Impossible Odds

hostages, so this meant that condition number onefor mounting a rescue attempt (if Jess was known to be in immediate lethal danger) had not been met. And while Jessica’s health had to have been badly affected by this entire experience, there was no specific information on that. Up to now, the kidnappers’ communicator, Jabreel, hadn’t allowed her to talk long enough to describe her physical state, so condition number two (that Jess’s health was failing) had not been met either.
    Condition number three (that negotiations had stalled) was drawing closer. Longer periods between calls were being enforced by the captors. Negotiations weren’t going well at all. Even though Erik and the family were kept out of the dollar negotiations, they had to be told the ransom demands were far out of range in order to allow them to participate in strategy discussions.
    This Jabreel character seemed to go into a rage every few seconds. More than his interest in communicating on behalf of the kidnappers, he constantly changed the topic to insist he was not one of “these pirates,” and that he ran “a local NGO” and was “a respected citizen.” He insisted he’d been brought in especially to give weight to the negotiations. Any comment made to Jabreel indicating he might be anything less was met with another emotional outburst from him, wasting valuable bits of communication time.
    Erik’s years of experience in the Somali political scene gave him certain insights into the reasons for the kidnappers’ irrational demands, beyond what he was officially allowed to know as the husband of the American hostage. He had a good idea of what the American agencies in the area might be capable of doing in gathering intelligence. Having followed current events in Somalia over the years, he could imagine some of the surveillance methods used by Matt and his colleagues. It was public knowledge throughout the media that American drones were used in the region, and he had a few guesses about what other methods were employed.
    He had knowledge of many of the local people who couldtap into the region’s gossip network, and for all of technology’s advancement, this network remained blind to the latest spy machinery. In this manner the old ways returned, back from the time before these dazzling things. This was the safest way for Erik to get messages to the kidnappers that they would not realize originated with him, hints of misinformation to help keep the kidnappers off-balance. On the verbal gossip network, communication was done quietly, one person to another, along a chain of speakers known to one another. Each one is responsible for whatever he speaks into that network. Liars wake up to groups of angry people crowded at their door. The fear of vengeance from one’s neighbors keeps the network safe from loose lips. But it does not keep the network safe from outside information, clandestinely fed into the arteries of the community.
    On the ground in Somalia, the kidnappers were plagued by ignorance of the capabilities of their opponents, but they used what they knew to put up their best defense. They kept the hostages covered under scrub tree branches during the daylight hours, which effectively concealed them from overhead observation. But their nighttime procedures failed them, when they consistently moved the hostages into the open for sleeping.
    The raging paranoia of the kidnappers—their long trips into the desert to disguise their location with the cell signal, the days spent holding the hostages under tree cover—had a firm basis in reality, as far as it went. Although they held the upper hand through the blunt-force tactic of surrounding their hostages with armed fighters, their dominance ended with that one cold fact.
    The Americans knew exactly where they were.
    The Crisis Management Team was also gathering as much intelligence as possible on the daily life in the camp and what resources were consumed there. It was logical that the town of Adado was where they received daily shipments of everything theyneeded. Jabreel and several others stayed in or near Adado when they weren’t out in the bush with the rest.
    At this point the CMT knew which subclans were involved and even which of the clan elders and local political leaders could be trusted. Most important, they knew the local authorities were either too corrupt or too compromised to offer meaningful intervention. Uniformed authorities could not be counted on to