3 Kidnaped on Venezuela Fishing Trip : Crime: Friends wait for word in Louisiana and hope for the best after gunmen abduct their companion and two others in a plane.

SLIDELL, La. — Kirk Pichon had saved for two years to make the trip with his four buddies.

On Tuesday morning, he was slumped glumly in a darkened living room, wondering what had happened to Jim Lamarque, the man who had helped put together the fishing expedition to the Venezuelan interior. Was he dead? Was he trying to find his way through the jungle with the other two men who had been kidnaped? Was he being held prisoner?

It started out as a sportsman’s dream, fishing for peacock bass in a place so far removed from civilization that a plane had to ferry them in and out. The plane had just landed last Saturday afternoon to fly the fishermen back out when four young men raced from the jungle, firing pistols and holding hand grenades.

The gunmen forced four of the fishermen to stand aside. They then jumped in the plane and ordered it to take off. With them were the pilot, the Canadian co-owner of the fish camp, and Jim Lamarque. The twin-engine Beech aircraft took off to the north, banked and turned south toward the Colombian border, 40 miles away.

Now, they can only wait and hope for the best, which is that the gunmen merely wanted the plane for drug smuggling or some such purpose. The waiting is the worst part, that and the endless ringing of the telephone.

“I feel like the telephone is now an extension of my ear,” said John Lamarque, Jim’s brother, as he puffed on yet another cigarette.

All five men knew each other, as is the case with people who grow up together and then stay on in America’s small towns. In this case, it was Slidell, just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans and just west of the Mississippi border.

Jim Lamarque, 46, had always been the adventurer of the bunch. Once, he had made his living in Honduras dealing in exotic birds. But in the most recent years, he had divided his year between Slidell and Vero Beach, Fla., where he skippered yachts for the very rich. There are two pictures of him in John’s living room. Each shows a bearded, slightly paunchy man in shorts standing in front of a trophy marlin.

This was his third trip to the Venezuelan fishing camp, which he had talked up with his pals: Wayne Ciko, a repairman for South Central Bell; Robert Weiss, a medical doctor; Joe Ponson, the athletic director at Slidell’s Salmen High School, and Pichon, a general contractor.

They had flown from New Orleans to Miami to Caracas and then by charter to the Laguna Larga lodge, which was 135 miles from the nearest town. They fished during the day and drank beer in the evening, swapping stories and getting their tackle ready for the next day. They got to know the camp owners, Clayton Lofgron, a Canadian native, and Glenn Webb of Huntsville, Ala.

Last Saturday was departure day. The men were taking their last snapshots and home movies of the camp as the plane was making its final approach.

“Then I heard a pop, pop . . . pop, pop, pop. I saw four people running toward us, firing in the air,” Ponson said.

He said that Webb told everyone to stay calm.

Pichon said the men motioned for them to put their hands in the air, which he quickly did.

At first, the gunmen tried to load everyone, including themselves and the camp’s two-way radio, onto the eight-seater but realized there was not enough room. They started taking people out until only the pilot, Lofgron and Lamarque remained.

And then the plane was gone. As luck would have it, another plane had just landed at a nearby fishing camp. Webb raced over on foot, got the pilot to give chase and radioed what had happened. By then, it was too late. The other plane had too much of a lead.

The remaining four fishermen were ferried to the town of San Fernando, where they gave the first of what seemed interminable statements to police. There were also calls home, as well as the one to Lamarque’s brother to tell him what had happened.

“It’s been a nightmare,” John Lamarque said.