Impossible Odds

willing to take on Jessica’s fear or pain, he would have gladly taken her father’s as well. To Erik, John lived out the phrase “grace under pressure” while all of them hung by the hands of the clock.
    The persistence of misery was fierce. Erik was unable to turn off the thoughts of Jessica’s torture, rape, murder—any of the most vile possibilities. It still felt like a betrayal of her to even consider such things, but his personal knowledge of the region tormented him. Moments after he forced himself to quit a negative thought pattern and switch to something positive, the terrible thoughts were already back. They returned and intruded, seeping in like poison gas, finding every crack in the house.
    •  •  •
    Jessica:
    Our fifth day in captivity started out like the others during our stay at the “Banda place.” We were rousted off the dew-soaked sleeping mats and got up shivering. I was so thirsty I might as well have had a mouthful of dirt. They moved us back under overhead cover to spend the daylight hours.
    The survival instinct was my substitute for a cup of coffee. The challenge of getting to a toilet bush and back while out in the open in front of a dozen men lifted the morning fog right out of me. I took the last scrap of thin cardboard from the cookie package and headed for a bush that was close enough so that nobody got nervous about an escape attempt, but also hidden enough that I could pretend there was a little dignity left to the situation. The pretense itself was worth something.
    I got back to the Banda structure without trouble from any of the thugs, who mostly looked strung out, as if they had been up all night and were ready to quit their shift. But there was nothing else to start the day, not even any water. The small bottle given to us once each day was far too little. They were also holding back on getting me antibiotics from any decent source for the inevitable urinary tract infection burning away inside me as a result of our medieval sanitary conditions. This was on top of the strain to our kidneys already caused by depriving us of water and forcing us into dehydration. Poul was just as concerned about water and got assertive with one of the guards, pantomiming the need for water and persisting when the guard hollered to silence him.
    But a moment later Poul grew angry and began shouting back at the man. It happened quickly—the voices hit just the right pitch, things ignited, and the guard leaped toward Poul. He cocked his AK-47, pulled the trigger, and held it down while the firing mechanism went click on the empty chamber.
    It was only a second later that I realized I should have been looking at Poul’s dead body and expecting to join him. But no, it was only a joke. A power play. A little reminder that Poul’s macho display had been recognized but slapped to the ground.
    Good morning, then. Pretty sure I’m awake now.
    Abdilahi, the young boy I’d been seeing around since the beginning, happened to walk close to me. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing one of the Mine Risk Education bracelets my NGO gives out to all the kids after they attend our classes on avoiding war munitions. I had to swallow hard to keep from gasping out loud while the thought hit me: This boy was one of our students?
    I might have trained the teacher who taught this boy’s class. The visual materials I helped create to effectively convey information to people whether they are literate or not were most likely used in his class. This was one of the kids we were fighting toprotect. I forced myself to look away from him. Thank God I haven’t been teaching locally, because if this kid recognized me, he might feel the need to impress the elders by revealing that. Who can tell what sort of resentment they have toward my NGO in spite of our work?
    A few seconds of casually observing him confirmed his exaggerated macho posturing as an obvious bid for authentication from the adult males. This was a kid who could cut your throat for pocket change.
    I couldn’t take my attention off him. He was a bomb with an invisible fuse. Swaggering, grinning, compensating for his youth with loud behavior and an aggressive voice, he seldom spoke in a normal tone. I searched for anything about his behavior to give a clue to how and why he happened to be in this place, a pubescent boy swaggering around with a deadly weapon and chewing through the daily khat ration of a grown addict. I didn’t get his