Kidnapped and a Daring Escape (8 page)

    
There is something else that is faintly knocking at the back of his
mind, as if asking to be let in, another piece of the puzzle. But what? He
revisits the scene he witnessed in the Alcazar Bar. Then, like a flash, he
sees it once more. The squat fellow standing at the entrance, scanning the
patrons — the same squat shape exuding strength as ‘
la bête
’. Are ‘
le
trapu
’ and ‘
la bête
’ one and the same? In his mind he listens again to
their voices. Both timbre and pitch are identical. That removes the last
shred of doubt he has. He has got caught in the kidnap affair sealed in the
Alcazar.

    
The temperature has dipped considerably. Bianca is shivering at his
side. Since the vehicle is still going mainly uphill, their captors are most
likely taking them over one of the passes back into the province of
Cauca.

    
After what must be close to three hours, the vehicle stops. The engine
shudders and then goes silent. The sudden quiet feels eerie. The rear door
squeaks open. The weight of bundles on top of them disappears. ‘
La
bête’
shouts: "Get up, and don’t do anything silly."

    
André tries to raise himself and barely manages to sit up. Somebody
removes his hood. It seems as if he were looking through a murky mist,
everything in shades of gray. The vehicle is parked on the verge of the
road beside a grassy wasteland. In places, the cloud cover almost touches
the ground. For a moment, he mistakes the hundreds of stout stems
fading away into the distance as an army of men wearing wide hats — the
man who stands two meters or so away from the door, a gun trained on
him, one of them. It looks like the macabre battlefield scene in a black-and-white first-world-war movie. Then he recognizes the stems as the
strange
frailejones
or tall friar trees found in the
superpàramo
, the high-elevations grasslands of the Cordilleras.

    
‘
La bête
’ removes their handcuffs. Strange as it may seem, André is
grateful to the man and rubs his painful wrists. Although he labors, he
seems unable to get enough oxygen. Bianca still lies next to him. She has
not moved despite her hood having been removed. A sudden panic grips
him. He shakes her, tries to raise her, to wake her, but he does not have
the strength. She slips from his grip. Fear that she may already be beyond
help takes hold of him.

    
"Help her," he croaks. "Wake her up or she will die."

    
‘
La bête
’ nods to one of his fellow captors, and the two of them lift
her out of the vehicle and put her down on the wet grass. He slaps her
back several times.

    
She opens her eyes. "Where am I?" she whispers in Italian, looking
around confused, disoriented.

    
A wave of relief chases André’s fear. "Give her something to drink,"
he begs. "And wrap the blanket around her."

    
He reaches for the horse blanket that covered them, but the man with
the gun pushes him aside. He stumbles and falls awkwardly onto the
verge. ‘
La bête
’ brings Bianca’s expensive Gore-tex rain jacket from the
vehicle and drapes it over her. Then he fetches a thermos bottle and helps
her drink. André crawls over to her. The man also offers him the bottle.
He barely manages to produce a hoarse thank-you and drinks, hoping that
it is not laced with Burundanga. He lets Bianca drink some more.
Somebody places his own rain jacket over his shoulders. Spontaneously,
he drapes an arm around her, feeling protective. She leans into him.

    
He wonders why they stopped, but knows that it is wiser not to ask.
He is all the more surprised, when ‘
la bête
’ offers each of them a thick
sandwich. His men also eat while standing idly around them, one still
carrying an AK47. They occasionally exchange a few words. Their
Spanish is staccato and heavily accented. He only catches the rare word
that tells him little.

    
"My bladder is bursting. I can’t hold it much longer," Bianca
whispers. "What should I do?"

    
André rises. The guy watching them immediately points the AK47 at
him. He raises both hands above his head and says: "The
señorita
needs
to relieve herself. Please, give her privacy to do it."

    
The guy grins and tells her to go to the other side of the vehicle. He
does not even bother staying close to her. There is really no way to
escape in this open country. While she is away, André also empties his
bladder.

    
Time passes slowly. Day fades into dusk and dusk into night. He spots
a small light slowly crawling closer. It occasionally dims and then turns
bright again. After maybe a quarter of an hour, faint engine noise reaches
them.
Are we being transferred to another vehicle
? he wonders. A few
minutes later he gets his answer. When the vehicle is close enough for
the light to separate into two, ‘
la bête
’ orders them up and tells them to
put on their rain gear. He again clips on handcuffs, but to André’s great
relieve with the hands in front this time.

    
The vehicle turns out to be an old, dark-green, short-wheelbase
Landrover. Several mountain backpacks are strapped to its roof rack.
They are handed over to the new crew, this time of four men. None wears
disguise. André reckons that three are in their early twenties, the fourth,
who seems to be in command, is somewhat older and nastier looking —
‘
le vilain
’ suggests itself immediately. ‘
La bête
’ hands ‘
le vilain
’ several
items. To his regret André notices that none of their valuables seem to be
among them.

    
He and Bianca are squeezed into the right-hand side bench of the back
section of the vehicle. Two of the men occupy the opposite bench, one of
them holding an AK47, the preferred weapon for both guerrillas and
ex-paras
. The Landrover turns and they proceed down the way it came up.
The road is no better. They are thrown against each other. André fears
that the gun, casually held by the guy, its muzzle pointing directly at his
stomach, may accidentally go off at a particularly violent jolt.

