Hell at El Morro (on ingles)

A Cinematic Fiction 

By Álvaro Cotes Córdoba  

At 1:00 a.m. on a holiday Monday, a group of five heavily armed men, aboard a speedboat, approached a yacht anchored off the bay of Santa Marta to kidnap one of the people inside the luxurious vessel, rented by a group of young graduates from one of the city’s most prestigious schools. From a distance, the yacht appeared brightly lit.

The expensive maritime vessel had its lights on, but an eerie silence reigned within, as if no one was inside. However, as the assailants climbed aboard, they realized what had happened. They noticed several empty beer cans and whiskey bottles, along with a scattering of potato chip crumbs strewn across the deck.

At that hour, the Caribbean sea’s mist hung heavily in the air, as there was little wind, only a gentle breeze blowing from north to south. The temperature hovered between 24 and 26 degrees Celsius, unusually chilly for the residents of this hot coastal town, which could still be heard awake in the distance. The kidnappers were dressed in black, their faces concealed by matching balaclavas through which only their eyes were visible. They boarded stealthily, but the absence of sound or movement on the yacht’s upper deck unsettled them. They signaled to each other to head toward the interior, where they assumed the occupants of the boarded vessel would be.

Two men, clutching firearms equipped with infrared sights, were tasked with descending to the yacht’s lower section, located beneath the control cabin. They moved slowly, like two giant black cats.

When they reached the final steps of the staircase leading to the covered area of the yacht, they confirmed their suspicions: not a single soul was on the deck. 

Except for the yacht’s captain, the students appeared to be asleep, some sprawled over others. Immediately, one of the intruders, positioned halfway down the small staircase, signaled to a third man stationed at the main entrance, indicating that only the captain was missing from the lower deck. With gestures, he ordered them to quickly find him in the control cabin. 

The others promptly aimed their high-caliber weapons at the bridge on the yacht’s third level, where the protective glass of the elevated space became dotted with dancing red laser points from their firearms’ infrared beams. As they did so, they approached slowly, cautiously, from all sides. The man tasked with climbing the access ladder did so with great care and difficulty, his lethal assault weapon pressed against his shoulder, aimed upward. 

Two steps from the cabin’s entrance, a stench hit him, churning his stomach and triggering an overwhelming urge to vomit. He paused, suppressing the nausea, and reached for a handkerchief in one of his back pockets. Once he had it, he wrapped it around his hand and held it to his nose to block the foul odor. With that managed, he continued his ascent until he reached the cabin, where he discovered the source of the horrific smell.  

The yacht’s captain had hidden behind the helm in an awkward position, having soiled himself out of fear. He was a local man, a seasoned smuggler with extensive experience navigating Colombia’s northern coast.

“Get a bucket and fetch seawater to douse him—he’s crapped himself,” the man instructed his accomplices in a low voice, and they clearly understood the order. Once they forced the terrified and soiled captain to descend to the deck, they led him to the stern, where they handcuffed him to a canopy protecting the anchor chain. 

There, after dousing him with a bucket of seawater, he would remain out of the way while they resolved the issue of identifying the target to kidnap, known only to the leader through a digital photograph on his phone. Inside the yacht, the two men who had descended began waking the sleeping beauties, prodding their bodies with the barrels of their rifles. 

The first to wake was a tender 17-year-old girl, beautiful, with pale skin that contrasted with her black one-piece swimsuit. Traces of the mascara she had applied the previous night, when she left her home in one of Santa Marta’s upscale neighborhoods, were still visible. A small silver piercing gleamed on the septum of her aquiline nose.

“What’s happening?” she asked, still groggy and yawning.

“Nothing, baby—just do as you’re told,” replied the man who had woken her, a tall, burly figure with a voice reminiscent of Afro-descendant locals.

“Are you going to kill us?” she inquired, showing she already grasped the situation.

“If you obey, no. If you don’t, probably,” the kidnapper responded. One by one, with the same bewilderment but remaining calm and showing no trace of panic, the other students awoke. They looked disheveled, some half-naked in swim trunks, others still wearing long pants but shirtless. All were young, aged between 17 and 20. 

The group consisted of four young men and one young woman.

“Which one of you is Juan Carlos?” interrupted a third kidnapper, entering the yacht’s makeshift dormitory. His voice was steadier, hoarse, almost out of tune, as if he were the leader of the criminal group. He was the only one of the five not carrying a weapon, but instead held a high-end smartphone.

