Law of the Jungle, page 35
He finished with a tribute to the men and women who extricated him from the hands of the FARC.
“You guys, the ones who saved us, the ones who rescued us, are heroes. You’ve given me my life back, and now I don’t have to dream about being free anymore. And it feels so good to be free right now here with all of you.”
EPILOGUE
LIVING TO TELL THE TALE
OPERATION CHECK WAS QUICKLY HAILED AS the greatest military action ever pulled off by the Colombian armed forces. It sparked celebrations across the land, boosted the popularity of President Álvaro Uribe, and enhanced the prospects of Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who resigned nine months later to run for president. Within five days of the rescue, three films about the hostages were in the works. In the words of U.S. ambassador William Brownfield, what the Colombian Army pulled off “was even greater than Entebbe.”
Watching it all play out on television, Jorge Sanabria, the disgraced leader of Vulture Company, was ecstatic to learn that the three American contractors—the men his troops had been tracking in the jungle five years earlier—had finally been liberated. But he felt a little melancholy about missing out on the glory.
His timing had been all wrong. Sanabria had graduated from cadet school just as Colombia’s military was bottoming out. Then, as the army restructured and found its footing, Sanabria and his men stumbled upon the FARC guaca, stuffed their pockets, and blinged their way to ignominy. By the time Colombian troops began taking down members of the FARC secretariat and homing in on the hostages, the troops of Vulture and Destroyer companies were on the run, in the sight of rebel hit squads, or locked up in the stockade for defiling the army’s good name.
Yet after the sudden decision to annul the military court’s verdict and free the soldiers, Sanabria had trouble recharging his batteries. For a few months, he worked a dead-end job at a brick factory near his hometown of Sogamoso. He followed his doctor’s advice and checked in for gastric bypass surgery. Months later, however, he still sported his spongiform body and tipped the scales at more than three hundred pounds. During a lunchtime interview at a Sogamoso restaurant, he inhaled plates of spit-roasted beef, veal, and sausage.
But if the armed forces had taught Sanabria anything it was the art of survival. He had carried on amid the army’s darkest hours, endured mission after mission into FARC-land, and later withstood the military’s judicial offensive. Now that he was a free man, he wasn’t going to agonize over the false turns and the roads not taken. He also remained loyal to his men. Though it had all gone wrong in the jungle, he insisted that his motives were pure: he had allowed his slumdog soldiers to divvy up the FARC loot to help them move up in the world.
“When we fought, they gave their all for me. Thanks to them, I am alive,” Sanabria said. “Now, as their commanding officer, I have to respond for what happened and I understand that. But the situation was unprecedented and it was difficult to maintain discipline in the middle of chaos. I don’t know if it was all worth it but something good has to come out of all this. God must have some plan.”
A few months later, through a friend of a friend who was willing to overlook his legal problems, Sanabria found work as a security supervisor at a Colombian coal mine. As it turned out, he would need a few good men to serve under him. So, just as he rounded up his old mates to take a second crack at the FARC loot a few years earlier, Sanabria recruited some of his buddies from Vulture and Destroyer companies. Though he missed the army, Sanabria and his men once again sported uniforms and weapons—just like old times, sort of.
Former private Walter Suárez, the soldier who discovered the guerrilla cash amid a violent bout of diarrhea, also stuck to a military regimen even though he was no longer in the army. Every day he rose at 4:30 a.m. But instead of reveille followed by push-ups, sit-ups, and a military chow line, Suárez jumped into a white Ford pickup rigged to run on natural gas to save money. In the back sat crates with plastic one-liter bags of milk and cartons of yogurt. The would-be millionaire was now a milkman.
His delivery route took Suárez through the farming communities on the outskirts of Bogotá. Suárez drove slowly, his wife beside him in the passenger seat, as two runners trailed behind, dashing in and out of stores to deliver the goods. But dairy products could be a hard sell. On a recent morning, Suárez arrived so early that many of his regular clients had yet to open their stores. “Nobody here drinks milk,” said the owner of one corner grocery as Suárez offered his wares. “They only drink beer.” On a good day, Suárez sold seven hundred liters and came away with about twenty-five dollars in profits.
