caught via AOSHQ
The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt.
Earlier in his captivity, he had made a run for it, but -- barefoot and much older than the insurgents who held him -- he was snatched back before he could get far.
After nearly two months in captivity and out of contact with anyone who cared about him, the hostage reviewed what his fate might hold -- whether ransom negotiations or rescue efforts or a miracle might bring him freedom.
"One option was for the money to arrive and be ransomed," the 61-year-old engineer from Ohio told Military Times, speaking on the condition that he remain anonymous. Another was "that they'd just get tired of me and let me loose." A third was "some kind of military intervention," he said. "In my mind I'd given a military intervention a one out of a hundred chance. Not that they couldn't do it, but they're busy and I'm not that important a fellow."
On an airstrip many miles away, however, several twin sets of Chinook helicopter rotor blades were starting to turn as about 60 of America's most elite troops prepared to prove him wrong. Members of a task force that Military Times agreed not to name, the commandos had been hunting for the businessman since soon after he went missing. Now they were ready to act.
This is the story of one of the most daring and successful U.S. hostage-rescue missions in years.
heh - RTWT - you know you wanna |