Colombiano Read online

  About the Book

  BLENDING FACT AND FICTION, COLOMBIANO IS A HEART-THUMPING JOURNEY INTO THE VIOLENT AND UNPREDICTABLE WORLD OF POST-ESCOBAR COLOMBIA.

  For four years Rusty Young worked secretly for the US government in Colombia. During this time he was shocked by the stories of child soldiers he encountered. He vowed that one day he would turn their tales into a book and let their voices be heard.

  ‘Eventually, you have to pick a side. Or one will be picked for you …’

  All Pedro Gutiérrez cares about is fishing, playing pool and his girlfriend Camila’s promise to sleep with him on his sixteenth birthday. But his life is ripped apart when his father is callously executed in front of him by Guerrilla soldiers and he and his mother are banished from their farm.

  Vowing to take vengeance against the five men responsible, Pedro joins an illegal paramilitary group with his best friend, Palillo, where he is trained to fight, kill and crush any sign of weakness.

  But as he descends into a world of unspeakable violence, Pedro must decide how far he is willing to go. Can he stop himself before he becomes just as ruthless as those he is hunting? Or will his dark obsession cost him all he loves?

  From innocent teenage love to barbaric torture … from cruel despots to cocaine traficantes … from seedy drug markets to brutal battlefields … COLOMBIANO is a blockbuster revenge thriller and an electrifying coming-of-age story.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Map

  Dedication

  Author prologue

  PART ONE: Little Pedro

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART TWO: Learning to Kill

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  PART THREE: Trapping a Rat

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  PART FOUR: Working for the Company

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  PART FIVE: Los Narcos

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  PART SIX: The Battle of Jaguar River

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  PART SEVEN: Social Cleansing

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  PART EIGHT: The Dark Alliance

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  PART NINE: The Work of Other Men

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

  Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Epilogue

  Glossary of Spanish terms and slang

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Rusty Young

  Copyright Notice

  To my loving parents, Marie and Peter,

  and to

  Simone Camilleri, fellow writer and lifelong friend

  AUTHOR PROLOGUE

  I FIRST MET Pedro Juan Gutiérrez González (not his real name) in Bogotá. It was during my initial visit to an albergue – a halfway house for child soldiers exiting the vicious civil war.

  The children I was about to interview were participants in a government ‘demobilisation’ program that aimed to help them overcome their trauma and begin a new life by providing them with accommodation, food, education and psychological counselling.

  As I pulled up in front of a large, ordinary-looking Spanish colonial house in the leafy, residential suburb of Teusaquillo, I noticed a well-dressed man in his early twenties standing outside the gate. He appeared to be waiting for me.

  ‘You must be the journalist. Welcome!’ he said, shaking my hand firmly as I exited my SUV. ‘I’m Pedro. I’m a volunteer assistant here.’

  In appearance, Pedro was typically Colombian – of medium build with straight dark hair, an olive complexion and brown eyes. He was handsome despite a prominent scar running down his left cheek. He glanced at my S
UV.

  ‘Level three armoured vehicle,’ he stated confidently, tapping the bulletproof windscreen.

  I nodded and tried to laugh it off. ‘A potentially dangerous profession.’ After all, Colombia had the highest murder rate of journalists in the world and armoured vehicles were common enough. However, it took experienced eyes to recognise one, and Pedro’s narrowed.

  ‘Which newspaper did you say you work for?’

  ‘I’m freelance.’

  Pedro nodded. As I followed him inside I noticed he walked with a slight limp. He gave no further indication of disbelieving me about my car or profession and quickly changed the subject, asking me whether I was married and mentioning his own wife and newborn son. However, if he did harbour any suspicions they were well founded – I wasn’t a true journalist. I’d written only one book. Since publishing Marching Powder, I’d travelled to Colombia, fallen in love with the country and decided to make it my home. I was now working as a manager of a US government counter-terrorism program in anti-kidnapping. The work was interesting and satisfying. I felt we were making a difference. But in a country with two terrorist organisations whose members numbered in the tens of thousands, it didn’t pay to advertise my job.

  The first group was the FARC Guerrilla. In the 1960s, peasant farmers took up arms, aiming to fight poverty and social inequality by toppling the government and installing communist rule. To fund their revolution, they ‘taxed’ businesses and kidnapped the rich, appropriating their lands for redistribution to the poor.

  The second group – the Paramilitaries – was created in response. Wealthy land and business owners, tired of the government’s failure to protect them, formed their own private militias and ‘death squads’.

  Despite my absorbing job in counter-terrorism, the writer in me had remained restless; I was always on the hunt for interesting stories. Meeting these former child soldiers might be my first step towards at least writing an article.

