammunition, but the deafening roar of rifles on automatic disoriented me until, finally, I recalled Alfa 1’s advice about a soldier’s first battle: ‘Fire as soon as you can, even if you don’t have a clear shot. Your fear will discharge with the rifle.’
I fired without aiming properly and the Galil jolted against my chest. The impact on my ribcage knocked out my breathing, but Alfa 1’s advice worked – the jolt stemmed the overload of adrenalin in my body. I suddenly felt calm and clear-headed. We needed to hold our positions, radio for backup then conserve ammunition.
But before I could give the order we were already in trouble.
‘I’m hit,’ yelled Veneno. ‘Help! I’m hit.’
He lay on the ground, clutching his back and rolling around. I scrambled to him and grabbed his pack straps to roll him onto his stomach. His pack blocked my view of the wound, but I saw a dark, wet patch spreading quickly down the back of his right leg. I touched his pants – the cloth was already saturated. I fumbled through my own pack for the first-aid kit and unravelled a tourniquet and bandage. MacGyver crawled over to us.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he warned. ‘Once it’s dark, they’ll surround us and we’ll have nowhere to run. We need to get off this hill or we’ll be stuck here all night dodging their grenades.’
As though to confirm his words, there was an explosion thirty metres downhill at the base of the knoll.
‘Shit!’ MacGyver said. ‘They must have an MGL.’ A Multiple Grenade Launcher.
We also had grenades, but they were hand grenades – completely useless against an enemy at two hundred metres. Another explosion sounded on the other side of the knoll. Our protective fortress of jobo trees now felt like a prison. A single fragmentation grenade landing among our trees could kill us all.
Nevertheless, retreating across open ground carrying an injured man would be difficult. Then it got worse. Coca-Cola gasped, stumbled and clutched his calf.
‘I think they got me,’ he stated calmly.
His hand came up covered with blood. He looked horrified and confused. Ñoño scrambled to his side and dragged him to safety behind a tree.
I yelled to Tortuga and signalled for her to come over. ‘Radio it in! Major battle. Two men down. We’re under siege by a large enemy force. We need reinforcements urgently.’ I tossed her the bandage, tourniquet, iodine and morphine syringe. ‘Fix Veneno! I want both injured men together. Then you and Ñoño help return fire.’
MacGyver pointed west – the opposite direction to the approaching enemy. ‘I can take two men down that way and circle around into the woods to stop them spreading out.’
I didn’t like splitting the squad, but when another grenade exploded nearby, it seemed like our only option. ‘Okay! Go!’
MacGyver waited for the next grenade and then led Yucca and Giraldo down the back of our hill, which was still protected from their line of fire. Tortuga and Ñoño attended to Veneno and Coca-Cola. Palillo and I continued firing to slow the enemy’s advance. But since they were still hidden among the trees they were well protected.
Within two minutes, we heard rifles cracking from the northern edge of the grassy clearing. I had no idea how MacGyver had managed to reach the trees and then cover so much ground so quickly, but the Guerrilla mustn’t have expected it. MacGyver’s fire coming at them from forty-five degrees now destroyed their cover. They turned on their heels and ran back towards the river.
Palillo and I sprinted down the open slope while MacGyver’s group gave chase through the trees. The Guerrilla stopped frequently to return fire, but neither we nor they had a clear shot through the thick woods. Ahead, I heard a boat engine roar to life.
We emerged into a clearing to see the river two hundred metres ahead. Twelve guerrilleros were sprinting towards a boat that was being pushed out into the current by a man wearing a black T-shirt and red shorts who was knee-deep in the reeds. Since they were in the open, they no longer returned fire, instead concentrating on reaching the boat. Palillo stopped running and fired.
‘Come back here, you fucking gallinas!’
