Impossible Odds

to stop him from attacking me for much longer. So there it was: the brick wall—can’t get over it, can’t get under it, and there was no way we were going in through the door. I’d kept my sanity up to that point by giving in to the experience in every way I could, trying to avoid being in a state of friction all the time. But my limits of acceptance stopped at the wall. There was no acceptance for anything beyond it.
    In the face of my alternatives, the grim choice of bringing on my death by attacking him before he got to me actually sounded better than all the other available options. After all, we were still on the other side of the looking glass, where you step up to go down, and step down to go up.
    •  •  •
    Erik couldn’t believe it was a coincidence when he came downstairs one morning to discover their car had been stolen. Because of the security at their compound, it was almost certainly an inside job involving the night guards.
    Later in the day he learned that another car identical to theirs was also stolen in the neighborhood. It would seem the word was out on that particular make and model, possibly from a local chop shop, and somebody had paid off the guards. If so, this confirmed his growing suspicion that for people with a little cash to throw around, any form of live security protection could be penetrated.
    The paranoia that had become a constant companion forcedhim to wonder if the Somalis who were negotiating on behalf of the kidnappers were somehow behind the car thefts. Had he been targeted for additional “ransom” money he didn’t even know he was paying?
    He filed the useless paperwork on the missing car, hoping it was a random event and not the first ransom payment. In a separate story, there was now word that a $6 million ransom payment had just been made to Somali pirates holding a hijacked oil tanker. The kidnapping industry appeared to be booming, right at the time when they were trying to convince Jessica’s captors their demands were completely unrealistic. He now feared that to Jess’s captors, the $6 million just paid to those others sounded tantalizingly close to the $9 million they’d last demanded for Jessica and Poul. The clear message these kidnapping successes sent was that all Jessica’s kidnappers had to do was to be brutal enough and hold out long enough—and magical millions of U.S. dollars would soon be coming to them, too.
    Jessica’s family couldn’t stay in Africa any longer, and Erik sadly drove her father, brother, and sister back to the airport. With no end in sight, they had to face the reality of their own lives. He knew he would especially miss having John there. His steadfast belief that this would actually all work out had been a great influence to have around, and Erik hated to do without it.
    He dropped them off thinking that being there had been good for them in spite of their having to leave frustrated, at least in allowing them to feel they were doing what they could to support her. The heartbreak lay in having to go back without being able to let her know they were there for her.
    Erik’s day ended with a depressing call from Matt, who told him to prepare for the possibility these negotiations could take longer than they hoped—maybe months. As hard as it was to hear that, his knowledge of the region had already told him that was so. He felt a certain relief that his own view was confirmed, since hisworld revolved around the absolute need to make the right choices in this.
    He also heard the unspoken message in that call. It told Erik that Jessica’s health wasn’t going to hold out that long, and unless they found a way to get medicine through to her, she was unlikely to survive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
    Jessica:
    After weeks in the wild, the apparent identity of the true leader of the operation began to emerge. It wasn’t the Chairman, whom we never saw anymore, nor was it Abdi, even though he was still a ranking officer. No, the one who made the others tremble was the one called Bashir, a chubby fellow of thirty-five or so, with extremely dark skin and a complexion troubled by acne. He walked hunched over a heavy paunch and drove a silver Land Cruiser with delicate pinstriping.
    Bashir was the closest thing to an operational commander we were able to identify. Maybe he was also the money man and maybe not, but he was certainly the top dog, and he had emerged as the one with the iron fist. In recent days, Bashir had begun to