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

by Gary Brozek

  I used to talk all the time about us being like lab rats in a maze. Well, those same lab rats, when they weren’t being used in experiments, lived their lives in small cages. So did we. I didn’t realize until captivity how important and freeing it was just to walk out of my house, get in the car, and go to work. I didn’t understand that at my previous intel job, getting up and going to the watercooler, the restroom, the break room, or anywhere else provided me with a little change in the routine and some exercise. Movement meant freedom, and if we had been shackled physically and completely prevented from moving except when the FARC allowed us to, I don’t know how I could have endured it. As it was, we went far more places and ranged more freely in our minds than we did physically. We talked about those moments when we were so engaged in a conversation or were each taking on a task in our minds or revisiting a memory. At those times, we were beyond the walls of the hooch. At those times, we were free.

  Exercise did that for us as well. We each had our own routines and sometimes we worked out together and sometimes we did our own thing, but at the Exercise Camp, we all focused on our physical fitness in a way we hadn’t before. If the forty-day march had done nothing else for us, it made us realize that we never wanted to be in that weakened condition again. None of us wanted to repeat the agony of having every single footstep be an act of torture. As it is for anybody starting to work out, it was hard at first to get motivated, but once we got going on it for a while, we started to really look forward to getting up in the morning to work out. It also helped that we started to set goals for ourselves. Tom got into lifting weights more than at any other time in his life. Keith got into the stepping thing, and started out by saying he wanted to do thirty minutes a day. Once he reached that level and was able to achieve that goal regularly and easily, he upped it to thirty-five. By the time we left the Exercise Camp, he was doing fifty minutes a day pretty regularly.

  The other good thing about setting up our gym was that it was a definite do-it-yourself project—a Jungle Depot special. We had to build the bench we used for bench pressing. Of course, we needed to borrow tools and materials from the guerrillas, but we did all the work ourselves. That activity gave us exercise, a sense of accomplishment, and a purpose each day. When it came time to build the barbells for the bench press, squats, and military press, we all pitched in. It felt good not to be the lone carver. We took a fairly stout log, one that was six inches or so around, and whittled away at it so that the bar was down to about an inch around and the ends were still the original diameter. It took us a week or two to accomplish this, but we all chipped in. Again, we sometimes worked alone on it, and sometimes we worked together, but they were “our” weights. When we got stronger and wanted a heavier barbell, we did the same thing with a larger log. We jokingly called it our Flintstones gym, but we also took pride in having done it ourselves.

  None of us had ever been a gym rat before, but we figured out a good approach to working out. One day I would focus on my upper body with pushing exercises—bench press, military press, and pushups. The next day it would still be upper body, but pulling exercises like curls and pull-ups. The day after that was the lower body, with squats and abdominal work like sit-ups and crunches. We all set goals for ourselves and these were something crucial to staying positive. We had only one long-term goal—of getting home again, but we also needed to keep focused on the everyday and the short term as well.

  This didn’t apply just to our physical work but to our mental and emotional efforts. Writing in journals still occupied some of our time, as did learning Spanish and reading. Sergeant César Augusto Lasso had given me a Bible while at Caribe, and my goal was to read it from start to finish. It was a Gideon Bible, the New Testament only, and half of the books were in English and half were in Spanish. From the moment I got it, I read a few passages every day. Keith started to read it along with me. I found strength and freedom in that book and in those stories as well.

  Before I was taken hostage, sometimes my faith felt like a burden. I thought of it in terms of things that I had to do (go to church) and restrictions (don’t lie or swear) instead of what it could do for me and what it allowed me to do. At the Exercise Camp, I really came to see just how my faith had allowed me to grow stronger. I wouldn’t have been able to find the resolve and determination to exercise my body if it hadn’t been for all the work I was doing on my soul at the same time. My prayers and daily Bible reading gave me the mental strength I needed to keep pushing myself.

