by Gary Brozek
“They were late?” I asked.
“Yep. I can’t believe I have to sit there and wait. What am I doing getting my ass up at ‘o dark early’ if I just have to sit there for twenty minutes? That’s twenty minutes of beauty rest I could have had.”
“You could have used that,” Tom said, smiling at Tommy J and me.
Keith pointed at me.
“That hat, bro. That’s not really working for you.”
I tugged at the brim of my Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl Champion hat and smiled at the thought of the team finally going all the way after so many years of futility. I tried to think of something to say in return, but watching Keith twirl a couple of CDs around his index finger had me mesmerized for a bit.
Before Keith could go on to explain whom he was going to be listening to today, a couple of Colombians walked in. We did our work only with the full cooperation and approval of the Colombian government. Some people’s perceptions of our work as subcontractors was that we were like cowboys riding all over the range doing whatever we wanted. That’s just not true. Every flight we went on, a representative of the Colombian government, either a military guy or a civilian, joined us. They were known as “host-nation riders.”
The two Colombians said hello and introduced themselves. They were dressed in civilian clothes, even though one of them introduced himself as Sergeant Luis Alcedes Cruz. Both seemed to be personable guys. Like most of the Colombians we worked with and knew, they seemed eager to make a good impression.
Because there wasn’t enough room in the plane and he was mission commander, Keith let them know that only one of them could go up with us. Tom, who’d done a lot of aviation work all over South America and the Caribbean, spoke Spanish, and he interpreted for Keith, relaying to us that Sergeant Cruz had stepped up and let the other guy have the day off. Cruz sat in on our meeting, and with our broken Spanish, his broken English, and Tom’s capable translating, we let him know what our target package was for the day. With that message communicated—as much a courtesy as anything else, since he really had no say so at this level to alter our plan—we loaded up.
As usual, during takeoff, we were pretty quiet and on task. Once we were airborne and on our way to the refueling point, the chatter began. I noticed that Tom could barely make it into the first half hour of the flight without dipping into his lunch. His wife, Mariana, was a legend—a Peruvian woman who was a marvelously good cook. Every one of us would have admitted to needing to shed a few pounds, and I knew that Tom was on meds for his high blood pressure, the cause of which he attributed more to Mariana’s good cooking than to the stress of being a pilot.
While I was busy checking the equipment, I could hear everybody communicating over the headsets. Tommy J reported that the dinner I missed was spectacular, “Mama’s full of food. I dropped her off at the terminal this morning on my way in. She’s happy, and I’m going to see her shortly at home.” Tommy J pivoted in his seat and I saw the big grin on his face. The man clearly loved his wife and spoke of her in glowing terms every time I was around him. I remember thinking that the guy was fifty-six years old, but he had the body of someone who was twenty-five. I didn’t know how he did it, but I wouldn’t have minded doing it myself.
By that time, the smell of Tom’s lunch had wafted to the back of the aircraft—garlic, some pungent cheese—and that got Keith and me drooling a bit. Keith showed me the chicken Parmesan sandwich that he’d ordered along with his dinner the night before, and I started wishing again that I’d joined them. My meager can of tuna didn’t stand up to the pleasures these guys brought on board. Those smells also didn’t make it any easier for me to think about eating better, shedding a few of the pounds the good life had helped me pack on. I couldn’t help myself, though. I was about four hours into my day and had barely eaten a thing since the night before.
“Keith, you’ve got to give me your recipe for tuna-salad sandwiches,” I said to him.
As legendary as Tom’s wife’s cooking was (we could always tell whether she was in Colombia or the States based on the quality of Tom’s lunches), Keith’s tuna-salad recipe had earned a reputation for excellence company-wide and beyond.
Keith laughed and said, “No can do, sir. It’s a can for you. My recipe is classified information. You don’t have the proper clearance.”
“But you brought the stuff, right? You brought the tuna, too?”
