Rally Point 89

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rally Pointers fall In. Good morning America.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's your host for the Rally Point Radio show, Amanda
macchiato mccanue here with James the Sarge Hemingway in the
studio at e is. How's it going, Sarge No two bad?

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Not too bad. It's been a little while, but folks,
I'm back.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
We got a great show lined up today, so we're
just going to jump right in. So coming to us
today here in the studio is Air Force veteran and
author of the book Out of Captivity, Surviving Oney nine
hundred and sixty seven Days in the Colombian Jungle. Mister
Mark gonsalve Is. Good morning, Mark, how are you.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Good morning, Good morning guys.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thanks for having me here, Thank you for having me,
Thank you for being here, Thanks for being on the show. Absolutely, So,
you are someone who has kind of lived several lives
at this point. You are an Air Force veteran, you
were a government contractor, and you survived one amazing ordeal.
Let's kind of take it back to the beginning of
the story and tell us about your time in the
Air Force.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Really, I go back a little bit before that. So,
as a kid right out of high school, trying to
figure out what I was going to do. I was
I realized I wasn't cut out for college, for university,
especially when I was looking at how much it was
gonna cost. They wanted me to sign those papers.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
I was like, man, that's a lot of money. And
I wasn't really that good a student in high school anyways.
But I made it. I was okay. So I started
to look at the military, and actually I did a
lot of my pre military stuff, you know, the as
fab and all of that with the Army, and I
almost went into the Army, and right at the last second,
you know, I was like, let me talk to the

(01:37):
other recruiters real quick. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, A a
my army recruiter. I mean he worked hard, you know,
getting me in there, big dude. His name was Sergeant Smith.
You know. He drove just this plain, white like government vehicle.
His office was like in this huge room there was.
His office was a big space filled with a lot

(02:00):
of other recruiters, you know, cheap kind of old schools
old like you know, elementary school desks and stuff like that.
And you know, I was like, wow, this is for real,
you know. And so my father was an Air Force
veteran and he actually was in the Vietnam War. As
he wasn't a draftee. He volunteered and so I was like,
let me check check them out. So I went to

(02:21):
see the Air Force recruiter and his office was in Hartford,
Connecticut capital one person in his office. It was beautiful,
you know, nice big mahogany desk. You know what his
name was Scott. It wasn't Sergeant so and so, Scott.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
So you know, I was like, oh, and actually I
kind of glossing over it, trying to make fun of it.
But the reality was I looked a little bit more
into you know, my goals and what I wanted to do,
and it seemed to me like the Air Force was
putting a little bit more into like training and stuff
like that for what I for what I wanted. And so,
you know, I kind of switched at the last minute
and I went in with the Air Force, you know,

(02:59):
and I went in. At first I wanted to be
a pilot, you know, yeah, yeah, Army the armenter would
have that high school to flight school program. It would
go on and off, on and off, and it wasn't
they didn't have it back then. So and the Air
Force recruiter said, you need to go to college first
if you want to be a pilot. So so I

(03:20):
went in as an intelligence analyst, and you know, not
really knowing or fully expecting it to be what it
turned out to be, but I'm super grateful for it.
So my specialty was imagery analysis. I was analyzing photos.
It would come from either satellites or different types of
you know, airplane sensors. You know, we had the YouTube.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Back then exactly. I was deployed with them. That was
an amazing mission.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, before that, the SR seventy one, you know, one
of the fastest airplanes ever made, you know, So we
would we would review those images. They looked like little clear,
you know, negative images, and we had these like microscopic
i don't know, eye pieces that we would look through
and it would magnify everything and I would be able
to identify.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
It's like looking at microfish.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of like that. You
have the zoom capability, you could take a hard copy
photo of it and annotate it, you know, we would,
and we would notate order of battle, you know, the
types of tanks, the movements and stuff like that. And
so I did eight years in the Air Force. I
was stationed mostly actually for five of that at Central

(04:29):
Command to mcdial Air Force Base.

Speaker 5 (04:32):
And for you listeners, Microfish is a film that we
used to use back in the day.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
We were digital back then.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I think most of our listeners remember Microfish. They're probably
more familiar with that than the digital means we have nowadays.

Speaker 5 (04:45):
To be honest, were that detailed the film that you
had that like from the from the sky down?

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Where that detailed on like huts.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Well you look, we can see stuff on our iPhones now, yeah,
so it was all of that, you know, it was it.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
Was all of that.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
And I remember, so I came in the Air Force
in two thousand and one and I remember getting emails
of like the AC one thirty gun ships going after
you know, enemies, engaging enemies on the ground and seeing
that kind of footage. That's kind of what I imagine.
It wasn't it wasn't super HD or extremely sharp, but

(05:19):
it was enough to where you could make out what
was what, whether it was a structure, a person, a road,
a vehicle.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, that's what I remember.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I mean, those those videos used to go around all
the time, especially when you know the Global War on
Terror had first begun, because that was a huge boost
for morale for us as Air Force members to see, hey,
the support you give, even if you're not aircrew or
you know, a maintainer or a pilot or whatever, the
support you give is enabling that to happen.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
And it was it was cool.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
But yeah, the imaging definitely, it was almost like a
black and white VHS.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
It was just different versions of gray.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
But you could tell what was a running enemy and
what was a structure that they were running into, and
then you just saw this huge cloud and there went
the boom because the spoopy did its job.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was great.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, when I was in so I joined in ninety
two and I got out by ninety nine, and over
the course of those eight years, I went from you know,
using hard copy data and then eventually we were in
all digital. It was pretty you know, it's pretty amazing.
It It made things a lot easier, and towards the
end of my second enlistment, it was time to re
enlist again, and I noticed a lot of my colleagues

(06:31):
were getting out and they were getting civilian jobs. Basically
go home one day and the next day come back
to work into civilian clothes, you know, making twice small
free times.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Benefits. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
So I decided to do that and I put a
resume out there, and I had a couple of offerings,
and one of them really interested me. And it was
a counternrocotics job out of Key West, Florida, and we
were going to be covering mostly South America for a
area of responsibility. And I was fascinated for some reason,

(07:04):
you know, I was always fascinated about counter drug work
since early on. It was I think it was because
I used to work with a sergeant who had had
experienced in that, and he would tell me about their
missions and it sounded so cool. You know, he was
at one point on a boat and they were analyzing
radar data and stuff like that. I was like, man,
that would be awesome to be, you know, maybe closer

