The trial was a farce. The cadets closed ranks. The teachers wanted to avoid a scandal. Only Gamboa pushed for the truth. And then, the accident happened.
The scapegoat was a timid, chubby boy named Alberto— El Paje (the Page). He was not a wolf. He was a mouse who wrote love letters to a girl he’d never kissed. El Jaguar forced him to memorize the layout of the office. "You go through the window," he said, pressing a razor blade into Alberto's trembling palm. "You cut the glass. You take the exam. If you scream, we find your letters and read them to the whole battalion."
"The only way," El Poeta whispered one night, "is to steal the key from the Commandant while he sleeps. That is suicide."
The ringleader was known as El Esclavo —the Slave. He was thin, with cunning eyes that had learned to spot fear like a shark smells blood. His lieutenants were El Boa , a brute with fists like sledgehammers, and El Poeta , a quiet, bitter boy who wrote verses about death in a hidden notebook. libro la ciudad y los perros
The pack hesitated. Then they laughed. This one, they decided, was made of the same rotten wood as them.
Alberto turned his face to the window and closed his eyes.
"Stop," said Lieutenant Gamboa, the one honest officer in the academy. His face was a mask of disappointment, not anger. "Whose idea?" The trial was a farce
The circle, he knew, would never end.
As the bus took him away, he saw a young cadet on the parade ground, being circled by three older boys. The boy’s eyes were wide with terror. No officer watched. No one would come.
But El Poeta, who had been on the roof that morning, saw the truth. He saw El Esclavo hand the loaded rifle to El Boa. He saw El Boa aim not at a target, but at the back of El Jaguar’s head. He saw the premeditated murder—because El Jaguar was going to confess to Gamboa about the stolen exam. Only Gamboa pushed for the truth
One morning, during weapons training, a rifle fired a live round. The bullet struck Ricardo Arana—El Jaguar—in the chest. He died before the ambulance arrived. The report called it a "cleaning accident."
The true war began with a stolen exam. The Fourth Year cadets had the answers to the chemistry final, guarded in a locked drawer in the Commandant’s office. El Esclavo needed them to avoid failing and repeating the year—a fate worse than death, for his father had promised to send him to a reformatory.
El Jaguar listened from the shadows. "No," he said. "We don't need the key. We need the night guard drunk. And we need a scapegoat."
The Military Academy of Leoncio Prado was not a school. It was a cage of polished boots and shaved heads, perched on the dusty cliffs overlooking Lima. Inside, the boys were not cadets; they were wolves, and the weak were the prey.