The irony of me talking like a junkie to my dealer wasn’t lost on any of us, but those sandwiches of Keith’s were just that good.
“Yeah. I got the tuna fish, too, bro. You can calm yourself. Everything’s right in our world.”
KEITH
Up until the point when our engine died, everything had been right in our world, but to be honest, when I stepped out of the skeletal remains of our bird, I wasn’t thinking much about good or bad or right or wrong. I wasn’t thinking that we were the best in the business, better than the National Security Agency, the CIA, the air force. Though I believed that was the truth, I didn’t have the time to consider that we often flew the lowest, had a low-budget platform, covered the same territory so many times we acquired superior local knowledge, and knew what the customer wanted. All of that was out the door.
We were truly low-level now—not at the five thousand feet above the deck like our missions—but right there on the ground in the trees and on the jagged slopes of those mountains that had looked so different through our FLIR equipment. Marc, Tom, and I may not have been able to use infrared to detect the heat signature a human body throws off, but we knew we were right smack-dab in the middle of the shit.
I’d known we were in trouble as soon as the engine failed. I was glad that twenty minutes before we launched, I had called home to check on my kids, Lauren and Kyle, and my fiancée, Malia. I’d been a single parent for a few years and I wanted to be sure that everyone was up, everyone was getting ready for school. Before I hung up, I had told them that I loved them. Standing on the floor of the jungle looking at the wreckage of your plane, there’s not much that can make you feel good about your situation, but I was happy I’d done that and had always told them that they were going to be okay if something happened to me.
When I spilled out of that downed aircraft, I was thinking about one thing—surviving. Though I didn’t have time to dwell on it, I was one grateful American at that point. Not too many people can say that they are two-time survivors of aircraft accidents. I’d previously been on board a helo that went down in the States. I’d made it out of that scrape alive and now it seemed I’d gotten out of another all in one piece.
Call me a two-time loser or a twice-lucky SOB, it didn’t matter. Within minutes, rounds were firing at us from all directions, and standing at the wreckage of our shattered Cessna Grand Caravan, we all had more important things on our minds. I’d seen a few guerrillas coming up the hill toward our position. Behind them, a whole platoon was making their way toward us. Given the steepness of the terrain and the distance they had to traverse, I knew we only had a couple of minutes to figure out a plan.
Cruz handed me all of our weapons and ammo, and I pitched them down a slope next to the wreckage. This was no time for any of us to fancy himself a gunslinger. This was about making the most expedient choices possible and assessing the situation with one goal and one goal only in mind—get to the end of the day. I knew that with a couple of pistols and a single M-4 rifle we were seriously outmanned and out-equipped. Things were so chaotic that I didn’t realize Marc hadn’t seen me dispose of our weapons. He still thought we had more on board and he went searching everywhere, inside the cabin, under the wing, under the fuselage.
While he was gone, Cruz and I were standing at the front of the plane, our backs to the sheer drop-off. Sergeant Cruz was understandably worked up, and I told him to calm down. I knew this was no fight we could win, but Cruz was Colombian military. If the FARC guerrillas found that out, he’d be in bad shape. The FARC were known for kidnapping military types, since th
ey were primo bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.
When Cruz saw me ditch our weapons, he changed tactics.
“Please say I am American! Please tell them!”
I nodded. I could tell that Cruz was seriously hurt. We were all shaken up, and the terrain was difficult to get a solid footing on, but Cruz was limping badly. The odd thing was, he didn’t seem to be in any pain. I watched as he hobbled off a few feet away to bury some papers.
Like it was doing for Cruz, the adrenaline pumping through our systems was keeping us from feeling the pain from our injuries. Glancing at the cockpit, I saw that Tom Howes had an obvious head wound. Marc would later tell me that he had a badly banged-up hand, and I had done something to my back or my side. I added that factor to the equation, and decided it was best to just see what would develop and not do anything to make the situation worse.
Marc returned while I was trying to calm down Cruz.
