by Mitch Weiss
“Captain. Captain. There are two here. We have caught them.”
Prado scurried up the hill with Private Alejandro Ortiz and found two members of the guerrilla band. They were gaunt, covered in dirt, and showing signs of great fatigue.
Prado could tell the first was undoubtedly a foreigner. He had an impressive gaze, clear eyes, and a thick wild beard. He wore a jacket with a hood, a shirt with no buttons. Barely hanging on to his feet was a pair of homemade moccasins. In his right hand was a carbine. The other man was short and dark, with long hair and a little goatee.
As soon as Prado saw them, he ordered them to drop their weapons.
“Who are you?” Prado asked the taller man.
“I am Che Guevara,” he answered in a low voice.
Prado was certain of his identify before he had asked the question. The distinctive shape of his face and beard made him an instantly recognizable figure to anyone who had seen his photographs. Now it was confirmed. Prado’s heart raced, but he maintained his composure. He addressed the other man like it was no big deal.
“How about you?”
“I’m Willy,” he replied.
“Are you Bolivian?”
“Yes.”
“What is your real name?” Prado asked.
“Simon Cuba.”
Prado turned back to the bigger man. Maybe it was someone who looked like Che, sent to throw them off his tracks. There was only one way to prove it. Prado asked Guevara to show him his left hand. The long scar was there beneath the dirt, right where the intelligence reports said it would be. There was no doubt this was Che.
Prado ordered his men to take the guerrillas’ equipment. Ortiz collected everything Che was carrying: a pack, two knapsacks, a pistol at his waist, and five hard-boiled eggs he had been saving to eat. Another soldier picked up Willy’s pack.
“They destroyed my weapon,” Che said.
Prado noticed that his carbine had had its barrel perforated from a hit. “When was that?” Prado asked.
“When your machine guns began to fire. I’m also wounded.”
Prado looked for the wound, but it was hard to find.
“I suppose you’re not going to kill me now. I mean more to you alive than dead. We have always healed prisoners.”
What arrogance, Prado thought. Even here, in the worst moment of his life, Che thought he was above it all, that somehow he would be able to walk away with no consequences. He’d invaded the country and tried to start a revolution that would topple the Bolivian government and impose Communist rule, and he felt superior enough to compare his forces and techniques to the Bolivians’.
No, Prado had no intention of shooting his prisoners. That’s not what a good soldier does. That would violate every military principle—everything Prado had been raised to believe about the rules of engagement.
“We’ll fix you up,” Prado said. “Where is your wound?”
Che rolled up his pants and showed Prado his right leg. He had a bullet entry mark on his calf, with no exit mark. It was bleeding very little and the bone did not appear to have been touched.
Prado ordered his soldiers to take the guerrillas back to the command post.
“Can you walk?” Prado asked Che.
“If I have to,” he replied, leaning a bit on Willy.
At the command post, Prado ordered the prisoners’ feet and hands tied with their own belts. The pair sat down against a tree. Two of Prado’s men stood guard, watching the prisoners’ every move.
Prado turned his attention back to the ravine—he knew there were other guerrillas out there. It couldn’t just be Che and Willy.
“Don’t bother, Captain, this thing is all over,” Che said.
Then Che—the picture of confidence, the icon of the revolutionary movement—hung his head.
Prado felt sorry for Che. He didn’t want to, but for a moment, Prado identified with what Che was feeling. He looked so demoralized. Che knew his war was over, his hopes and illusions destroyed. So many people had died in this failed campaign. Now Che himself faced an uncertain future.
And for once, Che had nothing to say.
* * *
Leaving the prisoners under guard at the command post, Prado radioed Totti at the base. He told him to transmit the following message to Vallegrande:
“I have Papa Cansado and Willy. Papa slightly wounded. Combat goes on. Captain Prado.”
“Papa” was the code name the Bolivian military gave to Che. “Cansado” means “tired,” but on this mission it meant “in custody, wounded.” When Vallegrande confirmed, Prado returned to the canyon to continue combing the area. Prado suspected the guerrillas would try to mount another attack, especially when they discovered Che was captured.
