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

by Gary Brozek

  We spread our mattresses on the floor. Keith was in the middle and Tom and I flanked him. We had about six inches between us, and a roughly six-by-twelve area at our feet. We decided that keeping the beds in one area instead of spreading them out around the room maximized the limited space we had. Going from the high of anticipating our release to being housed in a barbed-wire cube was a real punch in the gut. Faced with no choice, we settled in.

  As with previous camps, we had no idea how long we were going to be there, but we based our assumptions on the formula that the amount of effort to build it equaled the longer period of time we were going to remain there. It wasn’t always an accurate equation, since any intense heat from aircraft usually put us back on the move. Still, we figured at the very least we would mark the start of our third year in captivity in our new birdcage. Even though we had far less space than we’d ever had and we were once again reduced to calling for a guard to let us out every time we needed to use the chaunto or slit trench to defecate or the pit hole to urinate, we got by with the coping skills we’d picked up along the way. It seemed as if the more adverse the conditions, the better we all got along. Part of the reason for this was the realization that if we’d been in pressure cookers before, we were now in a vacuum-sealed can. It was in none of our interests to cause trouble.

  We also drew on the lessons we’d learned from our captivity thus far. Twentysomething months in, we were veterans of several hard marches and had just come off a tension-filled stay in Camp Caribe. With all this under our belts, we wanted life in the birdcage to be as stress-free as possible. The only time we were allowed outside our enclosure was when we bathed, and the water we were able to use for drinking and cleaning was a substantial improvement over the chocolate water we’d had in the lowlands. If things got tense, as they were bound to, we at least had a means to cool off, scrub clean, and not carry that tension into the next day.

  For that reason, we also produced our own miniature versions of exercise equipment. Keith gathered sawdust and chips from the FARC’s construction project and made a softer pad on which he ran in place for thirty minutes. I had a pull-up bar, and while at first I struggled to hoist myself up to my chin, gradually I was able to do multiple repetitions. I hadn’t forgotten my idea of improving myself physically that I had developed all the way back at the New Camp, and our recent forced march had seen me shed, by my estimation, forty of the excess pounds that had my precrash weight at 190. I’d shed the weight, but I needed to put on muscle, and as the number of pull-ups increased, I could see the results and that motivated me further.

  Tom did a bit of exercising, but without the ability to do his laps, he spent more time in his hammock doing his various “projects.” Instead of motorcycle repair or airplane assembly, he tackled a house-building project. He also amassed a financial empire, beginning with resort hotels and establishing himself as a real estate mogul who could trump Trump.

  We were also fortunate that gaining the trust of the guards began to pay dividends for us. The Plumber became the “getter” of this group of FARC. If you needed something, he would be able to get it for you. The currency in all the camps was cigarettes, and making deals for various supplies had occupied a lot of time when we were in Camp Caribe. Now that we were back to just the three of us and our sense of competition was duller, our economy took a serious nosedive. Fortunately, the Plumber had a radio that he was willing to lend us. At the hospital Tom had scrounged a roll of insulated copper wire that we were able to use as an antenna. We strung that all around the inside and outside of our hooch. The wire on the outside looked like our clothesline, so no one ever questioned us about it.

  We resumed listening to the message shows, and Keith and I switched off nights. Tom’s hearing wasn’t good enough for him to listen to the shows at the necessary low volume to avoid detection. With the antennae wire hooked up to it and the sun down, we were able to pull in decent reception. We had all come to an agreement. Because the programs were on late at night into the early morning, we agreed that if a message came in for someone who wasn’t awake, the listener’s responsibility was to get the message in full and not risk missing any of it by running to wake up the intended recipient. That was crucial at that camp because we weren’t supposed to have a radio and shouting about a message was a dead giveaway.