(07:25):
to the field and not in an office all the time.
So I got out and I became a contractor doing
the same thing basically, but we were looking for cocaine
laboratories and coca fields. Coca is the plant that's used
to make cocaine, and I love that job. I loved

(07:47):
it and I got pretty good at it. So after
what maybe four years of being an analyst, I decided,
you know, looking at the career path I wanted to take,
I thought it was time for me to do something different.
And so I had an opportunity to join one of
the platforms that actually flies and collects the data and

(08:10):
I would be a sensor operator and actually instead of
you know, analyze the data that comes from the camera,
point the camera. Wow. And that was for me the
ultimate That was the next step, you know, being able
to point the camera to where I knew it needed
to be looking at and to collect really high quality data.
So that was for me, you know, at that time,

(08:33):
it was like the dream job. That was as good
as it would get for me.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, I remember reading about that in your book, you
talking about how now you were getting to take the
pictures that you once used to analyze, and you because
you knew what it was like to be on the
other end of it, you know, kind of doing the
debriefs and having to analyze stuff. You knew, Okay, if
I'm the person on the back end of this, what
am I going to want to see? And that's I

(08:59):
mean that is kind of a full circle thing. That
was pretty cool to read about because you could understand
both sides of the coin.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And when you have like the analysts perspective,
you know what indicators there are to look at, because
you know, even though we're an airplane, not flying super
high but fairly high, the resolution is still you know,
it's there's limits to how good. So you know, when
you're looking for a coca field, you know, you're looking

(09:27):
at plants, there's a lot. It's not just being able
to zoom right in and say and look at the
leaf and that's you have. There's patterns and indicators and.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Colors, you said at one point, yeah, it is. At
one point in the book it talked about that too,
whether it was like lighter green, darker green, and like,
i' mean that level of detail and having to see
that from the sky, and then I imagine it's tricky
because you're also moving. So I know, I've tried taking
pictures while in motion and they don't usually come out
too pretty.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Or they look pretty trippy.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I'm sure your cameras were probably good enough to
be to you know, accommodate or off that bat.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
But yeah, yeah, and you know it's it's it's to clarify.
We were working a government mission down there, but we
were all civilian contractors and our program was called the SRS,
the south Com Reconnaissance System, and so Southcom, you know,
they decided they needed to have their own full time
platform doing counter arcotics there. They had access to other platforms,

(10:26):
but they would get called to go to other AORs
and things, and they didn't have anybody there that was
full time dedicated to counter arcotics and that's where the
SRS came in. And but we were all contractors. You know,
we were on contract to do a very specific tight mission.
You know, we were supposed to fly out of Bogata, Columbia,
which is the capital of Columbia, only in daytime missions,

(10:48):
and we were supposed to stay within a certain radius
of Bogata. And what happened was the product we were
producing was was good. It was way cheaper, right, our
program was way cheaper than everybody else, but we also
had higher quality, more accurate information, like we could locate

(11:09):
a cocaine laboratory and give you the exact geo coordinates
of where that was not all believe it or not,
not all platforms back then could do that. Oh wow,
they would have to they would have to use other indicators.
They'd have to line it up on a map and
they would get you in general location. We would we
would give you a pinpoint location of it. Now, because
we were so good at that, we had we experienced

(11:31):
what's called mission creep. The customer. The government started to
ask us to do more, more and more and more,
and so before long we were flying at night, we
were flying the entire country, we were going to other countries,
and we were doing just a much bigger mission. And
now contractors they always want the customer to be happy
because that ensures.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
The renewed continued.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Right, the mission creep thing, our management should have addressed
that and said, okay, we can do that, but we
need a better platform, or we need a you know,
we need a different airplane. And that's important to note
also because the airplane we were flying in is a
Cessna Grand Caravan. It's a single engine airplane, right, only
one engine, and it looked like a civilian airplane painted

(12:17):
white with blue stripes. You would never know that it
was flying around, you know, running counter narcotics missions by design,
right by design. Yeah, but inside you know, packed with sensors.
We had the camera sensors that I operated. We had
some signals sensors, we had radio comms, everything encrypted, you know,
and we were constantly, you know, in contact with our

(12:40):
home base in Key West and also out of Miami
southcom So with single engine, one engine, so we were
running a mission, getting ready to run a mission actually
one day, and we would take off out of Bogata
at the capitol. And Bogata is a city that's had

(13:00):
about eight thousand feet elevation. And because we're in an airplane,
an airplane with only one engine, it's heavily loaded with sensors,
it's heavily loaded with people and other gear that if
you were to take off with full gas tanks, the
plane didn't have enough power to actually safely yeah, yeah,
because you would have to take off and climb to
get over some mountains.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
It's like a solid bowl region.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, it's like exactly, And so we
would always take off with partial fuel tanks and that
would make a lighter airplane and we would have enough
power then to get over the mountains fly south where
there's a large mountain range, but once you get past
that mountain range, it's planes, it's flow lands. And then
there was a base south where we would land and refuel,

(13:44):
top off our tanks and then go run missions. And
so on this day we were, you know, just normal.
We had just taken off. We were head and south,
we were across the mountain range, and out of nowhere
I heard this sound. It would just sounded like a
winding to out sound. And you know, despite being in
the Air Force, I had very little aviation experience.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Right, everybody thinks we know everything about aircraft that we
fixed planes, we fly planes. It's like nyna, Like my
job was I would watch people who fix planes and
be like, Okay, what are you doing, how do you
do it?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
What do you use? And I even didn't know anything
about that.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
But yeah, the way that you wrote it in the
book was, man, my stomach lurch when I read it
because and I can't remember who pointed out, whether it
was Tom or Tommy Jay, but one of them looked
out the window and was like, that is an engine failure.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
And I was like, oh my.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
Gosh, that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Just like that's not what you want to hear.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
We weren't across the mountain range yet, you know, and
I was just you know, happy, go lucky, you know,
in my seat, working with my software, and that sound
happened and I noticed Keith, who was sitting just to
the right of me, he about out of his chair,
and that's when I was like, oh, is that something bad.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
He had an aircraft maintenance background, he did, so he
was a marine and then he went in the reserves.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
He went to National Guard.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Oh, national Guard, thank you?

