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

Settling In 127given cigarettes, but we didn’t really take up smoking. For us, they werecurrency. Most of the guerrillas were seriously addicted to smoking.Advantage: Americans. We saw the way nearly all the guerrillas werepuffing away on the things and figured that we could parlay that intosome sweet deals for ourselves. Like most things, cigarettes came intocamp sporadically, and because of this, we were able to wheel and dealwith our stockpiles of smokes. Even if we couldn’t buy any materialgoods, we could at least make a down payment on some goodwill withsome of our more susceptible captors.One of them was a guy named Smiley. He was a young, good-naturedkid, very animated and emotional. When he was first guarding us, itwas like he had a crush on us—his first Americans. He was one ofthe first guerrillas I really reached out to as we were figuring out ourHogan’s Heroes thing—how to get the guards to do things for us. I couldtell that Smiley had a brain, that he was more of a freethinker and willingto take risks for us. One day, about six weeks or so into our stay atthe New Camp, Smiley came up behind my hooch. Back there, he wasblocked from view by anyone except me. He looked like he was aboutto cry and laugh and shit his pants all at the same time. He was smilingand flapping his hands in imitation of a bird, meaning we were beingset free. I could tell he was genuinely happy for us. No one was thatgood of an actor.Risking the guards banging down on us, I ran to Tom and Marc.“Listen to what I’ve gotten from Smiley. He seems to think we’re goingto get released.”“What do you mean?” Marc said. “How does he know?”“I’m not sure. I’ve got to find out more, but my Spanish isn’t goodenough. All he could do was gesture and hold out his arms like an airplane’swings.”“I’ll talk to him as soon as I can,” Tom whispered, and broke offwhen another guard took notice of us and headed our way. The dayafter Smiley gave me the bird-airplane signal, Tom asked him where he