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When the four of us left the club and began to make our way back to my old car, Jen realized she’d left something behind, and she and her new friend went back to get it, leaving me to wait outside alone with Erik-not-Orik.
Well, I thought, if there’s a rude awakening coming with this guy, it’s probably going to show up while we’re alone out here. But his attention had been caught by a fellow in a wheelchair who was begging on the street. Erik walked over without hesitation and gave the man several hundred Kenyan shillings. The amount is only worth a few U.S. dollars, but those dollars had real buying power to secure him several good meals. Erik seemed spontaneous about it, very offhand, and didn’t try to come back for some sort of approval from me. It really looked like more of a knee-jerk reaction on his part. Something he just did as part of who he was.
That simple gesture did more to impress me than anything so far. Some people will use displays of charity as an excuse to show off, but his gesture was so underplayed it convinced me his actions were heartfelt. Just as his story about Victoria Falls revealed itself not as bragging, but instead an attempt to share a meaningful experience, his gesture of kindness to a stranger was a clear sign of his character.
So we stood waiting by my car. He insisted on staying with me until my friend returned. My resistance was fading fast. There were no rude awakenings from the spell of the evening, just more of this sweet masculine energy from a guy so appealing the only thing I felt uncomfortable about was how quickly my defenses were disappearing.
Jen returned with her new guy, and the four of us arranged a double date for the next night. Erik and I gently kissed goodnight, Jen hopped in the car, and I drove away feeling an unexpected mix of anxiety and exhilaration.
Our second date went beautifully, as did the next one and the next. Things just kept right on being good. I wasn’t sure what to think, but by this point I was eager to see how far this thing might actually go.
The oddest thing was that the more he told me about his background, the farther apart it appeared we ought to be. After all, I’m from a Christian household in rural Ohio, and he came from a small social democracy in the middle of Scandinavia. But instead of presenting major obstacles, the differences turned out to be mostly cosmetic. We were each raised by tolerant families. Our households shared a strong emphasis on the moral content of our lives. The fact that my parents had a religious backdrop for their teachings while his focused on ethics and personal honor seemed to be two sides of the same coin.
We had each seen relationships dissolve out from under us because of our commitment to our work, and while both of us might sometimes give the appearance of being loners in the romance department, it turned out that we shared a strong sense of the value of a healthy family. We acknowledged the challenge and difficulties faced by anybody who might dare to love us. But neither one of us actually expected to go through life as a single entity. We had both just figured such things lay in the future, out of necessity.
Everything about Erik Landemalm seemed so right and fit so well that I sailed through those first two weeks on a romantic high. He gave the distinct impression that he was returning my strong interest, and we began a pattern of seeing each other as often as our work schedules would permit.
It went on that way for those first two weeks, and the feeling of it all was like running in total darkness down a smooth, steep hill. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. This probably made it especially rough for Erik when I broke the news that after carefully thinking it over, I decided we really should stop seeing each other.
It was a head-fake, okay? I didn’t know it at the time, but of course that’s what it was. It was all just too good. My emotions were too strong, the impact was overwhelming, and my last deep entanglement with a man hadn’t exactly been a stellar experience. I began to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of finding out I was wrong about this guy. I found myself wondering if it could be possible for such a fine and true and powerful thing to actually be taking place at that point in my life.
So of course I told him we had to break up. It makes perfect sense that an exciting new person can’t let you down if you run away before he gets the chance to disappoint. Thus the backward logic of self-doubt caused me to make one of the worst decisions of my life.
I had no idea, until later, that what I really wanted him to do was prove my fears wrong. The cruelest thing he could have done at that time would have been to let me have my way.
By that point I was getting to know him well enough that I should have realized it wouldn’t be so easy to discourage him. He’s gentle and his manner is calm, but he’s a force to be reckoned with. This is a man who spends his life dealing with terribly difficult situations that sometimes also involve difficult people, some of whom have few qualms about killing opponents and no particular reason to do anything he asks, except for the strength of his personality and determination. Without realizing it, I put myself up against that particular form of strength, the same one that had caused his parents to start referring to him as “the little diplomat” back when he was five years old.
I learned he could argue a strong point without raising his voice. He could quietly reason his way through any objection I raised. He was determined to give us the chance to see if we were genuinely right for one another. And he wasn’t at all like guys who refuse to take a hint. Instead he introduced me to another part of himself that I didn’t even know I was hoping to see. He began to lay out his feelings. He revealed them freely in spite of his masculine persona, and so much of what he expressed rang all the right notes. Before long, his combination of a poetic sense of romance and dogged persistence won me over. If I had known him better at that point I would have expected nothing else.