Speaker 2 (15:11):
So was he I guess air National Guard then yeah,
and he was an aircraft mechanic with them, so yeah,
so that makes sense that he was just kind of like,
uh oh, he.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Knew what that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's when
our pilot, Tommy Jannis, said, that was an engine failure, okay,
And so you know, my first thought was we're going
to die. Right, that's really you know, like not even exaggerating,
that's really what I believed. Every other time there was
an incident in the mountains in Columbia, nobody survives.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
There was a couple and I remember searching for the wreckage.
You know, using satellite, right.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
And there were ones after you too where nobody survived.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
It was awful, right, So that's what I thought was
going to happen. You know, I thought we were going
to die. So so I prayed, you know, my very
first thing was prey and just ask for forgiveness of
my sins and to be allowed to go to heaven.
That's that's you know, ask for peace for my my family,
that they would be okay.

Speaker 5 (16:09):
And uh.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
And then I had to go to work and I
unbuckled out of my seat and I started to secure
everything that was in the airplane. We had a lot
of a lot of things in their survival gear. We
had cases of water, you know, all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
They could become projectiles in the case of a crash, right.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
So everything had to be secured and tied down, and
that's what I went to work doing. Then I got
back in the seat and between Keith and I we
continued to call in our coordinates as we were heading south.
And the original plan was we were going to just
try to glide as long as we could and perhaps
you know, get over the mountains. But it didn't look

(16:50):
like it was going to happen. You know, we were
we yeah, we weren't. We didn't have enough. And then
you know, and then out of nowhere below us by
the way as mountains and it's all triple canopy covered jungle,
you know, high trees. It's just there's no clearings at all.
But then suddenly, off to the left side, our pilot
noticed a very small clearing. You know, it looked like

(17:11):
a little agricultural thing. And from our position it looked
like smaller than a postage stamp. It was tiny. It
was like from where we were we were, it was
like a little thing. And Tommy Janis says, we're going
to land there. And so we went from having to
maintain altitude to all of a sudden having to burn
it off so that we could land in that little

(17:32):
spot and make the plane as slow as possible. And
so our our pilot in command, his name is Tommy Janice,
was like a high time pilot. He was he was
Delta force in the army. He uh, I mean, he
just had a ton of experience under pressure apparently. I

(17:52):
mean he had told us stories every but everybody tells stories.
But when this happened, the dude was not nervous.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
The mission mode.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Some people are wired like that, like when the stuff
hits the fan, where everybody else is like trying not
to freak out on the inside. Some people just lock
right into mission mode and it's like their training takes
over and they almost become like an automat time. I
imagine in some ways that's kind of how it was,
because you wrote like he stayed so calm, you just
you know, stuck to his procedures, and I think that

(18:23):
probably kind of helped all of you stay a little
bit slightly looser considering the situation, but also kind of
have a little bit more calm if you will, to
know that like, Okay, well he's not freaking out, so yeah,
I shouldn't be really freaking out either.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
Yeah, for him, it was just another day at the office.
I mean, he never skipped a beat. You know, he
was on it. And once he noted he was the
one that found that little clearing and he said, where
that's where we're going to go. That's where he put
us now in the process of burning off, you know,
that extra altitude. There was a couple of times when
the stall buzzer and so the stall buzzer is a
little business. And when that goes off, that means the

(19:00):
airplane is flying too slow and it's not flying fast
enough for the wings to create lift, which is what
keeps it in the air. And so a couple of times,
as you know he's banking, you would hear the you'd
hear it go off and talk about, you know, the
bucker factor. Every time I went off, you know, I
did like a year's where the keegels and like two
min into that thing going down this is but he

(19:22):
was perfect, and he brought us into that little clearing
and we braced for impact right before and we hit
very hard. Lane bounced and then we hit again. And
I remember when we came to a dead stop.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
You know, I just.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Looked at my hands and I had all my fingers,
my feet were still attached. Everybody was in one piece,
and we were, you know, conscious, and so I was like, man,
that's a miracle, right, that's a miracle. And if you
look in the book, there's a picture of the wreckage,
you know, and you you wouldn't think a person could
walk away from that. It's it was tremendous. So it

(19:57):
was a miracle. But the thing is, once we got
out of there plane we were immediately being shot at.
So yeah, yeah, so Keith and we had a host
nation rider on board with US Colombian Army sergeant Sergeant Cruise.
We would always fly with somebody, a host nation representative
on board. We wouldn't you know, We weren't allowed to

(20:18):
just go fly around their country. We were a guest
of their so they always had somebody on board with us. Well,
Keith and Sergeant Cruise got out of the airplane first
and they immediately went to the front of the airplane
to get the pilots out. That pilots were both unconscious.
And while they were doing that, I was still in
my in my position, I was trying to make radio
contact again the radios. Everything was dead on the airplane

(20:41):
except for our emergency beacon that that was flashing and
that was telling our base where we were. So I I,
you know, everything is dead on the airplane. I had
our target deck and I hid that in a place
that wouldn't so wouldn't be found, and I grabbed my
survival vest. We had some weapons and duffel bags. We
had like a double bag with some pistols, another one
with a rifle, scrabbed those. I had my personal backpack

(21:04):
which had expense reports in it that I had not
filed yet, and those things. Man, I hate expense reports.
And I was like, oh, I got it, and they
were almost done. It's like, oh, let me grab this.
You know, I don't want to forget my expense. So
I get out and I didn't realize we're being shot at.
And once I get out of the airplane, I start
to hear and I've never been shot at. You know,
I'm in the I was in the Air Force. You know,
we weren't one wasn't set up for that. I was

(21:26):
supposed to be sitting in air.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Conditioning and you weren't a cop.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
So they definitely were a pair of rescue and they
know what it's like to be shot at.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah, I no me. I'm an imagery analyst. I'm supposed
to sit in a nice air conditioned office in a
windows and a good chair, you know, coffee, awake, analyzing photos,
not getting shot at by terrasts, you know. So I
get out of the exit the airplane and I'm hearing
bullets swizzing by. I'm hearing things snapping and cracking, and
I can see the next ridge line over a group

(21:57):
of armed people shooting, running, shouting, heading towards us. So
I immediately run towards the front of the airplane, which
which makes the airplane create a little barrier between us.
And then Tommy Janis had just exited the airplane and
he was bleeding from his face. He had just come
to he was dazed. Our copilot, Tom Howe's was in

(22:19):
his seat and he just got out. He was really bloody,
you know. So the way the impact affected us was
in the back of the airplane. It was more of
a downward force, and the front of the airplane they
went forwards, so there restraints, their seat belts basically didn't
hold or they slipped out of them, and they both
hit their heads on the dash and were knocked out.

