By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya – Roy Hallums was enduring his 311th day of captivity, blindfolded, his hands and feet bound, stuffed into a hole under the floor of a farm building outside Baghdad. He heard a commotion upstairs and managed to get the blindfold off. Delta Force troops broke open the hatch. An American soldier jumped down.
“He looks at me and points and says, ‘Are you Roy?’ I say ‘yes,’ and he yells back up the stairs: ‘Jackpot!”‘ Hallums recalled in a phone interview with The Associated Press six years after his rescue.
Another mission by elite U.S. troops took place just last week, this time in Somalia, resulting in an American and a Danish hostage being rescued and nine kidnappers killed.