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

152 OUT OF CAPTIVITYWith Botero behind the camera, the bad news kept coming. Welearned that shortly after our plane had gone down, another Americanplane had crashed. About a month after our engine failure, the secondGrand Caravan in the fleet had crashed on takeoff, killing all three onboard. These guys were heading out to look for us, and they died. RalphPonticelli was probably the one that we were closest with, and when welearned that he had died, Tom and I both started to well up with tears.Learning that Tommy Schmidt and Butch Oliver had also lost theirlives made us feel even worse.Botero must have planned all these revelations in order to elicit someemotion from us, and he succeeded. Tom was so upset about Ralph’sdeath that he grabbed the copy of the day’s Miami Herald they hadintended to use in the POL to shield his face from the camera. Boterozoomed in tighter, framing Tom in a close-up. Tragedy makes good TV,but this was just piling it on.I’d been thinking about my mother’s message and wondering if itwas a letter, a cassette tape, or something else. Botero took out a videotape,put it in his camera, and wired up a small monitor for me toview the video. After seeing him use Ralph’s death to capture Tom athis most vulnerable, I was determined not to become a part of Botero’spropaganda scheme. Despite how I was feeling about hearing a voicefrom home, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry when I watched the message.It helped that Botero messed something up and started playing itwithout sound, forcing him to rewind it before giving me the headset.The setup was simple. My mom was at home, sitting on the couchwith the camera steady in front of her. Gradually the camera pannedover to a photo of me in my air force uniform that she had on a shelf.When she finally spoke, her voice was a measured calm, like she wasmaking an effort not to show just how upset she was.“I just want to tell you that I love you very much. I hope you comehome soon, safe and alive—and also your colleagues. There are hundredsof people praying for you and I just need you to come home