It had been more than five years since he had come out of FARC-land flush with cash that he’d buried beneath a doghouse. Still, the legend followed Suárez, making him a marked man. One evening, a few days after Christmas, five men dressed in camouflage uniforms burst into his apartment carrying pistols equipped with silencers and began shouting: “The money! The money! The money!”
“They said they were guerrillas but that was bullshit,” Suárez said.
They tied up Suárez and his wife and turned the apartment upside down. Suárez insisted that he was broke and pleaded with the intruders to check with the landlady. He was living in a ninety-dollar-per-month apartment and was two months behind on the rent. The frustrated burglars finally gave up and roared off on motorcycles. Unfazed, Suárez turned in, then rose before dawn to set off on another milk run.
Frankistey Giraldo, one of the three Giraldo brothers in Destroyer Company, had managed to elude the rebels and the robbers. He used some of his money to open a wholesale grocery store and roared around Bogotá in an SUV with a monster sound system.
“Your image changes,” said Giraldo as he cranked the volume on the truck’s stereo. “When you have money, people look at you in a different way.”
Giraldo also spread his wealth around, buying a house for his parents and giving another $10,000 to his father, a devout Evangelical. His father turned around and donated the money to a preacher in his hometown of Machetá. Unaware of the windfall’s sinful origins, the preacher used the cash to buy a plot of land where he put up a Pentecostal church.
Frankistey’s little brother, Lenin Giraldo, now known as Jenny following her FARC-financed sex-change operation, had adopted the perfect camouflage. As a buxom hairdresser, Jenny was overlooked by both the Colombian officials who were rounding up the soldiers who discovered the FARC guaca and the guerrilla assassins who were trying to shoot them down. She now ran a beauty parlor in Cali.
“Lieutenant Sanabria once declared that the money had been a curse,” she said, “but for me it was a blessing.”
Though the cloud of further litigation hung over the heads of Jenny and the other former soldiers, as time passed it seemed unlikely that they would be brought back to Tolemaida Military Base for another reckoning before the judge. Only about one-third of the 147 troops had appeared at the original trial, and once liberated, most of them had gone underground. Hernando Castellanos, the lawyer representing the Giraldo brothers, pointed out that the wheels of justice in Colombia turned so slowly that the eleven-year statute of limitations would probably expire before the mess was resolved.
“Someday,” said Sanabria as he drained a bottle of beer, “we’ll all have a good laugh about it.”
WHEN ÍNGRID BETANCOURT STEPPED OFF THE plane at the Bogotá airport on the day she was freed, she gave her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, a stiff hug, then the next day flew to Paris with her two children and ex-husband but without her spouse. She had survived six and a half years as a FARC prisoner but, like other former hostages, she was finding it difficult to pull off a storybook homecoming.
“Her love for me may have ended in the jungle,” said Lecompte, who soon afterward filed for divorce.
Yet Lecompte admitted that Betancourt’s frosty greeting was partly his own doing. While Betancourt’s mother sent radio messages to her daughter nearly every day, Lecompte spent long periods without getting in touch. There were also rumors published in gossip magazines, which Lecompte denied, that he was dating a Mexican woman as well as one of Betancourt’s cousins. Former hostage Luis Eladio Pérez said a copy had reached Betancourt in the jungle.
“We almost never received magazines,” Pérez said. “But one of those high-society magazines arrived and there’s Lecompte with a model in Mexico. Of course, Íngrid saw it.”