  ‘These kids have been through so much,’ Pedro told me as we entered the albergue. ‘You simply can’t imagine. Here, we don’t refer to them by their group. They need to stop thinking of themselves as Guerrilla or Paramilitaries. So please don’t ask them that question.’

  Pedro ushered me down a long corridor, knocked on a door and then pushed it open.

  The scene inside reminded me of school camp. In an unpainted dormitory sat seven boys and five girls on bunk beds. Aged from thirteen to seventeen, they were dressed in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. It was impossible to distinguish them from ordinary teenagers, let alone know which side they’d belonged to. However, they clearly knew who was who, and didn’t seem happy sleeping in the same room with others who, only a month earlier, would have gladly slit their throats.

  They were even more mistrustful of journalists, especially white-skinned gringo interviewers like me.

  I greeted them individually and ventured a few questions. Their responses were courteous but contained nothing of substance. They restricted themselves to shrugs and mumbles, answering, ‘I don’t know, señor,’ while glancing nervously at their roommates.

  I left the dormitory and walked out of the house with Pedro, deflated and discouraged.

  ‘You could interview me,’ he offered as we reached my car.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I was in the Paramilitaries for two and a half years. As a commander. I went through this same program three years ago.’

  Suddenly his confidence and expertise made sense. I’d been thrown by his demeanour, maturity and his mention of a wife and child. I hadn’t conceived that Pedro himself might have been a child soldier. He definitely had my attention now.

  ‘Why do you want to tell your story?’

  ‘For the same reason I’m working here: to help. People need to understand the truth in order to heal their scars.’ He touched his cheek. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones. I should be dead – the Guerrilla almost killed me several times – and I went down a dark path myself.’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘This limp I have.’ He chuckled ironically, lifting his right foot and shaking it. ‘That was my own doing. I shot myself in the foot to avoid being captured and tortured to death.’

  I shared similar concerns about avoiding kidnap. However, among the many precautionary measures recommended in the US Embassy security briefing, shooting yourself wasn’t one of them.

  ‘But this scar right here.’ Pedro tapped his fist to the left of his sternum. ‘The one I have here in my heart is the only scar that hasn’t truly healed. This scar you’ll only understand by listening. And that will require more than just the article you want to write. It will require a book.’

  ‘If you’re willing to talk,’ I said, ‘I have time.’

  We began our recorded interviews that afternoon. Very quickly, I realised I’d been wrong to have characterised Pedro as ‘typical’. At twenty-one he’d already led an incredible life, one so far removed from anything I could ever invent, and yet one so horrific that I would not wish it upon my worst enemy.

  Eventually, witnessing Pedro’s trust in me, other child soldiers from the albergue came forward and shared their stories.

  Making sense of their experiences and putting them in coherent order was difficult. Most didn’t want their names mentioned for fear of reprisals – against themselves or their families. They were from different provinces, from different groups, and they’d joined and left the war at different times. Mostly, they were ordinary boys and girls simply wanting to make sense of what they’d been through. But they all had one thing in common: they were trying to salir adelante. Trying to move on and put their pasts behind them. Just like their country.

  I also realised the complexity of attempting to chronicle a conflict that had raged over four decades. Many times I questioned my right as an extranjero – an outsider – to pass comment on a beautiful country I loved that had already been deeply maligned and stereotyped.

  The more emotionally involved I became with the child soldiers’ stories, the harder I found it to maintain any pretence of journalistic objectivity. Ultimately, I decided to weave their stories into a novel.

  Some parts of this story are real. Most parts are fictionalised and informed by my own experiences and historical research. These children’s pasts were complicated and painful. Their stories affected me deeply and changed my life. I felt they needed to be told.

  Rusty Young

  PART ONE

  LITTLE PEDRO

  1

  THEY CAME ON a Wednesday to execute my father.

  Looking back, I should have sensed something amiss during morning Mass three days earlier. The new priest’s maiden sermon had left the congregation divided – some bored, some irate – never a good omen in a small Colombian town.

  When the congregation rose to leave, Señor Muñoz, the father of my girlfriend Camila, paused briefly in the aisle and leaned towards Papá.

  ‘May I talk to you outside?’ Glancing at me, he added, ‘In private.’

  I was fifteen years old and in adolescent limbo: not old enough to be included in adult discussions yet not young enough to run off and play. While the grown-ups talked, I stood shiftily on the church steps with Camila and my best friend, Palillo, waiting for them to finish.

  Palillo, or ‘Toothpick’ – whose real name was Diego Hernandez – liked provoking trouble. And he liked pushing others into it, then running around them in figure eights like a dog in long grass.

  Half a head taller than us, he now draped his arms over our shoulders, placed his hands behind our heads and twisted them towards our fathers. They were deep in conversation, breaking only to scratch their chins and cast significant glances our way.

  ‘¡Pillado!’ Palillo declared gleefully. ‘You two are so busted!’