“We can’t go anywhere without the pilots,” I said to Marc.
Marc then had the presence of mind to remember why we were there in the first place.
“Our target package. I’ve got to get that.” Our target deck had been placed in a metal clipboard we call the pan. “I hid it under the seat. They’re going to search it and find it.” Our targets were FARC-controlled and-operated drug labs, one of which we knew to be under the command of Mono JoJoy, one of the FARC’s major players.
While Marc was off retrieving that sensitive and potentially damning evidence, I helped Tommy Janis and Tom Howes out of the wreckage. Tommy J was obviously dazed, but I said to him anyway, “Tommy J, bro, that was incredible what you just did. Thanks.”
Marc had returned without the clipboard, so I assumed he’d destroyed the paperwork. I looked at him and saw that he had his backpack with him. Tom Howes was standing there as well. Cruz was done with tearing through the hold for his papers and the five of us stood in a group waiting. The guerrillas were marching toward us, and it was only a matter of minutes before they arrived.
When they were within a hundred meters, I put my hands up and took a step forward, shouting in my best Spanish-lesson oral-practice voice, “No armas! No armas!” Everybody else did the same. I didn’t want to be spokesperson, but if Cruz spoke up, they’d immediately recognize his Colombian accent, if they hadn’t already tagged him as that based on his skin color and hair. Tom Howes had the best Spanish of any of us, but I could tell by looking at him—the flap of flesh was dangling over his eye, and blood continued streaming from his wound and down his face—that he was basically out on his feet.
By then I could see that there were between fifty and sixty heavily armed guerrillas coming at us. The members of this large platoon-size group were a ragtag-looking bunch wearing an odd assortment of cammo gear, T-shirts, sweatpants, and bandannas, but I was more interested in the weapons they carried. Not the latest or the greatest, but still capable of tearing a hole in any one of us—Israeli Galils, AK-47s, old M-14s. Worse, they had an M–70 grenade launcher and an old Chinese piece-of-crap 308.
When they reached us, four of them approached, their faces completely expressionless. I did a quick scan of the whole bunch. None of them could have been more than twenty years old, ranging from what I guessed was about fourteen. At gunpoint, they led Tom and me downhill and away from the aircraft. I didn’t like the idea of us being separated and wondered if this was how they were going to execute us. Then I saw one of the guerrillas take off a scarf he was wearing and hand it to Tom. The scarf was cammo on one side and the other side was checked like a PLO scarf only in the colors of Colombia’s flag—red, blue, and yellow.
I was surprised the guy gave it up. The scarf was obviously taken from someone in the Colombian military. A lot of the FARC had them, and it was a way of counting coup—to show that they’d either captured or killed a Colombian counterguerrilla soldier. I also figured if he was bothering to hand that over, it could be a good thing or a bad thing. Either he knew he was going to be getting it back a few minutes after he shot us, or he was trying to take good care of a prisoner. In either case, Tom wrapped the thing around his head to stanch the flow of blood. He leaned back and I could see him wobble a bit.
Tom and I sat down about fifty yards from the plane and watched as one of the group’s leaders—a woman we eventually learned was named Sonia—searched the plane, tossing stuff out of it and onto the ground. I could also see Marc standing with Tommy J and Sergeant Cruz. They started to move Marc away from Tommy J and Cruz and down the hill toward us. I could tell that Marc didn’t want to go, but the FARC guard on him was nudging him with his weapon. At one point Marc stopped and turned back, and I followed his gaze up the slope. There, at the top of the hill, stood Tommy J—worn out and injured. He limped over to Sergeant Cruz and put his arm around Cruz’s shoulders.
That was the last we saw of them.
