Under the Rubble

It was 4:30 when I reached the Police Headquarters. The sun over Port-au-Prince was still blazing. It was so bad I could hardly breathe. Six months had passed since the earthquake of January 12th, which killed thousands in Haiti. The duty officer waved me in. As expected, two black, double cabin pick-ups with tinted windows were already waiting for me with engines running. I got in one of them and a member of the SWAT team passed me a bulletproof vest. The policeman at the wheel started driving slowly. The other followed at close range. We were heading south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, for Operation PP-7 (Police-Press, signifying six policemen and one journalist). For the first time in my life I was part of a police operation. The goal was to dismantle a network of kidnappers in Martissant, Carrefour, near Port-au-Prince. That area is notorious for gangs and criminals. I was filled with anxiety for my son, Jeff, who’d been kidnapped and was being held for ransom by one of those gangs. But if all went well, I’d soon be able to hug him again. It began two days earlier, when my cell phone rang. It was Jeff, and he was crying. “Papi, I’ve been kidnapped. There are three other children. They beat us. We are in the area of Car --” He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. I heard him cry out. I shouted, “Jeff! Jeff!” But he didn’t answer. Instead, a harsh voice came on the line. “Si ou vle wè ti gason w lan ak twa lòt zanmi l yo vivan, mwen ba ou de jou pou peye 20 000 dola.” (“I give you two days to pay $20,000, if you want to see your son and his friends alive.”) I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight. Fear washed over me. I thought about the children abducted and murdered in Haiti during the last three years. And now my son! I had very little money in the bank. How was I going to pay a ransom? I’d done six months of painstaking research in my effort to find him, but I didn’t expect to hear his voice under these circumstances. The seconds passed. I didn’t know how to answer. I took a deep breath.