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

426 OUT OF CAPTIVITYstripped to his underwear and with his limbs all wrapped up, I couldn’thelp but think of him as a pig. A pig’s an intelligent animal, and as yellowas Enrique proved himself to be, he’d made the intelligent choice.He couldn’t have fought us all off. In the end, I think he realized whatwe all did about the FARC: Their cause was not something worth losingyour life over.After a brief twenty-minute flight, we were on the ground in SanJosé. Without any fanfare or delay, we were loaded onto a Fokker jetthat had once been the Colombian president’s equivalent to Air ForceOne. We were seated in the front part of the plane, the first-class cabin.The rest of the former hostages were in the rear of the plane. We sankinto the cushioned leather seats. In my life, I’d been on too many commercialflights to count, but never had an airline seat felt so comfortable.A small contingent of Americans were on the plane with us. Theywere partly responsible for our rescue and worked at the embassy ina highly classified capacity. They were great to us and filled us in onsome details of the operation. Essentially the FARC were undone bytheir own people and their own flawed and antiquated communicationssystems. It was good to know that some members of the FARChad been corrupt enough to cooperate. The FARC had been duped intobelieving that a humanitarian contingent had come to visit with all ofus, but in fact, our rescuers were highly trained members of an eliteColombian army squad. The doctor was real, but the TV guys were soldierswho’d volunteered for this dangerous mission.We drank clean bottled water for the first time in years and sat back,letting everything sink in. We heard quite a celebration going on in theback of the plane, and walked in that direction to enjoy the spectacle.General Montoya, the chief of the Colombian military, was speakingthrough a megaphone: “Stop it! Stop it! Silence!” Things would quietdown for a bit and then he would scream, “Glory to the ColombianArmy!,” causing the cabin to explode again in revelry. When he finallygot them all to calm down, he said that we were going to begin the