A Matter of Perspective
Alex looked down at the receiver. 'Well,' he thought, 'Isn't this just fucking great.' He was trapped, between what looked to be about 20 jihadists, and a mountain. And all MI6 could do was tell him he was on his own.
"Capitule!" One of the terrorists shouted.
'Great, the bastards only know French.' But Alex knew the gist of it. Unfortunately, a remedial knowledge of French wasn't going to help him very much in the long run. One of the terrorists, he noted, had just gotten a clear shot at him. Reluctantly, he raised his hands. The men shouted in victory. If he was hearing them right, one of them was chanting "Allahu Akbar!" Otherwise, he couldn't tell what they were saying. Persian, by the sound of it.
One of his captures went up to him, and smashed the butt of the gun into his face. Alex's world rapidly grew black.
The American schoolboy, 15 years old, looked up from his tranquil walk around the field. A Bell UH 1 'Huey' helicopter, with it's distinctive "chopchopchop" sound, was flying low overhead towards him. He figured it must've been from the National Guard Armory. One of his old Scouting friends was now in the Guard, and they liked to play pranks on him, like seeing if they could strafe him with water balloons.
As the Huey grew closer, however, he noticed something different. It was approaching to land. He grew confused- they never landed- but he was still not suspicious. After all it was probably just another prank. That, or another Government Official checking in to make sure he wasn't building another power plant. He laughed at the thought. A few months beforehand, he had gotten into serious trouble by building a small nuclear reactor in one of his fields. It worked, too, and it didn't leak that much radiation. Only 1 miliSievert per hour. Less than a single CAT scan. Unfortunately, someone had seen the steam produced by the reactor, and, figuring it to be smoke, had called the Fire Department. In a stroke of dumb luck, the first responders had a Geiger counter with them. Then they called the Sheriff, who then called the Guard, who then called the EPA, who then called Homeland Security, who then called called the Energy Department. And so, his mini nuke reactor had been shipped off to White Sands, New Mexico. And the Guard, unable to actually charge him with anything, for he hadn't broken a single law, made him promise he wouldn't do it again, unless under the direct supervision of the Science Department of the nearby college.
Being as he was a Boy Scout, he had kept his promise.
So his thoughts went back to the rapidly-approaching helicopter. He walked towards it's apparent landing zone. After it had landed, a single man, likely of Arabic, or perhaps Persian descent, stepped out. He then reached out with a hand towards the boy, with a cloth. It was covered in Cloroform.
The man then caught the falling boy. He turned his radio on. "We have Robert."