Galvez finished his cigarette in silence as his men forced the storekeeper to his knees in front of him. He studied the man disinterestedly for a while, taking some pleasure in the fear manifest in the storekeeper’s wide, bloodshot eyes.
“Please, Señor…” A rifle butt to the kidneys silenced the storekeeper. Galvez just watched, taking a final drag off the cigarette before dropping it to the street and crushing it out with his boot. Then he looked up and around at the surrounding houses. The windows were dark and empty. He knew that they were being watched, but none of the locals wanted to risk showing their faces.
That would change.
He picked up the bullhorn. It was a quiet, misty morning, the sun turning the humid air gold as it topped the ridge to the east. Lifting the megaphone, he triggered it with a faint squeal of feedback.
“Everyone come out of your houses! Now!” He waited a moment, the hesitation on the street palpable. “If you do not, I will be forced to send my men to drag you out! Everyone will witness what happens here this morning! Anyone who resists will join this cringing running dog for the Capitalistas!”
For a moment, he was met with silence and stillness, as fear battled with fear. Finally, though, Jimenez’s neighbors started to come out or come to their windows. Galvez swept the street with his eyes, deliberately making eye contact, as if to ensure that each man and woman knew that the right hand of the revolution had his eye on them, personally.
“Today, you will witness the price of treason!” He could easily have made himself heard with only his voice, but he chose to use the megaphone, blasting the street with his amplified voice. “This rat, this worm, has sold out the revolution! He has bowed and scraped to the imperialists and the exploiters! He has betrayed you as he has betrayed the Leader, General Clemente!” He looked down at the weeping storeowner with undisguised contempt—contempt that he held toward the frightened faces in windows and doorways all around them, as well. “He has spied and reported to the Americans and their puppets in Bogota!”
“No!” The storekeeper looked up at Galvez through his tears. “No, Señor, I have done nothing! I have only tried to run my store and feed my children!”
Galvez spat in his face. “Run your store? Driving your neighbors to poverty, for what? And your filthy profits weren’t enough for you, were they? You had to communicate with the Army.” He bent low over the weeping man. “What did you tell them? Did you tell them how many of us are here? Where our supplies are kept? What did you tell them?”
He knew he would get no answer from the terrified shopkeeper. There was no answer to give. The man had sent no messages, had no contacts in Bogota that Galvez knew of. The store had been chosen completely at random. It had looked clean and well-kept-up enough to make it a likely target. The somewhat better off were always the best targets for this sort of thing.
Galvez needed an example. The storeowner and his family would provide as good a sacrificial victim as any. After what was about to happen on this street, any of the locals would be too afraid to take advantage of the lessened numbers as he pushed more of his Green Shirts out into the jungle to patrol the area.
Vladimir Lenin, one of his heroes, had said it best. “The purpose of terror is to terrorize.”
“Please,” The shopkeeper begged, sobbing. “We’ve done nothing…”
Galvez kicked him in the face. He collapsed onto his back, still weeping.
“Now watch what happens to traitors and capitalist exploiters!” Galvez motioned to the Green Shirts who held the wife.
The violence that followed was not quick. The storeowner’s wife came out of her daze as the rifle butts broke her shins. Her screams echoed up and down the street as they systematically broke her bones, while her husband was held up by his hair and forced to watch. She fell silent again when her skull was cracked. The beating continued until no sign of life remained.
The shopkeeper’s weeping hadn’t stopped through the entire ordeal. Galvez remained unmoved. He’d killed any sentimental part of his soul—which he would have denied existed in the first place—a long time ago.
Still, while he had originally planned to kill the entire family, he’d eventually decided that the children would serve as a terrified reminder of what had happened here. The other families might have been able to put it out of their minds. But to leave the storeowner’s children alive, they would have to look at them and take care of them, making the deaths constantly present.
“See what happens to all spies, traitors, and wreckers!” The Green Shirts hauled the already broken man to his feet, while a third man prepared a noose at the end of an electrical cable, throwing the running end over the lamppost on the corner. The shopkeeper wept, his eyes still fixed on his wife’s corpse, as they dragged him under the lamppost and looped the noose around his neck.
There was no short drop and broken neck for the storeowner. He was hauled, hand-over-hand, into the air, kicking and strangling. The Green Shirts hadn’t tied his hands, so he tried to haul himself up, scrabbling at the cable as it dug into his throat, but to no avail. He was not a particularly fit man, and even if he managed to pull himself up with sweaty hands on the slick cable, there was no way he would be able to do so indefinitely.
They stood there, Galvez sweeping the bystanders with burning eyes, as the storeowner slowly strangled to
