Taken

Continued from Page 1A of clear PVC in front of hotel windows. It won’t stop a rocket, but it will stop shrapnel and keep glass from shattering into rooms.

When a violent militia called the Houthis invade the country’s capital, Mark and his colleagues are forced to evacuate. Six weeks later, they return.

Yemen, or at least this part of it, is in turmoil. But they have a contract.

In February of 2015, Mark is evacuated for the second time. An embassy vehicle is pummeled with gunfire outside the compound, and the contract is suspended. The U.S. government withdraws all military and diplomatic personnel from this Middle Eastern country.

The embassy closes, and the Marines never return.

America is not at war with the Houthis, but after a political uprising, leaders in Iran spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to arm this rebel group from the mountains of northern Yemen. To oust the country’s U.S.-backed government and aid a bloody conflict with Saudi Arabia, Iran officials train the Houthis to kidnap. They train them to torture.

They train them to kill.

And once the Houthis overthrow the Yemeni government, that’s exactly what they do. In 2015, they detain hundreds of innocent people. Six of them are American. These people are not soldiers. They are journalists, construction managers and teachers.

This is a story about two of them, and it starts when Mark returns to Yemen for the third time.

The Airport: Sanaa, Yemen – Oct. 20, 2015

Mark McAlister steps off the plane at an airport with only one runway. He walks across its tarmac and sees a familiar face. His hotel manager from the Sheraton is shouting his name.

Mark waves, even though he is sick from water he drank the night before. A few minutes later, Mark gives his passport to an airport official and is told to sit down. United Nations personnel from his flight continue past him.

More than 30 minutes pass while the man with Mark’s passport talks on the phone. Mark watches a white van pull up outside. He looks around and doesn’t see his hotel manager anymore. He doesn’t see the U.N. security team he thought would escort him to the hotel. By the time the Houthis climb out of that van wearing masks and carrying assault rifles, the airport is empty. Mark can only see their eyes. Green and red patches on their sleeves say “Death to America” in Arabic.

It’s sometime after 4 p.m., and it will get dark soon.

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Turn around,” a man shouts in English. Mark asks why, and the Houthis raise their guns.

Mark is blindfolded, hands bound with a scarf. His colleague resists. John Hamen III is a former Bronze Star sergeant with too many awards to fit into one box on his discharge papers. His job here is security, and his first instinct is to escape.

A father to seven children, he eventually relents.

The Houthis shove the Americans into their van. Inside, the doors are lined with barbed wire. Mark hears his partner whisper. John has wriggled his hands free, but Mark can barely hold his head up.

The Houthis drive for 20 minutes, and Mark counts each second. One of the men talks to him, but Mark is no longer listening. His world is spinning. When the van stops, the Houthis throw Mark and John onto the ground.

They lead them into a dark room, and the interrogation begins.

Pictures from Mark’s failed marriage hang on the walls, and Fox News plays in the background. Coverage of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan fills his television. Mark is looking for his cellphone when he turns to the TV. The capital of Afghanistan is in disarray.

As a project manager, Mark helped construct buildings like the ones now turned to rubble on the news. He started working overseas in 2005. His son was in middle school, and one of his daughters had just started college. His wife was a hair stylist, and their family largely lived paycheck to paycheck.

Mark almost always had two jobs –including digging graves. It’s why he took a dangerous position and left Tennessee for Iraq, a day before his son’s 11th birthday. In Mark’s small hometown – population 2,078 – everyone seems to know him. And most go to his church. When no one knew whether he was dead or alive, there were prayer vigils. At church and at the school’s gymnasium. There were stories on the local news.

Tonight, Mark brings up Yemen without being asked. Because no one asks anymore. In his living room, almost six years after his capture, he cries. He tries to collect himself, but he can’t stop.“People don’t realize how good they have it,” he says. Mark can barely speak now.“Life is a struggle.”

The Prison: Yemen – Oct. 20, 2015

Mark leans into John’s back, hands and wrists turning purple from the handcuffs. He might throw up.

The Houthis remove their blindfolds, ordering the Americans to squat against the wall. They leave to retrieve confiscated computers and phones.

Mark sees two windows covered by curtains. He doesn’t see the metal bars behind them. He talks to John about es- caping, and the guards return. The Houthis ask Mark and John for passwords. They ask for names. They ask who they work for.

They threaten them with Tasers. They call them spies.

The Houthis take necklaces, shoes and watches. Looking for anything sharp, they take Mark’s glasses because they don’t want him to kill himself. They take John’s wedding ring.

Mark is thrown into a chair and John is carried to another room. Again, they ask Mark his name. They ask what he is doing in this country. He tells them he’s a quality control manager. He tells them he works at the Sheraton hotel on a contract to oversee renovations for the U.S. embassy.