  One Saturday night, I was on the radio when I heard the announcer say that they had a reporter from MTV news who had a message for one of the three Americans. He didn’t say which of us, so I had to wait. It was well after midnight, and I was half dozing and half listening. When I heard the MTV reporter’s voice, I immediately sprang up. At first, he was speaking in Spanish. My Harry Potter Spanish still wasn’t great, so I struggled to get everything straight in my head. Then he switched to English. He said that he had talked to Lauren and Kyle and that Keith shouldn’t worry. They were doing fine under the circumstances. He went on for a minute or so telling Keith that he hoped that he was still alive and well. He couldn’t understand why people would do these things to one another and that he was deeply sorry for what had happened. He wanted the FARC to let the hostages go. He’d been traveling all around Colombia trying to get this message to Keith, and everywhere he went, people said the same thing—let the hostages free.

  Lauren’s voice came over the radio. I concentrated on what she was saying as she filled Keith in on Kyle and her. Her “we miss you” was heartfelt and touching. She loved him so much and couldn’t wait to see him again. When she was through, I ran over everything in my mind. Our agreement was that we should wait until the morning to pass the message along, but this was like Christmas morning and I couldn’t wait. I crawled next to Keith’s bed and shook his shoulder to wake him. The jungle quieted, almost as if it wanted to hear what Lauren had to say. I whispered in his ear everything that I could remember of the message.

  When I was through, Keith clasped his hand around the back of my neck and whispered, “Thank you, bro.”

  My eyes were brimming with tears. I was so happy for Keith and so happy that I’d been able to help bring him that gift. I knew that Lauren’s message was special. Keith had always said that if there was anyone he could count on to come through for him, it was she. I also knew that the last message Keith had gotten was during our first weeks at Camp Caribe. The hit-and-miss nature of getting the messages aside, more than a year without any contact was a long time no matter how you looked at it.

  For days after that, Keith’s pleasure was visible. Every time he thought of Lauren’s message, it was as if he’d gotten a sudden jolt of energy throughout his system. Keith had what he referred to as his library of memories and he put that one on a prominent, easy-to-access shelf. Every day he would walk into that library and select a pleasant place, person, or event to revisit—from his childhood, from his life with his kids, moments with his siblings and parents. I got the feeling that Lauren’s message was one he checked out regularly.

  The same was true of me. I was deeply touched by Lauren’s message, and knowing that it had come to one of the three of us was the same as if it had been for me. The fact that I’d done something to help my friend was a powerful thing. I returned to those moments and those sensations often.

  Whether by plan or coincidence, at times it seemed as if the FARC were diabolically clever. Just when we hit a high, they did something to knock us back down. A few nights later, we heard on the news that the U.S. had made arrangements with Colombia to have Simón Trinidad extradited there to eventually stand trial. President Uribe announced that if the FARC didn’t want this to happen, they needed to release all their prisoners immediately. We knew that was never going to occur anytime soon. The only response that we heard from the FARC was a rumor, but one that was believable enough to send us hurtling downhill from the Lauren high: The FARC were going to hold all the hostages for the same length of time as the sentence Trinidad received. We didn’t know the formal charges against him, but it seemed possible that he could receive a life sent
ence.

  A week after the Trinidad news, Mono, who had become one of the more decent guards, came to us with an offer. He told us that he had been wandering in the jungle and came across an abandoned camp where he found a few Spanish-language magazines. Keith said that we would love to have them. With the exception of Tom’s copy of The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Marquéz, we had shed all of our reading materials on the forty-day march. (In another gesture of kindness, Cereal Boy had found the copy of the book that Tom had discarded on the march and returned it to him when the march was over.) Mono said that he would get them for us so long as we promised to keep them hidden.

  That we didn’t rat him out after he brought us the magazines built up Mono’s confidence in us. He began to open up to us, telling us his life story. He’d started out as a cow thief, then he joined the militia before becoming a full-fledged guerrilla. Mono was a bright kid and handsome, with definite European features. He was also completely into the macho thing and wore his rifle everywhere he went. He spoke with an obviously deliberate, lowered tone to his voice. It was funny and sad at the same time, like a kid playing a man in a high school play.