(22:42):
So we get out of the airplane and it's within
minutes that the terrorists are there on us and at gunpoint.
They take Keith and Tom Hows away first, then they
take me away by myself, and there was a group
of them with Tommy Janis and Sergeant Cruise and so
you know, again as we're walking away, I'm air Force.
I wasn't set up for this. As we're being led

(23:05):
away from the wreckage. I realized, out of all of us,
Tommy Janis had the most training, would be the one
that that's going to know how to deal with this.
So these haririfts are forcing me away, and I stopped.
I'm a hands are up in the air, and I stop,
and I look over my shoulder and I see Tommy
Janis is being led away, but he's limping, and he
has his arm draped over Sergeant Cruise's shoulder, and Sergeant

(23:27):
Cruise is helping him limp along. And I wanted to
wait for them, but I got hit and pushed and shut,
you know, made to keep on walking. And that was
the last time I would see those two again, because
it was only a few minutes later when they executed
Tommy Janis and Sergeant Cruise. They killed them both, and

(23:48):
Heath Heath, Tom Howes and myself. They took us and
forced us to walk, you know, and once we got
into the jungle, that was it, you know, we became
long term hostages. The good guys showed up within I
mean not long after the crash, you know, I heard
helicopters arriving, and once they got to the scene, the

(24:13):
terrorists tried to shoot the helicopter down too, you know.
And so there was a bunch of you know, just
gunfire going back and forth and close, I mean really
close to where we were. They were literally above us,
and I you know, again, I was thinking, are we
going to get caught, you know, just in the crossfire
at this I didn't know at that point that Tommy
Janis had been killed or Starving Crews had been killed.

(24:35):
It was later, once they got us away into the
jungle and away from from the helos, that they told us,
you know, they they just killed them and that if
we do anything, they'll kill us too. And so they
marched us for twenty four days straight and until they
put us in an encampment and held us for five
and a half years.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, several encampments, because I mean you start off like
they moved guys around a good bit, you know, like
you'd stay someplace maybe for a few months or what
have you. But and it was interesting that each one
of them kind of had a name that was affiliated
with like what happened there. I guess there was like
the New Camp, if I'm not mistaken, that was the

(25:17):
first place that y'all stopped and even to back up
to that, I think one of the parts of the
book that really had me kind of like WHOA was
right after the crash. They were going through your stuff
and they were like, if we you know, if we
find anything like a beacon or a locator or whatever,
will kill you. And they did find it, but and

(25:38):
it was it was bittersweet because part of me was like, man,
I wish you would have activated it because it would
have told more there were However, Comma, they would have
been shot, but the guy took the batteries out of
it and that was the only reason it didn't go off.
But the terrorists didn't know what they were looking at,
so it was it was kind of Yeah, it was
like a double edged short. It was like, oh, man,

(25:59):
that would have told you know, the friendlies where you were,
but at the same time it would have come at
a huge cost, so that was kind of crazy. But yeah,
then being dragged like days and days and days, and
I remember you said in because the book goes through
different narratives, so sometimes it's Mark talking, sometimes it's Tom talking,
sometimes it's Keith talking. And everybody had their own writing

(26:21):
style and their own voice, so it was kind of
interesting because you almost could like obviously I know what
Mark's voice sounds like because I knew you before you
came on the show, but like you almost kind of
feel like you can imagine what their voices sound like.
And I remember you talking about that first march from
the wreckage to that first camp, that that guy would
just pick you up and drag you sometimes, you know,

(26:44):
if you got tired, because I mean they were marching
them through horrible terrain. It was steep, it was rocky,
and then it rained a lot, so and they're not
wearing appropriate shoes. I think you're you're part of the
book talked about how you were wearing like boots that
I imagine were like Timberlain or ugs, It's something like lugs

(27:05):
or whatever at the time that were not really hiking boots,
and that's what you're being made to stomp like twenty
something thirty something miles who knows. But yeah, I just
I mean, you did a really good job of describing
what that was like, because it was just I mean,
it sounded awful as far and I'm sure it was,

(27:25):
but I mean just being dragged if you fell down
because you were just so tired or like, you know,
they ended up getting sick from you know, the food,
the elements, whatever. All of that takes a toll on
your body. And every time they would fall and have
to get back up or somebody would like pick Mark
up and drag him, I'm just like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, the jungle is I mean, it's it's beautiful, but
it's not really a place that's meant for human beings.
I mean, it's filled with things that will sting you,
poison you, cut you pierce, you make you trip u.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
There were parts where you guys wrote about that the
Nuchase New Chase.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, Oh my gosh. I'm sitting there trying to read
this book. So okay, we read this book while my
husband was in the hospital, and so that was how
we kind of passed the time and kept his mind
off of things too. And I'd be reading the book,
and when I would read about some of the bugs
and some of the stuff that y'all had to deal with,
I'd be sitting there trying not to drive heat and
dry heat reading about.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
It because it was just very detailed.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
But yeah, it's the Jungle was extremely unforgiving, and you
guys did a wonderful job of helping the reader understand
just that it was crazy.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The neucha, for people that are listening,
is a fly that will come and land on your
skin and like inject a little larvae. And you know,
when it's happening, you don't really know. You think it's
a mosquito, but it's injecting this egg or worm in
you and it grows and it's actually like it turns

(28:55):
into a worm in your flesh and you could feel it,
you know, it feels itchy, and it gets bigger, and
if you don't do any they'll get big, like, you know,
bigger than maggots, and they live in your flesh. And
the way that the the terrorists would deal with those
is they would use nicotine from a cigarette, so they
would light a cigarette, blow it, you know, blow the

(29:16):
smoke onto their palm of their hand, and it would
like leave this disgusting yellow film and they would take
that film and they would rub it on the nucha
and apparently that would kill it. I don't know if
it actually did, and then they would squeeze it out
like you're squeezing assist.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Doctor pimple Popper.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
The Jungle version it was, and we would get loaded,
you know, we would get covered in those things. I mean,
there were so many different types of bugs that like
you just don't see here in the US, you know,
and so the New Cha was one of them. There
were these little tiny ants that you would you know,
when we would for example, when we would be there,

