by Gary Brozek
“How the fuck can they do that?” I asked.
Orlando looked at me and shrugged. “Because they can. Because they believe that if he is not kept quiet, he poses a serious risk to us all.”
We were between a rock and hard place. If we said or did anything else, the FARC would have just taken Emanuel somewhere else and Clara wouldn’t have gotten to see her child at all. As much as we wanted to believe we could accomplish what we’d hoped for, Sombra had trumped our hand. In the end, we decided that it wasn’t worth making our point if it was going to harm Clara’s chances of seeing her kid.
As the days went on, our disappointment with the results of the hunger strike was replaced by a feeling of complete helplessness. The FARC set up a closely monitored schedule so that Clara could have forty-five minutes a day with her son. She lived for those moments, and the rest of the time she wailed and screamed at the guards to be allowed to see him. Gloria, Consuelo, and Ingrid tried to console her, but she was so devastated that there was little they could do.
During the day, Clara would stand at the fence shrieking in agony. When people tried to console her she’d tell them to leave her alone. At night, we would hear the haunting sound of Clara singing lullabies as loud as she could to her absent child. For every day of those first few weeks after Emanuel was taken from her, it seemed like Clara was on the edge of emotional collapse. None of us knew how to behave at those times—not just toward Clara, but toward one another. After the failure of our hunger strike, we felt hopeless and incapable of doing anything for her. Never one of the stronger people in camp, Clara grew weaker and weaker, and it seemed to us that she was hanging on to the ragged edge of our little society. Seeing her in agony raised specters of our own issues of anxiety and loss.
The pain of separation from our kids was one that the three of us knew all too well, but we couldn’t imagine what it was like for Clara to know that her newborn child was just a few yards away. Over the course of the next four months, the FARC would not relent and Clara and her son were essentially kept apart. We watched to see how the boy’s arm would mend, but we were all concerned that a more important bond had been broken.
TOM
While Clara’s situation united all ten of us on certain fronts, it didn’t stop fissures from forming for all sorts of reasons. As the months rolled by at Caribe, we found that one of the most frequent sources of contention was food. If there was one thing you could always count on to sow conflict in the group, it was food. Because the FARC had limited supplies most of the time, food had always been an issue for us—even before we arrived at Caribe. On the occasions when there was enough to eat, it wasn’t particularly tasty, and compared to the FARC, we were probably picky eaters. We knew better than they did that food didn’t have to be just rice and beans and the worst cuts of meat imaginable.
When we came to the political camp, our concerns about food shifted. It wasn’t just that we had to deal with the quality of food, we had to deal with another issue—competition for food. At first, we’d tried to be courteous and set an example, going to the end of the line at mealtime and waiting to be served last. Consuelo was very good about taking her place back there with us, but we quickly learned that no good deed goes unpunished. Those in front didn’t consider the needs of those at the back. Frequently, we’d have to ask the guards for more because the food ran out before we got a chance to serve ourselves. We eventually learned not to be so polite and stopped always being the last in line, but we didn’t do what had been done to us. We only took portions that would allow everyone to have equal amounts of food. We tried to alternate getting in the front of the line, the middle of the line, and the back of the line, but the problems persisted. It got to the point that the FARC noticed what was going on and intervened, doling out the portions themselves to make sure that everyone got an equal amount. That worked out better, but it also made me sad to think that a group of adults needed to be treated like children.
The food was often awful and sometimes inedible, but we still needed some form of nourishment. (Sometimes I wondered if people taking more than their share and leaving the end-of-the-liners with very little or no food was an act of kindness.) The FARC didn’t waste anything, and their version of chicken soup included the heads, the feet, and the beaks. It quickly became a running joke about Marc and the chicken heads, since it always seemed like he got a chicken head in his soup.
The chickens weren’t just in the soup; they were everywhere. Camp Caribe could easily have been called Camp Tyson. The military guys had captured and bred chickens. They kept some in a coop and others were walking around free. Marc became obsessed with the idea of abducting a chicken for the egg ransom. The smell of eggs cooking was enough to make an otherwise grown and law-abiding man resort to such criminal behavior. The military guys were kind enough to share their eggs with us every now and then, but Marc was too industrious (and too hungry) a guy to rely on handouts. One of the chickens seemed to like the relative chicken-free quiet of our camp, so she came over to visit quite a bit. Marc set his sights on her as the beginning of his chicken empire.
When she came into our side of the camp, his eyes lit up. He’d run around grabbing any unused tablas, vines, clothing, or anything he could get his hands on to seal up the little breaches in the fence where a chicken could squeeze through. He knew that, regular as clockwork at around noon, this chicken would lay an egg. All he needed was that one egg and he’d be on his way to becoming a chicken mogul. No matter what Marc did to block the hole in the fence, the chicken would invariably find some other place else to escape. Once outside our enclosure, she would lay her egg tantalizingly out of reach. Marc was often so busy trying to plug one hole in the fence that he didn’t notice that the chicken was gone. We all took great pleasure in seeing him turn around to discover that his chicken had escaped again. His face would go from expectant to crestfallen in about the time it took for us to go from observing to laughing.
