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

Ruin and Recovery 233took much of his inspiration from the military prisoners, who werechained together by the neck throughout the march. Their rigorousphysical training helped them, but no one had it easy.Everyone did the best they could to help the others, but the FARCwere suffering as badly as we were and they took out their frustrationson us. At one point, Clara, who was carrying her own backpack anddoing the best she could, fell in the mud, losing one of her boots in theprocess. Emanuel was being carried by several female guerrillas, andnow she struggled in this deep stew of mud and prickly vegetation byherself. I stepped out of line and went to help her. We each had a guardin front of us and in back of us. They both yelled at me, “¡Vámanos!¡Vámanos!”I continued to move toward Clara. “I’m going to help her. She can’tget up.” As I bent down to lift her up, I heard the sounds of roundsbeing chambered in their AK-47s. Ignoring my wife’s plea that I not doanything to endanger myself, I shouted at them, “Go ahead. Shoot me.You don’t have the balls or the orders to shoot me, so go ahead.”I finished helping Clara get to her feet while the two guerrillas glaredat me.Several days before, we’d had a group of six Blackhawk helos flyoverhead and the guards had done what we’d come to expect—theysurrounded us with their weapons drawn. I was getting tired of that,and even though I knew they were as stressed as we were and likely tosnap, I couldn’t put up with their total lack of humanity. Unlike the previousencounter, when we had been in relatively good shape, we werebeaten down and vulnerable. I half expected someone to make a runfor it. Fortunately, the helos stayed away, and after a tense few minutesof standing there with a circle of terrorists with their weapons drawntaking a bead on us all, they ended up yelling at us to “vámanos.”I was especially angry because we noticed that when we did get ourmeager amount of food, the guards doled it out to us, making sure that