“You’re CIA,” they say.

Mark can’t hear much from John’s room, except yelling. This continues until at least 3 a.m

In the hallway, Mark holds up a piece of paper with writing on it he doesn’t understand. The guards take his picture. The Houthis open a large door, Continued on next page laughing while pointing a rifle at Mark. They lock him into a 12-foot by 9.5-foot cell.

Mark is alone.

It is cold and damp, and there are no windows. A dim bulb in the hallway shines through a slit in the door. It only lights up the top half of the cell. When the Houthis turn off the light, Mark can no longer see the hand in front of his face.

He prays for God to stop his heart.

The Bible: Greenfield, Tennessee –August 2021

Mark answers the door fully dressed: brown pants, pink Polo shirt and boots. It’s Sunday morning, and he wakes up at 4 a.m. He tries to go back to sleep but gets out of bed an hour later.

Mark often thinks about his time in Yemen as a movie. Maybe it’s easier that way. After the flashbangs of violence depicting his kidnapping, Mark’s Hollywood film would probably start here in Tennessee.

He is sitting by the pool in his backyard, and no one else is awake.

Mark looks down the rolling hills of his property. The sky is foggy, and he reads his Bible. The very same Bible he slept with in prison. Without glasses, he couldn’t read it. But he held the book close to his heart and placed it near his head when he slept.

Today, the 63-year-old sits under a patio awning he imagined in prison. He looks at the same picture of his ex-wife an interrogator once gave him. His grass is brown and his tree limbs are overgrown. Flowers wilt by the pool. Mark’s home never looked like this before Yemen. But Mark has changed, in some ways he acknowledges and some he doesn’t. As the sun rises, he closes his Bible.

It’s time for church.

The Cell: Yemen – October 2015

The cell smells like urine.

Mark’s toilet is a hole in the floor, rattling from bombs outside. There is PVC pipe in the wall, near the ceiling above the hole in the floor. At times, the pipe allows a small circle of light into this dark hell. Mark watches it grow throughout the day. He imagines the light forming a cross, and he prays.

A small slat in the door swings open three times a day for food, mostly bread and beans. Mark refuses to eat until he sees John. In cell No. 5, Mark hears water pouring into a bucket across the hall. He wonders if the guards plan to waterboard him.

He doesn’t want to be a YouTube video.

Mark sits on an orange Igloo cooler, pressing his face into a half-inch gap in the door. He tries to breathe fresh air from the hallway, and he sits there for hours. Then, he paces from one corner of the cell to the other. Every eight-anda-half steps, he touches a cross carved into the wall.

He sings “Amazing Grace.”

The Houthis give him a 2-inch mattress and a thin quilt, but he doesn’t sleep much. When he hears the screech of unlocking doors and sees weapons aimed at him, he knows it’s time for another interrogation. The Houthis handcuff him, drape a towel over his face and shove him into another room.

They interrogate him every day, sometimes three times a day. They call him a spy and ask the same questions over and over. They ask why America is destroying their country.

Mark coughs up blood, and he asks to see John.

Back in his cell, he uses his belt buckle to carve a single line into the wall. He starts near the floor. The next day, he scratches another line. This is how he keeps track of the days. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one.

On the 22nd day, he gets a cellmate.

On 95.1FM, radio hosts talk about depression and suicide.

Mark is driving the church bus today.

First, he picks up a man in a wheelchair who tells him about a car crash near his home. Then, he picks up a woman who is angry she cannot drive herself. Finally, Mark stops to pick up a woman whose dead husband was once the only doctor in Greenfield.

She helped deliver Mark.

Growingup,Markrodethechurchbus with his dad, who also took turns driving. Today, Mark drives past a sign for Greenfield, Tennessee, where the slogan is: “You don’t get lost in the shuffle.”

At church, Mark rarely sits. He collects donations and changes attendance numbers on a board outside the chapel. He used to be a deacon. Now, he is the

Sunday school director. At one time, his ex-wife taught classes here.

She doesn’t attend anymore.

During the service, Mark sits in a pew toward the back. He wants to see everything.Andhedoesn’twanttobetakenby surprise. Next to him are his son, his son’s fiancé and his own girlfriend, who takes notes and wears a pink polka-dot dress to match Mark’s shirt. Afterward, his son visits his fiancé’s family. Mark hasn’t met them yet. They invite him to dinner, but he declines.

He doesn’t want to miss evening service.

The Doctor: Yemen – 2015

Guards jostle the doctor awake at 2 a.m

“Do you speak English?”

It’s been three months since the Houthis abducted Dr. Abdulkader Al-

Guneid from his home, just days after his 66thbirthday.Thefactthathewasadoctor and the mayor of Yemen’s third-largest city did not matter. It’s November now, and the guards lead him to a new cell.Inside,Markisconfused.Thedoctor speaks slowly.

