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Oscar Lizcano lifted himself off his bed of leaves and struggled to his feet. He couldn't see his own hands in front of his face, but he felt the humid jungle air around him. Crossing the rebel encampment toward the tree line, he crept past men who kept AK-47s within reach as they slept the light sleep of outlaw soldiers on high alert, deep in a Colombian rain forest.
It was late October 2008, and after more than eight years in captivity, the 62-year-old former congressman and economics professor was ravaged by malaria and malnutrition. His eyes had sunk into their sockets, and his skin sagged under his ragged beard. Ninety-eight months of separation from his wife, two sons, and his work had nearly shattered his spirit. He could make his getaway, or die. Lizcano wasn't leaving alone. A 28-year-old rebel commander named Wilson Bueno Largo, nom de guerre Isaza, was risking a break for freedom too. After setting up camp earlier that night, he'd asked Lizcano for a game of chess. Over the board, Isaza looked at Lizcano with his one good eye—the other had been lost in battle—and said flatly, "You're gonna die here."
Lizcano stared at him.
"Get ready, old-timer," said Isaza. "I'm going to get you out of here."
His escape would be a dangerous gambit under any circumstances. But because Lizcano was one of the longest-held hostages of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the effort would be doubly treacherous. In 2002, President Alvaro Uribe took office, vowing to crack down on the group responsible for kidnapping thousands of his country's citizens in the past four decades. As a result, Lizcano's captors had been on the move, fearing air strikes and raids. Increasingly, rebels had been giving up and slipping away, including Isaza's girlfriend, who was now in hiding.
Just four months before, a special forces operation, with help from U.S. intelligence, had tricked the guerrillas into handing over three U.S. Pentagon contractors, the French Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, and 11 other Colombian captives. The rescue made headlines worldwide and sent the rebels into a tailspin. Lizcano was becoming less valuable by the day. Bartering him for release of their own men and women from government prisons probably wouldn't work now; it would be easier to just kill him.
Lizcano's nightmare had begun on a slow August afternoon in 2000 as the recently reelected congressman helped the mayor of Getsemaní, a hamlet in the mountains of central Colombia, campaign for her own reelection. Lizcano, clean-shaven and with his hair neatly clipped, had trained as an economist and been a respected teacher at Universidad Nacional in Manizales, but he had the charm and confidence of a natural politician and moved easily between the rural hills of his home district and Bogotá's gleaming halls of power. As he mingled with peasant farmers and day laborers, he felt no fear despite his awareness of rebel strongholds nearby.
The rebels hadn't been targeting politicians. Their tactics were terrifying but crude. They'd sweep into villages with homemade mortars, destroy police stations, and overrun army barracks. In the decades of trying to seize power from the government, however, their influence extended over a vast territory—at one time one third of the country.
As Lizcano and the mayor chatted with well-wishers, they were suddenly surrounded by a guerrilla band of 30 or more. "You are detained," one of them said, "and you will be held until there is a prisoner swap."
Three days later, the rebels let the mayor go, but Lizcano was marched the other way. As he watched a soldier in front of him hack a path with a machete through the virgin forest, Lizcano realized that everything had changed.
After more than a dozen nights of marching from site to site, Lizcano arrived at a sprawling encampment 150 miles west of the capital, Bogotá, and 90 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. From the outset, the guerrillas met Lizcano's questions with silence and isolated him in a small area. Soon he simply stopped talking, except to ask to use the toilet or wash his clothes. At night he'd fashion a makeshift tent in which he'd fall into a heavy, dreamless sleep, rarely waking before dawn.
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