Thirsty. The first time I woke, or maybe the third, I had a long chat with my pillow. I wanted water, and while the pillow had control of all the spigots, it wasn’t giving the stuff away. I didn’t need water anyway, I confided; I had roots, long shiny green roots that burrowed deep into the earth. I could wait for rain. The pillow smiled and agreed so I slept some more, dreaming of thunderclouds scudding across ocean skies. When my Mojave-dry mouth woke me again, maybe for the fourth time, maybe the sixth, I licked my parched lips and tried to move my right hand to shove the prickly hair off my forehead. Pain shot like electric current across my shoulders and pried my eyes wide. Instead of the interior of my room at the Hotel del Parque, with its soft companionable pillow and the window that peered at the mountains, there was fluttery uneven light and a blur of lumpy wall. No pillow at all.
I probed the area and myself with tentative feelers, senses on full alert. My hands, bound at the wrist, were secured behind my back; no wonder my shoulders felt stretched and achy. I closed my eyes, reopened them. Not a dream. Definitely, not entirely a dream. And since it was more than a dream, I was bound hand and foot, lying in some sort of hammock suspended from uneven wooden poles. Movement made the hammock swing and my stomach lurch in woozy imitation. I was hungry as well as thirsty. Hungry and thirsty and ill. Drugged and slow and stupid, like a fish flopping on a wooden dock, trying to breathe out of water.
I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself I had to remember. I needed to recall what had come before, or how could I cope with this strange and unprecedented place? I’d been in a hotel room in Bogota. No, in a bar, the Zona Rosa, with a fat man. In a cab, flying down the side of a dark mountain. Each scene was like a puzzle piece. No narrative line connected one to the other. Then the bright shifting chunks started lining up in order, one image dissolving into the next in a montage of error and regret.
DAS. The Colombian secret police. Why the hell would DAS want to keep me from finding Paolina? I’d been forced into the black Jeep. I recalled the terrified eyes of Santos, the cabbie. Would he defy the secret police and go to the embassy? What were the chances that anyone knew I was here? Wherever here was.
A bird called out, a strange and piteous cry. I wasn’t gagged; I could cry out as well. I licked my dry lips and hesitated. They’d left me un-gagged, therefore no one would come when I called, or possibly someone would come, but not anyone I wanted to see. I tried to lift my feet. My ankles were loosely tied, a hobble more than a restraint. If I swung the hammock vigorously, would I tumble out? If I tumbled out, how far would I fall?
The rough ceiling seemed to be made of sticks, with a kind of cross at the center surrounded by concentric circles of wooden poles that looked almost like bamboo. The hammock was made of rope and loosely woven cloth. What light there was entered through the roof, filtered through the poles. I was still wearing my jeans and T-shirt, but the blue ruana was gone. My shoulders felt bruised, my mouth tasted like copper, and I badly needed a drink.
With a convulsive jerk, I swung my legs over the side of the hammock and tried to sit up at the same time. I still felt like that fish on the dock, trying to breathe in viscous air, but my muscles obeyed, and I attained an awkward, upright position. My stomach lurched again, and I wondered what time it was, what day it was, as I glanced into the dark corners of what appeared to be a primitive hut. My knuckles were sore. I rubbed them gently against each other behind my back, wondering whether I’d skinned them punching somebody, whether I’d injured any cops in the struggle. Maybe I’d be charged with resisting arrest. Maybe DAS didn’t need to declare any charges.
DAS, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Colombia's intelligence agency, is often referred to as Colombia's FBI, and frequently linked to human rights violations. There's a DAS agency in every big city, each operating under slightly different rules. DAS is also Colombia's Interpol connection, the go-to people for gun running, drug smuggling, art forgery, for any international agency needing a window into Colombia.
The man/woman team who’d gone over me with a fine-tooth comb at the Miami airport could have been DEA. DEA could have sicced DAS onto me. DAS, always interested in drugs, would be interested in Roldan. Maybe we could cooperate; I’d trade the man for Paolina any day.
Shit. It was possible I’d triggered DAS myself. Base Dieciocho. What the hell was Base Eighteen? I’d tried the number again from the hotel room. DAS could have a trace on every phone in Colombia for all I knew.
Stop theorizing before the facts, before breakfast, before dinner, I ordered myself sternly. I opened my mouth; I had only to call to get something to drink, but pride kept me from shouting. Stubbornness, too. Instead, I swung the hammock one way, my feet the other, and tumbled onto a dirt floor with a thud. My nose was filled with dust. Was this what the U.S. consulate meant by a substandard prison? What the hell was DAS thinking? No self-respecting FBI station kept prisoners in dirt-floored huts.
I waited, but the slam of my weight hitting the floor must have made less of a ruckus than I imagined. Maybe the agents were all busy torturing other prisoners. No one came.
