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

88 OUT OF CAPTIVITY“You see what happens when you get involved in a war?” he began.He then continued by accusing us of fighting against the guerrillas.“We’re counternarcotics, nothing more,” Marc, Keith and I told himone by one. “We don’t fight the guerrillas. We fight the drugs.”Every time we used the word drugs or narcotics, he flinched a bit.“Bullshit” was his only response to our telling him the truth.He went on a political rant. He told us that the Colombian governmentand the army had been tracking us throughout our twentyfour-daymarch. He said it didn’t matter if they had. The Colombiangovernment couldn’t do anything to hurt the FARC because the FARCdidn’t have a casa blanca; instead they had a casa verde—their house ofgreen, the jungle. Because they didn’t have a headquarters, becausethey kept on the move constantly, they couldn’t be bombed or raided.By then, I’d figured out who this man was. He was Joaquín Gómez,the leader of the Southern Bloc. Our intel had pegged him as the guywho collected the revenues generated by the FARC’s drug-traffickingoperations. Ramírez reported to Gómez, so we’d seen the latter’s namea few times on our target sheets.Gómez went on talking, telling us again that the FARC knew thatthey were being spied on.“That’s right,” Keith said.He raised an eyebrow and looked at Keith. “So, you are saying thereis no safe way to communicate.”Keith shrugged. “That’s what you are telling us. That you have nosecure phone. Everybody can intercept your communications. Thearmy followed us. They know we’re here. They know you’re here. You’retrapped is what I’m saying. There’s nothing you can do.”Gómez said the best way to combat the technology that enabled usto be tracked was to go back in time. We’d already felt that we’d traveledback in time. How much further could they go? Instead of using radiocommunications, Gómez said, they were going to use messengers tocarry handwritten communiques back and forth.