But within minutes, Prado heard Totti’s voice crackle over his radio. Commanders were urgently requesting that Prado confirm Che’s capture. Apparently the news had been received with skepticism, Prado thought. He lost patience. He replied that it was most certainly Che and that he had neither time nor any reason to make up stories.
Then Prado bolted into the canyon, followed closely by the medic Tito Sanchez, who was trying to reach a wounded soldier. When they reached Huanca’s position, Prado was able to gauge the terrain and the situation close-up. Directly in front of him were rugged, well-protected grounds from which his soldiers’ movements could be easily monitored. Not a good place to be.
When Huanca began advancing again to find the guerrillas, Prado and Sanchez spotted a wounded Ranger. Sabino Cossio was lying on his back; his uniform was pockmarked with bullet holes and soaked with blood. He was having difficulty breathing—each breath sounded like it might be his last. Although the Green Berets had trained Sanchez as a medic, he had few supplies. He just stood there with a dazed look on his face, panicking. Prado stared at him.
“You take care of him,” the commander ordered.
Sanchez reached into his supplies, but couldn’t find any bandages or dressings. Prado knew he had to get help quickly for the wounded soldier. He returned to the command post to call for more assistance, but as soon as he reached his position, Huanca radioed Prado and told him Cossio was dead.
Prado stopped.
For a moment, he was overcome with sadness. He knew death was part of being a soldier. You knew a bullet could end your life at any moment. But as a commander, he felt responsible. Sanchez came out of the canyon, his uniform bloody, his face contorted, and his eyes full of tears.
“Cossio died, Captain. There was nothing I could do.”
Prado tried to calm him down. He told him not to lose hope. He reminded Sanchez that despite the loss of life, the mission had been a success. It seemed to work. The medic looked at Prado and said: “This is going to be over, Captain. That bum who was the head has fallen.”
Under the tree nearby, Che was listening.
“The revolution has no head, comrade.”
Maybe it was the tone. Maybe it was the hubris. Whatever the reason, Prado snapped. “Maybe the revolution you advocate has no head, but our problems end with you.”
At that moment, a Bolivian soldier emerged from the canyon bleeding. It was Valentin Choque. He had two wounds, one in the upper part of his neck and the other in his back. Neither appeared serious. Sanchez reached into Che’s backpack and removed a shirt to tear apart for bandages.
“Do you want me to treat him, Captain?” Che asked quickly.
“Are you by any chance a doctor?”
Che responded that he was a revolutionary first, “but I know medicine.”
“No, let it go,” Prado said.
Then Willy spoke up: “Captain, doesn’t it seem cruel to you, having a wounded man tied up?”
He was referring to Che.
Prado knew Willy was right. So he ordered the men in charge of security to untie the prisoners’ hands. Che asked
if he could sip water from his canteen.
But Prado was wary about letting Che use his own canteen. He was worried that Che might be carrying poison and try to take his life. So Prado gave him his own canteen. After Che drank from it, he passed it to Willy.
“Can I have a cigarette?” Che asked.
Prado offered him one, but Che refused. They were Pacifics—a mild brand. He said he preferred strong tobacco. One of the soldiers had Astorias. Che smoked one of those.
Prado turned his attention back to the canyon. The guerrillas launched another attack, but Huanca’s men returned fire, and the guerrillas fell back. Somehow the guerrillas found a break in the encirclement that allowed them to move some distance away. After another search, Prado’s men couldn’t find them.
At dusk, El Churo Canyon was clear. Prado withdrew his men to La Higuera, leaving behind a few troops to block the exits. The town was only a little over a mile distant.
