An Excerpt from Rescue the Captors

   As I stepped out into the open sunlight, I looked up and blinked, staring into the barrels of three machine guns. The gun’s owners glared at me as they said, “Hands up! March!” As they marched me up the street towards the airstrip, suddenly I heard a pistol shot. My abductors stopped. One kept his gun centered on me as the other one fired a burst of bullets back down the street. “Faster!” they commanded. “Keep moving!” They marched me past the airstrip and into the jungle. I wondered if they had shot my friend Gilberto. A dark, mustached guerrilla, whose name I learned later was Manuel, told me to lay down on my stomach there in the jungle. I wondered if they were going to shoot me. Manuel repeated the order in a harsher voice so I obeyed. “Well, I guess I just have to trust you!” I exclaimed as I lay down. Manuel pulled my arms behind me and I felt him place a rope around my neck and arms, joining the three loops with a central slipknot. Manuel stepped back and ordered me to get to my feet. I held my breath thinking about the .38 Smith and Wesson revolver that I always carried strapped to my left ankle. My pant leg had come up while I was on the ground, exposing the revolver. The guerrillas must have been blind not to have seen it. Rolling over and getting to my feet, I gave my pant leg a tug and breathed a sigh of relief when the cuff of my pants dropped down over the gun.

   They proceeded ...