Then, shortly after Betancourt was freed, her jungle liaison with Pérez became public and both she and Lecompte filed for divorce. By then, Betancourt had moved on. She was received in Paris by French president Nicolas Sarkozy: she was granted a private meeting with the pope and took home the Prince of Asturias Award, Spain’s equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. She ruled out immediately jumping back into politics in Colombia and spent her time writing her memoirs and traveling the world to lobby for the release of the remaining hostages. Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Betancourt fully expected to win and her staff invited reporters to a tentative news conference just in case. But the prize went to Martti Ahtisaari of Finland.
Keith, who came out of the jungle with a fierce animosity toward Betancourt, was relieved she didn’t come away with the Nobel. But the Americans, all three of whom resumed working for their old company, Northrop Grumman, faced their own letdowns.
After returning to Merritt Island, Florida, Tom and his wife, Mariana, realized their marriage was over. Mariana found an apartment and Tom found himself wandering around his big, empty “dream house,” the home he had never managed to enjoy because his family first moved there just weeks before he was kidnapped.
“The nightmares I have are not about captivity,” Tom said. “They’re about divorce.”
When Marc reunited with his wife, Shane, at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, he knew something was wrong because she flinched every time he put his arms around her. A few days after returning to their home in Big Pine Key, Marc filed for divorce, accusing Shane of refinancing their house without his knowledge and running up a massive credit card debt. Soon afterward, Marc moved back to Connecticut to be closer to his parents.
“Marc and Tom were victims of a crime against humanity,” Keith said. “They were also victims because their families were torn apart. All these guys ever wanted was to go home and be husbands and fathers again. It kills me what I saw happen to them.”
Jo Rosano, Marc’s mom, was relieved to see her son extract himself from a troubled marriage, but she had her own fence-mending to do, namely, a public apology to President Uribe for her harsh words during her son’s ordeal. With Marc free, she showered the Colombian leader with praise. And at a ceremony at the Colombian embassy in Washington, D.C., a month after the rescue, Uribe made Jo an honorary Colombian citizen.
“I love Colombia and its people,” said Jo, who still found it hard to believe that Marc was free. “I can pick up the phone and call my son. Before I had to send messages and there would be no answer back. It’s like a dream. I’m still numb. And the three of them have formed a bond that no one can break.”
Keith and Patricia got married on the sugar-white coastline of Anna Maria Island, Florida. As they exchanged vows, Keith’s eyes filled with tears. They moved into a house with the twins, Lauren, and Kyle located just down the street from Keith’s parents in Bradenton. Besides commuting to the Northrop Grumman office in Tampa, Keith used the lessons from the jungle to become a motivational speaker. He addresses corporations and sales conventions on topics like “Survival Through the Unbreakable Bonds of Friendship” and “The Power of Teamwork in Any Situation.”
Though their pact to sell their story to Oliver Stone fell through, Keith, Marc, and Tom stuck together in the outside world and inked a joint book deal to write their memoirs. But more than cashing in, the men found themselves savoring life’s small wonders.
“I am a person who has redefined his value system because of so much time reflecting,” Keith said. “We now have an appreciation for the smallest things, like a glass of water. Just seeing your kid’s photo. Or a call from your mom. We want to take out of the jungle that value…. Hopefully, it never leaves me.”
They also planned to call attention to the plight of the remaining Colombian hostages by taking a motorcycle tour across the United States. Harley-Davidson donated three hogs for the pending journey, which they dubbed the Freedom Ride. And Keith made a surprise return to Colombia to personally thank the men and women in the Colombian military who saved them.
“We will never forget them,” Tom added. “It was the best rescue in the history of the world.”
BUT FOR THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT, THE glow of Operation Check was already starting to fade. President Uribe was forced to apologize to the International Committee of the Red Cross after news leaked that the army agent who posed as the Arab during the rescue mission had worn a bib with the organization’s distinctive symbol.
Weeks later, a far more serious scandal rocked the army. Eleven young men from the Bogotá slum of Soacha had been lured to northern Colombia with the promise of high-paying jobs. But instead, they were executed and presented by army soldiers as enemy combatants. Soon, Colombian investigators began looking into more than a thousand similar cases involving seventeen hundred victims. Now, front-page stories about the heroic army were replaced by photos of the grieving mothers of the dead.
