Impossible Odds

group, each man in this chain watches one of the others defecate in close proximity at least ten times a day. That’s only if nobody has diarrhea, which seems unlikely with the garbage I see them being fed. I try to imagine living in a tiny room that smells like the worst public restroom anyone has ever seen, with at least fifty other men, all chained in groups of eight to ten. The stench is like nothing I’ve encountered before. It’s the odor of a poorly tended zoo.
    Nobody would stay inside that toxic cloud by choice. I stare at these forlorn creatures and wonder if they somehow get used to the crowding and the filth, or if their senses are reoffended every time they wake up to find themselves in that place again.
    And the men’s medical condition—dreadful, even to the untrained eye. The inmates I see are all black African males, but most are literally ash gray in color. There is no natural human skin color like that. The question hits me, How long does a black man have to be held without sunlight for his skin to go so strangely gray?
    Faces loom at me from the shadows of their cells, with shades of death stretched across their faces. My only purpose there is to help them. I have to find a way, but I don’t even know where to start.
    I ask a guard if the men ever go out into the courtyard. He laughs and points out at the courtyard’s surface, covered in stones. “Too many rocks! The men get rocks and kill us!”
    I tell him if he ever expects to get any help from myorganization maybe they should go out to the courtyard and remove the rocks so there’s no longer a “security problem” lying around on the ground. Is it too much to ask, I want to know, to put in a little physical labor and clear the ground?
    I am stunned with disbelief, not just by the primitive conditions but also by the laughing cruelty of the guards. The question of who would want a job like this is answered by their casual inhumanity. They appear to like their jobs for all the wrong reasons.
    Finally, one of them begins tormenting an inmate by jabbing him through the bars with the barrel of his gun. He grins at me while he does it, as if fully expecting me to laugh along with him and encourage his behavior. Instead, my temper gets the best of me and I snap. I grab him by the front of his shirt, lift him several inches off the ground, and slam him back against the wall.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demand. “You bastard! You bastard! Are you out of your mind?”
    The answer comes not from him but from behind me. It is a fast series of metallic clicks. I turn to see AK-47 barrels all around me. Every one of them is pointed directly at my head.
    All right, perhaps not the best tactic. I lower the man back to the ground  . . .
    Erik woke up then, but couldn’t shake off the dream, which was all true, down to every haunted face. The question lingered—had he worked to release some of the men from that prison, only to return them to a life of crime—say, kidnapping for ransom? Could one of them be among the men holding Jess now?
    His life was saved that day when the lazy prison commander showed up to calm the guards and escorted him out of the prison in one piece. Luck was with him; they won concessions from the prison to alter its restraint policy and went on to get releases for anumber of the men being illegally held there. Those men escaped that hellhole with whatever health they had left. He could only imagine their joy and relief when they were shown the door and told to go, after giving themselves up for dead.
    But while he lay in the dark and tried to sort his thoughts, bad ideas formed: Should he go appeal to the kidnappers on that basis? Let them know he had worked to free them, and if not them, then their brothers? Would they show Jess mercy in return?
    It was only another extreme idea, based on nothing more than the frustrated desire to do something, do anything other than simply watch the clock. It echoed his wishful thinking for a time like that day at the prison when he was able to take effective action with no thought about risk to anyone but himself.
    It was Thanksgiving morning when Erik’s dream was interrupted by a call from Dan Hardy saying another proof-of-life call was scheduled with the kidnappers. In a quiet voice Dan asked if Erik would be willing to reverse the strategy and speak directly with the kidnapper and possibly with Jess as well. The CMT’s hostage negotiation consultant