“Me,” said one of the young men standing next to the girl with the piercing.

The lead kidnapper glanced at his phone screen, comparing the photo to the boy’s face. Seeing no resemblance, instead of getting angry, he smirked, approached the boy, and said:

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” He then delivered a punch to the boy’s stomach, causing him to double over in pain.

“The next one who lies to me dies!” warned the man, clearly the group’s leader. His bloodshot eyes, perhaps from an untreated condition or recent marijuana use, stood out. The violent act snapped the teenagers into reality, making them understand that the presence of these strangers on the rented yacht was no joke. 

Fear immediately showed on their faces, their complexions turning pale. The only girl in the group, about 17 years old, began to whimper and clung to the 20-year-old beside her, a tall, dark-skinned young man standing 180 centimeters, still reeling from the punch. The leader’s gaze then settled on another boy, who resembled the one in the photo on his phone. Smirking again, he took two steps toward him and said:

“Hello, Juan Carlos. Your dad sent us to get you.”

He immediately ordered two of his accomplices to seize him, but the sweet girl with the piercing interrupted, saying, “Why him? His family isn’t as wealthy as the rest of ours!” And she was right. Juan Carlos’s parents didn’t have even a fifth of the wealth of the other young people’s families, including hers, the eldest daughter of a young household tied to a banana empire in the region.

Most of them belonged to the cream of Samarian society, the future heirs of fortunes amassed in various ways over decades, nearly a century. Among them was the son of a former mayor, a prominent businessman owning thousands of hectares of fertile and cattle land, whose lineage had always been tied to the region’s power, of which Santa Marta is the capital. This was none other than the boy who had taken the punch to the stomach, named after his father: Alfredo Olarte.

There was also Emilio Diazgranados, the last member of one of the region’s oldest dynasties, settled in the city since its founding, with roots in medieval Spain. For centuries, his family had remained tied to the hierarchical elite of this ancient city, over 500 years old.

Likewise, the Sabaraín twins, Jorge and Miguel, descendants of an entrepreneur who had become a millionaire through palm oil products. Both sported chiseled, bodybuilder physiques, honed through months of rigorous gym training. They appeared older but were only 20 years old each.

Finally, among the group of recent graduates was the son of the city’s police commander, Camilo Lombana, the youngest at just 17 and the only one not native to the area or descended from the ancestral ruling families of the Magdalena capital. He seemed the frailest, lacking muscle or much flesh. His father, Colonel Jaime Lombana, originally from a very paisa town, had instilled in him never to trust anyone, not even his own shadow. 

This made Camilo the most visibly worried about what might come of this intrusion. Given the unexpected revelation from the young girl, the man with the phone swiftly changed the primary objective of their presence on the yacht. He announced that, from that moment, including the yacht’s captain, still chained near the anchor in the stern amid his own fetid excrement, all were now hostages of his armed group. This group didn’t belong to any of the country’s guerrilla or paramilitary organizations but was dedicated to the “kidnapping industry” for the benefit of their families. 

The sudden shift in the kidnapping’s primary objective also surprised the other members of the group, as more victims meant more responsibility and commitment. They were no longer guarding one person but five, and they didn’t know where, as the pre-selected location only had space for fewer people. Indeed, days earlier, the armed group had visited El Morro multiple times, a rocky islet located over a nautical mile from Santa Marta’s main beach. 

The only access to this large rock, surrounded by the Caribbean Sea that bathes the oldest city founded in South America, is through small vessels like canoes, speedboats, or yachts, which can approach it due to their short lengths and shallow drafts, especially via its hidden side, invisible from the tourist capital. 

During their visits, conducted just as the sun rose over the Sierra Nevada or the opposite cardinal point from El Morro, the criminals prepared one of the dungeons still preserved there, relics of a prison that once operated in this iconic place after colonization, now neglected for tourism. 

They equipped it with a mattress salvaged from the mouth of the Manzanares River, which runs through the city and carries the trash dumped by riverside residents to the sea. They also stored five packs of water bags and non-perishable food in airtight bags, like potato chips and other snacks popular with young people, sold in stores and supermarkets. The initial plan was to keep Juan Carlos there for several days or a week, sustained by water and bags of chips, until his father paid for his release. However, with the new situation involving multiple hostages, what they had stored at E

l Morro wouldn’t last a week if they took everyone there…