In a way, the Colombian Army was the victim of its own success. Under President Uribe, the number of troops had nearly doubled. Yet government oversight of the armed forces lapsed. Officers came under fierce pressure from President Uribe to deliver on the battlefield, and some of them, in turn, offered GIs promotions, cash rewards, and days off for killing guerrillas or paramilitaries.
“Uribe is calling officers on their cell phones at eleven o’clock at night,” said Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy in Washington. “What’s a colonel going to tell him? The only quantitative results he can show are people killed or captured.”
Santos, the defense minister and a longtime critic of the body-count mentality, responded by firing twenty-seven military personnel, including three generals. Mario Montoya, the army commander and the hero of Operation Check, survived the initial purge. But his tenure soon became a liability for the Uribe government. The Democrats, who tracked human rights abuses abroad far more closely than the Republicans, now controlled the U.S. Congress as well as the purse strings at a time when Colombia was seeking a major new American aid package. Thus, on November 4, 2008, just hours before Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, the man who directed the sting operation that secured the release of Keith, Marc, and Tom was forced to resign.
“Mr. President,” General Montoya said, “after serving my country for thirty-nine years, I arrive today at the end of my journey.”
In his exit speech, Montoya praised President Uribe’s national security policies, saying they had “changed the lives” of the Colombian people. He was right. The country was far safer than it was in 2003 when the Americans crash-landed on a rugged mountain slope swarming with FARC guerrillas.
The year before, when Uribe first took the oath of office, Colombia registered 2,882 kidnappings. By 2008, the figure had dropped to 437. That same year, a record number of guerrillas—3,027—deserted from the FARC. Shortly after Operation Check, a rebel turncoat hiked out of the jungle alongside Óscar Tulio Lizcano, a former Colombian lawmaker who had been held hostage for more than eight years. In February 2009, the FARC released the last of its kidnapped politicians, though the rebels still held twenty-three police and army troops.
For his efforts, Uribe traveled to Washington in January 2009 where he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by outgoing president George W. Bush. Then he launched a campaign to amend the Constitution so he could run for a third consecutive term in 2010.
“I think Colombia needs to stay with Uribe,” Tom said. “He’s the best president in probably a hundred years.”
Many Colombians shared that view. But Uribe’s reelection drive risked damaging his impressive legacy. Some began calling Uribe a right-wing version of the power-hungry Hugo Chávez, who has vowed to rule Venezuela until 2021. In addition, Uribe’s implicit message—that without him Colombia would suddenly fall back into chaos—poked holes in his own argument that Colombia was now a safe and stable democracy.
As Uribe’s eight years in office drew to a close, there were some obvious blind spots and blemishes in his record. Though the FARC was diminished, profits from the drug trade would likely keep the organization on the warpath for years. And in spite of all the improvements in security, many rural areas remained off limits. When a visitor mentioned his plans to inspect the site where the Americans’ Cessna Grand Caravan had crashed nearly six years earlier, he was warned off by a Colombian Army officer who said guerrillas were in the area.
“I don’t recommend that you go,” he intoned. “You could get kidnapped.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALEJANDRA DE VENGOECHEA INSISTED THAT I write Law of the Jungle even though we had a baby on the way and I was already spending too much time out in the field or glued to a computer screen. But Alejandra could relate to the subject. Her father—who is now my father-in-law—was kidnapped, twice, by the FARC. Amorcito: gracias por existir.
My dear friend David Carr provided encouragement, commented on early drafts, and found me an agent—Flip Brophy—who found me a publisher. Juan Forero, Marcelo Salinas, Ruth Morris, Scott Dalton, Tim Johnson, Quil Lawrence, Zoe Selsky, and Steve Dudley provided photos, advice, and companionship during many excursions into FARC-land.