  One evening when Mono was on guard duty, we were talking about the FARC policy of kidnapping and hostage taking as a political tool. We explained to him that if they really believed they were involved in a civil war, then those actions violated the Geneva Conventions. We went on to say that all it did was earn them ill will in their country and around the world. Mono didn’t put up an argument. Instead he told us that for a while his duty assignment was in the kidnapping and ransoming units. They referred to those victims as economic hostages. He told us that the FARC had a law, law 001, which stated that if a person had more than a certain amount of money and didn’t pay their “taxes” to the FARC, they would take that person hostage. The FARC would hold that person until someone paid the negotiated ransom. If the family wouldn’t pay, then the hostage had to be executed.

  “Mono,” I said to him, “you’re a bright guy. How could you think that a law that says you should kill other people is justified?”

  Mono paused. “There are those who take and those who get taken from.”

  “Have you ever been a part of an execution?” Tom asked.

  Mono sat up a bit straighter. “I have seen them. I’ve done one.”

  Keith asked, “How did you do it?”

  “The prisoner was tied up and led to a space where a hole had been dug. As soon as the prisoner saw the hole, he cried. They always cry. I told the prisoner to get into the hole, but just as prisoners always cried, they always refused to do as ordered.” Mono sounded as if he couldn’t understand why the person he had to execute would do either of those things—cry or refuse an order, delaying death. “When I finally got the man into the hole, I put the gun to the prisoner’s head and pulled the trigger. Then I buried the man.”

  We all sat in silence for a few moments. “How did that make you feel?” I asked.

  “I really didn’t want to do it,” Mono said, lighting a cigarette, “but my comrades were all watching, and if I didn’t do it, I would be ashamed. I had to do it in the spirit of the revolution or they would kill me.”

  We liked Mono and we liked what he could do for us, but the cold indifference of that story revealed, if not his true nature, then what he had been transformed into by the FARC. We didn’t say a lot to Mono. We hadn’t thought of him as a killer, but he was. I added to my library a sobering reality—new, unbearably grim images of ways I could possibly die.

  To combat those fears, I sat and watched the Plumber whittling a piece of wood while guarding us. He used his knife to transform the stick into a cylinder and then into a spinning top. I’d taken a variety of shop classes and thought I was pretty decent at working with my hands. I asked him if he could get me a piece of wood; whittling and carving seemed like good ways to keep my mind occupied. The next day he brought me a piece of wood and his knife. He asked me to whittle it into a cylinder. He supervised the operation and was pleased with my work and I was happy to have something to do.

  I didn’t think that my skills were good enough yet to work on a detailed scale, so I asked the Plumber for a short log—about a foot in length. We’d asked for a chess game and never gotten one, so I decided to carve a pawn. I needed something simple that I could carve and a pawn wasn’t that much different from the cylinder I’d made for the Plumber. I spent the day whittling and carving. After I returned the knife at the end of the day, I showed it to Tom and Keith. They looked at me. They looked at my project. Keith just shook his head, and when I looked objectively at what I’d done, I could see that my pawn looked more like a primitive fertility idol than a chess piece.

  Using my rusty drafting skills, I drew out my vision of a pawn. My drawing was to scale, but I wasn’t completely satisfied. In one of the magazines Mono had stolen for us, there was an article about a brilliant young Russian woman. She was supersmart but also a beautiful model. She was going to be in Colombia. One photo of her showed her sitting in front of a chess set. I decided to copy the style of those pawns. I did my drawing and then began carving. Over the course of the following two days, I finished my first chess piece. I showed it to Tom and Keith and got no wisecracks, just the answer I’d wanted, “Now that’s a pawn.”

