``Get down Fathers,'' shouted an army soldier before a fusillade of bullets cracked and whined overhead, ending the kidnapping of a bishop and a priest that had shaken Roman Catholics from Colombia to the Vatican.
Upon hearing the words, Bishop Jorge Jimenez and the Rev. Desiderio Orjuela threw themselves to the ground as the bullets killed one of their rebel captors and sent most of the others fleeing.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Jimenez - one of Latin America's most prominent bishops - described his four-day ordeal that ended with the dramatic rescue Friday.
The churchmen were kidnapped Monday as they drove to preside over a Roman Catholic ceremony in a village north of Bogota, the capital. Soon, they were riding on horseback in the rain through the mountains of central Colombia with heavily armed Colombian rebels at their side.
They spent the next four days and nights walking and being led on horseback through streams and up and down mountainsides, enduring sleepless nights, bug bites. The rebel commander showed no pity.
Jimenez said also found a rare display of compassion from a 17-year-old rebel - the one guerrilla who was killed during Friday's rescue.
All the while, government troops backed by helicopters were closing in on the rebels and their captives, guided by tips from farmers and ranchers in the area. Pope John Paul II and other church leaders worldwide repeatedly demanded that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, free the priests.
Right after the rebels intercepted the priests' car, they told Orjuela he could go free, knowing that the village priest was not as valuable a captive as Jimenez, the president of the Latin American bishops conference. The conference determines Roman Catholic Church policy in 22 nations in Latin America, home to nearly half the world's Catholics.
But the 68-year-old Orjuela refused to abandon his friend.
``I couldn't have gotten through this without his company,'' Jimenez said Friday night, as he was driven from Bogota 25 miles north to the town of Zipaquira, where he is based.
The first night of his captivity, Jimenez spent nine hours on horseback before the group of eight rebels and two hostages finally stopped before dawn. Spreading a sleeping pad under a tree, one of the rebels said: ``Father, here is your home.''
Then it was up again, walking and riding on horseback through the mountains, the rebels nervously trying to evade hundreds of government troops backed by helicopters who had been dispatched by the armed forces' high command to rescue them.
Once, when Jimenez and Orjuela were whispering prayers for strength, the chief of the rebel band threatened to gag them.
But as they settled in for another night, one 17-year-old guerrilla watched as a weary Jimenez took off his shoes and then prepared to remove his wet socks.
The rebel told Jimenez he should keep his socks on, to keep the mosquitos from biting his ankles. The rebel knelt in front of Jimenez and began rubbing his feet to bring them some warmth.
``Father, you don't know how it hurts me to see you suffer,'' Jimenez recalled the young rebel saying.
Some of the FARC rebels initially told Jimenez that he had been kidnapped for ransom, but Jimenez later overhead a rebel commander describing the bishop as ``exchangeable'' for captured rebels being held in Colombian jails.
The FARC are holding dozens of prominent Colombians in an effort to force the government to exchange them for imprisoned rebels. President Alvaro Uribe had previously ruled out an exchange, but after Jimenez's kidnapping, the president suggest United Nations mediation.
Minutes before the army troops closed in, the 17-year-old rebel approached Jimenez and - in a whisper so he couldn't be overheard - asked for help leaving the rebel band.
Before Jimenez could respond, the warning shout came from the soldiers, the clerics hit the dirt, and the hostage drama was over. The young rebel lay dead on the ground. Two other guerrillas were captured. The rest fled.