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

xiiiOUT OF CAPTIVITYTOMWhen I heard the engine spooling down, I immediately looked at theinstruments and then scrutinized the terrain for an emergency landingspot. I didn’t see anything close to suitable, so I reached for a map.I was barely aware of the ambient noise in the cabin. I knew Keith wason the radio, but the sound of his voice in my headphones and the presenceof the three men behind me were definitely on the periphery ofmy consciousness. Our altitude was a little more than twelve thousandfeet and I needed to determine if we could make the glide, clear themountains, and land at our refueling site, Larandia.I looked over at the gauges to find out what our current airspeed,altitude, and rate of descent were. From the map, I plotted a point approximatingour location and our destination. My gut had told me instantlythat we were not going to make it over the ridge and into theairport. The calculations I did simply confirmed my suspicions.“I see a clearing.” Tommy J’s voice rose in pitch just a bit.“I see it, too,” I said.We were going down in a steep valley bordered by two ridgelines.Just above the one to the north was a clearing less than the size of afootball field. I’m not a spiritual or religious person, but when I calculatedthe odds of there being any patch of ground that was clear of treeson the thickly forested slopes of the Cordilleria Mountains, I’d say itwas pretty damn close to a miracle. The spot was no bigger than a postagestamp, but it was our only option. Put it this way: If we were fallingdown a deep well, that clearing was like finding a tiny ledge just a fewinches above bottom.The first thing I did was to make contact with the aviation authoritiesat two nearby airports, reaching the towers at Florencia andLarandia. Between calls, I remembered a brief conversation Keith andMarc had had about today being February 13. Keith had told Marc thathe’d have plenty of time when we returned to order f lowers for his wife,Shane. I thought of my own wife, Mariana, waiting for me back in