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

Choices and Challenges21there with their guards, and the hills surrounding us were being pepperedwith rounds from the minigun.Marc said to Keith, “Fuck me, I’m getting out of this shit. This is ourchance.”“That thing’s spitting out two thousand rounds a minute. We’ve gotto consider another option, Marc.”We all knew that the best time for escape was within the first fewminutes of being taken, before our captors could get fully organized.This was a pretty chaotic scene and in that sense a good opportunity toflee, but now, with all that gunfire landing right where we wanted to go,it was better to stay put.Keith was standing and he extended his arm to brace himself againstthe trunk of a tree. Sunlight reflected off the dial of his wristwatch andcaught my eye. It must have also caught the attention of one of theguerrillas near Keith. “Deme su reloj,” the guy said.Keith stared at the guy in disbelief and began to unclasp his Seikodiver’s watch.“Here, take the thing,” Keith said. “Just let’s get the fuck out of herebefore we get killed.”That theft was just another of the absurdities of the day. Why hadn’tthey taken it before? Why would a FARC guerrilla choose to steal it duringthe middle of a firefight? We’d eventually come to the understandingthat the FARC didn’t operate by anything resembling the logic orvalues we did.We stood there for a few minutes, and across the large clearing, Icould see a small campesino house the FARC were hoping to get usto. By the word clearing, I mean a typical Colombian jungle slash-andburntype of clearing. Clumps of vegetation, tree stumps, and deadfalllay scattered around the nearly five hundred feet to the structure.While the canopy above us was open, the field itself was the tanglednest of an obstacle course. Sprinting across it would be the equiva-