After scaling the steep path, they were met by Major Ayoroa, who had come from Pucara when he heard the big news. He was hopping with excitement and peppered Prado with questions. Ayoroa peered at Che and couldn’t believe it. It was really him. He was no ghost after all. And he looked nothing like the major had envisioned. He was emaciated, draped in tattered fatigues; he was a scarecrow, a hobo. Ayoroa and other Bolivian commanders knew they would all be up for promotions. They already were hard at work embellishing whatever role they had in the operation. As President Kennedy uttered after assuming responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” All the fathers congratulated themselves that day.
Prado, though, was worried about the guerrillas still loose out there. The prisoner was his responsibility, and he had to get him safely delivered to La Higuera. Too many people were celebrating too soon. No one seemed to wonder if the guerrillas might launch an attack to free their leader.
The entry into La Higuera became a procession. Dozens of villagers lined the streets. The Rangers carried the bodies of their three fallen companions, followed by the wounded on three more stretchers. The dead guerrillas were dragged down the road by the collars of their shirts, and behind them walked Che and Willy, surrounded by a security detail. The dusty, tired Rangers followed in their turn. They were tired, but joyous. They had captured Che. The conflict was nearing its end.
The parade wound up at a tiny, one-room schoolhouse in the middle of the village. A partition divided the building into two classrooms, and a single window let in a shaft of sunlight. It was more a barn than a school. There were three thick wooden doors and a brown tiled roof that leaked when it rained.
Inside were a few chairs and a wooden bench. The floor was muddy. Prado placed Che in one room and Willy in the other, and the bodies of two dead guerrillas near the door. Guards surrounded the schoolhouse with orders to shoot to kill.
Prado set up his new command post at the telegraph operator’s house. He sent a complete report of the day’s events to division headquarters. He told them about the dead and wounded.
“Presume more casualties inside canyon. Due to late hour and difficult terrain, impossible to effect search and recovery over sharpshooters’ resistance. Will continue operation tomorrow.”
He requested a helicopter to La Higuera to evacuate the wounded and asked for more M-1 ammunition.
Then Prado undertook a detailed inventory of all the items in Che’s backpack:
Two notebooks, containing Che’s diary (one corresponding to November–December 1966 and the other to January–October 1967)
A notebook with addresses and instructions
Two notebooks with copies of messages received and sent
Two small codebooks
Twenty maps of different areas, updated by Che
Two books on socialism
One destroyed M-1 carbine
One 9-mm pistol with one clip
Twelve undeveloped rolls of 35-mm film
A small bag containing money (Bolivian pesos and dollars)
Prado sent the report to headquarters. A few minutes later, at 10 P.M., he received an urgent message from Colonel Zenteno in Vallegrande: Keep Che alive until he arrived by helicopter first thing in the morning.
CHAPTER 21
Papa Cansado
Rodríguez was rigging a homemade antenna for the PRC-10 radio on a Bolivian Air Force PT-6 turbo propeller plane when Prado’s voice crackled over the speaker.
“Papa Cansado,” he heard among the chatter.
At first, Rodríguez wasn’t sure what he had heard.
“Papa Cansado,” there it was again.
Since arriving in Vallegrande with the Rangers, Rodríguez had hung around the Eighth Division headquarters with Colonel Zenteno. When he wasn’t working on the intelligence coming in from the field, he was at the airfield with the antennas and the PRC-10 radios. With one of Rodríguez’s homemade antennas installed, a pilot could use the portable radio in his cockpit to communicate with soldiers on the ground below.
“Papa Cansado.”
Rodríguez knew the codes, and almost instantly he knew what the voice meant: “Papa” was Che, and “Cansado,” or tired, meant he was captured and wounded.
They had captured Che.
The excitement hit him like a wave. At first, Rodríguez didn’t believe that a bunch of green Rangers could have captured such a seasoned guerrilla in so little time. Maybe it was a mistake, a joke.
Rodríguez hustled back to headquarters. He could see the excitement in the Bolivian officers when he entered the building. But that enthusiasm soon turned to confusion. Had Prado’s men really captured Che?
“We don’t know for sure,” Major Serrate, the division’s operations officer, told Rodríguez when he arrived. “Come with me. Let’s go see.”