The room was round as a doughnut. Empty hammocks hung from the rafters like drooping vines. I wasn’t sure I’d dignify the overhead sticks with the term “rafters.” The structure looked homemade, crafted out of tree branches and daubed mud, like a ramshackle hunting camp. I couldn’t picture this building in Bogota, and it suddenly occurred to me that this was not the first place in which I’d woken. Hadn’t there been a previous moment of consciousness, walking supported between two hulking men? Hadn’t there been a bumpy airstrip, a small skittery plane? I screwed my eyes shut again and felt nausea rise in my throat. Nothing to come up, I thought, and I seemed to remember that I’d been sick before. Where?
I crouched for a while, reestablishing equilibrium, then stood, hesitantly at first. The rope that bound my ankles had six inches of play, allowing an awkward hobbling gait, like a prisoner shuffling from bus transport to prison yard. My arms, secured behind my back, were useless for balance, but my stomach eventually stopped rolling, and I could move in a limited fashion. I could explore the hut, locate a window, a door, possibly find something to use as a weapon or a tool. I’d stay close to the lumpy walls until my balance adjusted to bound hands and feet. Hell, at least the floor was pretty soft. Volleyball players fall on harder floors every day. If I fell, I’d just get up. Right. I halted the pep talk and started to move in a slow circular pattern.
I’d been lucky. Much of the floor was stone, not dirt. If I’d tumbled onto one of the flat hard stones that covered the area nearer the walls, I could have broken an arm or worse. Thoughtful of my captors to place my hammock over dirt.
The noise was a cross between a cough and a snuffle, human, not animal. All my senses, which I’d thought were operating at maximum alert, ramped up a notch. My heartbeat increased, my hearing sharpened, and I froze against the wall, turning my head cautiously side to side. I couldn’t see anyone, and the noise had stopped. It wasn’t repeated. Again, I could have called out, but I didn’t want the other person, the other thing, to be able to site on my response. A shudder rippled across my aching shoulders.
One of the hammocks hung distinctly lower than the rest. I should have noticed it before, even in the dim, flickering light. I tried for a silent approach, but the rope between my ankles brushed against stones and earth.
At first I thought he was dead: I’ve never known anyone to sleep that quietly, breathe that softly, certainly not a full-grown hefty man. He slept like the dead. My thudding exit from the hammock hadn’t disturbed him; my shackled approach failed to alert him.
He was in his late twenties, possibly thirty. Hard to tell because his narrow face was filthy, his beard scruffy, his angular features pinched with pain. The area around one eye was bruised and a deep scratch scored the bridge of his nose. His mouth was partially open, and his chest expanded gently as he breathed. He wore the remnants of muddy, bloodstained military fatigues.
His right arm, below the elbow, was bandaged in clean white cloth. His left pantleg was ripped off high at the thigh, the leg roughly splinted and wrapped in strips of the same cloth. The bandages seemed recent. They were clean, for one thing. No blood had seeped through the immaculate cloth. A sharp smell hovered, not antiseptic, but green, leafy, a forest smell. I wondered if it came from the loosely thatched roof.
Eighteen inches on the other side of the wounded man's hammock stood two earthenware vessels. Terra cotta in color, they looked as old as some of the pottery I’d seen at the Gold Museum. I bent to look inside, hoping for water, wondering how I’d drink with my hands behind my back even if the thing were filled to the brim. I backed off immediately. The largest was obviously a chamber pot; it begged no further investigation. The smaller held a colorless liquid. I sniffed cautiously, wondering if I could manipulate it between my chin and my chest. No need. I’d found the reason for the man's deep slumber. The smell was heady, laced with some sort of opiate. Not at all tempting as drinking water.
As I knelt near the hammock, a sudden touch set my heart pounding. The wounded man's fingers had grasped my sleeve, and his soft, “Who’re you?” was murmured in English, not Spanish, his low, raspy voice a Southern drawl.
Another American. In DAS custody. What the hell was going on? I wondered how long he’d been playing possum.
“Who are you?” I responded more in a croak than a voice. His hold was weak; I could have shaken him off with no effort.
“Where am I?” His eyes were gray as slate, the whites threaded with red veins.
Shit. I was more than disappointed by his query; I was angry. I’d imagined he’d know exactly where we were. It seemed only right; he’d been here first.
“You American?” he managed, before his hand dropped.
“Yes. And you, what unit are you with?” I waited for his response, but he’d gone out like a light. I spoke into his ear, then held my ear to his mouth. He breathed, but he was far away.
An American, another American, wounded, and wearing combat fatigues. How long had he been here? I took another look at the makeshift splint. The poles on either side of his leg could have come from the same plant as the thin rods that made up the inner structure of the roof. I rested my fingertips on the wounded man's forehead. He was hot to the touch, feverish. He ought to be in a hospital.
