Running late for work one morning in September 1994, Tom Hargrove, communications director for an international agricultural aid organization in Cali, Colombia, was mildly annoyed when he spotted a roadblock, or reten, manned by soldiers in fatigues. He chafed at the delay, but told himself that guerrillas and kidnappers didn't operate on a main highway in broad daylight.
But Hargrove had been dreadfully mistaken. Despite his assertions that he worked for a non-profit agricultural agency, he was forced at gunpoint into a vehicle and driven into the mountains by communist narco-terrorists...