The ground was shaking all around her. It felt like a front-row seat in an earthquake. As she pulled herself into the tunnel, another blast flattened the structure. She crawled further along the tunnel. She had to get far enough in to reach the shovel and the trowel. If the roof fell in, she wanted to be able to dig her way out. When she got there, the shovel was there but no sign of the trowel. That was alarming. Best to keep going. The other end of the tunnel would not be completely dug out. From the outside, it would look like the merest rat hole. She decided to stay put for now. She didn’t want to pop out of the dirt in the midst of a search for survivors. She wiped the stink off her by twisting and rubbing in the soil. It took a while. She had plenty of time. She decided she’d stay put for a couple of days. An hour into her wait, she felt rather than heard an explosion. Probably a landmine. At least one soldier had paid a price for the invasion.

A day and a half later, in the small hours before dawn, she deemed it safe to emerge, she crawled to the end of the tunnel only to come upon a lethargic, thick-bodied snake. She couldn't tell in the darkness if it was a bushmaster. From the gleam of starlight from the tunnel entrance she was sure it was a species she’d never seen before. She decided to collect it if it didn't slither off first. If nothing else, it might be protection once she was out of the tunnel. As she moved forward, awkward because she was dragging the shovel, she bumped her head on something hard. The snake twisted to face her. She looked up. It was a trowel. Right where she needed it to dig out the tunnel entrance. She smiled and gave thanks to whoever had left the trowel where she couldn’t possibly miss it. 

Her movements were almost imperceptible as she reached up for the trowel and removed it from the earth above. A tiny shower of dirt rained down on her head. She rested while the snake slowly relaxed. Long minutes later, she started drawing the shovel up beside her. She had to roll to one side carefully to avoid the blade of the shovel as it passed her ribcage. The snake was alert but not alarmed. As the haft passed her head, she leaned over on the blade slightly to raise the shovel handle off the ground. Her aim was to get the shovel handle over the snake, then lean into it to trap the snake’s head against the ground. There would only be one shot at this. It all had to be done without there appearing to be any movement perceptible to the snake. She started to sweat due to the strain of remaining balanced over the shovel blade. She wasn’t worried about being attacked; she was worried the snake would escape. She felt she needed that snake. 

She was almost ready when she heard movement outside. The viper was instantly on alert, head turned away from her. She struck. The snake writhed violently and tried to slither out of the hole. It encountered something and struck. She heard a scream outside and pulled back, gripping the snake by the tail. She had it behind the head in an instant and drew farther back into the tunnel. Meanwhile, whoever had been bitten outside was cursing a blue streak. She heard a couple of voices approaching. They seemed to be running. 

A conversation ensued regarding what kind of snake had bitten the man. (A soldier she assumed.) One of the men left to get a shovel. They planned to dig out the snake to identify what kind it was so the victim could be treated. Pip was alarmed. If they dug more than a foot, they’d find her. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t find the snake. She couldn’t let go of the snake’s head without risking a bite herself.

The man with the shovel returned with help. Now, there were an unknown number of soldiers ready to expose her. They started to dig and dig fast. Time was of the essence. Almost immediately, they broke through to the tunnel. Part of it collapsed because someone was standing on top of it. He fell through into the tunnel. She shoved the snake forward. It bit the man above his boot. He yelled and withdrew. Someone slammed the shovel down on the snake’s head in the dirt, stunning it momentarily. Another chopped its head off with a machete, narrowly missing Pip’s hand concealed by the collapsing soil. She withdrew her hand. The hole left behind filled in by itself. The soldiers only had eyes for the two stricken men. Their voices soon faded. A few minutes later, Pip emerged from the tunnel, drawing the shovel up behind her. As she straightened up, she was told to raise her hands over her head.

…

When a muddy apparition crawled out of the ground right in front of him, General Peña almost dropped his rifle. He was only on-site to review and confirm the circumstances of Cano’s death. Where he was, outside the perimeter, was not to capture the enemy; it was to take a leak in private. He’d heard about the snakebite incident and had wandered in this direction to see for himself. Consequently, when he uttered his command, he was standing there with his dick in one hand and a pistol in the other. He couldn’t see what Pip was hauling out of the hole. 

