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

Ruin and Recovery 245post-Christmas blues, I closed my eyes, and I was back in Connecticutenjoying an Indian-summer day in New England. In my imagination,I could smell the twin scents of leafy decay and a distant fire. Destineywas squealing with delight as she sat in a pile of leaves and tossed themskyward. They tumbled back down, and rested on the pink hood thatcovered her curly hair. She smiled and revealed a gap in her top row ofteeth, a reminder to Shane and me that the tooth fairy needed to makea stop. Joey and Cody stood nearby, bunches of leaves in their hands,ready to attack their mom and me. I licked my lips and I could taste thelast bit of sweetness from the caramel apple I’d just eaten.That vision, pleasant as it was, was not enough to hold off the realitythat stood before us: Perched on the hillside was what appeared to bea very large birdcage constructed out of a few posts supporting a cubeof barbed wire. If Camp Caribe had a prisoner-of-war detention-campaura, then this rustic wood-and-wire hooch was something out of aHalloween house of horrors. I knew, but did not want to believe, thatanyone could expect a single human being, let alone three of them, tolive in that figment of someone’s demented imagination brought tolife on a scarred patch of land in Colombia. I thought of the fact thatwe were in the Macarena Mountains and the silly dance craze of thesame name that briefly had America’s in its grasp—this thing had tobe someone’s idea of a joke.Milton escorted us to the gate, and when we refused to go in, henudged us inside with the butt of his AK-47. It was approximatelyeighteen by eighteen by eight, topped with barbed wire and black plasticsheeting. The guards set our foam mattresses down. We kept ourequipos on our backs, not so subtly signaling our intention to, as Keithwould say, “beat feet” out of there. We asked Milton what the deal was,and at first, instead of saying anything, he bared his teeth and made aclawing motion.“Tigres,” he said. He went on to explain that big jungle cats couldclimb over most any fence. “They come in. They eat you.”