THE FOLLOWING DAY – New Year’s Eve – I began stealing 9mm rounds. After range practice, the twelve perimeter guards lined up at the container to hand back their pistols and boxes of unfired ammunition. While I wrote, Culebra called out each man’s alias, the last three digits of the pistol’s serial number and the number of unfired bullets he was returning.
‘Valderrama, number three-seven-one, returning eight bullets.’
At first, I was too scared to under-report the bullets. In the end, I only changed one numeral, writing a ‘5’ instead of a ‘6’. If Culebra checked my list, he might notice. However, his thoughts were on that night’s celebration. There would be music, and each of us would receive four vouchers that could be exchanged for cans of beer. Culebra gave my list only a cursory glance before opening the brown paper package of Viagra and condoms I’d bought for him.
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 need 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.