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

Ruin and Recovery 253model. She was going to be in Colombia. One photo of her showed hersitting in front of a chess set. I decided to copy the style of those pawns.I did my drawing and then began carving. Over the course of the followingtwo days, I finished my first chess piece. I showed it to Tom andKeith and got no wisecracks, just the answer I’d wanted, “Now that’s apawn.”Over the next three months, I carved more. I tried not to think ofthe significance of carving chess pieces, in particular pawns, but I wasreminded of that irony while I was working on my fifth one. There hadbeen somewhat limited aircraft activity throughout our stay in the birdcage.One night, about five months into life at the birdcage, an aircraftcame into our airspace and began circling our location. We receivedword to evacuate the camp and head up the hill. In the dead of night,we heard several people shouting, “¡Ningunas luces! ¡Ningunas luces!”No lights. It didn’t make sense to any of us that we were heading to ahigh point. If the aircraft had any infrared gear on board, they’d pickup our heat signals so much easier if we were in a clearing—especiallyif we all huddled up. But the FARC had no idea what they were doing,and their confusion was evident. They were insistent that we remain inthe clearing, and so, forced to hold our position, the three of us spreadout as best we could.In the distance, we could hear the heavy thump of high-caliber gunfire,but it was too far away to be directed at us. The familiar sound of aFantasma gunship tracking and flying orbits around a target rang out.We heard a supply truck driving and then the sound of its motor wasreplaced by the screaming of the Fantasma and its guns. The noiseswere in the distance, but they weren’t getting closer. It seemed thatluckily for us the pilots had located a different target than our camp.Once the Fantasma broke off, we headed down the hill and talkedsome more about the attack. We were glad that we hadn’t heard Blackhawks.What we’d survived wasn’t a much-feared rescue attempt; the