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'I'm still here'

In December 2001, Susana Correa was kidnapped by one of Colombia's guerrilla armies. After 13 months, her family ended negotiations and placed their hopes with police.

MIAMI - Susana Correa's real-life nightmare began with a bump.

She was heading home from work outside the Colombian city of Cali when a vehicle hit the rear of her Toyota Land Cruiser.

Moments later four people leapt into the car. One of them squeezed into Correa's seat and stuck a pistol in her ribs.

It would be 13 months before Correa, 40, would regain her freedom.

On Jan. 4 this year an elite squad of Colombian antikidnap police rescued her from a remote peasant hut where she was being held by left-wing guerrillas.

Video footage of the dramatic police operation, and Correa's emotional reunion with her family, made the national news.

But until recently most Colombian kidnappings didn't end so joyfully.

Last month rebels executed 10 hostages during a failed military rescue. The dead included two prominent politicians. That tragedy highlighted a terrible dilemma for the Colombian government: whether the security forces should attempt risky rescues, or negotiate.

Sheer numbers - there were 2,986 abductions last year - make it impossible for every case to get official attention. Wealthy families mostly prefer to use professional negotiators to quietly arrange payment of a ransom.

Colombia's sparsely populated jungle and mountains allow rebel forces and drug traffickers to keep people hidden and to operate with relative impunity.

"We strongly recommend that rescues not be attempted unless there is absolutely no alternative," said Juan Valadez, a retired CIA agent with Thomas A. Clayton Consultants, a California-based global risk and crisis management firm. "Most hostages who die in captivity die in rescue attempts."

The government says that is changing. Its antikidnap units, generally ineffective since their creation in the mid 1990s, have greatly improved their record in recent months. According to official statistics, 693 hostages were rescued last year; only one died in the operations. By the end of April this year, the government had freed 190 captives.

Colombia's government has made kidnapping a top priority.

"It's very important for us," said Vice President Francisco Santos, who was kidnapped for eight months in 1990. "It's a very powerful military weapon."

Ransom payments help fuel the country's long-running armed conflict, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the revenue of outlaw groups, officials say.

Instead, the government is urging Colombians to collaborate more with the authorities by reporting suspicious activity. Under a new scheme, the government offers rewards as well as guarantees of anonymity.

The United States is providing $25-million this year to help train antikidnap units, known as GAULA (Unified Action Liberty Groups) throughout the country. The program includes funding to start an antikidnap training school, with U.S. experts, equipment and special training facilities.

It wasn't until the next day - Dec. 5, 2001 - that anyone noticed she was gone.

Correa failed to show up at Cali airport for an early morning flight to Bogota to attend a business meeting.

By the time the military was alerted, she was already far away. Abductors drove Correa - along with her chauffeur and a colleague from work - up into the Jamundi mountains south of the city.

Waiting for them were 20 uniformed armed men wearing the red arm-bands of the Army of National Liberation, the smaller of Colombia's two guerrilla armies, known by its Spanish abbreviation ELN. The unit was commanded by a rebel named "El Profe" (the teacher).

El Profe began by apologizing: "Que pena (What a shame). . . . You all look like decent people."

He questioned each one of them, asking for addresses and telephone numbers. El Profe asked if Correa owned the gas company where she worked, Northern Valley Gases. He seemed surprised when she said no, she was just the manager. He told Correa he had a lot of information about her.

What he didn't seem to know was that she was a hard-working single mother with a degree from Harvard Business School.

Her colleague, Oscar Ocampo, and the chauffeur were taken away. Correa was given a pair of rubber boots and told to start walking.

A week later they reached a wooden hut that would be home for the next four months. The rebels called her "Mona," the Spanish equivalent of "Blondie," and they gave her some new clothes and a radio. She spent her days playing ludo, a board game that involves getting all one's pieces safely home.

During the day she also determined to be as helpful as she could to make relations easier with her captors.

"I have to get through this," she told herself.

"I washed clothes, anything to relieve the boredom," she said. The only thing her guards - sometimes there were only one or two - wouldn't allow her to do was cook, fearing she might cut or burn herself.

"I was the merchandise," she said. "They didn't want me getting hurt."

She slept on a bed of wooden planks. There was no mattress. The chauffeur had lent her his leather jacket before she was marched off. Now she folded it each night and used it as a pillow.

It was 16 days before Correa's family received the first word of what had happened to her. On Dec. 23, Ocampo was released with a handwritten letter to Correa's father demanding a $5-million ransom:

We have your daughter as the bearer of this letter can certify. She is now well and only you will be responsible for whether she continues well or not. For her to recover her freedom the only way is for you to pay the ransom and we don't want you to try to be sly. . . . We are in no hurry. Your daughter is.

It was signed: "Los Magnificos" (the Magnificents).

For extra effect the rebels noted they had murdered Correa's chauffeur. His body was found dumped on a rural road, with several bullet wounds.

