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Guaviare Jungle, Colombia

October 14

Zoe cursed as her left foot sank ankle-deep into the thick mud and struggled to find the energy to extricate herself and continue. The absolute terror that had seized her when they set off on the trek three days ago had faded. Now she could feel nothing but exhaustion.

They’d hustled her out of the Bogota bar and thrown her in the back of what she thought was a van, never removing the dark bag from her head. Jasele and the man who had taken her remained with her, she on the floor of the vehicle and they on either side within arm’s reach. The male driver always spoke in what was either an angry or irritated tone.

She’d tried to ask her captors who they were and where they were taking her. She knew they’d never answer, but it was the only way to deal with her helplessness. Every time she spoke, they either told her to shut up or ignored her altogether. She’d undoubtedly been kidnapped. Socialist guerrilla groups had once threatened visitors and locals alike in Colombia, but matters had gotten much better in recent years. They now advertised the country as a safe, beautiful haven that everyone could visit.

My arse. Zoe tripped and fell for what seemed the thousandth time. Her navy pantsuit was covered in mud and she was freezing. She pictured her warm, wool Roberto Cavelli trench coat, still hanging in the coat check at the bar. Or more likely now wrapped around one of the waitresses, since it had remained unclaimed so long.

Every time she fell, it took her longer to stand again. She wasn’t acclimating well to the change in elevation as they rose higher into the mountains. Every breath was an effort, even when she was allowed brief rests.

And her feet were a mess. The rubber boots she’d been given two nights ago to replace her ruined pumps were much too big, and the trails were steep. The constant up and down in the sweaty footwear was excruciating. She’d dared to take the boots off only once and found her entire feet were rubbed raw with blisters, the toenails black. Who knew what kind of dreadful infections one could develop in such a godforsaken environment.

A short, stout man probed her ribs from behind with his rifle. “Levántate,” he barked. She knew after having heard the word nonstop for three days that it meant get up.

“Wait. Please,” she pleaded tiredly. “I just need a minute.”

“No. Vámonos.” The soldier kicked her thigh.

Zoe lifted herself to all fours and contemplated biting his leg. He was so close. But her satisfaction would be very short-lived. He would seriously hurt her, she had no doubt.

The night of her abduction, the van had left the paved road after a long drive and bounced over rough terrain for several more minutes before finally stopping. Someone had dragged her out and removed the sack from her head. They were in the jungle. It was pitch black and ominously quiet except for a low, distant buzz of insects, but she could sense people around her. And up ahead, dim light through canvas told her they had reached a camp of sorts. Someone shoved her from behind and told her to walk.



She headed toward the encampment, a guerrilla walking behind her. As they neared, her guard pushed her toward the largest tent and told her to enter. Inside, a bearded man in fatigues sat in a chair, looking down at maps by the light of a lantern. Zoe stood there waiting for him to look up, but he ignored her.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“No questions,” he said, his attention still fixed on the maps.

“If it’s money you want—”

He looked up at her, clearly irritated. “I said no questions,” he barked, as he pushed a button on a tape recorder.

“It was a statement, not a question,” she shouted back.

He got up and smacked her across the face. “That was a statement, too.”

Shocked, she rubbed her cheek. No one had ever hit her, not even her parents. This was undignified, uncivilized, and un-bloody-believable. She wanted to slug him back, tell him to go to hell, but common sense and self-preservation prevailed. Instead, she stared at him with all the menace she could manage.

Unfazed, he motioned to the guerrilla behind her, and the man came forward with Zoe’s purse and laid it on the table. She’d forgotten all about it.

The bearded man opened the bag upside-down and spilled out its contents but, before he’d even glanced at her passport, declared, “I know who you are. You are going to stay with us until we get what we need.”

Zoe raised her hand. Asking for permission to talk like she was back in primary school was ridiculous. But she wasn’t in the mood for another show of macho bullshit.

“Speak,” he said.

“Just contact my father. He will give you whatever money you ask for.” God, she hoped she hadn’t overestimated her father’s account. She had no idea what she’d be worth to these people, but she’d heard and read enough to know that bargaining was part of the deal. Her father would sacrifice anything to get her out of there. “I can tell you how to reach him.”

“Not necessary,” the guerrilla replied, sitting back in his chair. “We have information.”

“Then please call him now.”

He put up his hand, warning her. “Enough.”

But Zoe would not be put off. This was obviously the man in charge, and at least he spoke fluent English. She had to know what she was in for. “How long will I be here?”

“No more questions.” He said something in Spanish to the man who’d brought her in, and the rebel immediately grabbed her arm and pushed her out into the night again.