(29:56):
you know, in march, when they would be moving us
from one location to another. We could be marching for
days and it's all on foot, and at night they
would set up camp and we would sleep on the ground,
you know, and so we would get covered in these
little tiny microscopic dants and they would leave like this
little acid trail wherever they walk, and it felt like
a jellyfish sting, you know, and it was you know,

(30:18):
you'd get those. I mean, it was just there was
all different kinds.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
It was like the most demented version of Survivor. Like
I used to watch that show on TV and you
would see people, you know, trying to survive in the
jungle or wherever they drop them off at Sometimes it
was a rainforest, and they'd be covered in all kinds
of like bug bites and stings, and so I kind
of imagine it that way, although this was a much

(30:42):
worse version of that because you were, you know, fighting
to stay alive.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Yeah. Yeah, the bugs were one thing, you know, but
the terraces were the next level. And so, you know,
and the question that we had very early on was
why are they holding us? And what do we what
will they do? You know, what it's going to take
for them to let us go? And we would ask
that every time one of their leaders would come around,

(31:08):
we would ask, what's what do you need? What are
you going to let us go? You need a negotiation? Yeah, yeah,
And that was their answer, sabe kean sabi means who
knows in Spanish. Yeah, And they would never tell us
any information. And so it turns out, you know, in Columbia,
they're they've turned kidnapping into an industry. You know, we

(31:30):
weren't the only hostages. They were holding thousands of hostages,
and they put them in different categories. Some of the
hostages are being held for ransom extortion. Others are being
held for political purposes, and we fell into the political
hostage basket. They thought because we were Americans that we
were high value. They automatically considered us high value just

(31:52):
because we were Americans, and they thought that they could
use us to pressure the governments, the Columbia government and
the using the US government into giving them things that
they wanted. And so that put that was that was
hard for us because the way the US responded was
not the way they won't expected. The US started to
invest or. They allowed funding that used to be used

(32:16):
for counter arcotics. That was very strict. Their funding was
only for counterarcotics. It was never you were not allowed
to use any of that for counterinsurgency. Well, once they
had us, that changed you. You were now allowed to
start to use assets, personnel, money to do counterinsurgency work
and try to try to rescue US. So in a

(32:38):
way it hurt them, you know, badly by by taking
us hostage. You know, they now all of a sudden
you had all these different assets. Like my program it
used to only work counter ecotics. Now you know it
was they were being tasked with terrorist targets and looking
for US.

Speaker 5 (32:55):
I had a question for you. Did that classification affect
the way they treated you guys that your camps like
your internment camp.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
No, you know, because they didn't understand that. They always
thought that we were there to look for them, you know,
they they didn't know, you know, we were working counter
a cop.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
They continually told the terrorists like, we are not here
to fight you, We are here to fight the drugs.
Like we're against the drugs, not not the people, not
your cause, We're just against the drugs. Yeah, so that
that kind of helped them understand too. I mean it
helped in the sense of helping keep you alive in
a way because it was helping explain to them like,

(33:34):
I'm not going to try to kill you. I was
only here trying to fight drugs because the drugs were
coming into the US, right, And so that was kind
of to to my mind when I read it, that
was kind of a way to sort of diffuse it
a little bit, but also kind of redirect the terrorists
a little bit, to kind of and maybe just deflect

(33:55):
is a better word.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
That that's what we wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
You know.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Now the reaction is they're the ones that control the drugs,
that's their drugs, that's theirs. Like, like our target that day, well,
we had about six targets that day. One of those
targets was called the Mono Hoy Hoy h c L
Lab and HCl lab is one of the laboratories that's
used to make cocaine powder. Mono Hoy Hoy is the

(34:20):
name of their their second in command. He's their number
two dude. And we met him, so he was like,
he was, yeah, we were going after one of his
We were going after one of his Yeah, we were
going after one of his laboratories. They never found that
target deck that I know of, but you know, that

(34:41):
was we were trying. You know, we were trying to
kind of deflate things and say, hey, we're here. You know,
it was true, we were there only for counterarcotics. But
then once once they took us, you know, they they
decided they're going to target Americans. I think the US
position changed with right, they were going to, you know,
deal with Plant Columbia.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Right. Well, so if we can talk about this. The
other thing that I saw in the book was resiliency,
Like this really changed your mindset about some things in general.
Like you said, you know, when you start going down,
you prayed, But at first they kind of tried to
act like, you know, we're going to we're going to

(35:19):
release you in just a couple of days or whatever.
And then when you realize that wasn't going to happen.
They did one thing that was, you know, kind of
a blessing, if you will. They gave you notebooks, they
gave you things to write with, and I remember you
saying that you kind of made a personal plan for
yourself of all the things that you were going to

(35:41):
work on about yourself, goals you had for yourself to
help yourself get through that captivity, however long it lasted,
and it was you know, personal goals, spiritual goals. Can
you talk a little bit more about that, because I
mean I thought that was pretty profound, Like most people
in a situation like that would fall into like a
pit of despair or go into kind of pseudo pow

(36:04):
mode like what we've been taught in the military. To
a small extent, as far as you know, if I'm
taken captive, we're going to set up a rank structure,
is how we're going to operate. But you kind of
took it in a different direction, and if you can
talk about that, I thought that was really important to
point out.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
Yeah, once I realized that there wasn't going to be
a quick resolution to that, and that you know, it
took me like over a year to figure out I
could be there for many, many years more. I a
lot of times that it seemed hopeless, but despite that,
I would still have hope for just based on faith.

