. . . The moment has come. It is signaled by a short, remarkable exchange:
—What are you going to do to us? —one of them asks.
—Keep walking! —they reply.
—We are innocent! —a number of them shout.
—Don’t be afraid —they answer.— We’re not going to do anything to you.
WE'RE NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING TO YOU!
The guards steer them like a terrified herd toward the garbage dump. The van comes to a stop, shining its headlights on them. The prisoners seem to be floating in a glowing pool of light. Rodríguez Moreno steps out, gun in hand.
At this moment, the story ruptures, explodes into twelve or thirteen nodules of panic.
—Let’s make a run for it, Carranza —Gavino says.— I think they’re going to kill us.
Carranza knows it’s true. But the slightest hope that he’s mistaken keeps him walking.
—Let’s stay . . . —he murmurs.— If we run, they’ll shoot for sure.
Giunta is walking sluggishly, looking back with one arm raised to his brow to shield his eyes from the blinding glare.
Livraga is stealthily making his way over to the left. Step by step. Dressed in black. Suddenly, it’s like a miracle: the headlights leave him alone. He has stepped outside their range. He is alone and almost invisible in the dark. Ten meters ahead, he can make out a ditch. If he’s able to reach . . .
Brión’s cardigan shines in the light, an almost incandescent white.
In the assault car, Troxler is sitting with his hands resting on his knees and his body leaning forward. He looks out of the corners of his eyes at the two guards who are watching the nearest door. He’s going to jump . . .
Facing him, Benavídez is looking at the other door.
Carlitos, bewildered, can only muster a whisper:
—But how . . . They’re going to kill us like this?
Vicente Rodríguez is walking slowly along the rough and unfamiliar terrain below. Livraga is five meters away from the ditch. Mr. Horacio, who was the first to get off, has also managed to make his way ever so slightly in the opposite direction.
—Halt! —a voice commands.
Some of them stop. Others take a few more steps. The guards, on their part, start to retreat, taking some distance, the bolts of their Mausers in hand.
Livraga doesn’t look back, but hears the turn of a crank. There’s no time to make it to the ditch. He’s going to throw himself on the ground.
—Forward, line up side by side! —shouts Rodríguez Moreno.
Carranza turns around, his face contorted. He drops to his knees before the firing squad.
—For my children . . . —he weeps.— For my chil . . .
Violent vomiting cuts his plea short.
In the truck, Troxler has pulled the bow and arrow of his body taut. His jaw is almost touching his knees.
—Now! —he howls and hurls himself at the two guards.
He holds a rifle in each hand. And now they are the ones afraid and begging:
—Not the guns, mister! Not the guns!
Benavídez is already up and grabs Lizaso by the hand.
—Let’s go, Carlitos!
Troxler brings the heads of the two guards together and throws each one in a different direction, like dolls. He leaps up and is swallowed by the night.
The anonymous NCO (or is he an apparition?) is slow to respond. He tries to get up too late. A third guard is aiming his rifle at him from the front end of the vehicle. A shot is heard. The NCO lets out an ‘Aaah!’ and sits back down, just as he was. Only dead.
Benavídez jumps. He feels Carlitos’ fingers slipping away from his own. In a state of desperate helplessness, he realizes he has lost him, that the boy has been buried beneath three bodies that are holding him down.
The policemen on the ground hear the shot behind them and hesitate for a fraction of a second. Some turn around.
Giunta doesn’t wait any longer. He runs!
Gavino does the same.
The herd begins to separate.
—Shoot them! —screams Rodríguez Moreno.
Livraga throws himself headfirst to the ground. Farther ahead, Di Chiano also takes a dive.
The shots thunder in the night.
Giunta feels a bullet whiz by his ear. He hears a commotion behind him, a low moaning and the thump of a body falling. It’s probably Garibotti. An amazing instinct tells Giunta to drop to the ground and not move.
Carranza is still on his knees. They put a rifle to the nape of his neck and fire. Later they riddle his entire body with bullets.
Brión has little chance of escaping with that white cardigan that shines in the night. We don’t even know if he tries.
Vicente Rodríguez has dropped to the ground once already. Now he hears the guards running toward him. He tries to get up, but can’t. He has tired himself out in the first thirty meters of his escape and it isn’t easy to move all one hundred of his kilos. By the time he gets going, it’s too late. The second round of shots takes him out.
Horacio di Chiano rolled over twice and froze, playing dead. He hears the bullets destined for Rodríguez whistle overhead. One cuts very close to his face and covers him in dirt. Another rips through his pants without wounding him.
Giunta stays glued to the ground for about thirty seconds, invisible. Suddenly he leaps up like a hare and starts to zigzag. When he senses the shots coming, he throws himself back on the ground. Almost instantaneously, he hears the astounding whir of the bullets again. But by now he is far away. He is nearly safe. When he repeats his maneuver, they won’t even see him.
Díaz escapes. We don’t know how, but he escapes.22 Gavino runs for two or three hundred meters before stopping. At that moment, he hears another series of explosions and a terrifying shriek that tears through the night and seems to last forever.
—May God forgive me, Lizaso —he will later say, weeping, to one of Carlitos’ brothers.— But I think that was your brother. I think he saw everything and was the last to die.
Up above the bodies stretched out in the garbage dump, where the caustic smoke of the gunpowder still burns in the glow of the headlights, a few groans hang in the air. A new burst of bullets seems to put an end to them. But then Livraga, who is still frozen and unnoticed in the spot where he fell, hears the bloodcurdling voice of his friend Rodríguez, who says:
—Kill me! Don’t leave me like this! Kill me!
And now they do show him mercy, and they execute him.
Footnotes:
22 “With respect to Díaz . . . the declarants do not remember at what point he got off the truck, but what they know for sure is that when they got off, he wasn’t there anymore; it’s very possible that . . . he may have gotten off when one of the guards wasn’t looking . . .” Joint declaration of Benavídez and Troxler.