Impossible Odds

who’s ever had that nightmare of running through sand or deep water with a monster in hot pursuit. At last we began to move and the group quickly went into a brisk jog. Someone held me up and guided my steps.
    There were lots of footstep noises around me. I had the sense of people running along right next to me, others a few yards away. It didn’t sound like there were many of us out there, given what we were up against.
    Poul and I had come to know the men of this criminal militia and we had seen their heavy weapons, the rocket launchers that could take out all of us with a couple of rounds. I didn’t want to guess at their savagery in open combat if they had the chance to steal back their prize captives.
    But even in that early hour, these SEAL warriors were alreadyheroes just for getting me out, just for getting me this far. If we never made it all the way home, they had nevertheless given me a chance at least to die in the quest for freedom among my own people, after so long. From my standpoint, I was surrounded by magical heroes. They brought this terrible explosion of violence that popped the locks on our invisible prison. They reached in there and snatched us out alive—I couldn’t see how, but I was impossibly alive—and there we were, getting the hell out of there.
    Most of our captors would have killed us, if they could have, before allowing us to escape. And it had torn a piece out of me to see Dahir’s terrified face in the flashes of the guns. I felt another piece of myself tear away when I heard him cry out. He alone among them had made a point of behaving with respect and without arrogance. There was no way for me not to feel pain on his behalf.
    Still, I thought they had to be coming. We represented a major investment. I knew there had been nine guards on duty, at least—maybe more, if some had arrived while I was sleeping. In addition, the rest of the crew had to stay close enough to the camp during their off hours to be able to get back and forth when they took over their next shift. Surely some of those guys were coming for us, by this point. All anybody needed to do was get off a call to the Colonel or to the Chairman. Cell phones, walkie-talkies, ham radios, signal drums, the sound of distant gunfire, that was all it took. The fighters would rally. They would roll down over us with an avalanche of bad news.
    We probably only ran for a couple of minutes, but they were the kind that each takes an hour. Then helicopters appeared out of nowhere. Three of them, I think, although the noise and downdrafts made it hard to tell. The soldiers started guiding me toward a specific chopper, but I sprinted the last few yards on my own and dove into the open hatch, then skittered across the fuselage and plastered my back against the side. Lights were muted inside the aircraft. I could only make out silhouettes. The soldiersall wore helmets and face masks with special goggles. It looked as if I’d been picked up by space aliens.
    The strangeness of each coming moment surpassed the one before. I had no control over any of it. Nothing felt real, and it certainly didn’t seem to be possible that both of us could actually be out of there alive after such a vicious firefight. But before I knew it Poul and the soldiers all piled in, and we took off. I tensed and waited for the explosions from the incoming Somali rockets or their heavy machine guns. Amazingly, nobody tried to shoot us down. We were quickly out of the neighborhood. Before much longer it was too late for them to try.
    It was only in that moment that it hit me—I had stopped expecting to see this day. Whatever the outcome was to be, I had let go in my attempt to die with some measure of dignity. Instead, my fate had just spun on its heels one more time and delivered the very escape that had been withheld for so long.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
    By the time Erik’s phone rang at 6:41 a.m. on January 25, he was seriously doubting whether he had really been reasonable in standing back and letting the authorities handle Jessica’s rescue, instead of going after her himself. His early morning news feed that day told of a Vietnamese kidnap victim in Somalia, captured by pirates who decided to stimulate ransom money by chopping off one of his arms and sending it to his family. The story further agitated Erik’s state of mind. He answered the phone after the first ring, but it was with real trepidation.
    “Erik, it’s Matt.”
    Cold fear shot through