Colombiano

  I was about to ask the soldier if he could get word to my base when suddenly a man with a scrunched-up face like a bulldog’s was looming over me. He was panting heavily from his sprint across the landing pad.

  ‘Stand back from my prisoner,’ he ordered the soldier and then began barking questions at me. ‘Which frente are you with? Who’s your comandante?’

  The soldier stood his ground, shoving his arm against the bulldog fiscal’s chest.

  ‘This patient needs urgent medical attention.’ And to save me from having to answer anything immediately, he injected me with an extra dose of morphine, which knocked me out again. The last thing I remember was his winking and mouthing two words: ‘Good luck!’

  But with the bulldog fiscal against me, I’d need a lot more than luck.

  103

  I WOKE IN a small, white-walled hospital ward, disoriented and shaking, but glad to be alive. I was dressed in a blue gown. A tube ran from my arm up to a metal drip stand beside my bed. A man with a shaved head lay sleeping in the bed opposite with one bandaged hand elevated in a sling.

  The door was open but my wrist was cuffed to the bed’s metal railing, and a green-uniformed fiscal policeman was stationed on a chair in the corridor. As soon as my cuffs rattled, he punched a number into his phone.

  ‘Subject is awake,’ he said and hung up.

  Once the initial elation at being alive wore off, my thoughts turned to my platoon. Palillo. Ñoño. Piolín. Giraldo. Where were they now? Had they sustained injuries during their retreat? I also wondered what had become of Santiago and the girl. Had they been captured by the government, or had they managed to escape in their canoe? I took the remote control from the bedside table and turned on the TV, hoping for information. Surely a battle that big would make national headlines. But nothing was mentioned on the news. The wall clock read 1 pm. Only ten hours had passed since the battle – perhaps not enough time for news to filter through.

  Lying there, I had plenty of time to go over what had happened with Santiago. To have been spared by a man I despised, a man I could have killed myself, or at least taken prisoner, was humiliating. His false apology about my father, his condescending paternal advice, as though he were a school careers counsellor, was galling. I’d have much preferred his bullet to his mercy. As I lay handcuffed, ruminating in that hospital bed, Santiago’s sparing me was the final insult.

  But rather than making me disheartened, my encounter with Santiago sharpened my focus. At least I was alive. And that meant I was free to pursue Papá’s real killers. In fact, by telling me about Caraquemada, Santiago had given me a gift.

  I’d always believed that Santiago – as the highest ranking comandante who’d given the order – bore the greatest responsibility for Papá’s death. I’d believed that with his demise, I might feel some relief and calm. It would be all over. But how could I continue hunting a man who’d spared my life, twice? Besides, now that I knew the truth about Santiago – that he was a delusional communist who cared more about ideas than people, my anger towards him turned to disdain, and even pity. From now on, I resolved, I would concentrate my energies on the men who’d actually carried out Papá’s murder.

  Caraquemada was my ultimate target. Of course, I’d get Zorrillo and Buitre too. I’d kill them both. But before I did, I’d force them to lead me to Caraquemada.

  Presently, a surgeon arrived – a tall, bookish type in his early thirties, with a steady voice. He explained that they’d operated on me for five hours and had removed thirty-two esquirlas – shards of metal – from my back and legs. I’d have scarring, he told me, but should consider myself lucky.

  ‘If you’d moved a centimetre to the left or right,’ he said, rattling a plastic jar containing the esquirlas, ‘any one of these could have severed a major artery and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

  ‘How long will I be stuck here?’

  ‘A week at least. Perhaps longer.’

  My first feeling on hearing this was relief – surely that would be enough time for my group to find me. However, on further reflection, that relief became tinged with trepidation. When my platoon had regrouped and realised I was missing, had they gone back looking for me, or simply assumed I was dead? It would take the Autodefensas at least two days to trek out from Río Jaguar via the shortest route, and even then I couldn’t rely on them looking for me. I needed to find a trustworthy person to convey a message back to La 50 as soon as possible.