(36:39):
And so I decided, if I'm going to get home
one day, I don't want that time to be wasted.
So I was going to try to improve myself, you know,
whatever ways that I could. And there was very little
that I could do, but there was a couple of things,
and so I came up with this outline. I called
it my Personal Life Outline PLO, and it had like
five main points and a bunch of sub points under those,

(37:03):
and those were things that I had. You know, I
went through a serious phase of self reflection while I
was there because I had nothing to do. You know.
Sometimes I was just locked in a box and had nothing,
and so I would think about my past, my family.
I would think about the things that I messed up on,
the things that I said that I shouldn't have said,

(37:24):
or the things that I I didn't say when I
should have, you know, all of these things, you know.
And I went through this this period where I was
and at the end of it, I was like, I
have to stop beating myself. Up and now I'm going
to improve. And so you know, I wrote this pl
PLO down, my Personal life outline down, and it included,
you know, becoming stronger spiritually, making a better a better

(37:46):
relationship with God. But then I also wanted to become
a better husband, a better father, a better person, you know,
a better worker, everything, like I just want to improve physically,
like I wanted. I had all these areas is that
I was focused on, and so you know, I had
it written down and eventually, because I didn't want the

(38:06):
terrorists to get hold of my thoughts in my notebook,
and you know, eventually I burned it and I would
just but I had it memorized and I would recite
it to myself every morning, you know. And so what
I would do when we were in camp, I would
try to figure out a way to exercise every morning.
And so if there was a log on the ground,

(38:27):
I would step up on the log and step down,
step up, stepping out, and I would do that for
thirty minutes, you know, switching legs. And while I was
doing that, I was reciting my Personal Life outline to myself,
or I would meditate or pray, you know, and that
I would get down and do push ups. And I
figured out that that little exercise, you know, the meditation

(38:49):
plus the physical exercise, it provided a balance for me
so that I was able to stay a little more
solid throughout the rest of the day. I would sleep
a little better at night. I was in a little
bit more control. And then on top of that, when
we weren't in these little tight camps, we would be
moving always on foot through the jungle and we would

(39:11):
have to carry heavy backpacks. And the very first movement
we did was torture, Like physically, you know, I couldn't
do it. We had just we had been locked in
a camp for two months, sedentary, hardly moving, and then
all of a sudden, they're like, let's go. You know,
we just the camp had just been bombed. We're another

(39:32):
miracle that we survived that. But they're like, let's go,
and they moved us for only four days. That was
one of the shorter movements, and the three of us
were dying at you know, every single day, like every
step was so hard to do because we hadn't been
moving at all. And so I realized, if if I'm
going to survive this, I have to be a little

(39:52):
a little stronger physically. Yeah, yeah. Then and then later
we learned about the Colombians discovering encampments where other hostages
were being held, and when they went in to try
to rescue those hostages, the terrorists killed all the hostages
and they ran away and they didn't even get caught.

(40:14):
None of them got caught, but all of the hostages died.
And when I learned about that, I figured out, you know,
I need to do more than just what's required of
me as you know, as a hostage, right, I need
I need to do more than just the minimum if
I'm going to survive this. And the three of us
talked about that, and we came up with a plan

(40:38):
to help us survive, you know, and really none of
us had a whole lot of train survival training for
that time.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Had the advantage that you guys could recognize the sound
of aircraft from further away than the terrorists. Because most
of these terrorists were like teenage kids that had been
recruited off the streets and sold a pack of lies
about you know, this better life and whatever. So they
were disorganized to some degree. Most of them were uneducated.

(41:07):
A few of them were pretty decently educated, but they
had the advantage. You know, Keith, Mark and Tom could
hear aircraft. And Keith especially he was like, yeah, he
had amazing ears. He'd know if it was a black Hawk,
he'd know if it was a Fantasma, Like he could
identify the exact type of aircraft, and they would know

(41:27):
whether it was like, okay, do we need to like,
what's our plan? Do we need to run? You know,
you had parts of certain camps where you could recognize
a vulnerability where and there was one story that was
kind of crazy because if I didn't know you, I
would have been worried reading it. But there was one
point where they heard aircraft coming and I might be

(41:48):
getting this wrong, but there was a weakness in one
of the perimeter fences. So Mark got out from under
it and is like way out in the woods on
the jungle, you know, and Keith and Tom are like,
oh crap, well the planes went over. It really wasn't
It wasn't a rescue. So now Mark's on the other
side of the fence trying to figure out, oh crap,

(42:08):
how do I get back into camp before they realize
I'm gone? And then they realized that we kind of
know how to exploit a weakness here in the camp. Like,
so that was definitely I'm sure you want to talk
about pucker factor five. You were probably at eleven that time.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
Yeah, Yeah, that was that was scary. But because we
knew that their orders were to kill us if it
was a rescue, and we also knew a rescue would
come via helicopter. Right every time we heard helicopters, you know,
we would alert each other and then we would you know,
just be ready to do our plan. And our plan
was super basic and simple. Scatter like chickens. Yeah, because

(42:44):
we know they're going to come shooting, and if you know,
if we make a little bit of distance, we might
you know, they might miss. We might be able to survive.
You know, it's seconds matter, rightly. And the other thing
we tried to do was be calm throughout the entire
captivity and make them believe we're not a threat, make

(43:05):
them believe we're not gonna move, you know, And so
we so we tried to maintain mobility by being still,
you know, and it worked for a while. Our biggest
thing was to try to stay out of heavy restraints,
and we did do that. I mean, there were times.
We were restrained almost always, or we were almost always
like in Kate, you know, in Kate's or something. But

(43:30):
what we didn't want was to be chained, and we were,
you know, and our plan worked for a few years.
The last two years we were they eventually put one
hostage escaped and that's when they put us in very
heavy chains, you know, And so I was chained by
the neck, you know, and it was padlocked shut the
little loop and the other end of the chain was

(43:50):
was chained to Keith's neck or you know, if we
were you know, in a camp, they would chain into
a tree or something. It's like that. So that was bad.
That's a bad situation for hostage because now I don't
have any mobility, you know, if they get the guard
to shoot, you know, there's not a lot I can
do at that point. And they did that, you know, sadly,
they killed a lot of hostages. And so the fact

(44:13):
that we made it out of their live, you know,
it's another miracle for me.