The FARC led Tom and me down the hill a little bit farther. The going wasn’t any easier, but we managed to make it another four hundred yards or so to a small building made of rough-hewn lumber with a corrugated tin roof. Tom and I stood there for a few minutes and then Marc joined us. A young female guerrilla—she couldn’t have been more than eighteen—brought out a large aluminum ola, or pot. In it was water with a few lemon seeds floating in it. She handed each of us a small cup of the liquid. I was surprised at how sweet it tasted. FARC lemonade was about as sugary as any sweet tea I’d had at home. I looked over the rim of my cup and all I could see was dark eyes framed by mustaches and black hair. I was struck by the odd assortment of hats they wore and the half-ass assortment of ways they wore them. What kind of terrorist organization was this?
We descended more of the slope, and after we’d gone several steps we stopped. The next thing I knew, the FARC were pawing me, searching for any weapons and indicating that we needed to strip down. They spread out a sheet, and Tom, Marc, and I did as we were told. Pretty soon we were in our underwear. I could barely contain my anger at the hypocrisy the FARC then demonstrated when one of the “idealistic” communists took the money out of my wallet and put it in his pocket. Here was this supposed guerrilla organization that was founded on Marxist principles, and yet the second they come into contact with private property, they jumped to take it for themselves. Each according to his needs, I guess. Worse was the fact that I had a photo in my wallet of my son, just a tiny little snapshot. I indicated that I wanted to keep that, but they wouldn’t let me. They did the same to Tom and Marc, taking all their personal possessions except their clothes.
“I guess this is better than being dead,” Tom said.
Marc shook his head and added, “What is this? Look at these guys. What a motley crew. They look more like a bunch of kids dressed up for Halloween than soldiers. And the cow that was mooing at us when we first got out of the plane? How surreal.”
With everything else going on, I had almost forgotten about the cow, which had made a chaotic setting that much stranger. They may have looked like a bunch of kids at Halloween, but they’d been firing some high-power weapons not too long ago. Those rounds were real and could do serious damage to any one of us. But things were about to get even weirder.
Each of us had a guerrilla come back to search us again, this time probing our hair and our underarms, between our toes. Another FARC member separated himself from the group and stepped forward and said something in vehement Spanish. I understood only two words—chip and mato. Tom translated for us: “He says that if he finds a microchip on us, he’s going to kill us.” I didn’t like hearing those words, but I was glad that Tom was finally getting more of his wits about him. The blow to his head could have been a hell of a lot worse, but now that he was able to speak in both languages and process thoughts more completely, I was relieved. We needed Tom’s input and knowing that he was on his way back to full strength was a good thing.
A few hours later, when we all had our first chance to really speak to one another, we agreed that of all the bizarre moments we experienced th
e day of the crash, this comment about the microchip was the most puzzling. These people actually thought that we had microchips embedded in our bodies. They assumed that, as Americans, we had some kind of tracking system that enabled our people back in the States or even in Colombia to trace our every movement. Even when they had finished searching us and should have been satisfied that we didn’t have such a thing, they continued to threaten us with death if they discovered a chip. The little fucks were so young they could have thought that a bit of toe jam was a microchip and opened fire. They’d sure as shit never seen a microchip before, so how would they know if they’d found one? It was unsettling on every level, and the idea that we were dealing with such heavily-armed people with this level of competence did not sit well with me.
For the same reason, they also tried to prevent us from speaking too loudly, convinced that American satellites could pick up the sound of our voices. During the course of the next few days, we’d learn that they thought that we were somehow endowed with superpowers, that every American was a snake-eatin’, ass-kickin’ John Rambo type. (One guard even went so far as to ask us about the movie Matrix and how we Americans could do that. Not how do the people in Hollywood create that special effect, but how the three of us were able to dodge bullets like that.)
After we put our clothes back on, we climbed up to the ridge opposite the crash site. Sonia, who was wearing a red jacket either to make herself a better target or to lead someone flying over to believe she was some kind of emergency personnel, was still picking through the wreckage. Marc muttered “HCL lab” and “targets” and looked down at the ground, shaking his head slowly, but I didn’t have time to respond to his concerns.
“Helos. A long way off,” I said.