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

130 OUT OF CAPTIVITYwall of building was plumb—straight up and down—or level on thehorizontal plane. If a small air bubble suspended in liquid is betweentwo lines on the small cylinder, then whatever you are checking is leveleither vertically or horizontally. I liked that image because it allowedfor the individual difference among the three of us. When I was flaton my back, that meant I was in my bubble. If Tom and Marc were upand around and busy with their walking or their cleaning, it meant theywere in their bubbles.We hadn’t forgotten about Smiley’s revelation, but a few days hadpassed since our conversation with the Frenchman about our future.Tom followed up briefly with the Frenchman and asked him that if theorder was given for our release, how long would it take until we wereactually let go?“Eight days” was his only response.When Tom reported that information back to us, we were all puzzledand impressed. Why eight days? Why not a week? Did the guy have itdown to that exact number because a plan was already in place? TheFrenchman’s precise answer combined with the continued increase inaircraft activity upped our anticipation level. We could hear a plane—we weren’t sure if it was Grand Caravan like we’d flown (and thus oursister ship from California Microwave) or if it was a King Air run byanother group out of Bogotá. The planes were essentially boxing in ourlocation, flying in a pattern similar to what we did over our target zonesand narrowing it down through a series of turns.That was a good thing and a bad thing. We knew that a recon planewould be looking for us on the ground. The jungles of Colombia arevast, and our small clearing could easily blend into the surroundingvegetation. We weren’t just a needle in jungle haystack, we were the eyeof the needle—a tiny empty space in a vast carpet of green and thereforevery easy to miss. The comfort in all of this was that the presenceof these aircraft near our location verified our assumption that we werebeing tracked and people were looking for us.