Speaker 5 (44:17):
They perceived you having value as being American, being Americans
in camp and at some point to trying to again
try to borrow that off for whatever they want to do.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
Yeah, Yeah, you know, in the beginning, I think what
they were hoping to get was what they call it
dispay Hey, which is a demilitarized zone. They wanted this
large piece of land about the size of New Jersey
to be demilitarized where they can be safely and the
army can't do operations against them. And they requested that

(44:48):
because they had received that under a different administration, another
Columbian president actually gave them that, and they had used
it to get much stronger, and they wanted that again.
And so that's what they had, this group of around
eighty seven political hostages, the three of Us, the three
Americans included, and that's what they were wanting. But then
one of their high level leaders was captured and he

(45:10):
was actually in Ecuador and he was acting as like
the negotiator for the Three Americans, you know, making the
demands and stuff, and he got caught and he got
extradited to the US and sentenced to sixty years for kidnapping. Well,
we were still being held hostage when that happened. And
when that happened, the FARK changed their position with the

(45:31):
Three of Us and they said, well, we're not going
to release the three Americans unless you send our guy home.
And so that trade. Yeah, well that was never going
to happen at that point because President Bush was in charge.
He remember his.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Deal, we do not negotiate with terrorists. Yeah, I specifically
remember that.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
Yeah, so that that Once that happened, it appeared to
me like we were never going to get out of there.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I even sure at one point they said, you said
in the book that they told you guys, what ever
sentence he gets, you guys are getting too getting Yeah,
so that's scary.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it looked it seemed to me
we were never going to get out of there. You know,
So I would think about my future, what does that
look like? You know, am I going to die? Am
I dying there? Or am I going to come home
one day? And if I looked at all like the
the you know, the evidence what was happening, it was bad.

(46:26):
It didn't look like we were going to get out
of there. A military rescue was very hard because it's
you're just in the jungle. Anytime that they heard helicopters,
they were alert. Man. They would they would position themselves
and be it ready to receive the order to shoot us.
Every single time we heard helicopters. That was hundreds of times.
So rescue looked like it could never happen, a negotiation

(46:49):
looked like it could never happen. And escape was very hard,
not only because of the gorilla the terrorists who were,
you know, always guarding us. It was more than jungle
that was them, that was holy us there. The jungle
is just huge, man. And if you don't know how
to survive, which is like eat from you know, knowing
which trees produce nuts that are not poisonous.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Situation, and they look exactly the same with the exception
of some tiny little distinguishing thing. Yeah, that was hard,
but it came obviously because you're here.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Yeah, so it happened, man, another miracle. If you guys,
if people here don't believe in God, please just read
my book and listen to this story, because God exists
and this, all of this is the hand of God
for me. So what happened was the Fark group that
was holding us. They had daily communications with their bosses

(47:41):
where which and who knows where they were. They were
somewhere else in the country, but they would just use
basic HF radio to do those communications. Anybody could hear
those Everything that they talked about was encrypted using US
like old school codes. But the Columbian Army already broke
in that encryption years ago, so they knew every all
the comms that were going back and forth, well, some

(48:04):
low level like EPHOR, and the Columbian Army said, hey,
why don't we just start answering those communications, pretend we're
the bosses, and let's give them orders. And they got
ahold of that idea, that idea, and that's what they
started to do. So they intercepted the comms and respond,
you know, and say okay, house hostage, so and so,
blah blah, you know, and they would start to give

(48:24):
little orders, move to this position, move that hostage to
this group, you know. And when they saw that the
terrorist group group that was holding us were completing they
were fulfilling the orders, they came up with the idea
to send helicopters in and under the guise of saying,
we're gonna move the hostages to here to where we

(48:47):
are to do a proof of life. And the leaders
of our group they believed it, and so they came in.
The Columbian Army came in on two large civilian life helicopters.
One of them came in and landed, and they came out,
you know, everybody dressed in civilian clothes, pretending to be

(49:07):
a like an ngo, like a Venezuelan ngo press or whatever.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, the Australian guy got me because I was like,
hold on a minute, when he said he was Australian,
like you could probably very clearly tell he did not
have the accent to back that up, right.

Speaker 4 (49:21):
No, yeah, not at all. You know. When we I
didn't know anything about what was going on. You know,
I heard the sound of helicopters approaching. I learned to
Keith and Tom and you know, got ready to do
whatever we need to do to survive. But that day
the terrorists acted differently, you know, instead of surrounding us
or positioning to shoot, they you know, they were like, hey, Tom,

(49:44):
you're with me, Keith, you're with me, and they were
they led us away from the structure we were in
and we went into a field and I saw the
helicopters approaching and they were painted white and red, you know,
not like you know, they weren't militarily helicopters. And so
when I saw that, man, I was like, Oh, maybe
they're gonna let us free. I got so excited. I

(50:04):
thought maybe they're just gonna let us go. And so
one of the helicopters comes in at lands like a
guy with a camera comes out, another guy with a microphone,
looked like a news crew comes out. They go and
start interviewing the gorilla, and I'm super excited. And they
somebody from the crew came up to the hostages and
they said, hey, are you guys in good enough health

(50:25):
to fly? And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, let's go. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Freedom to go. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:30):
And so as they lead us to the helicopter, a
group of the crew, the helicopter crew stops us and
they say, hey, but you have to get We have
to restrain you before you get on. That's our our
agreement with the terrorists or you know, with the gorilla.
And once I heard that, I was like, oh, this
can't this is not for our freedom. Why would you
have to tie me up to set me free? You know,

(50:51):
I went from this point of being extremely happy, you know,
thing elated, thinking it's going to happen, We're finally going
to be set free, to crashing hard realizing this is
not for our freedom. They're going to probably move us
to Venezuela, and if that happens, there's you know, we're dead.
They start tying up the hostages, you know. And all
throughout my captivity, I was super careful about resistance, you know.

(51:13):
I would choose the moments to resist because you only
get a certain number of those. And I decided that's
the time I'm going to resist, you know. And I'm like,
I'm not getting tied up. You know, the civilians are.
They're zip tying people's hands, and I'm like, I'm not
doing it. These terrorists have had me in chains, you know.
And one of them came up to us. His name

(51:34):
was Daniel and he claimed to be Australian and he
was speaking English. He was speaking English.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
My thought, as I'm reading this book is I'm like,
there's no way this guy walked up. I was like, good,
I might no Australians for that horrible impression, but there's
no way.

Speaker 4 (51:50):
He was throwing in like a mate here and there.
But it didn't sound Australian at all, you know. And
I'm like, but I you know, is this for our freedom?
I asked? He said yes. I said, well, when he goes,
I don't know, he says. All I can tell he is,
we're here to help you. And he lists up his
wearing these ray bands unglasses. He lifts up his glasses,
looks at me, eyed eyes like, just just trust me.