Serrate and Rodríguez returned to the tarmac. Two PT-6s with PRC-10 radios were ready and waiting. The propeller was spinning as Rodríguez climbed into one of the waiting planes, and Serrate climbed into the back of the lead aircraft. Rodríguez was barely belted in when the planes shot down the runway and climbed high into the crystal blue sky.
Just as the landing gear retracted, Rodríguez saw white smoke start to fill the cockpit. “What’s wrong?” he shouted to the pilot in the seat in front of him.
“A short,” the pilot shouted back. “A short in the electrical system.”
Up front, Rodríguez watched as the pilot went through his checks and started to work on the plane’s circuit breakers. Finally, the smoke thinned out. Since the plane was flying without problems, they continued. Turning north, they followed Serrate’s plane. During the flight, the pilot realized that the firing mechanism for the rockets attached to the wings and the plane’s .50-caliber machine guns were inoperable. If the soldiers on the ground needed support, the plane couldn’t provide it.
But because of the radio installed by Rodríguez, they could talk with the soldiers on the ground. And for Rodríguez, that was the only reason he was racing over the jungles toward La Higuera.
Staring out the window, Rodríguez watched the jungle pass beneath the plane. For three months he’d tracked Che and his guerrillas through this hard terrain. They owed this all to Paco and his fabulous memory, Rodríguez thought. He hoped to God that “Papa” was Che and not just another bearded guerrilla in fatigues.
As the plane banked over the jungle near La Higuera, Rodríguez heard another radio message.
“Papa—el extranjero,” the radio operator on the ground said. (“Papa is a foreigner.”)
It was Che that Prado’s Rangers had captured.
The planes circled over the valley for a while longer. Without guns to support the Rangers, the pilot started to buzz the treetops. Rodríguez held on in the back as the pilot dove toward the trees. The plane made a shrieking sound as it raced toward the ground. Then the pilot pulled back. The roar had to
echo up and down the valleys and spook the guerrillas, who were running from the Rangers’ air support. But the move was also a symbolic gesture, the pilot’s tribute to the Rangers below.
After the bone-jarring dive, Rodríguez’s plane headed back to Vallegrande. At the airfield, Rodríguez and Serrate met with Zenteno and confirmed Che’s capture. Prado had sent an update with more information about Che.
“Not only did we capture him,” Serrate said. “We recovered a lot of documents, including a journal.”
Zenteno immediately ordered Selich, the commander who had interrogated Paco, to La Higuera to question Che and seize the documents. Returning to the safe house, Rodríguez was disappointed that Selich had got the assignment. The Bolivian had shown poor judgment with Paco. But Rodríguez was only an advisor. He knew he couldn’t interfere with Bolivian Army orders. But he had another plan.
Villoldo, meanwhile, was stuck. Hours before Che’s capture, he and his CIA contact had decided to meet halfway between Vallegrande and Santa Cruz to pick up some money to buy supplies for the Rangers. He was on his way back when he heard about the battle over the command radio. Racing back to Vallegrande, Villoldo was shocked to hear the news. He was disappointed. He wanted more than anything to interrogate Che, and now he wasn’t sure he would get the chance.
While Villoldo sped back to Vallegrande, Rodríguez put his plan in motion. Grabbing two bottles of high-end Ballantine’s Scotch, he joined the other officers for dinner at the Vallegrande Hotel, where Zenteno was staying. Rodríguez had purchased the bottles a few days before in Santa Cruz, for just such an occasion. He wanted to celebrate in style.
Rodríguez sat with Zenteno and the others and toasted their victory. But in the back of his mind, Rodríguez wanted to be in La Higuera. He wanted to get face-to-face with Che before anything happened to the revolutionary. There was no doubt that Che might not survive for long, especially in Selich’s custody—the officer had been ready to shoot Paco before Rodríguez took him in hand. Rodríguez knew he had to get to La Higuera if he was going to have any chance of getting Che out alive.