“I’m Abdulkader, from Taiz,” he says. I’m your new companion.”

“I’m Mark from Tennessee.”

Abdulkader encourages his cellmate to eat, and he gives Mark fruit he’s hidden from guards. Mark takes three pieces.

Abdulkader is an activist in a city sixand-a-half hours away. He’s being jailed for tweets he sent about the Houthis, a group he explains to Mark like this: In America, he says, it would be like the Ku Klux Klan ruling the country because of support from a foreign nation.

In Yemen, he tells Mark, the Houthis’ rise to power has led to years of war and years of death. His people feel hopeless.

The doctor tells Mark his city doesn’t have access to vegetables, and the Houthis urinate in their water tanks. He tells Mark it’s dark in here because a prisoner tried to hang himself by electrical wiring from the lights.

The guards took the lights out.

Mark tells the doctor about attending church three times a week and about teachingBiblestudy.Hetellshimhelikes honeyinhiscoffee.Hetellshimabouthis wife and grandchildren, the youngest born a day after he left for Yemen.

Later, the Houthis handcuff Mark and Abdulkader together, barefoot with towels over their heads. In the hallway, they’re instructed not to speak. For the firsttimeinthreeweeks,Markstepsoutside. He can barely see. It takes almost 30 minutes for his eyes to adjust. When they do, he looks down. His arms are wrinkled, his muscle gone. He pulls his skin down in flaps.

He’s lost 30 pounds.

Mark sees his prison, built on the side of a mountain. He sees blue sky, the bluest he’s ever seen. He doesn’t see John. After an hour, Mark returns to his cell. He and the doctor work out together, and Mark gets stronger. His beard grows long and ragged, but he begins to eat. The guards give Mark fish, and he shares it with Abdulkader

Before they eat, they pray.

Mark learns to tell time by the prisoners’ prayers. And he often drums on the wall with his hands. He drums a beat he believes John will recognize. When he hears a response, he knows John is alive.

But Mark grows depressed. Prison is breaking him. His family doesn’t know if he’s alive, and he worries he’ll miss his son’s college graduation at home. He worries he’ll die in here. He is

Continued on next page walking back and forth across the cell when the shouting begins.

I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here.

Mark is angry, and his shouts turn to screams. He spits. He threatens the guards and screams at the doctor. He shouts for fresh air, for sun. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here.

Mark climbs up the cell door, grabbing the bars and shaking them. Mark is rage. Mark is fury. He can’t breathe, and he doesn’t feel anything. He pounds his fists into the door and yells until his hands are cut and his arms are bloodied.

After a few minutes, it’s over. The guards threaten him with batons, and he asks the doctor for forgiveness. Then, it happens again. And again. Mark climbs the walls three or four times a week.

The doctor is scared.

The Flight: Memphis, TennesseeOctober 2015

When Crystal McAlister drops her husband off at the airport, she doesn’t say much. It’s the third time she’s taken him here for his job in Yemen. Mark says now if Crystal would’ve asked him to stay, he would have.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t have any words left.

She’s already told him it’s not safe. She told him Advanced C4 Solutions, the company hired by the State Department for work in Yemen, would not send him back. When they do, Mark asks his employer if it’s safe. They tell him U.N. personnel will escort him from the airport to the hotel.

And he signs a form acknowledging there will be no military protection.

Mark and Crystal had been arguing about money. Even after a decade of working overseas, Crystal doesn’t think Mark leaves her enough to live comfortably. The day before Mark’s last flight, they talk about divorce.

At the airport in Memphis, Crystal says goodbye and little else. She usually watchesMarkwalkthroughsecurity.Today, she doesn’t get out of the car.

When Mark lands in northern Africa, his last stop before Yemen, Crystal ignores his calls. A few days later, she receives a phone call from Mark’s company. They ask for documentation of her husband’s work history, school and training. They don’t explain why.

The next day, the call is more urgent.

“Ms. McAlister,” an employee says, “it is extremely important that you get me these things now.”

When Crystal asks where her husband is, there is a pause.

No one knows.

Obsessed with finding Mark, Crystal stays up late searching for information about Yemen prisons. She forgets to pay bills, and she closes her beauty salon. She forces herself to adjust to a Middle Eastern time zone, eight hours ahead of Tennessee. She sends messages to peo-

ple in Yemen through Facebook. She speaks to another American captured and released before Mark. She writes a letterforherhusband,givingittoaworker traveling to Yemen for the Red Cross.

Mark never gets it.

Crystal stays awake as many as three days at a time. To sleep, she drinks wine. She stops leaving her home, and her daughter stops trusting her to watch her grandchild. Nothing seems important, except finding Mark. That’s why she always keeps her phone with her.