What she could see in the dim light of dawn was that the General’s gun still had its safety on. She noted that he was right-handed and holding his gun in his left. He appeared to have forgotten the safety. 

The creature standing before him was covered in some sort of sticky, muddy goo from head to foot and smelled foul. He gagged. When he got control of himself, he was staring down the barrel of Pip’s shovel. 

“You can’t shoot me with that,” he said. 

“Why not?” she replied. “All I have to do is pull the trigger, and you’ll be worm food.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but if you do that, you’ll only get a splinter in your finger. What are you doing here?”

“I’m an orphan. I’ve been trafficked. I’m Canadian. I’m trying to escape.”

“You don’t look Canadian. You look Chinese, mud and shit all rolled into one unwholesome package.”

“If you’d been buried in a tunnel next to a latrine, you’d look no better Señor.” The General put his gun back in its holster and had to excuse himself before he peed his pants. Pip decided to let this play out and leave her gun where it was. 

Zipping himself back up, he told Pip to come with him back to the army’s bivouac. 

The bivouac pitched next to a parked Sikorsky helicopter, loomed over a vast series of craters where friends and comrades had lived mere hours or days earlier. She couldn’t be sure. “Don’t leave this immediate vicinity she was told. If you do, chances are, you’ll step on a mine and blow yourself up.”

“Don’t worry. I need a bath. I’m not going anywhere.” she said, watching the clean-up crew. She saw someone pick up what looked a lot like part of Cano’s SAT phone. It attracted others and an excited conversation grew around it.

The General called for an aide. “What can we do to get this girl cleaned up?” he asked. 

“Not, much my General unless we use our drinking water.”

“Do it then. We can’t take her back with us like this, she stinks.”

Less than an hour later, she’d washed and scrubbed as best she could using quite a lot of bottled water. She was outfitted with new army fatigues that were too big. Luckily, she still had her own rubber boots. Once cleaned up, it could be seen that she was indeed Chinese with sparkling red hair. She was a marvel. The General wanted her story and a photograph. She was happy to oblige while the rest of his mop-up crew scoured the site for bits and pieces of the recently departed rebels, probably even now being turned away from the Pearly Gates. 

During the course of the conversation, the General took a break and disappeared inside the helicopter to talk to an unseen in the chopper. Moving closer to the copter door, she could hear what was being said inside. The General was being advised over a SAT phone from headquarters that this little girl was a known security threat. She could not be brought back to Bogotá and exposed to the media. She needed to be terminated here, on this site, as an insurgent.

When the General left the chopper, Pip was gone. She had been among the guerrilleros who planted the mines. She had no trouble avoiding them. She stopped by and dug up Uncle Ernie, then waited for the helicopters to take off. She perforated a couple of them, which brought soldiers after her on the run. Right into the mines she’d planted days earlier. She’d made a choice based on what she knew at that moment. She thought she now had accumulated enough evidence to make an informed choice, not just a choice.

She knew more now. It boiled down to this: 

The Colombian Civil War was started by the rich people of Colombia when they moved to disenfranchise the peasants who formerly owned and farmed most of the land. The government became an operational tool of the rich. The plan was to tax the peasants into poverty and bankruptcy. That would enable the government to expropriate peasant land, force them to relinquish their land. The rich could then purchase the land for taxes owing. The poor were forced into urban slums or subsistence farming on poor quality, undesirable land in remote areas. FARC was the logical outcome and a last hope - it started as a fight between the wealthy landowners who had stolen their land and who used the government as a tool to hold on to it against the peasants who had no choice but to fight back or starve to death. 

Without returning the land to its rightful owners, who had long memories, the war could not and cannot end. Over the years, the tools used by the disenfranchised expanded to eventually include the drug trade and child trafficking. By enlisting the USA to assist in fighting FARC, the USA became partners in crimes against the Colombian poor. Drug trafficking became a potent weapon against the wealthy of Colombia, the USA and, by extension, the world at large. Everyone was going to pay for the greed perpetrated by Colombia’s greedy elite. Altogether, it boiled down to a lose/lose war for everyone.