In a debriefing by a GAULA police unit, Ocampo identified a man known to police as Fidel Castro Murillo as El Profe. Castro is commander of the ELN's Jose Maria Becerra Southern Urban Front.

Correa's captors advised the family that communication would be conducted through a prearranged radio frequency. This common practice in Colombian kidnapping usually marks the start of a long, drawn-out negotiation process.

The family asked for some evidence that Correa was alive. Soon, Correa received a note from her captors asking her to list a number of personal details that only she and her family could identify.

In March her captors moved her to a farmhouse surrounded by fields of cassava, corn - and coca plants, the leaves of which are used to make cocaine. In return for food, Correa and her guards worked in the fields of two local peasant families, planting vegetables and helping pull coca leaves.

She also played with the peasant children and taught them how to read.

She learned she was being held in an area known as El Naya, a notorious river valley. Not far from Colombia's main Pacific port of Buenaventura, the Naya region is a key cross-country drug trafficking route, hotly contested by guerrillas and rival paramilitaries.

Correa discarded any escape plans. The nearest road was 12 hours away on foot.

Every Saturday night she tuned into a special radio program, Kidnap Voices, where relatives record messages for their missing loved ones. "Those were the sweetest moments," she said.

But it wasn't until May that she heard her mother for the first time. "I cried when I heard her say Daniela (Correa's 8-year-old daughter) was fine, and she'd earned a reading certificate."

In September, Correa was moved again. She noticed the new house was only 500 yards from a path through the wooded hillside. She regularly saw peasants walk by. Maybe one of them would realize who she was and tell the authorities.

But by October she began to despair. The guerrillas told her: "Mona, be patient."

In November the rebels finally allowed Correa to write a letter to her parents. She didn't know where to begin. Almost a year had passed and she realized she was nearing the limits of her endurance. She can still recite the letter by heart.

"I know you are doing everything you can," she wrote, "but I'm still here."

She went on to say that her health was good, except for some dizzy spells. "I've lost some weight," she wrote, "but spiritual deterioration is imminent."

She finished with a message to her father: "Don't let me spend another black Christmas here. Do whatever it takes, including the impossible."

As Christmas approached she tried to stay cheerful. She made a nativity scene. Her guards joined her in prayer.

But Christmas came and went.

Back in Cali negotiations for her ransom moved slowly. The family tried in vain to argue that Correa was not an independently wealthy woman. Divorced, she lived on her manager's salary, about $4,500 a month. Her abductors began to focus instead on the wealth of her father, a leading Cali businessman.

Instead of lowering the ransom demand, as is normally the case in kidnap negotiations, the rebels raised it to $15-million.

Correa's father felt time was running out. When her letter arrived Dec. 1, he believed she was trying to send a message: "I want to be rescued. Don't negotiate."

In early November, an informer told police about a female hostage being held in a farmhouse in an area known as Alto El Naya. The informer told police she was being guarded by five members of the ELN. The farm's main crop was coca.

The source, accompanied by GAULA agents, made the trek Nov. 25 to verify the information. The source was sent back again Dec. 21, and saw Correa from about 20 yards away.

Correa's father authorized a rescue attempt. Enlisting the help of the Colombian air force, the GAULA requested flights over the area at 8,000 feet, to verify if Correa was still in the farmhouse.

On the morning of Jan. 4, six Black Hawk helicopters took off from Cali toward Alto El Naya. Each of the GAULA teams on board carried a photo of Correa taken at a wedding reception shortly before her kidnapping.

When she heard the choppers, Correa was in the middle of preparing lunch, a plantain and cassava stew. She was alone with Santos, one of her guards.

Santos began bringing down the radio antenna. He nervously asked Correa to help him hide it.

She dashed inside to put her boots on. Suddenly, 10 heavily armed policemen stood in the doorway, pointing their guns at her.

"That's her, that's her," someone shouted. Correa was hustled out of the house and bundled into a bulletproof jacket. Santos was handcuffed.

Moments later, she watched through the doorway of one of the Black Hawks as the Naya Valley faded into the distance.

When the helicopter landed in Cali, a policeman in full combat gear jumped out and pumped his fists in the air.

Correa spotted her family across the field and ran clumsily in her boots toward them, calling out, "Papi."

After the first round of hugs she looked down at her boots and kicked them off in disgust.

Later, addressing her rescuers at the air force base, she gathered her thoughts.

"I never thought the government forces could do an operation like that," she said. "This should give faith to the families of other victims."

She saluted her father's "guts for seeking my rescue and not paying (the ransom)."

At a news conference on base, Vice President Santos thanked the policemen, and then directed his words to Colombians watching the evening news:

"Help us. Trust in us. The security forces have shown they know how to do things well, in a more coordinated way. Having Susana here next to us sends a clear message to the kidnappers."

Reunited with her family, Correa's first priority was a shower. It took an hour under the water before she finally felt clean.

- David Adams is the Times' Latin America correspondent. Sibylla Brodzinsky is a Times correspondent based in Bogota, Colombia.