Impossible Odds

in the small city of Garowe, about a hundred miles north of where Jess was working, when the call came in from Dan Hardy, the regional security advisor for Jess’s NGO. His voice sounded so upset it caused Erik’s adrenaline to spike before he caught any details. He quickly got the main message that his wife, Jessica, had been kidnapped. It hit him like a haymaker to the face.
    Dan Hardy went on with details, but Erik couldn’t seem to take it in. His head jammed on the thought, After everything we talked about and everything we feared, it’s actually happened? It simply couldn’t be true. But Hardy went on to explain that unknown forces had somehow waylaid the caravan, probably using overwhelming numbers. The NGO was already forming a Crisis Management Team and they felt certain she had survived the initial assault. Nobody could say where she was. They assumed she was still alive at this hour but couldn’t confirm it.
    Erik found himself standing on the roof veranda trying to get a better cell signal and shouting, “Whatare you saying, Dan? What are you saying?” But there was nowhere to turn for more information. There was nothing to do but wait to be contacted, hope to be contacted, pray to be contacted with word that Jessica was alive.
    Dan Hardy told him all they could do was keep quiet and say nothing at all, publicly, do nothing to give these kidnappers any information that might be turned against the families. Beyond that, every other thought ended in a question mark.
    He felt the specter of death throw his love for Jessica into strong relief, along with a dark wave of guilt over allowing her to talk him out of his position against the trip. This news threw him up against the cold truth that simply fearing the worst doesn’t protect you from it. He now had to face the terrible fact that he had willingly kissed her good-bye.
    Erik hung up and immediately began a call to Jessica’s father, John Buchanan, who lived in Virginia. He cringed at the thought of dumping this news on a single, isolated man who had been living alone since his wife’s passing and would absorb this news on his own. John had married his high school sweetheart. After both experienced a spiritual rebirth, they raised their family in a Christian household. It was strict, but not overbearing, and the family was supported across the years by John’s skills as an expert woodworker carving period furniture.
    John taught his spiritual message by example while independently earning his way with his own handiwork, loving his wife and family. Then came a vicious strain of flu, just fifteen months ago. She fell sick fast and hard. The end came for her within three days.
    While it would be natural for Jessica’s dad to reach out to his closest friends and relatives for support, it was vital to close down as much public information as possible, as fast as it could be done. Erik expected the commercial media in the United States to find Jess’s father.
    He was so shaken he placed the call before thinking up a clearstrategy for revealing this dreadful information. As soon as John Buchanan got on the line he decided there was no reason to withhold anything.
    “John, it’s Erik . . . John, I don’t know how to say this, but I have some very difficult news. Dan Hardy, the security advisor over at Jess’s NGO, just called . . . John, they believe Jess and one of her colleagues were kidnapped this afternoon.”
    There was a pause, then John’s quiet voice: “God in Heaven. Not Jess . . .”
    “John, I, I want you to know, there’s no reason to believe she isn’t still alive.” His fingers were damp and his hand was shaking. It was hard to keep a grip on the phone.
    “Is there a reason to doubt it?”
    “No, no! They were clear about that part. But you know she’s so smart and resourceful, and she’s received special training for things like this.”
    “Do they know why she was taken? Or where she is?”
    “They know more than they’re willing to tell me, for security reasons, but the security advisor thinks it was done for money, not to make an anti-American statement or anything like that.”
    “What can I do besides pray for her? Is there anything you need?”
    Erik thought about the famed Somali gossip lines running through every level of their society, as old as the people there, an invisible network linking families, friends, and cohorts all across eastern Africa. He considered the fact that each and every one of