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

Dead 287Taking exception to Tom seizing his last vital defender and tossingit to the ground, the Plumber stood up and shouted defensively, “¡Nohay violencia aquí!”As he jumped up, the Plumber knocked over the board, sendingpieces flying in all directions. He was clearly upset, but all Tom did wasstare at him and raise his palms up as if to say, “Let’s not get carriedaway.”Everybody started laughing and the situation quickly quieted sincewe knew Milton would freak out if he knew the guards were fraternizingwith us in that way. But it seemed odd to all of us that the Plumberwould respond so violently while telling us that violence had no placeon the chessboard. We’d seen a lot of evidence that nearly every memberof the FARC was capable of violence. We were playing a game,but these guys were committing real acts of brutality. Those thoughtsdidn’t stop us from playing chess, but I always kept that image of thePlumber shouting and upsetting the board in my mind. The incidentwas a good reminder of what his essential nature was—he was a terroristand would always be one no matter how much contact he had withus. It was dangerous for us to think otherwise.A short while after the Plumber’s eruption, real violence intrudedinto our lives. One morning we woke up to the sound of bombs detonatingnear our camp—much closer than usual. The sound of explosionafter explosion after explosion rode the waving tops of the trees;we knew a battle was going on, but we didn’t know where or who waswaging it. Eventually we heard the familiar sound of gunfire from aFantasma and we knew that something very serious was going on. Allwe could hope was that the FARC guerrillas were taking their lumps.The next day the Plumber reported back to us what he’d learned. Wewere in a region where the FARC had control over many coca fields.Instead of relying on airplane spraying to eradicate the crops, the governmenthad sent in a unit to manually destroy them. The FARC hadambushed the workers and killed twenty-seven policemen. We didn’t