The U.S. Army had a presence in Colombia, but it didn’t include combat troops as far as I knew. Why would a wounded U.S. soldier be held prisoner by DAS?
The man groaned, and I almost followed suit, the ache in my shoulders adjusting to movement with sharper pain. Having my hands tied behind my back made me feel useless. I twisted them, but the rope held. I hadn’t found anything sharp enough to use as a tool. I closed my eyes and considered the predicament. My arms are pretty long. I’m no gymnast, but volleyball keeps me supple. I moved from the stone-tiled section of the floor to the dirt-floored area, bent at the knee, and sat backward through the circle of my arms, jack-knifing my body and squirming till my arms were in front of me, twisting the ropes. When I got my hands free, I decided, panting, I’d rub my shoulders for a week. For now, I massaged my ego with the small victory.
Then I spent some time playing with the ropes, trying to untie them with my teeth. The ropes won. Still, my hands were more useful in front of me than behind, and maybe the man in army fatigues would wake soon and help me out with his one good hand. I tried to nudge him into consciousness to no avail. With a leg in that condition, he wasn’t going to be able to escape. I’d have to do it for him, file a report, a protest. Somewhere.
By now, my eyes had adjusted to the dim and shadowy light. My head pounded, my tongue tasted vile, and my mouth was dry as dust, but I seemed to have no other nasty side effects from whatever substance had been injected into my leg in the Jeep. The wounded man didn’t stir, so I shifted my attention back to the hut. Was anyone else hidden in the gloomy interior?
Returning to the part of the hut I’d been exploring before I heard my fellow prisoner's telltale cough, I resumed the task. Everything seemed easier with my hands in front of me. I could reach down and touch the polished stones. I found what seemed to be an open hearth, an arrangement of stones against a lumpy wall blackened by carbon. I tried to heft one of the stones, but it was no use. Too heavy. Where were the fireplace tools, the tongs, the iron? For that matter, where were the bread and water, the Geneva conventions, the U.S. ambassador? U.S. citizens were being held against their will, fodder for a rabble-rousing article by Luisa Cabrera, if I ever got the hell out of here.
Something glinted between the stones. I got back on my knees and pried at it, a tiny ochre-colored stone inset in the mud between the flat polished stones of the hearth. Just as my fingers were about to give up, it popped loose, followed by another flatter stone, then another roundish one, all linked by thread. When I finished yanking, there were six smallish beads. A child's necklace? A bracelet of some sort? The stones were filthy, but I kept it in my hand, wishing it were a more useful article. A knife, for instance.
The door, when I finally found it, took a moment to register as a door because my imagination had painted a prison door, a cell door, barred and formidable. In fact, it was a disappointment, no more than a simple row of sticks lashed to a frame. As far as I could tell there was no lock at all. A bar of light showed at what would have been the jamb, if there had been a jamb.
I considered the prospect of the door, the likelihood of a guard, the possibility of undetected escape. My backpack was gone, my shoes as well. If I’d found anything useful as a weapon, I might have opted for feigning sleep till someone came, attacking them when they tried to rouse me. But the stones were too heavy, and I couldn’t see depriving the wounded man of his splint, or lying in my hammock, ceramic chamber pot at the ready. The door was tempting; the edge of sunlight glittered like a diamond.
I hesitated before it, stock still, listening. The strange and pitiful bird called again, and I wondered why it was complaining, free as it was, able to fly. I spent another two minutes in a futile attack on the rope that tied my hands, gave up, and hooked my fingers around the edge of the door. Slid it open an inch, two inches, pressed my right eye to the gap.
Green. Never had I seen such a profusion of greenery, such a variety of green, from lime yellow to deep blue-green, never, not on the first glowing day of short eastern seaboard spring, never, never in my life. I was gazing at a clearing, and past the clearing, at a forest of trees that looked as old as time, draped with moss and vines, a forest primeval, but not a northern forest, not a single evergreen. In between the close cathedral of trees, low lush bushes covered the ground. Jungle, I thought, coffee bushes, maybe coca. Light dappled the greenery, changing the palette of greens from one moment to the next: apple to malachite, jade to olive, emerald to the tenderest chartreuse. There was a wildness to the light, a strange clarity that made the calls of birds and animals seem suddenly louder. I caught a glimpse of a huge and gaudy bird, just a glimpse as it flashed from tree to tree.
I held the thread of the small stone bracelet between my thumb and index finger, twisted the beads over the first three fingers of my right hand, fashioning them into a poor imitation of brass knuckles. Then I used the fingers of my left hand to scrabble at the door, shoving till the gap widened. Five inches, eight inches, and then hope died.