  Part of our mental planning at the Exercise Camp involved doing what was necessary to avoid being placed in chains. We’d seen how the military prisoners had to endure that indignity and that physical strain. We were continually aware of the risk chains held during an attack or rescue attempt. The time it might take during a rescue attempt to untangle a chain or maneuver around an obstacle could be enough to keep us from meeting our goal of surviving to return home. One of the main reasons why we preached to ourselves that it was okay to put up with some of the garbage from the FARC in exchange for earning their confidence was so that the chains would never come out.

  Besides chains, the other thing that the FARC could do to punish us was to increase the amount of security on us. None of us wanted that. In the case of a rescue, and if the FARC came after us to execute us, the fewer number of guards we had around us, the better.

  The fact that some of the guerrillas were providing us with information was also important to how we prepared ourselves for any possible rescue or escape situation. Through them, we learned that the Exercise Camp was very near the town of Santo Domingo in the Vista Hermosa municipality of the Meta department. We’d passed by Santo Domingo once before and now we knew we were on the east side of the Andes, very near the center of the country. Based on what we’d heard on Colombian radio, the department’s capital, Villavicencio, was a haven for refugees fleeing the FARC and the conflict. Though none of us was certain where the capital was in terms of location, we at least had a definite destination in mind, and that was a lot more than we’d ever had before. From the intelligence reports we read when we were flying missions, we knew that vast areas of Colombia were FARC controlled. If we did escape, we needed to be sure that we wouldn’t fall right back into the hands of our enemy.

  We’d already seen how all these concerns were tied together. Throughout our time at the Exercise Camp, there were nearly nightly flyovers by the Fantasmas. One day in May of 2005, we heard the distinctive sound of a Fantasma approaching.

  “Here we go again,” Keith said.

  “It’s roundup time.” Tom grabbed a few of his things and we all stood waiting for the guards to lead us out. We were herded down the steep slope of the ravine into what we assumed was a safe hiding spot. We couldn’t be spotted easily in the ravine, but escape from the FARC in case of a rescue was next to impossible. Scrambling up that rock-strewn ravine would have been next to impossible no matter how hard we were working out.

  “Let’s check out the action.” I nodded toward the Plumber, who was nearby with a radio scanner.

  We were all hunkered down with our backs resting on the walls of the ravine, kind of like I’d seen GIs doing in a fox hole. The Plumber didn’t mind us listening to the radio transmissions he was able to intercept.

  We sat there for a minute listening to the Fantasma pilot reporting back to his command center.

  “These guys are sounding more and more professional every time,” Keith said, and tossed a small rock against the opposite-side wall. A few loose stones cascaded down.

  “Just a routine mission,” Tom said. “Sounds like just another day at the office.”

  We continued listening as the pilot reported his coordinates. Then something changed in the pitch of his voice and the speed of his words. He was excited about something, but trying to keep command of his voice.

  “He’s talking to somebody else now,” I said. “He’s not going back to command.”

  A few seconds later, we could hear ab
ove us what was going on. A Kfir jet was approaching.

  “This is a whole ’nother ball game now.” Keith stood to try to scan the sky above us, but all we were able to see was a relatively small slice.

  “He’s guiding him in. They better get their coordinates right,” Tom said, an edge was in his voice because the Fantasma pilot was leading his Kfir into a bombing zone. We had no idea what the target was going to be, but they were definitely close to us, and it only took a few seconds’ delay or a slight miscommunication for those bombs to miss their intended target by a quarter mile or more.

  We looked at the Plumber and Tom said, “You’re going to feel what we’re talking about in a minute.”

  The Plumber frowned. We liked to show him and the other guards that we understood what was going on in the skies better than they did. A few seconds later, we felt the impact and heard the distinctive crump of a bomb making contact with the ground. That was followed by the explosion.

  My heart was beating faster, but more in excitement than in fear. Knowing that the Colombian military pilots were nearby and doing damage to one FARC installation or another was a reason to feel good.