  The doctor seemed friendly, so I thanked him for saving my life and attempted to engage him in conversation, trying to assess whether he might do me a favour. He could at least tell me whether other injured Autodefensas were in the hospital ward.

  ‘May I keep the esquirlas?’ I asked. ‘I think I’ll make them into a necklace.’

  ‘Of course.’ He laughed and held out the jar, but a hand shot out of nowhere and snatched it from him.

  ‘This is evidence.’

  It was the investigator from the Fiscalía who’d met my helicopter. His icy stare sent the mild-mannered doctor shuffling from the room. I now got a proper look at him – a podgy, balding man with cavernous nostrils like the muzzle of a double-barrelled shotgun.

  The fiscal – who introduced himself as Eduardo Mendez – was reasonable at first. He drew up a chair, enquiring how I felt and whether I needed anything. I was polite in return but gave monosyllabic answers.

  ‘Is there anyone you’d like me to contact on your behalf? Relatives or friends?’

  ‘No, gracias.’

  ‘So you have no parents or siblings? Not even a distant aunt who might want to know you’re here? You were raised by wolves, I suppose?’

  When I didn’t answer he opened a notepad, took a pen from his pocket and his voice became gruffer. He demanded to know my name and how I’d sustained my injuries.

  I gave the name from my cédula and stuck to my fieldworker-looking-for-employment story, even though it had more holes than a spaghetti strainer.

  When I finished, he reviewed his notes. ‘So you’re telling me you went looking for work in the middle of Guerrilla territory, where there’s not a factory, not a farm, not even a fucking shop. Pure jungle. And you were walking through that jungle when you just happened to wander into a battle between the Guerrilla, the Army and the Air Force?’

  He had his pen poised over the paper. I said nothing.

  He tried again. ‘You say you were injured in an explosion. Where were you hit?’

  ‘From behind.’

  ‘And you were wearing these clothes?’ He held up a bag containing my new civilian clothes.

  ‘A blind man could see my blood on them. Test my DNA if you want.’

  ‘Then where are the tears from the shrapnel?’ he shouted. ‘Are you suggesting these clothes stitched themselves back up? Perhaps you believe in witchcraft, Señor Jhon Jairo García Sanchez. Because I hear people from your region worship the Big Red Boy.’

  I looked out the window. Defending my story against further questions would be like trying to block bullets with tissue paper.

  Fiscal Mendez breathed out heavily through his nose and switched down a personality.

  ‘I’m an honest prosecutor. I don’t care whether a man is Guerrilla or Autodefensa – they’re both terrorist organisations. But that ID isn’t genuine and you don’t look a day over seventeen. If you tell us who you really are and co-operate, we’ll release you as a minor into the custody of your parents. If you can’t return home, you’ll stay in a safe house with kids your age, get a monthly living allowance and receive technical training at college. But if you sign your statement as an adult, you’re facing up to twenty-five years in prison for subversión and terrorismo.’

  He painted a pretty picture of the government’s program for captured underage combatants. But the Autodefensas could get to me anywhere. I knew what they did to sapos, and I’d rather my commanders found me here, handcuffed to a bed for refusing to talk.

  ‘I’m not signing anyt
hing.’

  The fiscal stood and slapped his notebook closed with annoyance. ‘Today I’ve been as soft as a kitten. But when I come back tomorrow, you’ll give me answers or you’ll see what I’m really made of.’

  He departed and for the first time I began to seriously regret disobeying Alfa 1’s order. I now needed the Autodefensas more than ever. Without them, I felt completely helpless and isolated.

  My roommate opened his eyes and sat up. ‘You resisted well. He tried similar threats on me this morning. I was worried about you at first. Looked like you got hit badly …’ He raised his bandaged hand. ‘We both did. Rocket-propelled grenade took three of my fingers. Fucking Guerrilla.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  I hadn’t yet decided whether to trust him. He was being a little too friendly.

  Besides, for now at least, being in hospital wasn’t so bad. I was alive. I had food and water. And whatever the fiscal could dish out was better than what I’d believed I was facing ten hours earlier – falling into the hands of the Guerrilla.

