Free Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt Page B

windshield. Bits were stuck to people’s clothes, their hair, their faces. The smell of burned flesh, combined with the smell of blood and gasoline, was nauseating.
    I heard myself say, “We can drive him to the hospital. We can help you!”
    I was talking to the group leader in the same way I might have addressed a road-accident victim.
    “You will go where I tell you to go,” he said.
    Then, turning back, he ordered the wounded man to shut up, which he did at once, whimpering softly like a dog caught between pain and fear. The commander appeared satisfied.
    “Go ahead,” he ordered our driver. “Keep it steady, but make it quick!”
    Without hesitating, Adair pulled away as the last members of the group were jumping onto the bed of the truck. One pushed my friends onto the rear bench with the enormous barrel of his rifle and sat inside the vehicle, placing the rifle upright between his legs. He apologized for the inconvenience and smiled as he looked straight ahead. They were all wedged against one another, elbow to elbow, trying to avoid contact with the latest arrival.
    To the journalist accompanying us, I said in French, “Don’t worry. I’m the one they want. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
    He nodded, not at all reassured. Beads of sweat were forming on his brow. As I looked through the rear window, I watched a terrifying scene unfolding on the bed of the truck. The wounded man was crying as he held the stump of his leg in both hands. His comrades had tried to make some semblance of a tourniquet with one of their shirts, but the blood kept flowing, seeping up through the already soaked fabric. The car was jerking every two seconds, making it virtually impossible to apply a new tourniquet. The commander tapped the side of the vehicle and shouted something incomprehensible, and the vehicle slowed down. The wounded man’s head was lolling back; he had purple shadows under his eyes and was already half unconscious.
    We drove along a small, bumpy, dusty road for twenty minutes in the diabolical heat before the leader gave the order to halt, just ahead of a bend that curved around a promontory.
    A group of young people in uniform appeared from all sides. There were women, their hair braided and pulled into buns, smiling broadly, strangers to the drama, all teenagers. Several helped carry the wounded man from the truck toward a semisecluded area where we could just make out the roof of a house.
    “It’s our hospital,” the youth sitting with us in the cab declared proudly. “He’ll pull through. We’re used to this.”
    We had been there less than a minute when the leader ordered us to leave. Other armed men jumped onto the bed in the back, standing up in spite of the jolts and speed of the vehicle.
    After ten minutes the vehicle stopped again. One of the recent arrivals jumped out and opened the doors. “All of you, out! Quickly!” He pointed his gun at us and grabbed me by the arm. “Give me your cell phone. Show me what you’ve got in there!” He searched my bag and pushed me forward, pressing the barrel of his gun into my back.
    From the beginning I had held on to the hope that they were taking us to a place where they would care for the wounded man and that we would then be permitted to turn around and leave.
    Now I had to face what was happening to me. I had just been taken hostage.

FOUR
    “EL MOCHO” CESAR
    I had shaken the hands of Marulanda, Mono Jojoy, Raúl Reyes, and Joaquín Gómez—the last time being just two weeks earlier—and this led me to believe we had established a dialogue, protecting me from their terrorist actions. We had discussed politics for hours, we had shared a meal. How could these affable individuals be the same men who had ordered our abduction?
    And yet their subordinates were threatening to kill me as they forced me to follow them. I tried to retrieve my travel bag from the vehicle, but the person shoving me with his gun yelled at me not to touch it. He