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

284 OUT OF CAPTIVITY“If you are ever going to be a commander, you have to make decisions.What is that airplane doing!” Still, neither of the pair could say aword. They were either too frightened or they honestly didn’t know.After we’d gotten more provisions and the FARC calmed down, weset out. We were told that we’d been given a week by the Front commander,Efren, to reach a rendezvous point, but it seemed that Miltonhad simply stopped caring about whether we got to where we weregoing. He’d halt the march whenever he felt like it and go hunting inthe jungle, disappearing for stretches at a time while we waited for hisreturn.At first, we assumed that with these breaks he was just doing hisguerrillas a favor. All our exercise had paid off, making us fit andstrong, but now the guerrillas were the ones struggling. Our increasedstrength and endurance didn’t go unnoticed. Milton made several angryremarks to his crew about their failure to keep up with us, using theboot instead of his brain to motivate his people.When that didn’t produce the effects he wanted, Milton took anotherapproach. On one of his hunting stops, we all noticed a group of spidermonkeys overhead. Milton took his rifle and brought one down with asingle shot. It fell just off the trail. He walked over and grabbed it byits tail and hauled it toward us. We had clustered together, and Miltondragged the monkey into the center of our group.We could see the monkey’s chest heaving. It was lying on its backand was clearly alive. Milton walked over to one of his guerrillas andpulled his machete out its scabbard. He hefted the tool in his hand, andfor a split second it was as though we could see the large knife goingthrough a transformation as it turned from a tool into a weapon.Milton looked at the monkey and then at us. He raised the macheteand rotated it in his hand before bringing the flat of the blade down onthe monkey’s head. As he did this, he yelled the word whack! like he wasin a sick comic book and was narrating the sound effects. Blood pouredout of the monkey’s head and into its eye. Still, it was breathing.