Colombian planners of the July 2008 operation were probably keen to avoid the fate of the earliest rescue attempt. The misadventures of that fiasco, along with the final rescue attempt, are detailed in a new book by veteran Latin America journalist John Otis, Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages and Buried Treasure.

An excerpt follows:

Was it the water? Or the wild monkey? Either way, the improvised Amazon chow was playing havoc with Walter Suárez's innards. Suárez was part of a contingent of 147 Colombian soldiers punching through the snarled jungle foliage as part of a massive operation to encircle the guerrillas holding Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and Tom Howes. But as the troops marched deeper into the wild, they began running out of supplies.

To feed themselves, the soldiers aimed for macaws with their slingshots. They killed borugos, a kind of Amazon rodent that looks like a cross between a squirrel and a rat and is a popular source of jungle protein. They also bagged monkeys, which they would stew for hours before braising over a fire in an attempt to cook away the gamey taste. But the meat was stringy and tough and as they gnawed on the primates' tiny arms and legs, some of the soldiers felt like they were eating their young. Others couldn't keep anything down. Now, drifting in the netherworld between sleep and consciousness, Suárez twisted and turned in his hammock until he finally popped awake in the early- morning light. His stomach was about to detonate.

Suárez made his way past his colleagues in search of some privacy. Adding to the indignity of the moment, he'd run out of toilet paper, so he tore off the sleeves of a tattered T-shirt in his backpack. He squatted behind a tree and, to help balance himself, used both hands to drive his machete into the ground.

But something didn't feel right. As the blade pierced the soil, the metal struck something hard that gave off a hollow thud. Intrigued, Suárez finished his business, hitched up his pants, and began rooting around with his hands. After burrowing down about one foot, he discovered the top of a blue plastic five- gallon container. Suárez pried off the lid. Like foam in a beer stein, a white substance topped the 30-inch-tall barrel. Was it cocaine? Suárez plunged his hands into the powder, which turned out to be ant poison, then pulled out block after block of blue-and-white 20,000-peso bills.

Suárez's heart raced. Each plastic- wrapped packet contained a thousand banknotes, or 20 million Colombian pesos — the equivalent of nearly $7,000. His wallet had never held more than petty cash, but now he was stuffing his uniform pockets with thick wads of currency. It wasn't easy because his whole body quaked with the snap realization that he, Walter Suárez, a $44-a-week anonymous soldier condemned to a mission impossible, had just won a kind of ad hoc lottery.

There was no question that the money was the evil lucre of rebel drug deals, extortion rackets, and ransom payments made by the desperate relatives of hostages. By some estimates, such scams earned the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the country's largest guerrilla army known as the FARC — $500 million annually. But knowing that these riches were tainted didn't stop Suárez. "I was so happy. I'd never seen so much money," he said. "It was like the Virgin had appeared before me."

As word of the fantastic riches spread, more and more troops began scouring the jungle floor, hacking at the earth like overcaffeinated grave diggers. The blue barrels bulged with Colombian pesos but they also found yellow containers filled with U.S. currency. How much was there? Months later, a report by the office of Colombia's inspector general estimated that the containers held $14 million in U.S. and Colombian currency. But in the same report, several troops testified that the final haul exceeded $43 million. One government investigator said the figure was much higher — more than $80 million.

Lt. Jorge Sanabria, one of the two commanding officers, never seriously contemplated doing the right thing. His troops were so poor that none of them even qualified to pay income taxes. Besides, Sanabria figured that if they turned in the money, higher-ranking officers would give his soldiers three-day passes, then start filling their own pockets. Wasn't that what always happened? It was like that scene in the Clint Eastwood flick Kelly's Heroes, where the preppy American captain warns Big Joe and his exhausted foot soldiers that the punishment for looting is death even as he considers the logistics of loading a German yacht aboard a B-17.

What's more, the rebel stash had already been stolen by gun-toting bandits performing cashectomies on the good people of Colombia. Rather than committing a crime, Sanabria reasoned, his men were performing a public good. They were cheating the cheaters out of money that would otherwise go toward grenades and guns, making the guerrillas stronger. Rather than being castigated, they ought to be decorated. There was also a sense among the troops that the cash was a serendipitous payoff for years of dangerous duty protecting the homeland. And if that wasn't enough, it was Easter week, the holiest time of year in Colombia. Many soldiers viewed the treasure as nothing less than a gift from God.

Soon, however, the troops began to feel like they were trapped inside a gold mine with no way to extract the bullion. Their stacks of dollars and pesos added up to nothing because there was nothing to buy: no bars, no brothels, no BMW dealerships. "Imagine having so much money and nothing to eat!" said one of the Colombian GIs, Frankistey Giraldo, whose father named him after Frankenstein. When they looked at themselves, they still saw a bunch of hungry, unwashed peasants in the middle of no-man's land. They were fabulously wealthy. Except they weren't.

Yet even in a place where consumer spending never before existed, the rules of the market economy suddenly kicked in. And the explosive growth in the money supply, combined with pent-up demand, led to another economic phenomenon: hyperinflation. Cigarettes sold for as much as one million pesos a pack. A roll of toilet paper cost 100,000 pesos, or $34. Suárez recalled a bidding war that broke out over a transistor radio that finally sold for the equivalent of $12,000. Some of the troops, intent on spending every waking hour looking for money, bought their way out of KP by paying colleagues up to 10 million pesos — or about $3,500 — to replace them.

The treasure hunt lasted three glorious, sleepless, elongated, excruciating days and nights. Then word crackled over the radio that fresh troops were moving in to replace nouveau-riche grunts. It wasn't exactly mission accomplished. But the soldiers felt giddy all the same. They had penetrated into a rebel rearguard position, outwitted the enemy, and kept themselves alive. Then there was the money. Sure, they had struck out in their search for Keith, Marc and Tom. But referring to the twenty-, fifty-, and hundred-dollar bills they'd dug up, Suárez pointed out they had already found three gringos: Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Franklin.

**Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages and Buried Treasure.