Impossible Odds

sudden embarrassment was condensed from the worst part of my youthful self-consciousness as a thirteen-year-old beanpole. Except now I was also deep down dirty, half starved, dressed in a filthy cotton deera that was ripped down the back. I was painfully aware that I had on no proper underwear, just the men’s athletic shorts which were all I’d been given. I’d lost so much weight I no longer need to wear a bra. I just wore a faded and ripped tank top under the deera, while I walked in the same sandals I’d been wearing when we were taken and every day since. I was months away from anything resembling a real bath. Many captive animals, upon release after months in a cage, would probably step out with the same sensations of confusion and uncertainty I felt swimming around inside me.
    I still couldn’t conceive of how they had pulled off the attack. Because of the merciful darkness and the chaos of gunfire, I saw nothing of its inner workings except to say it was hard and fast. It was unbelievably hard and fast. I gained instant insight into why the SEAL teams are said to train with such intensity. The depth of violence in the attack hits you all the way down to the bones. It sets off deep instincts to either flee or dive for cover. It must take a special form of hardening of the nerves to be able to remain calm and do your job in the midst of so much heavy gunfire. I had learned firsthand that morning that in such moments our untrained, non-SEAL survival instinct wants nothing but to hide or flee.
    As soon as the chopper put down on the airstrip in Galkayo, I told them I really had to relieve myself now. I asked if there would be a toilet on the plane that we were supposed to board next. Theyregretfully informed me I would have to pee on the tarmac next to the plane. They looked as if they expected me to balk at that. Who, me? Me, in my gross condition? Surrounded by hostile men for ninety-three days? It would take a lot more than that to shame me. I could pee anywhere.
    Still, a couple of the men gallantly stepped out onto the tarmac with blankets and held them up to form a little booth so I could relieve myself with some privacy, since by this point it was going to happen no matter where I was. But even through the fog of my confusion then, I was struck by the civility and the casual decency of these men. Without their masks, some were my contemporaries, some were even younger. And they were nothing whatsoever like those images of jeering, sneering young manhood permeating our media-driven culture.
    I was Alice, back on the good side of the looking glass, but it was still surreal to see how these compassionate gentlemen each bristled with deadly weapons that were just now cooling down after the battle. It occurred to me then that they must have killed all the Somalis. How else could we have gotten out of there like that?
    It might have been possible for one or two of the kidnappers to run away, but considering the night vision goggles the SEAL team used, it was hard to believe any glowing green human figures were going to skulk off into the flat scrub desert without being spotted. I knew all too well, after thinking about it so often, that there was nowhere to hide out there.
    From the rendezvous airstrip we boarded an air force C-130 for the flight up to Djibouti, the small country on Somalia’s northern border. During the flight a few of the men tried to be social once again and do some simple joking around with me, but I still felt completely locked up. Simple conversational responses felt foreign. I was surprised to discover how difficult it was to think and speakmy way through an ordinary conversation. It felt as awkward and unnatural as writing with the wrong hand. The feeling persisted even after my adrenaline burned itself out. They gave me some privacy for a while by simply leaving me in peace, a luxury in itself. A form of relaxation settled in that was mainly composed of fatigue, but it slowed me down enough that I could set about trying to swallow what had just happened.
    Okay, we’re out, Poul’s out, too. We’re both uninjured. Their medic even says none of the SEALs got hurt. As for the Somalis, they’re probably all dead—the ones in the camp, anyway. As for the rest  . . .
    The trouble was that the country is known as a nerve center for social gossip. No doubt the word was already traveling about the ambush, the dead guards, the escaped hostages, the lost opportunity.
    Somebody out