Impossible Odds

their eyes. Naturally, in such company the term “humanized” would be literal. As a woman and a foreigner, full human status was not mine to claim.
    Poul could occasionally get a bit of conversation going withone of the men, but I would occupy the same social stratum as one of the termite stacks out there, if not for the ransom potential attached to me. At least the termite stacks had a clear function in helping provide better cell reception.
    I searched in vain for signs of guilt in the eyes of anyone who looked at me. Sometimes they averted their gaze, but instead of shame what I saw there seemed more like a complete lack of interest. Some of the men obviously took personal amusement in my illness. When they looked at me it was clear they saw a spoiled American who deserved her fate. Nothing in any of that explained what element of restraint was operating here on my behalf, or whether that restraint would hold. Whatever was controlling their violence up to that point, the force of that invisible thing was keeping us alive.
    It wasn’t any form of affection. I didn’t bother to attempt to position myself as one who had earned any special consideration from them because of my work, to let them see I was in this place to help their people regain a functional society. Here, those goals sounded like crap. You’ve been in our country doing what? Really? And why is that?
    My mouth tasted of the bad diesel water we used for washing when we were lucky enough to get it. My lower torso throbbed with nausea while I got lost in silent arguments with myself: I didn’t put myself here. But I did. I didn’t put myself here. But I had. I didn’t put myself here. But there I was anyway, stuck amid the jabbering of green-lipped zombies.
    Surely one of the circles of Hell is where they make you wait for you know not what, and you are given no sign when it will end.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    Now that the Crisis Management Team had a line to the kidnappers, one of the essential challenges was to handle the delicate negotiations in such a way that the kidnappers wouldn’t give up and sell their “property” rather than continue talking. The kidnappers’ spokesman, Jabreel, repeatedly cried out, “Pirates crazy!” and warned them the crazy pirates were threatening to sell Jessica and her colleague to the Al-Shabaab network because the drawn-out negotiations were costing them too much. It was a tiresome threat, repeatedly raised, but the prospect remained too real to ignore.
    Erik had always carried a certain sense of pride in his ability to show patience when necessary. Many times in his work, the ability served him well while he threaded legal needles in delicate negotiations. From the day of Jessica’s capture he began learning about levels of patience unknown to him. Until then, patience had been the capacity to hold his tongue when somebody got hot under the collar in a negotiating situation and went overboard on the tough talk and the threats. But the cost of that sort of patience was nothing, truly nothing, compared to the cost of silence now.
    This torture only began with the idiots on the other end of the kidnappers’ phone connection. The worst of it for Erik was self-inflicted when he agonized over being helpless to take some sort of bold and sweeping action, and force all of this to a conclusion.Take the old-fashioned caveman approach, hunt down those men and fight them to the death.
    Even if he had all the information in the world, there was nothing to be done with it. He was already connected to a huge network ranging from top politicians to guys on the ground in Somalia, as well as former Special Forces people from different countries, all of whom had offered their help. What kept him from accepting it was his pledge to do only what was in Jessica’s best interest. At this point he knew a private attack wasn’t an option, and even if an armed rescue plan went forward, the real professionals needed to do it. That didn’t mean the temptation wasn’t severe.
    It gave him no pleasure to recognize this in himself. This is what he experienced as the power of raw frustration mixed with mortal fear for a loved one. By this time in the waiting period he had already witnessed, in John Buchanan, how it was possible to remain essentially calm and steadfast even amid such terrible anguish. He just wasn’t quite that way himself. He would have loved to have taken it all like some star in an action movie, one of those guys