dark.
Over there, I say.
Eduardo and Pedro go where I point, navigating by the blue light of their cell phones. At a waist-high ledge they peel back a thick, water-resistant cover, and Pedro lets out a whoop, then muffles his mouth. The sound echoes against the wet concrete.
Luis grins. You come back after four months, he says, and already you think you are the dog’s balls. He is grinning widely. These are yours?
On trust, I say.
Handheld grenades, he says, picking them up, weighing them in his palm like they are pieces of fruit. A new AR-15. And these?
Glock nine millimeters. You can throw away your thirty-eights now.
I heard the forty-fives are better.
They look like toy guns, Claudia murmurs from the darkness.
Well, Luis says to me, still grinning. Well, well. El Padre is a generous man.
Aside from Luis’s G3, we take one of the Colts and the two pistols. As this is Luis’s mission, I do not ask whether this is too much or too little firepower. Pedro is a child and will carry thebullet bag. He insists on bringing a couple of grenades. Just in case, he says.
In case what? jeers Eduardo. In case the target is hiding inside a FARC tank?
It is getting dark when we finally arrive in the correct neighborhood. We are on foreign turf and I am uneasy because it is the worst time of day to identify a target. I am also pissed off at Luis because he made a detour to check his emails. Luis is pissed off at me because I told him we could take a
chiva
bus and he replied, No,
puto
, they don’t go that way, and just now a green one came by and almost ran us over on the narrow street. And we are all pissed off at Eduardo, who failed to dodge a pile of warm dog turd.
You sure you have done the recon? I ask Luis.
Fuck you, he says. Maybe I have no office job but I am no child.
And the target is not protected?
Listen to you and your fancy language, says Eduardo. Is the
target
not
protected
?
Under the darkening sky, everything melts into shapes of brown and gray. We pass buildings made of brick, of cement blocks, of wood and plastic. Faces of people merge back into the material of their houses. Street kids scavenge for food by the roadside, some of them inhaling the pale yellow
sacol
from super-market bags—their eyes half-open and animal and unblinking. We pass unattended stalls, half-filled wheelbarrows, hot pillow joints, then there are no more houses and we reach an abandoned railway line running along the edge of a cliff. We cross the tracks and look down. The road dips steeply into a gorge jumbled full of bamboo poles and torn tarpaulin sheets and hundreds upon hundreds of boxes. It is our destination. The
tugurio
: the city of cardboard.
The few inhabitants we see do not interfere. We walk through dimly lit trenches, toward the northeast corner. Shadows of facesmove behind candles and gas lamps. Luis lifts his fingers to his lips and points to a shack at the end of an alley. He creeps forward. Yellow gaslight glows from behind the gaps in the cardboard. Coming closer, I see a black man on his back chewing a sugared red donut. Luis goes in and grabs him by the hair and flips him onto his stomach. If it is the right person, Luis has done his recon excellently. The target looks older than all of us—even Claudia, who has sixteen years. His skin is a darker black than mine, and burnished with sweat in the gaslight. His mouth is still crusted with little sugar bits. Luis rests his boot on the side of the target’s face as he reaches inside his pants to pull out the rifle. He frowns as the magazine gets stuck in the elastic of his waistband—this is a common hazard with the G3—a beginner’s mistake. Eduardo has dropped to his knees, pinning the target’s legs down.
Who is the son of a bitch now? Luis says. His voice is light and breathy as it is when he is excited.
You are,
puto
, squeaks the target. His lips strain to spit, and fail.
Claudia comes in and crouches down; there is not enough room to stand. We
Over there, I say.
Eduardo and Pedro go where I point, navigating by the blue light of their cell phones. At a waist-high ledge they peel back a thick, water-resistant cover, and Pedro lets out a whoop, then muffles his mouth. The sound echoes against the wet concrete.
Luis grins. You come back after four months, he says, and already you think you are the dog’s balls. He is grinning widely. These are yours?
On trust, I say.
Handheld grenades, he says, picking them up, weighing them in his palm like they are pieces of fruit. A new AR-15. And these?
Glock nine millimeters. You can throw away your thirty-eights now.
I heard the forty-fives are better.
They look like toy guns, Claudia murmurs from the darkness.
Well, Luis says to me, still grinning. Well, well. El Padre is a generous man.
Aside from Luis’s G3, we take one of the Colts and the two pistols. As this is Luis’s mission, I do not ask whether this is too much or too little firepower. Pedro is a child and will carry thebullet bag. He insists on bringing a couple of grenades. Just in case, he says.
In case what? jeers Eduardo. In case the target is hiding inside a FARC tank?
It is getting dark when we finally arrive in the correct neighborhood. We are on foreign turf and I am uneasy because it is the worst time of day to identify a target. I am also pissed off at Luis because he made a detour to check his emails. Luis is pissed off at me because I told him we could take a
chiva
bus and he replied, No,
puto
, they don’t go that way, and just now a green one came by and almost ran us over on the narrow street. And we are all pissed off at Eduardo, who failed to dodge a pile of warm dog turd.
You sure you have done the recon? I ask Luis.
Fuck you, he says. Maybe I have no office job but I am no child.
And the target is not protected?
Listen to you and your fancy language, says Eduardo. Is the
target
not
protected
?
Under the darkening sky, everything melts into shapes of brown and gray. We pass buildings made of brick, of cement blocks, of wood and plastic. Faces of people merge back into the material of their houses. Street kids scavenge for food by the roadside, some of them inhaling the pale yellow
sacol
from super-market bags—their eyes half-open and animal and unblinking. We pass unattended stalls, half-filled wheelbarrows, hot pillow joints, then there are no more houses and we reach an abandoned railway line running along the edge of a cliff. We cross the tracks and look down. The road dips steeply into a gorge jumbled full of bamboo poles and torn tarpaulin sheets and hundreds upon hundreds of boxes. It is our destination. The
tugurio
: the city of cardboard.
The few inhabitants we see do not interfere. We walk through dimly lit trenches, toward the northeast corner. Shadows of facesmove behind candles and gas lamps. Luis lifts his fingers to his lips and points to a shack at the end of an alley. He creeps forward. Yellow gaslight glows from behind the gaps in the cardboard. Coming closer, I see a black man on his back chewing a sugared red donut. Luis goes in and grabs him by the hair and flips him onto his stomach. If it is the right person, Luis has done his recon excellently. The target looks older than all of us—even Claudia, who has sixteen years. His skin is a darker black than mine, and burnished with sweat in the gaslight. His mouth is still crusted with little sugar bits. Luis rests his boot on the side of the target’s face as he reaches inside his pants to pull out the rifle. He frowns as the magazine gets stuck in the elastic of his waistband—this is a common hazard with the G3—a beginner’s mistake. Eduardo has dropped to his knees, pinning the target’s legs down.
Who is the son of a bitch now? Luis says. His voice is light and breathy as it is when he is excited.
You are,
puto
, squeaks the target. His lips strain to spit, and fail.
Claudia comes in and crouches down; there is not enough room to stand. We
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