Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

The Transition83chamber a round in her weapon. He instructed a couple of other guerrillaswho were going to ride along on the running boards to do thesame.Then he turned to us with a sleazy smile, “You’re surprised? Youdidn’t think the FARC had vehicles, did you?”The arrogant bandanna boy could drive and was proud of it. Weguessed that few of the FARC could, though saying this guy could drivewas a bit of an exaggeration. At one in the morning, blackest of night,he tore out of there with the radio blasting and one hand casually flungover the steering wheel. He spent most of his time staring at Sonia andmaking small talk with her, trying to impress her with his skill and wit.We thought that our first time sitting on comfortable seats in morethan three weeks was going to be something close to enjoyable, but itwas just another fright-night special of suspension-fracturing ditches,stomach-churning switchbacks, and more FARC nonsense. After anhour, we stopped in the middle of the road. A Toyota pickup with acanvas rubberized tarp hung over a metal-tubing framework pulled outof somewhere and parked alongside us.We climbed in the back of this new pickup, a different version of theLand Cruiser that was a real mountain bruiser with a stiff suspension.With a jolt, we were off again, bouncing crazily around in the bed,hanging on for dear life. Even with that rough ride, we all dozed offperiodically. At one point, just as the sky was starting to bleed acrossthe eastern horizon, we stopped again. Someone ran off into the darkand returned with a mattress that was no more than three inchesthick. We scrambled out of the truck bed while our guards arrangedthe mattress, and when it was set we took off again. What must havebeen an hour later, we came to the largest, most complex FARC campwe’d seen yet.It must have been a former maintenance yard, a holdover from thedays of the despeje or demilitarized zone that former Colombian presidentPastrana had created in 1998 to bring the FARC to the bargaining