(52:12):
We're here to help you. So they tie me up.
I agree, right like, I really didn't have a choice.
They were they were, They would have got me on
there anyways. But they tie me up and I get
on the helicopter with you know, all the other hostages.
The helicopter crew is on board, and there's two terrorists
on board, but they're the leaders of that entire region.
The number one leader and the number two leader of

(52:34):
the entire region are on the helicopter, and as soon
as it takes off, that entire crew pounces on them.
And I remember, you know, Caesar, the number one guy
for the region, he's got his pistol in his hand.
He's ready to fight. Keith is right next to him,
and I'm screaming, Keith, Keith. You know, I'm just thinking
make distance. This is programmed in make distance. And somebody

(52:58):
grabs me. I was standing up up. My hands and
feet are tied, but I'm standing up somebody grabs and me,
pushes me back into my seat and says, we're the army.
In Spanish, he goes, we're the army, and everybody shouting
we're the army, We're the army, and I didn't get it,
man if I then when this started, I didn't speak Spanish,
but over the course of the five and a half
years I had learned. I became fluent in Spanish. And

(53:20):
when he said, it's almost at hersito, we're the Army,
it went over my head. I didn't understand it until
you know, I was just concerned about Keith, until I
really I looked at Caesar and I see his pistol
has been taken away. He's being disarmed. All of these
crew members of the helicopter are on top of them,
beating it like ground and pound, like mma harder than
that ground and pound, beating him down. He's fighting, And

(53:44):
that's when I realized, holy cow, we're free. You know,
the Army, they're the Army rescue. Yeah, So it was
it was like that that they got us out of there.
Not a bullet was fired. You know, a couple of
people injured during that little ground and pound thing. See,
got really beat up. He deserved it.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
I was just gonna say, I'm like, as he deserved.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
But yeah, yeah, the other the other leader, his name
was Enrique. He was one of the He was actually
the leader of the group that was guarding us. An evil,
evil guy. He was really, I mean, cruel for no reason.
He would be cruel to us without reason and h
he had come into camp and he would tell us

(54:25):
how he will never be captured alive. He was going
to fight to He's not like us, we got caught
or we're losers because we got captured. He said he
would never get captured alive. Well, he didn't. He hardly
put up any of a fight. Man, he gave up instant. Yeah,
he gave up.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Tough guy.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
Yeah, the tough guy. Yeah. Now Caesar, the guy above him,
he was, he was in it, man, he was fighting
to the end. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
He was trying to get his done to shoot people.
That's why they had to get that away from him.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Yeah, And they were they were holding him down and
he was he was just struggling. And one of the
crew came up and you know, I'm untied by now,
and he's holding Caesar's wrist down. He looks at me.
He says, grab that bag and grab the vial and
the needle.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
So I grabbed the vial and a needle whatever vile
and eel I could find out of his big bag,
and I handed to him and they injected him with
something right in the butt. And that's when Caesar stopped fighting.
He went to sleep.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Here you wow, So they extracted you, guys, They brought
you back to San Antonio. You landed at Lachlan. You're
a Brook Army Medical Center for a while, which debrief
today is Joint Base San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston or
something like that. It's a big long name now. But
you were debriefed. You were reunited with your family, but

(55:38):
in small steps, like you said that they had they
had a process for this already in place with all
the necessary medical professionals, and you went through a reintegration
process where you slowly started venturing off base, having adventures
things like that to kind of just get you back
into the groove of Americans society.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
So from there, you know, I have to say, like
I know, you were a contractor for Northrope Grumman, and
I was actually really impressed that they did such a
good job taking care of your families. You know it
really it made it seem like they were a really

(56:22):
awesome employer. God forbid, if you had to go through
something like that that they it seemed like they did
the right thing, which most differently, I have to admit,
I think in a lot of ways, a lot of
us seemed to think that if something like that happened,
some companies would be like, you know, looking out for
people for a little while, but then after a while
they'd be like, you know, and it would kind of
they'd fall into the ether kind of thing and kind

(56:44):
of fade out.

Speaker 4 (56:45):
Yeah, Yeah, that didn't happen. North with Grumman was there
the entire time. They continued paying our salaries. That's a
wonderful time. They would meet with our families regularly. They
were involved the entire They were actually building technology to
help finding, help find us, wow and find and some
of that technology ended up in the jungle and the
gorilla found it, you know, like little sensor camera sensors

(57:06):
that were buried and things like that.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
I remember you guys even talking about that when you
were on a march or something, finding like cameras on
sticks or something that were in the jungle and just
being like, yeah, we know somebody's around, and it's got
to be somebody that's you know, looking for us or
friendly to us.

Speaker 4 (57:23):
So yeah, and that was one of their sensors.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (57:26):
Crazy, So that Yeah, an amazing company. You know, they
stood by us the entire way and then afterwards going
back to work. I mean, what a phenomenal company. And
in a world where it's you know, corporations are it's
about profit, that's necessarily about people, but some companies care
about their people.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
They still prioritize that. Yeah, that's wonderful. Well man, So
this has been definitely, I think one of my favorite interviews.
But for those of you who want more of the
story and want to know the whole story, the book
again is called Out of Captivity Surviving One thy nine
hundred and sixty seven Days in the Colombian Jungle. It's

(58:06):
written by Marklinsolves, Keith Stancel, and Tom Howees with the
help of Gary Brosek. I got my copy off Amazon.
You can find it all over the place, so if
you look it up real quick you can see it.
But Mark, we just appreciate you coming on the show.
Thank you for your military service. Thank you for staying

(58:27):
resilient and you know, being so brave as to survive
what you did and then to tell the story so
that people can understand that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
And I mean, I'm just I'm kind of like, I'm
proud to say I know you. That's really cool. I'm like, wow.
So yeah, thank you so much for being.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
On this show indefinitely.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
And I apologize for not doing this earlier in the
show my jaw locked up, but I want to say
thank you for your sacrifice. We feel that you are
a mentor of mentors and you don't talk about it.
You lived it and had that self reflection during a
time of extreme adversity and you turned it around and

(59:09):
made it a moment of value. And hopefully we can
share that gift that you provided us on our show
and our listeners to kind of how you'll make our
world a better place.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:18):
Well, I appreciate you guys for having.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Me man anytime, any absolutely, and that's our show for today,
So thanks for joining us. Rally Pointers fall out dismissed