This began a period of a year and a half of dating, and we became inseparable whenever Erik wasn’t out in the field somewhere. A few months after we met he was transferred to the city of Hargeisa, capital of the unrecognized State of Somaliland in northern Somalia, and we were reduced to spending only five or six days a month together. On most weekends he would fly down to Kenya to be with me, since his job paid better than mine. We struggled with all the usual joys and frustrations of a long-distance relationship and found the absence only increased our desire to be together. Christmas came, and we traveled back to the United States so my family could meet Erik, and his first trip to my home country spanned the gamut from New York City and Philadelphia, which we toured together first, to a trip to the heartland of Ohio to meet the folks.
Here was where the cultural differences between our homes really came to the fore. Erik had never seen giant roadside billboards advertising faith in Jesus. We both got nervous about whether he would fit in with my straitlaced family. “No talking about religion,” I warned. “Also, nothing about politics.”
“Right.” He smiled. We arrived at my family home, introduced everyone all around, then spent a lovely evening at dinner where the conversation was lively and pleasant. I could see my family coming around to my view of him, and I was overjoyed by that. After dinner we retired to the living room, where I lay on the sofa and took a little nap to sleep off some jet lag while the others kept on talking. I lay down with my head on my mom’s lap and drifted off, just as I had done when I was a little girl. It was beautiful.
I woke up to hear him debating religion with my mom. What? It should have been a disaster—he was inviting bursts of exasperation, storms of outrage, indignation! But again I failed to realize how much time he spends with people who don’t agree with whatever he is trying to tell them. Somehow, he was able to have the “forbidden” conversations with my folks and endear himself to them in the same moment. By the time we left I knew my family understood why I was in love with this man.
In October 2008, he asked me to marry him and I accepted. We were married on the beach in Kenya on March 28, 2009, and I finished up my obligation to complete the spring and summer term at the Rosslyn Academy. On August 15 I moved from Nairobi, Kenya, to Hargeisa, a distance of almost nine hundred miles, to join Erik full-time and truly begin our married life together.
We’d made it past the many obstacles to a successful relationship that can sprout up between two people with backgrounds that appear to be so different. It was a marriage designed to be an adventure for both of us, living and working in Africa together.
The way ahead was all clear for smooth sailing . . .
Part Two
CONCEALED UNDER OPEN SKY
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time Jessica Buchanan was kidnapped in Somalia on October 25, 2011, the twenty-four boys back in America who had been so young during the 1993 attack on the downed American aid support choppers in Mogadishu had since grown to manhood. Now they were between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-five, and each one had become determined to qualify for the elite U.S. Navy unit called DEVGRU. After enlisting in the U.S. Navy and undergoing their essential basic training, every one of them endured the challenges of BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, where the happy goal is to become “drownproofed” via what amounts to repeated semidrowning, while also learning dozens of ways to deliver explosive death and demolition. This was only the starting point.
Once qualification was over and the candidates were sworn in, three-fourths of the qualified Navy SEALS who tried to also qualify for DEVGRU dropped out. Those super-warriors were overcome by the challenges, regardless of their peak physical condition and being in the prime of their lives. This happened because of the intensity of the training. Long study and practice went into developing a program specifically designed to seek out and expose any individual’s weakest points.
If the same ordeals were imposed on captured terrorists who were known to be guilty of killing innocent civilians, the officers in charge would get thrown in the brig. Still, no matter how many Herculean physical challenges are presented to a DEVGRU candidate, the brutal training is primarily mental. It reveals each soldier’s principal foe to be himself. His mortal fears and deepest survival instinct emerge time after time as the essential demons he must overcome.
Each DEVGRU member must reach beyond mere proficiency at dealing death. He must become two fighters combined: one who is trained to a state of robotic muscle memory in specific dark skills, and a second who is fluidly adaptive, using an array of standard SEAL tactics. Only when he can live and work from within this state of mind will he be trusted to pursue black operations in every form of hostile environment.
Therefore the minority candidate who passes into DEVGRU becomes a member of the “Tier One” Special Mission Unit. He will be assigned to reconnaissance or assault, but his greatest specialty will always be to remain lethal in spite of rapidly changing conditions. From the day he is accepted into that elite tribe, he embodies what is delicately called “preemptive and proactive counterterrorist operations.” Or as it might be more bluntly described: Hunt them down and kill them wherever they are—and if possible, blow up something.
Each one of that small percentage who makes it through six months of well-intended but malicious torture emerges as a true human predator. If removing you from this world becomes his mission, your only hope of escaping a DEVGRU SEAL is to find a hiding place that isn’t on land, on the sea, or in the air.
• • •
On the day Jessica was kidnapped, Barack Obama had long since made his move from Chicago to the American White House. As the president of the United States, he had the services of the DEVGRU warriors at his disposal. By the time he received notice about the kidnapping, the most alarming aspect was the possibility that this was an organized act by Al-Shabaab, southern Somalia’s Islamist governing force with known ties to Al Qaeda, which is in constant conflict with Somalia’s internationally recognized transitional government. If they had taken her, the U.S. president and the rest of the world might soon witness a viral internet video showing the execution of a female American aid worker, while an anonymous voice-over delivered a lecture to all the Godless Ones and a stream of Arabic writing played across the screen.