Marc wasn’t the only one who was taken with animals. A few stray cats hung around camp. They weren’t feral cats but domesticated ones, who would run off to wherever they could find food. We fed them a bit; mostly, though, they feasted on the rats and mice that ate our food supplies. Because they performed a valuable service, the FARC let them be. The Colombians had very different attitudes toward these animals than we Americans did. Consuelo was appalled that we would pick up the cat and set it in our lap to pet it. She would shake her head, put her hand up to block the sight of the cat from her eyes, and say, “Ah, Dios mio.” She would no sooner finish questioning how we could touch a filthy cat when she would pick up a chicken, put it in her lap, and pet and kiss it. As Keith would say, “And we’re the dirty Americans.”
In spite of the food conflicts with the other prisoners, the months continued to roll by. While we were able to share laughs and stories with them from time to time, one thing we did not share was our escape plan. The three of us didn’t talk about it much, but the hole behind the bathroom was ever present in our minds. We were always on the alert for aircraft activity. We had all put together what we called our “go kits,” a mesh bag of essentials that we would take with us in case of an escape or rescue attempt. The go kits were our best case scenario situation. If we had the time and we were prepared enough in advance, we’d grab them and go. We all knew where we had to go in the event of an attack or rescue. The question that remained was whether we’d ever be forced to use it.
One night at about six-thirty, we were all sitting outside and talking. At one point, Marc held up his hand to silence us and said, “I think that’s a plane.”
Keith cocked his head in his familiar bloodhound-dog look as he narrowed his eyes. “That’s a Blackhawk. More than one of them.”
When we’d speculated about escape-and-attack scenarios in the past, we talked mostly about the fixed-wing aircraft that we saw. Helos were another matter. We really didn’t know how the FARC would react to a helo incursion into our area, but hearing them that n
ight, we knew we didn’t have time to grab our go kits. It was the first time in our captivity that we’d heard helos and this was no rehearsal. It was what we’d been planning for. We had to act. We had no idea if the FARC would wait to see what the helos did or if they would simply execute us on the spot.
The helos were low and fast approaching. My heart raced as the sounds of the choppers grew closer, starting to consume the entire camp. The FARC began to scramble.
“Follow me, guys,” Marc said, gesturing with his flashlight. Marc hurriedly walked toward the bathroom, looking around furtively to see if anyone was watching him. He made his way to the small gap in the fence. The darkness swelled around us, and without my glasses it was even harder for me to see. Marc moved to the hole, and Keith and I stood back. Lifting his head up to the sky, Keith listened to the helos and suddenly hesitated.
“Marc!” Keith whispered as loud as he could. “Marc, stay back. Don’t go out yet.”
But the sounds were too loud and Keith’s whisper too faint.
“Marc?” I said. “Marc?” I felt the question tearing at my clenched throat. Yelling would have attracted too much attention. I could hear the other hostages scrambling around and their anguished chatter was like a spotlight fixing the point in the camp where they were hiding.
I stared into the darkness in the direction I assumed Marc had taken.
“Damn it,” Keith said, letting out a heavy sigh and turning to me. “I don’t think those Blackhawks are here to extract us.”
I paused to listen to the rotors.
“You’re right,” I replied. I remembered hearing on the radio that President Uribe was going to be appearing at a forward air base in our vicinity. Most likely the helos were doing security for that event. They were just patrolling. We were not going anywhere. But with Marc out there and alone in the jungle, with nothing but a flashlight, what was going to happen to him? We’d always said that a solo escape was the most risky.
With this realization, our situation became even more grave. Marc had demonstrated that he could get out and avoid detection. Now the question was could he get back in without being noticed. If the FARC got even a hint of his escape, it could mean chains for all of us, or worse, death for Marc. At the very least they’d seal the hole in the fence and we’d need a new escape route. Our backs were against the wall.
Keith and I didn’t want to draw any attention to the area where he was going to reenter, so we drifted off toward the others, who were in a panic. Keith and I tried to calm them, and as we spoke it became even clearer that our assumption was correct. The helos were passing by.
In the darkness, I heard Orlando ask, “Where is Marc?”
Keith replied, “He’s back in the hooch. Let’s just stay here for a bit, give the FARC a chance to do their thing and check out the situation. Too much movement is going to keep them on edge.”
Keith and I did exactly the opposite of what he said. We edged back over toward our living quarters, where Marc was nowhere to be seen.
“This is not good,” Keith said under his breath.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” I replied as much to reassure Keith as myself. “The guards have scrambled around the perimeter, but they aren’t going out beyond the yard.”
“You’re right, but the sooner he gets back in here, the easier it will be for me to breathe.”
A few minutes went by and Marc was still nowhere to be found. We paced around the hooch, anxiety on the tips of our tongues. We didn’t hear any shots or yelling, but we also had no idea where Marc could be. We walked over to the bathroom building, careful to see that no one was watching. We didn’t want to draw attention to the spot where we expected to see Marc.
“We should move back out of here,” Keith said after a few more minutes with no sign of Marc. I could hear the tension in his voice. I knew that the longer Marc was gone, the more time the guards had to assemble and get more organized. We could hear their voices in the distance, but to that point, we’d not heard them walking on the perimeter pathway. We stood near the hooch.