  “Let’s hope they’re making good drops,” Keith said. “I hate to think about innocents getting rained on.”

  I tuned in again to what was being said over the radio, and I felt, if not pride, then certainly satisfaction as the coordinated efforts of the two crews produced the desired results. At the tail end of the bombing, we heard the pilot of the Kfir state that they had destroyed the bridge. We were glad that the target wasn’t another group of FARC. We still thought about the other hostages and their welfare.

  “Good to know they’re safe,” I said.

  “Let’s hope so,” Tom added.

  Sitting there and praying that night, I realized that I wasn’t as afraid as I had been before. I understood the risks and the options we had. I knew I had been preparing myself as best I could—mind, body, and spirit—for what might come. I took a lot of comfort in that.

  I also came to understand that most of the FARC didn’t have our ability to assess situations and devise plans. We sensed that with everything that was happening—daily and nightly flyovers, bombing runs, the general discontent between Milton and his guerrillas—some of them—not just Eliécer—wanted their freedom as much as we did. One evening the Plumber was on duty and he was talking about some of these issues very indirectly.

  Keith looked at Tom and me and said, “Hey, guys. What do you think? I may ask the Plumber straight what he thinks about escaping.”

  We agreed that the risk to us was low, so Keith asked him, “Would you be willing to get us out of here if we told you we could help you?”

  “Yes.” The Plumber’s face lit up and then darkened just as quickly. He paused. “Tell me more about what I’ve heard. Is the U.S. serious about providing a reward if we surrender ourselves?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” Tom said. “They can help you with visas, put you in witness protection. No one would hurt you.”

  “What about my family?” the Plumber asked.

  Keith shrugged. “I don’t know everything there is to know about immigration, but if you were to help us get free, all kinds of doors would open for you.”

  The offer was legitimate as far as we knew and a lot of the guerrillas talked about it.

  We were feeling pretty good about the Plumber’s willingness until we heard his plan. “We would have to kill everyone else in the camp. That’s the only way. If any of them survive, we would be tracked down and I would be killed.”

  Tom, Keith, and I exchanged glances. Keith’s face said it all. The guy didn’t really have a “plan” or a strategy. We didn’t have a problem with that morally, but we did have a problem with it strategically. The Plumber had one AK-47. There were nineteen other FARC guerrillas with us. Earlier in our captivity, we had learned from our more friendly guerrillas that if we tried to escape and no FARC got hurt, they were under direct orders to track us down and return us, but not to kill us. However, if we tried to escape, killed a guard in the process, and then got taken again, we’d be executed.

  Fortunately, once the Plumber admitted that he was willing to escape, we could use this information to our advantage. The Plumber also told us which guards we could trust and which ones we couldn’t. We weren’t going to waste our time or energy trying to manage the ones we couldn’t trust.

  Milton was a guy we could always trust not to do the right thing. After one of the more serious Fantasma attacks—the helos came in during daylight and fired more aggressively and with more planes than ever before—we got out of the ravine. Milton was freaking out. He’d been wounded in an air assault once before, so he was especially frightened by airplanes. He had us all just run deeper into the jungle. We took no supplies; later, Milton sent some of his guerrillas back to our camp to retrieve things.

  Two weeks after this, Milton ordered us back to the site of the Exercise Camp; we were too far from water, and he wanted to make life a little easier on everyone. When we got back, we saw that Milton had done something he’d promised he’d do to us if we didn’t respect him and his guerrillas. He made our enclosure smaller. All the work we’d done creating a more level area was undone, but as soon as we moved back in, we started leveling it off again. With our smaller area and our stronger bodies, it took a lot less time to get the job done.

  TOM

  It seemed as if at every camp we were at, there was a particular species of pest we had to deal with. Rogelio was one of them at the Exercise Camp. What was of more concern to us was that after two years of being in the jungle, we had all been afflicted with some kind of jungle illness or condition. Over time these all built up to take a collective toll on us.