Still there was no hard information to act on and no line of communication, thus nowhere to aim a DEVGRU team even if the president felt inclined to deploy them. So the report of the kidnapped American and her Danish colleague went into watch-and-wait status at the White House. Jessica Buchanan’s case took its place among a massive collection of other situations also standing by on the watch-and-wait status. Erik realized, coming from his line of work, that every one of them was a matter of great concern to somebody.
By far the largest conundrum facing the president was the provisional Somali government’s difficulty enforcing authority. While the northeast portion of Somalia, called Puntland, had achieved a semiautonomous status and managed to get a basic infrastructure going, the rule of street violence still reigned supreme throughout southern Somalia. Without a reliable structure to protect and guarantee shipping and commerce, there was no way for the population to rebuild a functioning economy.
Therefore desperation gripped a once proud and independent collection of clans and subclans, reducing many of their young men to the lunacy of sailing motorboats out to sea and attacking large ships and tankers with the intention of hijacking them for ransom. Every nonswimming teenager with a head-buzz of khat and a borrowed AK-47 who dared to ship out on such a mission was undoubtedly powered by the story of a neighbor or a cousin who made only one of the lethally dangerous raids and yet earned enough to live on for years!
Of course the odds against any individual pirate finding personal success were about the same as the odds against hitting a jackpot at a roulette wheel. The compelling part was powerful, however, because it was better than the prospect of remaining on land and slowly rotting to death. The courage of despair drove them into small boats to sail far from shore and stage attacks so one-sided and absurd they would be comical if not for their deadly consequences.
And once in a while a comedy of errors ended up with a bamboozled shipping company breaking down and paying out millions of dollars to get back its vessels, their crews, their cargo. When such a massive payout actually went through, it landed as a giant pile of cash in a region where men of working age would fight to the death over a fistful of khat leaves. Word traveled at light speed: The casino is open, boys.
Soon after the era of big ransoms began, hidden alcoves dotting the Horn of Africa played host to a variety of boats, ships, and tankers lying at anchor and awaiting ransom payouts. Captured crews were often held below decks in medieval conditions for months at a time. Many were killed in the initial attacks and others succumbed in captivity.
In the minds of their attackers, the victims’ collective guilt was simple; no matter what country a captive hailed from, it had to be a place with more opportunity than anything available in Somalia. After all, the captured crews came from places capable of building and steaming seagoing vessels across international waters, while the Somalis watched them sail by from the beaches of a stagnating homeland. The desperate attackers couldn’t concern themselves with the laws of other nations; they endured existence every day with no law greater than that imposed by whoever had the weapons and the cohorts to use them.
But by this time in late 2011, the beleaguered insurance companies and shipping companies were finally starting to follow the lead of the crews themselves, who had begun to arm up and fight back. The prospect of a military-level private shooting war between pirates and the entire shipping industry attracted various governments, and those governments sent military forces to get things “stabilized.”
The whole world knew about the piracy case of the tanker Maersk Alabama, in which three Navy SEAL sharpshooters saved the imprisoned ship captain. Those SEALs spent a full day lying in wait with their weapons trained on the pirate boat, waiting for the kill command. When the order came down, they instantly fired their sniper rifles, with their own vessel bobbing at a different rate from the pirates’ boat, having no room for error if the captive was to survive. The snipers took out all three pirates in a single shot while sparing the kidnapped victim. Captain Richard Phillips was freed unharmed from the close quarters of that little boat, while the dead bodies of the three armed pirates slumped around him.
Details of DEVGRU training are not available to explain this feat of timing and marksmanship, but the results testify to its deadly effect. SEAL Team Six founder Richard Marcinko has said that his budget for ammunition for his men’s training was greater than that of the entire Marine Corps. The comment might be dismissed as braggadocio if not for undeniable results produced under intense and deadly pressure.
Consequently, by the time Jessica Buchanan was being marched into a pitch-black desert to her own mock execution two years later, the same people at the White House who took note of her disappearance had reason to wonder if it might be time for another visit to the region from the men you don’t see coming.
The Somali attackers knew they had reason to fear such a thing. They kept their eyes on the international press. Even in a land of nearly nothing, anyone who can mug a tourist can get his hands on a smartphone with satellite and internet capabilities. Then he will engage in that great irony so unique to the twenty-first century: sleeping on straw, dining on garbage, and surfing the internet’s endless images of everything a heart can desire.
Even if the websites are entirely religious or politically based, there are those darn ads, those pop-ups, those little typos that cause unpredictable sites to appear. In this fashion even a faithful man of religion with no desire to see the internet’s baser temptations may find his bitterness steadily increasing while he encounters products, so many products, every single thing he might dream of, and more—much more than he ever imagined. A fountain of temptation squirts into his eyes through hypnotic imagery, while the sexuality employed to sell, sell, sell it all fills him with rage because it affects him so strongly.
