A Hostage Rescue in the Colombian Jungle

On Feb. 13, 2003, a plane carrying three U.S. military contractors crash-landed in rebel territory in southern Colombia. The survivors — Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes — were taken hostage by fierce Marxist guerrillas the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, better known by the Spanish acronym FARC. The initial rescue operation fell apart. Instead of finding the contractors, two companies of Colombian soldiers stumbled upon a buried rebel cache of $20 million, then deserted and splurged their newfound fortune on booze, sex and flat-screen televisions. The forgotten hostages spent the next five years in captivity. But with the help of billions of dollars in U.S. aid, the Colombian Army improved to the point that, on July 2, 2008, commandos were able to launch a daring, Mission: Impossible-style sting operation in a bid to save the hostages. That operation is detailed in a new book by veteran Latin America journalist John Otis, Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages and Buried Treasure. An excerpt follows:

The FARC had taken the bait. Through an ingenious electronic hoax, Colombian Army agents, mimicking rebel radio operators, had convinced the guerrillas to allow “international aid workers” to check the health of the 15 hostages then transfer them to another FARC camp on helicopters. But to pull it off, the army would have to put together a convincing mise-en-scène.

In a Defense Ministry war room, intelligence officers drew up the cast of characters. For foreign flavor, the fake mission chief was given an Italian accent and the exotic name of Russi. His phony deputy would be an Arabic speaker from the Middle East while a third team member, who had lived in Australia, would pretend to hail from Brisbane. Other impersonators included a doctor, three nurses and a reporting team from Venezuela’s left-wing Telesur station.

The agent playing Russi wanted professionals to help the agents overcome stage fright and fully embody their roles. He convinced his bosses to pay for acting classes. The players would have to keep cool, improvise and play their parts with Shakespearian heft if there happened to be a radical turn of events on the ground.

They showed up at one of Bogotá’s top theater academies and presented themselves as teachers who would be putting on a play at their high school. For $2,000, the instructor gave them a crash course in Method acting. The amateur players passed their first test. Though he wondered about his students’ high-tech radios, the theater professor never caught on that he was teaching a pack of army agents.

(See pictures of FARC in the jungle.)

General Mario Montoya, the Colombian Army commander, wasn’t satisfied. Many of the agents looked like they were fresh out of spy school. Montoya wanted more potbellies and wrinkles. Several members of the team let their beards grow and had gray streaks added to their hair. They replaced their underwear, which was stamped with the logo of the army, sent their costumes through washing machines for a lived-in look, and filled their wallets with fake driver’s licenses and foreign currency.

Phony business cards said they worked for the International Humanitarian Mission. The army mounted a Web site and set up a front office in Bogota with operators standing by just in case any FARC collaborators called to verify the authenticity of the group.

The day before the mission, Montoya pulled the team together for a pep talk. “Go forward in peace,” the general said, “because God is on the side of the good guys.”

Killing time at a rustic farm house the night before the operation, the army agents were suddenly attacked by mosquitoes. The guerrillas believed the helicopters were flying directly from Bogota to the pickup point. If the agents showed up with their faces pocked with insect bites, their entire story might unravel. So they spent a sleepless night chain-smoking cigarettes and shooing away the bugs.

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Shortly after 1 p.m. the next day, the hostages heard the roar of the two Russian helicopters. One stayed in the air. The other landed next to a field of coca bushes. Guerrillas in crisp camouflage uniforms stood at attention while two rebels pointed M60 machine guns at the aircraft.

The first off the helicopter was the fake Arab. He smiled at the guerrillas and wandered around as if awestruck by the natural beauty of the landscape. Next came the agents impersonating the Venezuelan news team, then Russi. In the cockpit, the pilots kept the rotor blades turning. The commotion would create a sense of urgency, making it less likely that the guerrillas would closely examine the delegates’ credentials. The running engines would also allow for a faster getaway. The pilots could follow the action through a microphone hidden inside the TV camera, and if the rebels discovered the deception, Russi would tip off the pilots so they could at least save themselves.

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Russi approached FARC commander Cesar and his cruel deputy, known as Enrique Gafas. Cesar smiled and extended his hand. The fake news team shot video of the rebels and pestered Cesar for an interview. The TV crew’s role was to distract the guerrillas and prevent them from concentrating on the events playing out before them.

The hostages looked on in disgust. The agents were joking with the rebels and two of them wore Che Guevara T-shirts. They seemed like FARC-loving lefties.

The final indignity came when the strange visitors insisted on securing the wrists of the hostages with plastic tie-wraps. It was a calculated effort to convince Cesar and Gafas that they wouldn’t be attacked by the hostages once on board the helicopter. But the outraged hostages refused to cooperate. The army agents were taken aback. In their rush to placate the guerrillas, the agents had provoked a full-blown mutiny among the very people they were trying to save.

Russi began scolding the hostages. If they didn’t want to cooperate, they could stay on the ground for all he cared. The problem was that most of the prisoners seemed prepared to do just that. As the argument grew louder, the fake Australian delegate noticed Keith, Marc, and Tom off to one side. Maybe the gringos would listen to reason. He pleaded with the Americans to collaborate.

“Do you want to go home?” he said. “Do you want to see your family? Please, please trust me. I’m going to get you home.”

“I can only see good with a helicopter,” Tom said later. “We hadn’t been in a helicopter in five and a half years. We’d been in the bottom of boats, on mules, on foot. It all looked good to me.”

The logjam was broken. Following the Americans’ lead the rest of the hostages agreed to be handcuffed then boarded the helicopter. Cesar and Gafas were directed to sit between the disguised army agents. Then, with the doorway ladder still hanging down, the MI-17 lifted into the air. The army agents had been on the ground for exactly 22 minutes.

Now, it was time for Act Three.

On cue, one of the fake nurses in the aisle pretended to be knocked off balance. She landed in Cesar’s lap. “Like a gentleman,” she said, “he caught me and then said, ‘You can ride with me.'” The phony medic then leaned into the guerrilla, asking him if he had ever flown on a helicopter. With Cesar deep in conversation, the nurse extracted herself from his lap. Then, another agent, a former boxer, moved in for the knockout. He punched the guerrilla in the throat and bashed his head against the wall of the helicopter three times. At the other end of the aircraft, the fake Arab and the cameraman wrestled Gafas to the floor.

At first, the hostages were baffled. But when they saw Cesar and Gafas incapacitated, Keith, who had worked his hands free from his tie-wraps, couldn’t resist. He and several other hostages pounced on Cesar, and Keith slugged him in the eye.

The helicopter was heading for home. Fifteen lives had been saved. With their mission accomplished, Russi turned to the now former hostages, smiled, and in nine curt words announced their deliverance.

“We are the Colombian Army, and you are free!”

(Another excerpt from John Otis’ Law of the Jungle can be found here.)

From Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages and Buried Treasure. Copyright © 2010 by John Otis. Published by William Morrow.

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