Families of Kidnapped Americans Want Answers

B O G O T A, Colombia, Sept. 29 -- They knew it was dangerous work. There were four Americans and a Colombian military escort on the single-engine Cessna flying high in the Andes in the heart of Colombia's guerrilla territory.

With a bird's-eye view they were surveying the illicit coca fields in the jungle below. Determining which would be sprayed with a chemical defoliant before the coca could be turned to cocaine and shipped to the streets of the United States.

Suddenly there was engine trouble.

Remarkably the pilot was able to make an emergency landing in a clearing in the jungle. All five survived the crash.

It is military work, but the Americans are ex-military men, under contract with the U.S. State Department. The United States is eager to keep its direct military involvement in the Colombia guerrilla war to a minimum. The men were drawn to Colombia by the adventure and the $140,000-a-year salary.

But on that February day their adventure became an harrowing ordeal.

Guerrillas saw the plane crash and quickly captured the five men. Two, American Thomas Janis and Colombian army Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, were executed. The three other Americans were taken hostage. More than seven months later Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes are still being held.

In her home Bristol, Conn., Gonsalves's mother, Jo Rosano, has erected a small shrine around a photo of her 32-year-old son in his U.S. Air Force uniform. A candle is always burning.

"It's like a nightmare I never wake up from," says Rosano, tears constantly filling here eyes.

But as time passes there is also rage.

"I think what they were doing was the dirty work for the military," says Rosano. "They weren't going to let the military do it because I feel that they must think that the military people are more valuable."

Enough Being Done?

Rosano can't understand why more effort hasn't been made to rescue three Americans who were working for the American government. She can't help comparing her son's plight to the dramatic rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq last spring.