Now that we had them on the run, he seemed to be enjoying himself, swearing and calling them chickens. They were a hundred and fifty metres ahead of us – a difficult standing shot, but well within the Galil’s range. Palillo switched to automatic and sprayed them with bullets without altering his aim. I dropped and lay flat, taking aim and breathing deeply as we’d been taught. I fired at the end of a long exhalation. My rifle cracked but the enemy kept running. I readjusted the rifle’s position, nestling it firmly against my shoulder and placing my right cheek ten centimetres back from the rear sight. I took more time to aim. I fired. Nothing. But my third shot caused one to fall.
Two turned and rushed back for him. Now that I had my aim, I fired four more shots at them in rapid succession. A second man went down. The third man tried to drag both his fallen comrades to the river, but the rest of his squad was already scrambling into the boat and pushing off. He abandoned the two dead, raced to the river, splashed through the water and was hauled over the side of the boat.
I fired at the boat. They were getting away.
‘Missed,’ called Palillo, who had dropped down beside me and was observing with the binoculars.
I fired again.
‘Missed. Splashed to the right and a metre too high.’
I fired yet again.
‘Hit the bow. Aim a little up and to the left.’
I lined up a fourth shot, but by then the lancha was motoring away swiftly and they returned fire on automatic, forcing us to cover our heads with our forearms as bullets whizzed overtop. I snatched the binoculars from Palillo and got a glimpse of the boat driver, who was crouching behind his outboard. He was skinny with dark skin, shoulder-length hair and a moustache.
Tortuga flopped down beside us. She’d sprinted from our knoll on her own but was hardly puffing. She crawled forward with the radio pack still on her back, firing at the boat as it rounded the river bend.
‘Call it in!’ I ordered. ‘Two enemy dead. Ten escaped by boat. Might be more coming. We need those reinforcements. And two of our men are down.’
Tortuga repeated my order through the radio but changed the last part: ‘One of our men down.’
I looked at her, wondering what she meant, but she had no time to explain. MacGyver belly-crawled in beside us with Yucca. ‘We need to move quickly. We’re exposed here.’
I nodded. We retreated into the woods. The order came back from Alfa 1: he would send a truck with reinforcements and notify the two nearest foot patrols, but they might take two or three hours to arrive. In the meantime, we were to evacuate immediately, carrying our injured to the army checkpoint five kilometres upriver. They’d be notified to expect us. We were to leave the enemy bodies but take their rif
les if we could reach them safely.
75
ONLY TWO KILOMETRES into our upriver journey, Alfa 1 radioed us that the army was sending a boat. They transported us to their river checkpoint and then transferred us into the Autodefensa truck.
Back at La 50, we were hailed as heroes: Palillo for detecting the enemy’s approach early; Ñoño for his rapid first-aid response; Tortuga for her calm and accurate radio communication; MacGyver for his quick tactical thinking, leadership and bravery; and me for my marksmanship.
‘We haven’t seen shooting like that for years,’ said Alfa 1. ‘Two confirmed kills from two hundred metres using only nine rounds. Incredible!’
For the next few days I felt elated. I was also proud of my squad. I remembered Trigeño saying soldiers should be prepared to give their lives for their commanders. At the time, they were only words. But now I believed them.
It is a strange and powerful feeling to know that the man beside you would sacrifice his life for you without a second’s hesitation. It’s a feeling few people will ever know, and one that is almost impossible to explain to those who have not served in the military.
The only person not to receive the commanders’ praise was Veneno. The dark, wet patch on the back of his right leg had not come from a bullet wound but from a burst water bottle in his pack. He swore he’d felt the impact and gone into shock. But over the coming days he was teased mercilessly by soldiers walking past him and tipping water on themselves, falling to the ground and calling, ‘I’m hit! ¡Socorro! I’m hit!’
The joke never got tired and Veneno had to keep quiet or risk further ridicule.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola was laid up with a shattered tibia in the Villavicencio military hospital, where Lieutenant Alejandro had registered him as a regular government soldier injured during training exercises. It would be at least six weeks before he was able to walk, and even longer before he returned to active duty.