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

396 OUT OF CAPTIVITYchains went on both of us, and instead of a single guard, we had two ofthem assigned to us for the next several days.Just as it seemed the FARC were at their breaking point and theBlackhawks were zeroing in on us, all the helo activity stopped. By theend of April, it was as if someone had flipped a switch and they weregone. We were able to reach a resupply point and for a few hours wesimply sat and waited, too exhausted to do anything but eat. We werebarely conscious when suddenly Ingrid and William Pérez emergedfrom the jungle. “Now what is that?” Keith asked. He was clearly irritatedby the sight of them.I was relieved to see Ingrid looking about as well as could be expectedafter our month on the run. It was the first time that she and Ihad seen each other since that night on the boat. I was pleased to seeher again, but when she greeted me, I knew immediately that somethinghad changed. She was not the same woman that I’d held handswith that night on the bongo. The light that I’d seen in her eyes was nolonger there.Based on the way William was looking at me, I sensed it had somethingto do with him. Ingrid didn’t treat me coldly, but there was adistance that hadn’t been there before. She seemed to be looking atand acting around William the way that she had with me, but she wasopenly affectionate toward him in a way she had never been with me.One of the things that Ingrid had shared with me was how difficult itwas for her to be a woman in captivity. We’d seen how easily and casuallythe FARC had coupled literally and metaphorically, and from theoutset, it seemed as if Ingrid allied herself with one man in each of thecamps. Maybe it was a way to be protected, maybe it was a function ofloneliness, but she’d complained to me that she didn’t like being forcedinto a position of helplessness. She shared some of her thoughts aboutthis in letters she’d written to me. I had tried to be honest with her andtold her that as much as I understood what other people were doing toher, she was responsible for herself. She was a strong woman and she