by Rusty Young
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!’
