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

16 OUT OF CAPTIVITYon his skin color and hair. Tom Howes had the best Spanish of any ofus, but I could tell by looking at him—the flap of flesh was danglingover his eye, and blood continued streaming from his wound and downhis face—that he was basically out on his feet.By then I could see that there were between fifty and sixty heavilyarmed guerrillas coming at us. The members of this large platoonsizegroup were a ragtag-looking bunch wearing an odd assortmentof cammo gear, T-shirts, sweatpants, and bandannas, but I was moreinterested in the weapons they carried. Not the latest or the greatest,but still capable of tearing a hole in any one of us—Israeli Galils, AK-47s, old M-14s. Worse, they had an M–70 grenade launcher and an oldChinese piece-of-crap 308.When they reached us, four of them approached, their faces completelyexpressionless. I did a quick scan of the whole bunch. None ofthem could have been more than twenty years old, ranging from what Iguessed was about fourteen. At gunpoint, they led Tom and me downhilland away from the aircraft. I didn’t like the idea of us being separatedand wondered if this was how they were going to execute us. Then I sawone of the guerrillas take off a scarf he was wearing and hand it to Tom.The scarf was cammo on one side and the other side was checked like aPLO scarf only in the colors of Colombia’s flag—red, blue, and yellow.I was surprised the guy gave it up. The scarf was obviously takenfrom someone in the Colombian military. A lot of the FARC had them,and it was a way of counting coup—to show that they’d either capturedor killed a Colombian counterguerrilla soldier. I also figured if he wasbothering to hand that over, it could be a good thing or a bad thing.Either he knew he was going to be getting it back a few minutes after heshot us, or he was trying to take good care of a prisoner. In either case,Tom wrapped the thing around his head to stanch the flow of blood. Heleaned back and I could see him wobble a bit.Tom and I sat down about fifty yards from the plane and watched asone of the group’s leaders—a woman we eventually learned was named