  Walking through the jungle, it was easy to get a cut or scratch. In the barbed-wire cage, we were constantly getting scratched up. It was there that Keith and I both developed leishmaniasis, a fairly common jungle disease, and though it makes you look like a leper, it isn’t life-threatening—so long as you get treated. It’s caused by a parasite that certain jungle flies carry. Those flies are attracted to open wounds; they transmit the parasite when they bite you, and you later develop open sores or ulcers that spread in size. Untreated, the sores continue to spread and multiply and can eventually endanger internal organs. Several months into our stay at the Exercise Camp, shortly after Eliécer had talked about suicide, I developed a sore on my foot and hand, while Keith had one on his elbow.

  In addition to being the racionista, Rogelio was, in defiance of all logic and common sense, our medic. He was a borderline sociopath, but he was the one we had to see to be checked out. He immediately told Keith he had “leish” and they started him on a course of treatment. He received intramuscular injections forty to fifty times to help clear it up. The FARC had easy access to a drug called glucantime since it was a fairly common problem.

  Despite the fact that I had a spreading sore on my foot that looked exactly like Keith’s, Rogelio and the “consulting physicians” decided I didn’t have leish. I didn’t get the injections and the sore spread and grew deeper and deeper. They just thought I had some rash and gave me antibiotics. Back at Caribe, we had heard from the military guys that it sometimes took as many as two hundred to three hundred doses of the injection to get rid of the stuff. Knowing this, I began to get worried and made more demands for the proper treatment. Those complaints fell on stupid ears. Finally, after the sore on my foot grew to the size of a silver dollar, I got the proper injections. Rogelio wasn’t about to give in completely and do the right thing. Whenever he felt like it, he withheld the medication.

  Going back a ways, Rogelio and I were on pretty bad terms. His ignorance got to me and I wasn’t afraid to expose it. He was one of the FARC whom I would question a lot of the time when he spouted off propaganda, and that made things pretty adversarial. I’d press him, asking how they were going to take over the country. I’d tell him that they’d been at it for almost
forty years, how could he think that they’d succeed now, when their numbers were dwindling? I also got to him by pointing out that sitting in the jungle holding us captive didn’t seem to be doing much to advance their cause. He’d say something else that was crazy or unintelligible, suck his teeth, and twitch his eyes.

  Because of the contentious dynamic between us, when I pressed him on the issue of the medicine, he pushed back. It started a cycle in which Keith would intervene, using his good relationship with Rogelio as leverage to get me what I needed. I’d then get my medicine until Rogelio decided to mess me up again. Things went on like this for a while, and during one argument, he even turned to Keith and said, pointing to me, “I don’t care if the old man dies or not.” I knew he meant it and I knew I felt the same way about him.

  I didn’t like Keith having to deal with Rogelio for me, but it seemed the only way to get him to cooperate. I’d had to deal with the same thing with my blood-pressure medications, and having this guy mess with my health was not something I could tolerate. I refused to let them think I was just going to lie down and allow them to control my health. The guard we had earlier in our captivity—the one called Smiley—had a bad case of leish and I saw what it did to him. It spread into a gaping wound. I was not going to let that happen to me. Finally, we worked out an arrangement so that I could get the injections I needed. Rogelio didn’t want to deal with me and I didn’t want to deal with him, so Keith gave me the injections.

  Around the same time that I was battling Rogelio over the leish treatment, we came into contact with another jungle affliction, one that has no equivalent word in English: chuchorros. We were never sure what caused them. They were painful open sores that swelled and oozed pus. The sore was just the surface symptom. Somewhere deeper in your tissue, some kind of inflammation spread and you swelled up. It was like the wound on your skin was the cone of a volcano and that deeper inflammation in your flesh was the volcano’s core. The chuchorros produced a deep, stinging pain. The only way to get rid of them was to squeeze the surrounding flesh. In some ways, the cure was worse than the pain of the infection or whatever caused the buildup of pus.