Even if it never seems to ring.

The Call: Yemen – March 2016

Crystalisinbedwhenherphonerings.

It’s 7:30 a.m. The State Department tells her Mark will call, but they’ve told her this before. She falls asleep. When another call wakes her up, Crystal doesn’t recognize the number: 00000.

Hello,” she says.

“Crystal,” Mark says. “I’m fine and I’m doing well.”

She sobs, but Mark remains calm. He tells her to gather herself. He tells her he misses her, and he asks how everyone is doing. She tells him about their new granddaughter, and she tells him about all the people praying for him.

Mark doesn’t tell her his shirt has holes in it. He doesn’t tell her he hears screams every day. He doesn’t tell her it’s so cold he shakes when he tries to sleep. He tells her his captors are listening, and he tells her she sounds good. After 15 minutes, the call ends.

Back in his cell, Mark carves another line on the wall to signify the passing of another day. It’s been five months and10 days. The notches almost reach his shoulders now.

A few weeks later, the guards blindfold Mark and lead him down a hallway in the middle of the night. It’s the same way he’s been taken countless times before. This time, the guards turn another direction.

Mark steps outside, and it’s raining. He doesn’t know if he’s being led to his execution, but he knows the rain feels good. In another building, he’s taken to a new cell. This one is smaller. There’s carpet on the floor, fresh paint on the walls and sunlight shining through a missing brick. The interrogations stop.

Eventually, the guards tell him to shave. They bring his suitcase, along with a new shirt and underwear. He changes clothes for the first time in 182 days.

“Mr. Mark,” a guard says. “You’re going home.”

The words don’t seem to sink in. Mark looks up, graying hair in his eyes.

“What about John?”

The Scrapbook: Greenfield, Tennessee – August 2021

On their patio table by the pool, Crystal moves an ashtray full of cigarettes to make room for a scrapbook. Inside are pictures from Iraq, Mark’s first job overseas. He would later work in Afghanistan, where he remembers talking to a man who spent more than seven years there. Mark asked how he could miss so much time with family. Then, Mark told the man he could never do that.

Mark worked overseas for 10 years.

In many ways, he was addicted. The work was exciting. Dangerous. Foreign. Fun. And it paid well: $166,731 a year for his Yemen contract.

While looking through the scrapbook, Crystal flinches at a photo on Mark’s phone.It’sapictureofhisprison,theone she spent months of sleepless nights searching for. She asks him to send it to her, and Mark leaves to feed his cows.

Crystal was 17 when she started dating Mark. She kept it secret because her mom forbade it. But Mark was persistent. They married in1988 and had three kids together.

Crystal agrees to answer questions, even if she doesn’t always say much. She moved out shortly after Mark was released from prison. She returned, but their marriage was already over. They just didn’t know it yet.

For years, Mark kissed her every morning before leaving for work. Today, he doesn’t even say goodbye. She lives upstairs, and he lives downstairs. Both havebeendiagnosedwithpost-traumatic stress disorder.

“I think I tore the family apart,” Crystal says.

Shelooksoffintothedistance,puffing acigarettewhile“DustintheWind”plays on the radio.

“That’s what life is,” she says.

She turns the radio off.

The Border: Yemen – April 29, 2016

Mark has never seen so many guns in his life. In a Houthi stronghold, everyone from 7 years old to 70 holds an assault rifle. They all stare at him. He’s made it out of prison, but he doesn’t think he’s going home.

The Houthis show Mark a bombed mosque. They show him a school and a home. Another mosque, another school. All bombed. Mark counts 21 bridges destroyed to keep the Houthis from advancing.

One of the soldiers, through an interpreter, tells Mark they will never give up.

We will die fighting,” he says.

Mark sits in the middle seat of a Toyota 4Runner, knees tucked underneath him. They drive for at least nine hours. When they reach the yellow barricades of Saudi Arabia, a chain-link fence divides the countries. Soldiers stand on each side.

After 20 minutes, a window rolls down. Outside, a man holds up an iPhone and pushes a button.

“Mr. McAlister, I work for the diplomatic security embassy here in Saudi Arabia. I want you to listen to this man and follow this man across the border. You do everything he says.”

Mark nods, and the rest is a blur. The man grabs his hand. They walk about 40 yards. In what seems like an instant, Mark looks back and the Houthis are gone.

SaudiArabianofficialsrunametaldetector across his arms, legs and chest. They drive to the hospital, escorted by dozens of vehicles, where Mark undergoes a full-body scan and two examinations.

At a restaurant near the border two hours later, Mark is greeted by FBI agents. They’re the first Americans he’s seen in six months and11days. He finally feels free.

Welcome back,” they say. Then, they tell him: “John has been murdered.”