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

64 OUT OF CAPTIVITYstepped up and yelled for them all to shut up. They fell silent, and amoment later a FARC guerrilla from a different unit came walking up.He was another of the local guides assigned to help us navigate throughthe next bit of territory—not a policeman or military guy. So much forwhat brave warriors the FARC were. Still, their response revealed amore important truth: These guerrillas were being hunted, and manyof them had been wounded before. While they looked somewhat laughableto us, they were also extremely volatile. After all, a terrorist organizationmade up of mostly young men and women isn’t anyone’s ideaof an ideal fighting force. They were undisciplined, and without gooddiscipline, who knew what they might do.The first time I saw them stand in ranks, military style, it was clearthat they saw themselves as an organized disciplined group of fighters.On that particular morning, a FARC commander by the name ofOscar was scheduled to arrive, and we suspected that something wasup because the FARC all put their hats on. We didn’t know exactly whatthat meant, but normally they didn’t wear them. When Oscar appeared,he obviously was the commander of the Front, which in their organizationalhierarchy is basically the platoon that captured us. Their chainof command dictated that Sonia reported to him. Oscar was short evenby Colombian standards at about five feet two or so. He was also overweightand carried a belly that swung like a hammock over his belt. Thepinkie finger on his right hand was mostly missing, but a stub of bonestuck out of the fleshy nub that remained.When Oscar called the soldiers together, they were a motley assortmentand their ability to form straight lines or stand at attention wasmore like a Three Stooges routine than a formation. By the time theyfinally got in a row, the three of us were about to burst out laughing.That morning was one of the few remarkably clear days we’d had ina while, and no sooner had they assembled in their disorder than aplane flew overhead. Oscar began waving and shouting, instructing hispeople to get back under the jungle canopy and the roof of a crude lean-