“Where are we going?” she asked, trying to keep her balance as he practically dragged her along.

“Now you sleep,” he replied. “Soon, we leave.”

“For where?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he shoved her to the ground outside a small pup tent. From the light provided by a campfire a few yards away, she could see the tent was filthy.

Her captor knelt beside her and retrieved a thick metal collar from the tent. A dog collar? His intention was clear.

“What the hell are you doing?” She shrank away as he reached for her.

The man grabbed her roughly by the hair, and she struggled to break free, but he overpowered her easily. He pinned her, belly down, by sitting on her back, and placed the iron collar around her neck. Then he padlocked it to a heavy chain about six feet long that was somehow fixed firmly in the ground.

“I’m not a dog, you son of a bitch,” she yelled as he finally released her and got to his feet. She rose as well and pulled at the collar. The metal was lined with leather, but it was so tight it rubbed against her neck. “Get this off of me,” she demanded, though she realized the futility of such a request.

He laughed and made a barking sound, “Guau, guau,” then walked away.

That night was endless. She didn’t sleep at all during the scant hour or so until dawn. The blanket in the tent didn’t cover her, and every time she tried to get warm, the rattling of the chain and the choking around her neck reminded her of her predicament. Her emotions kept shifting between anger and fear. As long as she was worth money to them, they probably wouldn’t harm her, but what they might be capable of in the meantime terrified her.

Four guerrillas came to get her at sunrise and they’d been walking ever since. Three days now of endless marching, all day and all night, slogging through the mud and over tenuous, slippery logs placed across streams. It had rained much of the time, drenching downpours that kept her soaked and miserably cold. And when it wasn’t raining, mosquitoes and horseflies bigger than any she’d ever seen deluged them. Everywhere they traveled, everything looked the same, all dense jungle with a maze of faint paths. How could they possibly know where they were going?

Except for the sporadic five-minute pause to eat stale bread and drink from a dirty flask that was eventually passed to her, all she got from these men was an occasional grumble or order to levántate—get up—when she fell. No one had tried to communicate with her. Though they seemed to understand much of what she was saying, they obviously had a limited command of English.

Her escorts were a ragtag bunch. Two were older, probably close to her age, and actually resembled soldiers in their faded camouflage fatigues and loaded ammunition belts crisscrossed over their shoulders. The other two wore T-shirts and sweatpants and looked to be only in their mid-teens. All were armed with rifles or machine guns. Most odd was their diverse assortment of hats: a beret, a straw fedora, a colorful peasant chullo with ear flaps, and a New York Yankees baseball cap.

Zoe wanted desperately to ask where they were taking her, why all this walking, and had someone contacted her father? Surely they must have asked for a ransom by now, and her father most certainly would have complied. So why bother moving her around and not simply take her back to Bogota? She tried to console herself by concentrating on the knowledge that such transactions took time. Maybe just a few more days and she’d be on her way back to London.

As the sun began to set on the third day of their march, Zoe wrapped herself in the blanket they’d given her. She must look like a mud-gray ghost from all of her falls. Her once-navy pantsuit clung to her, damp with grime and sweat, and she’d snagged it so frequently on the thick undergrowth it looked like Swiss cheese. Her hair was matted, her skin filthy. She dreaded having to live through another cold night trekking through the impenetrable jungle. Years of Pilates and yoga had not prepared her body for this kind of physical exertion. “Don’t you creeps ever sleep?” she asked out loud to no one in particular.

“Walk,” one of them said from behind her.

“I am, plonker,” she mumbled. Every muscle in her body ached, and she was so weak and exhausted she was having trouble thinking clearly. Already pushed so far beyond what she’d ever thought herself capable of, she knew that the next time she fell, she might not be able to get back up on her own.

They were marching across a clearing high in the mountains when all at once the men broke out in a frenzy of shouting and whistling. It took Zoe a moment to realize they were sounds of happiness and greeting. Below them, in the distance, she saw smoke and tents, huts, and farm animals. Men and women were waving back at them. Did this mean they could finally stop walking?

The guerrillas hurried her down the steep slope, no doubt eager to see their friends. The four men were so excited and distracted, Zoe considered running for it. It was twilight and would be full dark soon. Maybe she had a chance. The jungle was only twenty feet to her left. But before she could decide what to do, one of the men kicked her feet from beneath her and she was face-down again on the muddy ground.

Someone dug a knee into her back and placed another metal collar around her neck, similar to the one she had on the first night. She didn’t struggle this time. She didn’t have the strength and knew it was useless. One of the men attached a section of chain to the collar, then pulled her to her feet, choking her.

