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They don't find my questions on disappeared people, drugs and neo-Marxism as entertaining as I do. So it is time to cross the lines and join the military for combat missions against the FARC. I fly to Putumayo, the most southern and violent area in the Amazon region of Colombia. Our military transport Casa 212 lands in a clearing in the Amazon jungle. Officers of the Colombian military walk to the plane to welcome me to this remote war zone. There are no roads here, but there are trucks, buildings, a bulldozer, generators and aircraft. A completely self-contained oasis in the middle of the jungle. If I didn't know better, I would say that the military doesn't like the jungle. Dressed in crisp uniforms and clean jungle boots, they escort me to what looks like a large, three-story green vinyl tent surrounded by eyeball-height shiny black sandbags. The inside of the tent is blindingly white, air conditioned and furnished with brand-new modular office furniture. I am invited to watch a PowerPoint presentation that lays out the pain and misery of the Putumayo region. The colonel not only confirms the FARC's hand in drug cultivation but also lays out with excruciating detail the income from every region. The FARC provides the set-up money for seeds and chemicals, taxes every kilo of coca base and every kilo of refined final product. It also facilitates transportation and money collection. It's a sweet, high margin business. All you need is a good , dirty war to keep out the competition . Two hours into the presentation (complete with satellite photos, maps, graphs, animations and bar charts) I realize that the American military advisors have been hard at work. I plead for mercy and ask to see the war firsthand. After a delicious lunch of river catfish and potatoes, a US Green Beret drives us a few yards in a new Humvee to a blown out officers club that overlooks the wide Putumayo River. Across the brown turgid water is the triple canopy jungle of the Amazon. I am sitting on a patio and I assume that I will soon walk down the broken steps, past the concertina wire protected bunker and onto a waiting gunboat to see combat in the dense jungle beyond. But cakes and coffee are laid out and there is a soldier preparing a speech. It appears that there is another presentation to endure before heading off. Beside the podium, two young Colombian soldiers roll out a pair of four-foot-high loudspeakers. An officer begins to read a prepared script in Spanish: "First, the gunships will soften up the rebel base." I am sure I am getting it wrong. He is using the current tense as if describing something that is happening now. Then music blasts out of the two speakers and echoes off the jungle beyond. It is KC and The Sunshine Band. Then the unmistakable sound of a Huey firing a large caliber cannon and the whine of a minigun cuts through the throbbing beat. A chopper attack! But no, there it is, right in front of me: a Huey ripping into the jungle across from me with rockets. Tracers draw bright lines into the empty forest. I put my cake down as a massive tropical downpour starts. I am watching a live stage presentation of Apocalypse Now set to the beat of 1970s disco. I can barely hear the announcer. Over the thumping music and badoom badoom badoom of the guns, KC is belting out, "I'm your boogie man, I'm your boogie man, turn me on!" High-speed gunboats let rip into the jungle with bow-mounted .50 cals and 40mm grenades are launched into the green hell. Badoom badoom badoom. All hell breaks loose when, in a final pass, the jungle explodes to the sound of pre-planted C4 explosives with a gigantic WHAM. All that is left is the flat toneless smack smack smack of .50 caliber gunfire echoing off the jungle wall. As KC sings his final refrain, the announcer proclaims that the rebels have been subdued: "Thank you very much, and now it's time for more cake and coffee." I talk with some officers around me. One air force officer flies Puff the Magic Dragons (old DC-3s or C47s with cannons and miniguns designed to decimate rebel positions). He would like to take me up for a flight and show me but none of the planes are flying right now. I ask where the rebels are and he draws a circle with his finger. All around us. He smiles. Despite my entreaties to go down to the boats and see the war firsthand, I realize that I have just seen the war firsthand . Or at least this war in Colombia. I am put on a military transport and am back in my lUXUry hotel in Bogota before 6 PM. Damn and I haven't even seen the beaches. For me this war is too visible, too clean, too ordered and maybe even too American. Everyone has a reason but no one has a solution. No one has offered a concept for lasting peace, no one can drop me into a battle and no one can tell me when it will end. But every day the killing continues. Rebels attack police stations and kill everyone inside. Bombs explode in Bogota, people are kidnapped, informers are executed and paramilitaries sneak into campesino villages and execute every living thing. I do know that for Colombians, the war is a dark shapeless horror. Caught between the past and the future, the right and the left, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust there is nothing else to do but live each day and hope that one day the sound and the fury will subside. 71 •

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