  The time to start worrying would be in two days, when my group returned to camp. What if they searched hospitals and prisons but didn’t find me? What if they found me but suspected I’d been a sapo? My biggest worry, however, was that they’d assume I was dead and not look for me at all. How long before my squad dug up the jar containing our goodbye messages and made a heartbreaking phone call to Mamá and Camila?

  Over the course of the afternoon, I rang the buzzer repeatedly, hoping to encounter a sympathetic face among the hospital staff. However, each time the same nurse entered – a humourless woman with steel-rimmed glasses, upright posture and a disposition to match. As my hopes of getting a message out faded, my thoughts returned to escaping. I asked to use the bathroom. However, the guard handcuffed my wrists together, accompanied me directly to the cubicle door and stood outside. At night, when my roommate was asleep, I tried picking the cuffs using a plastic fork I’d stolen from the dinner tray. It was not as easy as in the movies. Finally, I rolled my bed to the window and considered smashing the drip stand through the glass. But how would I leap from the second-storey with a bed attached to me? And how far would I get on foot in a blue hospital gown before they recaptured me?

  Around midnight, I heard talking from the bed opposite. My roommate was using a cell phone. I only caught snippets of his conversation because he muffled the sound using a blanket. ‘You need to get me out of here now … Yes, there’s one other guy here … They’re threatening us both with prison …’

  The fact that he didn’t offer to lend me his phone reduced my suspicions. If all else failed, tomorrow night I’d ask to borrow it.

  The morning news contained nothing about the fate of Santiago or my companions. At 9 am, a new nurse slipped quietly through the door. She was pretty – a paisa girl from Medellín – with blonde hair, green eyes and large breasts that fought the buttons on her white cotton uniform.

  ‘Señor Sanchez! How are you feeling today?’ She fussed over me, measuring my blood pressure and fluffing up my pillow.

  Then she touched one finger to her lips, undid the top two buttons of her uniform, leaned forward and lowered her bra. Across her left breast was written FISCAL. Across her right was an arrow that pointed to my roommate. So I’d been right not to trust him – he was an undercover government agent pretending to be an injured Autodefensa in order to extract information from me.

  All the while the paisa nurse, who must have been on the Autodefensa payroll, kept up the polite, sing-song prattle that was typical of her region. ‘Señor Sanchez, please be so kind as to sign this for the public health insurer.’ She handed me a pen and tapped a fluorescent pink fingernail against a blank post-it note affixed to a form. I wrote, ‘I’m Pedro’ and then Culebra’s phone number. Before leaving, the nurse touched her finger to her lips again and I nodded.

  Although tempted to confront my roommate and expose him as a fraud, I refrained. I was now in an excellent mood. I’d just survived a major battle, the antibiotics flowing into my veins were shuttling me along the road to recovery, and I had food, water, a warm bed and television. I only had to keep my mouth shut and maintain my self-control until my group came for me.

  An urgent newsflash appeared on the TV. The Caracol reporter claimed that a carefully planned, joint operation between the Colombian army and Air Force had, in recent hours, successfully destroyed a major terrorist training base in the south-eastern province of Vichada, leaving scores of Guerrilla casualties. Army casualties: zero.

  The reporter flew over a destroyed patch of jungle in an army helicopter but was told it was too dangerous to land, owing to landmines. Instead, Caracol relied on shaky footage provided by the army.

  I recognised the camp but the report didn’t mention Santiago, and the rest of it was misinformation and propaganda. The date was false – our mission had occurred a day earlier. The location was false – the camp was across the Venezuelan border. The army hadn’t formed part of the ground force; it was only us – the Autodefensas. But when it suited the army, the Autodefensas didn’t exist. And since we didn’t exist, our deaths didn’t count either – the reporter made no mention of the men we’d lost. However, that was not what angered me most.

  When the camera panned across a long row of Guerrilla casualties laid out on black plastic sheets, I sat up like a catapult. The bodies shown with Guerrilla insignia were ours. I recognised several bloodied companions – MacGyver, Terminator, Manzana and Yucca – laid out flat and displayed like fish at a market.

