We circled the hills, trying to get our bearings. The weather at the base of the mountains was cooler, but the terrain was hard on our feet. Climbing upward at speed, over the unforgiving soil, was tough on the lungs. The same three recruits were continually in our rear, Sebastián, Juan, and Gabriel. Sebastián had grit. He’d only fallen back to help his friends. Juan was struggling and Gabriel, to be frank, was dying. I tried to push them forward, attempting to shield them from Zanetti’s awareness.

            But I couldn’t help Gabriel. No-one could. It was like he was retaliating against the way he’d been hoodwinked. He thought he was going to be among good, honourable men. Instead, he was just among men, and we behaved like men do. We comforted him, almost physically dragging him along at times, giving him large portions of our water, in addition to his own. We encouraged him, tried to improve his confidence. ‘Come on, kid,’ we said. ‘It’s not that bad.’

            Sebastián half carried him. Gabriel masked Juan’s lack of aptitude as well. In the end, we lost patience. We shouted at him, screamed at him: ‘Gabriel, you pussy, come on. I’ve seen tougher teenage girls than you!’ We told ourselves we were mean to spur him on. But no, we were mean because of our frustration.

            He kept trying to sit down. He was crying, wringing his hands together. He pleaded with us.

            ‘Just give me a minute,’ he kept saying. ‘Shit guys, I need to take a break!’

            Rodrigo tried our last resort.

            ‘Gabriel,’ he said, ‘do you want us to leave you out here in the wilderness? You’ll die like a wild animal. You don’t know how to hunt, how to feed yourself, and we’re not wasting our tools to give you. We can’t set a precedent where we release deserters into the wild and give them the necessary equipment to fend for themselves. Don’t be such a coward. Have some self-respect!’ 

            Suddenly, Roberto blundered back into our group along with his vanguard soldiers. As he did so, one of our scouts reported that National Gendarmerie were coming in our direction. Radio broadcasts confirmed their awareness of us and their plans to surround us. Roberto was spotted on his latest expedition; some peasants had alerted the authorities. Zanetti demoted him at once.

            ‘You stupid son of a -’ Zanetti said, but it was time to run. He broke off in mid-sentence. We fled at speed, but after some time, fatigue coupled with the uneven terrain caused Gabriel to lose his balance. He stumbled and fell to the ground, holding his chest in pain. We others formed a circle around him. He retched and a spray of his puke landed in the dirt between his hands. He kept complaining that his asthma prevented him from moving so fast.

            ‘Wait … wait … please … it’s me, Gabriel … your friend …’

            Our commanders bristled at the sight of his tears. We had no time for this. They instructed a few of us to place a bag over his head and to tie his hands behind his back. We, his fellow soldiers, no longer seeing his eyes or his wisp of a moustache, turned away nonetheless. If he had any friends among us, we said nothing to try to save him. We would only have shared his fate.

            We continued to stand around him with our rifles. The ones who had tied Gabriel’s hands listened to him plead, but they gave no sign of hearing him. This wasn’t how we believed things would be when we joined Zanetti’s cause. Before enrolling, we anticipated travelling a path to a more enlightened society. This was worlds away from that, like a scene from the Dark Ages, as though Gabriel was positioned in front of us, standing on the gallows with his head in the noose.

            Zanetti stepped forward. There, among the trees, he shouted at Gabriel to die like a man.

            ‘You miserable coward. Have you no sense of shame?’

            Despite it all, I didn’t sense what was coming. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. I’d seen a lot of death up close, but never the execution of someone I’d known any way well before. After it happened, I sort of went catatonic. I moved, but I wasn’t with it, even a small bit.

            Gabriel coughed, struggling to catch his breath. He rasped some unintelligible words, something about mercy, something that seemed like an apology. Zanetti grabbed Gabriel by the shirt and, breaking the circle, he dragged him outside its rim. Keeping his back to the rest of the men, Zanetti aimed his 9mm Browning at Gabriel’s brainstem and fired. Many birds fluttered into the sky, but the sound of the gunshot didn’t jolt us. Gabriel’s death was on the cards for some time.