The man with the other end was the short, stocky guerrilla who’d been with her the whole while. “Next time I kill you,” he warned. He must have seen her looking toward the jungle.

When they finally reached the new camp, men and women ran to greet them, so excited they seemed on the verge of throwing a party. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Zoe reckoned there must be at least twenty of them. Most ignored her, but a few studied her with a varied range of emotions. The women looked like they were sizing her up, and the men were practically peeling her clothes off with their eyes.

One of them, a scrawny youth in his late teens, stood directly in front of her, ogling her and licking his lips, alcohol on his breath. Though she wanted to break eye contact, she forced herself not to, glaring back at him to show she wasn’t afraid.

The smile on his face broadened, and he licked her cheek. Zoe, determined not to break, didn’t react, but the smelly soldier took this as an invitation. He neared her again, but this time the menacing voice of another man stopped him. Everyone parted to let him through.

If the guy had bothered to shave, he could have been attractive. He was tall, and fit, with skin the color of caramel, dark eyes, and a strong chin. He said something in Spanish and everyone returned to their tent or campfire.

All Zoe wanted was a place to sit and rest. Although she was afraid and hungry, her exhaustion was more powerful. Apart from the short guy holding her by the chain, the only man to remain was the one who’d sent everyone away. A chief of sorts, she guessed. He studied her face. “Hungry?” he asked.

Zoe looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t want your stinking food. I don’t want anything from you.”

The chief gave her a charming smile and motioned to the other man with his head. Again, the man jerked the chain, so brutally hard she gagged. She grabbed the collar to relieve the pressure, but the short guerrilla only tugged her away even more fiercely.

When they stopped near a tent, she was relieved—she could breathe again—and welcomed the opportunity to get off her feet and into a somewhat warmer environment. As the man attached the end of the chain to a steel ring embedded in a heavy block of concrete, Zoe, without being asked, stooped to enter the tent. She was almost inside when he yanked her back out and dragged her by the throat through the mud to the side of the tent.

“Tent for me,” the short guerrilla said. “You sleep here.”

“Are you bloody mad? It’s freezing,” she shouted.

“You say you want nothing from us, si? So…” He shrugged. “You get nothing.”

Zoe found the driest place she could to sit and wrapped herself tight in her blanket. It did little to ward off the freezing temperatures. She had nothing to lean against, so she sat Indian style. Through the canvas of the tent, she could hear the loathsome fraggle snoring and wanted nothing more than to sneak in there, grab his rifle, and put more holes in him than a colander.

She’d never physically hurt anyone, had never even contemplated such a thing. But her hatred for these people had begun to consume her. How much longer would she be here? How much worse could it get? And, most of all, where the hell was her father?

A small group of rebels hunched around a blazing fire several feet away. The warmth beckoned her. She tried to calculate how close the chain would allow her to get and decided it was worth trying. But just as she got wearily to her feet, one of the men—the scrawny youth who reeked of alcohol—turned in her direction. When he saw her looking at him, he gestured lewdly with his tongue.

“In your dreams, you son of a bitch.” She sat back down as he laughed and turned his attention back to the others.

An hour or two or three passed, it was impossible to tell. Time was meaningless here. She nodded off, but only for a few minutes. Her legs went numb from sitting in the same position. God, she’d never been more tired and hungry and dirty, had never felt more miserable in all her life. She told herself to concentrate on the future, think of a better time, when all this would be nothing but a despondent memory.

Images flashed through her mind: vacations, holidays, friends, parties. She called up every pleasant recollection she could, desperate to distract herself and help her make it through the night. She rocked herself to keep her blood moving.

“I want my mother,” she said aloud. “She’d keep me warm. She always knew how to make me feel better.” Great. Now she was talking to herself. Was this the first sign of madness? The possibility terrified her.

But thinking of her mother made her feel less alone. As she pulled the blanket even tighter around herself, she imagined her mom was tucking her into bed, just so, the coverlet up to her chin. Then she began to hum the lullaby her mother always sang to her before she kissed her good night.

A dull probe to her shoulder roused her. For an instant, before she came fully awake, she was back home in her cozy SoHo penthouse. But the cold and her aching body reminded her of the awful truth too soon. With a groan, she opened her eyes to the sight of a combat boot. Looking up, she saw the chief.

“Hungry?” he asked, in the same placid tone as the night before.

Zoe wanted to kick the smug smile off his face. Fight back. Scream. Run. But she wasn’t capable of much of anything at the moment. “Yes. I’m hungry now.”

 

Chapter Eight


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 877


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