WHAT HAPPENED NEXT I remember as keenly as my father’s execution. The muzzle flashed, the rifle cracked and Ñoño’s hand went up in belated protest. He flew backwards, his left elbow striking the ground and his body twisting over. He looked up at me, pained and completely bewildered. Alfa 1 took the Galil from me, actioned it, and the ejected casing arced through the air, clinking and spinning against rocks.
‘¡Médico!’ I yelled, cutting my shirt in two with my knife. From that range, the 7.62mm round might have tunnelled through cleanly. I lifted Ñoño’s shirt to locate the entry and exit wounds and staunch the bleeding.
‘No medic,’ Alfa 1 countermanded.
Ignoring him, I rolled Ñoño onto his back. The front of his shirt was singed, but there was no blood.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Of course it fucking hurts! You shot me.’
‘You and you!’ Alfa 1 pointed at Coca-Cola and Silvestre. ‘Chop him and pack him, muchachos.’
Ñoño sprang to his feet and leaped back. ‘But I’m not dead.’
He unbuttoned his shirt. Beneath, I saw severe bruising and seared flesh from the muzzle blast. But still no blood, and no bullet wound.
‘Let me look properly!’ I said.
But Ñoño pushed me in the chest. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’
I was no longer his saviour and he was no longer my loyal servant.
I’d shot Ñoño. The fact he’d survived was no thanks to me. It was now the Big Red Boy he worshipped.
That night, as everyone got drunk on aguardiente to celebrate the end of the course, Ñoño refused to talk to me. He’d drilled a hole through Alfa 1’s spent cartridge and hung it on a leather thong around his neck. Displaying his bruise and burns, he skipped sideways from group to group like a river crab, re-enacting how the bullet had bounced off his skin. But whenever I approached him, Ñoño turned his back and walked away. I wanted to explain what had happened. It was perfectly logical. I’d even found proof.
Alfa 1 had inserted a blank – a training round that simulates ordinary gunfire. Almost everything is the same. The muzzle flashes and the rifle cracks, but the spent casing must be ejected manually and there is no recoil because no bullet leaves the barrel, only a heavy blast of burning-hot air. Ñoño had never been in danger. Afterwards, I had retrieved Alfa 1’s empty ammunition box from the trash as evidence.
‘You going to ruin it for everyone?’ asked MacGyver when he saw me heading back towards the group. ‘They all think they’re bulletproof.’
To join the army you needed a school certificate, but most Autodefensa soldiers could barely read and write. They didn’t know about blanks. They believed what they saw and what the trainers told them. Should I tell them the truth?
As everyone continued celebrating, I slipped off to La Quebrada to be on my own and think.
Staring into the swirling waters, I replayed the shooting in my mind and tried to justify to myself what I’d done. Most people believe they’d never shoot someone, especially not a friend. Even with a gun pointed at their head and given the choice between their life and the other person’s, they believe they’d simply refuse. However, until it comes down to it – until they’re actually in the situation – they don’t truly know.
But Alfa 1 had shown me differently. He was like a doctor displaying to me an X-ray of my own skull. I’d seen myself properly now – not my face in the mirror but the bare bones beneath. Although I had yet to kill anyone, I now knew I was a killer, and I was glad. A killer was what I needed to be. However, Ñoño hated me and I wondered what the others thought. As the Fierce Witch had closed her suitcase – now packed with watches, necklaces and money donated by soldiers to the Big Red Boy in exchange for his protection – I noticed them looking at me differently.
I knew I shouldn’t have been so worried about other people’s opinions, but I was. Over sixteen weeks, although I’d made few friends, I had established a reputation.
So when Palillo found me sitting on my own at La Quebrada, I decided to lie. I would claim that I’d known about the blanks in advance. It was believable that I’d been part of Alfa 1’s act – I’d worked in the armoury and was close to the trainers.
‘Don’t cut yourself to pieces, hermano,’ said Palillo, putting his arm across my shoulder. ‘Something like that was bound to happen to Ñoño. He brought it on himself.’
‘They were blanks,’ I said, holding out the evidence.
Palillo nodded without needing to read the box. ‘I know.’
‘Ñoño was never in any real danger,’ I said. ‘None whatsoever.’
‘I know what blanks are.’
Rather than lying, maybe it was better to avoid the subject altogether.
‘Is Ñoño okay?’
‘One minute he hates you, but the next he’s so busy retelling the story that he forgets. Come back to the party. Try talking to him.’
As we walked towards the mess hall, a group of soldiers stepped out of my way. Although our usual table was full, four boys stood to make space. As I sat, the girls wouldn’t look at me and the volume of conversation increased.
‘Does everyone hate me that much?’ I asked Palillo.
‘No,’ he said. ‘They respect you. Although they’re also a little afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘That you’ll shoot them next.’ Palillo laughed, which made me laugh too. He had a magical way of cheering me up.
We sat a while longer, watching Ñoño re-enacting his near-execution and proudly displaying Alfa 1’s spent cartridge. I called him over, but he wouldn’t come.
‘And what do you think, Palillo?’
‘Ever since Tango shot Murgas,’ he said, ‘I think all of us have been praying we wouldn’t be selected to execute someone. But at the same time, every one of us has also been wondering what they’d do in that situation. Whether they’d be capable of pulling the trigger. Unlike us, you now know.’ He took the box from my hand and stood. ‘I’ll tell Ñoño that you knew about these beforehand. Otherwise he’ll never forgive you.’
‘I’ll tell him myself.’
‘No, the trainers want you in the office.’ He winked. ‘Something about a tattoo.’