  Furious, I grabbed my water glass and hurled it at the TV. It missed, smashing against the wall. The guard rushed in.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I rattled my cuff. ‘Unlock me now!’

  He cuffed my other wrist. I thrashed and bucked. As punishment, he unplugged the television and threatened to cuff my ankles as well.

  I lay there seething. It felt like my friends had died for nothing. They had given their lives as part of a monumental lie. The army dressing them up in Guerrilla uniforms to bolster their war statistics was the ultimate indignity.

  My roommate offered his consolation.

  ‘That’s not even the correct river,’ he said. ‘It was Río Jaguar. Which unit are you from? I’m in Bloque Centauros.’

  I should have kept my calm, but I was angry at him and angry at the government. I couldn’t listen to any more falsities. ‘Then unwrap the bandage.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unwrap the bandage on your hand.’ Of course, he couldn’t. Despite his claim of being hit by a grenade, he had no real injuries. ‘I didn’t think so.’

  He fell silent and when I woke that afternoon his mattress was stripped bare. But I’d made a mistake – blowing the pretty paisa nurse’s cover.

  The bulldog fiscal stormed into the room and told the policeman to take a long coffee break. He closed the door, wedging a chair beneath its handle.

  I reached for the buzzer but he knocked it out of my hand with a wooden baton, which he then used as a lever to twist my cuffs. They dug excruciatingly into my skin.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Who’s gone?’

  ‘Your friend. The one with the tits. She’s been arrested.’

  If he was telling the truth, I was sunk. But perhaps he was bluffing in order to secure my confession before help arrived.

  ‘Your friend’s gone too.’ I nodded at the empty bed. ‘The one with all ten fingers.’

  ‘Today I’m sending you to prison.’

  ‘You can’t. I’m injured.’

  ‘The prison has an infirmary. You can recover there. A long way from pretty little girls who try to send out messages.’ He twisted the cuffs tighter.

  ‘Then hurry up and sign the transfer. Because these painkillers are wonderful – I can’t feel a thing.’

  ‘¡Bien! You know how La Picota prison works? There’s one wing for the Guerrilla and one for the Autodef
ensas. You came in listed as a guerrillero, so I’m sending you to the Guerrilla wing. I’m sure the communists will love your tattoo.’

  The door handle rattled and we both looked up as the chair flew across the room and a middle-aged man in a blue suit and garish yellow tie barged in, rubbing his shoulder. He pondered the fallen chair and raised an eyebrow at the fiscal.

  ‘Is the government short-staffed?’ He snatched up the evidence bag of clothes and tossed it onto my chest. ‘Get dressed, muchacho.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ demanded the fiscal.

  ‘I’m his attorney. Unlock him.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ He snatched back the clothes. ‘He’s in my custody and this is evidence of—’

  ‘Of your incompetence.’ He drew documents from his briefcase. ‘The circuit judge just signed a conditional release order. Read it and grieve!’

  The bulldog fiscal was beaten. But before returning my clothes and unlocking the cuffs, he held out his business card to me. ‘Call me about you know what.’

  Flushing with anger, I ripped the card to shreds and told him to go to hell. It was a malicious attempt to make me look like a sapo. And it must have worked because the attorney immediately turned on me.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing. I promise.’

  ‘Good. Get downstairs to the car and don’t say another word.’

  I detached the drip, snatched up the packet of painkillers from the bedside drawer and walked along the corridor, rubbing my wrists and smiling from ear to ear. I felt elated. I’d survived everything the world had thrown at me and I’d made it. I was free. Now that I was returning home to the Autodefensas, nothing could touch me. I was invincible – a man made of steel.

  I waved sarcastically to the returning police guard and two duty nurses. ‘See you next time!’

  They shook their heads and frowned. Downstairs at the hospital entrance, I saw the Blazer from La 50 parked at the kerb with its back door open. Inside, I expected to encounter Culebra, Beta or a familiar face. I’d ask them who’d survived the battle and then borrow a phone to call Mamá and Camila.