  Over the next three months, I carved more. I tried not to think of the significance of carving chess pieces, in particular pawns, but I was reminded of that irony while I was working on my fifth one. There had been somewhat limited aircraft activity throughout our stay in the birdcage. One night, about five months into life at the birdcage, an aircraft came into our airspace and began circling our location. We received word to evacuate the camp and head up the hill. In the dead of night, we heard several people shouting, “¡Ningunas luces! ¡Ningunas luces!” No lights. It didn’t make sense to any of us that we were heading to a high point. If the aircraft had any infrared gear on board, they’d pick up our heat signals so much easier if we were in a clearing—especially if we all huddled up. But the FARC had no idea what they were doing, and their confusion was evident. They were insistent that we remain in the clearing, and so, forced to hold our position, the three of us spread out as best we could.

  In the distance, we could hear the heavy thump of high-caliber gunfire, but it was too far away to be directed at us. The familiar sound of a Fantasma gunship tracking and flying orbits around a target rang out. We heard a supply truck driving and then the sound of its motor was replaced by the screaming of the Fantasma and its guns. The noises were in the distance, but they weren’t getting closer. It seemed that luckily for us the pilots had located a different target than our camp.

  Once the Fantasma broke off, we headed down the hill and talked some more about the attack. We were glad that we hadn’t heard Blackhawks. What we’d survived wasn’t a much-feared rescue attempt; the Colombians had made no effort as far as we knew to put men on the ground. But now our eyes had been opened to a new risk that we added to our ever-growing list: being mistakenly caught in a gunship raid.

  Milton decided that the attack was too close for comfort and gave orders for us to pack up. We headed out that same night, and walking down the hill into the jungle, none of us turned back for a last look at our barbed-wire cage.

  TEN

  Getting Healthy

  May 2005–November 2005

  KEITH

  After two weeks of marching and setting up temporary camps, in mid-May of 2005, we came to another abandoned FARC camp. We could tell that this one dated back to the FARC’s glory days simply because it was still standing. When the FARC had their DMZ, they weren’t constantly on the run, so their camps were more or less permanent settlements. The camp was just a variation on what we’d seen over the years—a kitchen was dug out and topped by a tin roof, the other buildings were constructed of tablas, most were open-sided or at least partially so. They had constructed more than the usual number of benches and low tables and things. Unlike C
aribe, there were no guard towers or a fence, and that always made any camp feel less threatening. That was soon to change.

  After we’d left the barbed wire camp, Milton had sent a small group back to dismantle everything. He was under orders to leave no trace of our presence. Milton became increasingly fanatic about our doing everything possible to make it difficult for the Colombian military to track us. He seemed to have no qualms about stomping around in the jungle hunting, but if any of us snapped a twig, broke a branch, or otherwise made a sound or left some indication that we had been through the area, he would yell and threaten us. Meanwhile, Milton didn’t stop long enough to realize that shooting a couple of monkeys and dragging their corpses through the jungle was going to leave a trail.

  As vigilant as he was about obeying orders not to leave a trace, he also lacked follow-through, and this was one time when we were grateful for the general slothfulness of the FARC. The work detail that had gone back to dismantle our previous camp had taken apart our barbed-wire hell cage, but they were too lazy to bring the rolls of barbed wire back with them to our new camp. As a result, our hooch was made of wood again and so was the fence they put up to enclose us. Though we had only a little more space than at the previous camp, not being caged in barbed wire was good for us mentally and materially—we each had torn holes in just about everything we had—clothes, hammocks, plastic sheets, and tent tops—in brushes against that braided steel.

  Though the absence of barbed wire was helpful, Milton once again placed our wooden hooch on a slope. That may not sound like a big deal, but it was. None of us enjoyed sleeping on an angle, not to mention the fact that when it rained, water would rush downhill and flood the hooch. As we usually did when dealing with the idiocy and arbitrary cruelty of the FARC, we overcame it. In the first couple of weeks after our arrival, we hauled in enough dirt to level our small area. That made it much easier for us to walk around and to exercise. We asked our guards for shovels, and they provided them. When Milton found out about our little excavation and landscaping project, he was pissed—at us and at his guys for helping us. If the entire camp wasn’t supposed to be leaving any trace, a big patch of dirt large enough to accommodate three sleeping spots and three men would definitely alert the government it was us who had been there.