When Marc finally appeared around the corner of the bathroom, he strolled over as casually as he could. The front of his clothes were dirt-stained and a layer of sweat lined his face. But he was back in one piece.
Marc had made it all the way to the tree line, roughly thirty yards beyond the fence, before realizing the helos were not a part of any rescue effort. He’d escaped, but his timing couldn’t have been worse. He knew that he needed to get back inside the camp quickly. Immediately he fell to the ground and Marine-crawled back to the fence, but it was there that he ran into a problem. The escape plan had been designed to exit not to reenter. When he was on the inside, he pushed the fence out away from the camp, creating enough space to get under it. Now that he was on the outside, he pulled the fence toward him and there was no more give in it. He couldn’t maneuver the fence in any way to lift the bottom up so that he could crawl under it. To make matters worse, the terrain sloped up a bit in that spot, reducing the clearance in the chain-link even more.
Just as he reached the fence, he could hear the sound of a guard’s boots approaching on the walkway. He only had a few seconds to react. He pushed the fence back toward the compound and it grudgingly began to give way. Readjusting his grip, he gave it a more forceful push, opening up just enough room for him to squeeze his body between the ends of the fence and the dirt of the ground. He was back inside. He was safe.
It was only then that he realized his mistake: He’d dropped his flashlight. He looked back cautiously and saw it lying in the grass. If he tried to reach for the light, there was a chance the guard might see him. The sound of the boots got louder as the guard drew near. If he left the light there, the guard might see it or he might not, there was no guarantee, but if he went back for it, there was no way the guard would miss him.
He didn’t have much time to act. Hesitantly he drew back into the shadows behind the bathroom, leaving the flashlight on the ground. The guard passed by and Marc went unnoticed. Cautiously he retrieved the light and returned to the hooch.
As Marc stood before us now, he was exhausted. The adrenaline that had been pumping through him had finally slowed. With each passing moment, he relaxed a bit more. Suddenly Keith turned to him with a grin.
“You ain’t no chicken, are you? Your bird would have gotten back in here with no problem.” At the mere mention of Marc’s chicken, we all cracked a smile and laughed for the first time in a bit. Keith put his hand on Marc’s shoulder. “Glad you made it back, bro.”
The FARC confiscated all the flashlights following that night, and we were relieved that nothing more had been sacrificed. At least this way we knew that our plan would work. Next time, and we were sure there would be one, we had no intention of sneaking back in. Still we’d have to be more careful in the future about jumping the gun. Our advance warning from the sound of the aircraft had given us a head start, but it had also caused us to get ahead of ourselves. In many ways, everything had gone according to our plan. We’d anticipated the helos more quickly than the FARC had and the delay of a few minutes had proven crucial. The FARC personnel had responded once they heard helos coming our way, but it had taken them a few minutes to get organized. By the time they were all assembled, minutes had passed, and we’d already figured out that the helos were no longer a threat.
Two weeks later, we had another chance to test our plan. That time, we heard more than two Blackhawks bearing down on our position. We scrambled as we’d discussed, but so did the rest of the hostages. We all found ourselves standing behind the bathroom. Access to the fence was impossible. The three of us drifted away from the area, using the cord we had tied from our hooch to the bathroom. We needed to be able to get to the bathroom at night, but without our flashlights, the cord was the only viable solution. Whether we had access to our escape point or not didn’t really seem to matter. The FARC responded far more quickly than they had the first time. They stood on their walkway. They spaced the
mselves five yards apart and had their weapons at the ready. We assumed all they needed was the order to shoot us.
We retreated into our hooch. We were all upset and very much frightened for our lives. We could hear the helos approaching, and I wondered at what point the FARC would receive the order to open fire on us. To think that we’d all put up with so much and then be gunned down just before a rescue attempt. I wondered if the FARC would get my journals to my family. I was glad that I’d written so much for them. I would have liked to have the chance to speak to my wife and my boy one more time. I would never have had the time to put into words as much as I had put down on paper. I thought of the messages we’d all received and how much they mattered to us. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be on the other end of this. How would I have felt if I was at home and a knock at the door came and a stranger said, “We regret to inform you…”
When the FARC sent an execution squad into our compound, those imaginings seemed more real. One guard was assigned to each of us, and they stood at the opening to our hooch waiting for the order. Keith and Marc were nearest to the exit and the gate where Ferney stood. I could see the veins standing out on Keith’s temples and forehead in the light cast by the FARC’s flashlights. A guard called to Ferney, “Are we going to shoot them.” I couldn’t recognize the voice, and at that point it didn’t seem to matter who had said it. There wasn’t going to be any chance for revenge.
Keith broke out of the pack and approached Ferney. “Don’t gun us down like a pack of cowards. If you’re going to shoot me, do it straight up. Just look me in the eye and then do it.”
None of us could believe how angry he sounded. Orlando went out to pull him back in. I noticed that Marc was missing. I saw a shadowy figure standing on the chin-up bar. A moment later I heard the sound of footsteps on the tin roof and then the sound of Marc landing on the ground.