A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival by Judith Tebbutt

it without my own phone in front of me. The Navigator gave up, clearly disappointed. I was annoyed that I couldn’t perform this simple task so as to initiate the process that would mean my freedom. But I remained hopeful.
    It may take time, but this is resolvable – depending on how much they want. Sixty, seventy thousand pounds, maybe? We can do that, I know it, we’ve got that money.
    It was fully dark and the only light was from the moon when Marvin came over and signalled for me to crawl out from under the shrub. Just to stand was a welcome reprieve from the painful crouch I’d been forced to adopt all day. He led me by the hand to the boat. I was very hungry, very apprehensive of what was going to happen now, and yet relieved somehow to be moving. The boat was fastidiously reloaded, canisters and all, in complete silence. These men seemed barely to leave a tread on the ground.
    Once we were aboard, though, there was a hitch: the boat wouldn’t budge, and I realised – as they had – that the boat’s propeller blades must have got entangled in mangrove roots. Twoof them struggled to lift the propellers clear of the water, and a third hacked away at the tangle with a machete. It took some time, during which I felt once again that there was something oddly inept about this kidnap. Each time they fired up the engine it only whined in complaint and the boat remained obstinately stuck. I was hoping against hope that someone somewhere could hear this straining din. Finally the engine returned to its peak roar and once more I was ordered to lie down on the mattress, under the same clammy, ill-smelling covers.
    *
    Again we sailed all night, and for a time I slept, waking as if to déjà vu, for the boat was edging slowly into the reach of another mangrove swamp. The men executed their appointed roles: the boat was steered in, moored, unloaded. But this time I saw the Leader give some instruction to the Navigator, whereupon he shinned barefoot up a mangrove tree and began to hack down branches with the machete.
    I was led, with an unhappy familiarity, to a large shrub, low-growing with thick branches. I knew what was coming but I didn’t crawl under until prompted. This shrub, at least, enabled me to lie down under it, and so I got onto my back and rested one leg on a stray branch. From there I watched my captors cover the boat with a thick camouflage of the branches the Navigator had chopped down. Its bright turquoise hull was soon entirely buried under foliage – invisible, for sure, to any plane passing overhead. Inwardly I cursed them for having taken such care. Looking about me, I noticed one or two discarded cigarette packets and stubs (‘Sportsman’ brand), also some empty tins of tuna and water bottles scattered around. I could only deduce that this peculiar hideaway had been used before.
    The men settled themselves a little way off from me, on a flat open space up an incline, and there they ‘pitched camp’. They lit a fire, hung their rifles on branches, removed their wet clothes and either laid or hung them out to dry, and changed into clean clothes that they produced from black plastic bags. There was the sense of an organised unit, making ready for at least an overnight stay (though I realised the Fifth Man was nowhere to be seen, the unit seeming to have shrunk to a quartet). I also saw the Leader retrieve a mobile phone from another bag and make a call.
    But then all the bivouacking came to a halt as the Leader and the Navigator began – methodically and in unison – to pray. With water from one of the yellow containers (was it consecrated?), they washed their hands and heads and inside their mouths and ears. Then, crouching, they balanced on one foot while scooping handfuls of water to cleanse the other – a gymnastic feat, executed with near synchronicity. I watched in fascination. For all that I knew my predicament, still my mind was taken out of it for the time that I observed this rigorous