    
Although he told Bianca that their kidnappers could be FARC, he is
by no means so certain of that anymore. Two facts speak against it. From
what he read, FARC hostage taking, at least in the past, was generally of
a political nature or business leaders. Secondly, from the reported
accounts of kidnap victims, FARC operatives did not hide their faces. It
was the
paras
who did that since they lived and operated in more
populated areas. So their kidnappers could belong to one of the
ex-paras
splinter groups that has reverted to criminal activities. The fact that this
new crew wears no balaclava only reinforces his apprehension. The
payment of ransom does not mean release, but rather death. So their
captors see no need to hide their faces.

    
In parts, the road is steeply downhill. It is too dark to see any
distinguishing features, once they enter forest. After a while, occasional
harsh moonlight penetrates through the forest canopy, pointing to clear
sky.

    
From what he remembers of the geography, he figures that the first
vehicle brought them to the pass situated between the two volcanoes,
leading from the province of Huila into Cauca, while the second vehicle
is now taking them back a different way toward San Agustin. He can only
think of this as a diversionary tactic. He doubts that they hurt the driver
of their Jeep. They might have immobilized his vehicle to delay him
reporting the incidence, unless they scared him sufficiently to keep quiet
or he was a collaborator.

    
Sooner than he expected, they reach a sizable river flowing east, its
surface shimmering almost white in the moonlight — the Magdalena, he
guesses. They turn off the road into a narrow vehicle track. The foliage
of the bushes and small trees brush against the windows of the Landrover. Where the track widens in an opening along the river, squeaking
brakes bring the vehicle to a slow halt.

    
‘
Le vilain
’ jumps from the car and signals for them to get out. The
cold light of a moon three-quarters full creates black shadows, giving the
impression of standing in a set of an Italian opera night scene. While one
guy watches them, AK47 ready, the other three remove the backpacks
from the roof rack. ‘
Le vilain
’ puts the items he received from ‘
la bête
’
into one of the packs and then recovers a flask, fills a cup, and hands it
to Bianca. "Drink this. There will be no more until morning."

    
André almost calls out for her not to do it. He is certain that the drink
is laced with Burundanga to render them docile and helpless, but then
changes his mind. It may be easier on her if she is spaced out and does
whatever she is told without hesitation. She may not even remember
anything later on. But he is determined to avoid drinking the liquid
himself.

    
‘
Le vilain
’ fills the cup once more and gives it to him. He takes it,
turns a bit aside from the moonlight and pretends to drink, letting the
liquid flow down his chin. Much ends up in his sleeve, the rest on the
waterproof jacket, hidden by his raised arms and leaving no wet marks.
He counts on the black shadows to hide what he is doing. It works. ‘
Le
vilain
’ fails to notice anything. He hands the cup back, thanking. It takes
but a few seconds before he gets confirmation that the drink has been
laced. Bianca seems to relax, the usually vivid expression in her face
turning vacant. He pretends a similar reaction. Told to hold out his arms,
he does so without the slightest hesitation, hiding his surprise when ‘
le
vilain
’ removes their handcuffs.

    
‘
Le vilain
’ and two others now hoist packs, while the fourth gets back
into the Landrover. ‘
Le vilain
’ warns that any escape attempt will be fatal
and instructs them to march single file behind him, with one guy — ‘
le
premier
’ — between them and the other — ‘
le second
’ — making up the
rear. All have their AK47 ready in their arms. He hears the vehicle drive
off.

    
Initially the track snakes alongside the river. It is easy walking. The
moon sheds enough light to see any unevenness or stones on the track
surface, but André cannot help noticing that Bianca walks like a zombie.
She occasionally stumbles, each time quickly steadied by the guy behind
her.

    
Time crawls. It is difficult to know how far they have walked already.
The track becomes steeper. When it veers up a small tributary, they
abandon it and cross the shallow stream, getting their boots wet. ‘
Le
vilain
’ calls a rest on the boulders along the stream edge. It is painful to
watch Bianca follow each command like a marionette on a string.
Although he sits down close to her, she never stirs or looks at him. Her
gaze never strays from the ground in front of her. He unobtrusively
scoops up several rounded palms of water and drinks it.

    
After a quarter hour or so, they continue along the main river on a
rough foot track just wide enough for people or pack animals. Twice the
path abandons the river, joining it again after several steep switchbacks
up and down. As they gain height, the air cools noticeably. He is glad for
the warmth of his rain gear. At some point during the night, they leave
the path and push a short stretch through dense undergrowth to a small
clearing. At its far side he can barely make out the outlines of a primitive
wooden shelter. They are handcuffed again and told to lie down on the
floorboards. It feels almost like a blessing to be able to close his eyes and
drift off, wiping the dread of what is to come.

* * *

It is daylight when André senses a shoe nudge his side. He opens his eyes
and stares directly into the nostrils of ‘
le vilain
’s’ big nose. He is ordered
up. It feels as if he has just fallen asleep minutes before, such is the
fatigue in his bones. Bianca already sits on the floor, her eyes still spaced
out. ‘
Le vilain
’ removes their handcuffs and shoves them outside. The
sun is bathing the clearing with welcome warmth. ‘
Le premier
’ — the
kindest looking of the trio — gives each a plastic bowl filled with hot
soft corn mash. It tastes bland, but he welcomes the warmth spreading in
his stomach. He observes that their guards eat the same stuff, relieved to
see that the water they offer comes from the creek nearby and is drunk by
everybody. No more Burundanga for the time being. In contrast to the
first crew, this group hardly talks at all, except for the short orders given
to him and Bianca.

    
‘
Le premier
’ rinses the empty bowls in the creek and shortly afterward
they are on the move again. The track meanders through dense forest,
slowly gaining elevation, at times high above narrow canyons before
plunging again down to the river level. André silently curses each time
when a hard slog uphill is undone by another steep descent. It is tough
going.