'Got to try something': How Lombard's Mark Frerichs survived 32 months of captivity in Afghanistan

First of two parts

Early into his long captivity at the hands of the Taliban, Mark Frerichs tried to assert some order: He counted the days in his dirt-floor cell by rolling toilet paper into tiny balls.

“After a year, I gave up on that,” he said. Instead, he measured the seasons, as in, “oh there's snow on the ground, I guess it's two winters I've been here.”

In all, the Lombard native would spend nearly 32 months as a hostage in Afghanistan.

Frerichs, a civil engineer and former U.S. Navy diver, was beaten, shackled and threatened with execution.

When he could, Frerichs fought back. When he couldn't, he relied on positive memories to ward off despair.

Somehow, he endured — even after being left behind when American troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021.

And unbeknown to Frerichs, loved ones in Lombard had his back, allying with a U.S. senator to push for his release.

In September 2022, he walked out of captivity and onto an American government plane. Now, he shares his story.

Fateful crash

Despite living over a decade in Afghanistan where he ran a construction business, Frerichs took no chances in a country where kidnappings of foreigners were a recurring reality.

“Every 90 days, I would pack up and move to another side of town,” he told the Daily Herald. “I didn't keep a regular schedule. Even my team ... wouldn't know my movements until we were ready to go. I just didn't plan on a car crash.”

Jan. 31, 2020, brought the first snow and freeze of the year to the area. Frerichs was traveling to a project outside of Kabul with two others when a car veered into their path.

Frerichs was hurtled through the windshield. When he came to, the vehicle was in a ditch, he was lying across the hood and the motor was running full throttle with the dead driver's foot on the gas.

“I remember reaching in trying to turn off the key so it didn't cause an explosion,” Frerichs said. And as he did, “I could feel my other arm — boom! — being pulled out of the ditch. A couple guys grabbed me, bumped me across the street, threw me in the trunk, took my shoes and drove off.”

He was confined to the trunk for hours. When the vehicle stopped, several heavily armed young men forced Frerichs to exchange his Western clothing for traditional Afghan attire.

One looked at him and said, “Taliban good, America no good.”

“I knew I was being kidnapped,” Frerichs recalled. Until then, “I didn't know who they were affiliated with.”

Weaponized scarf

The next drive was cross-country.

Frerichs tried to brace himself in the freezing trunk as it bounced around. “My feet were so numb I was thinking they might be frostbitten beyond repair.”

An estimated two days later, Frerichs was shown a primitive compound and ordered to crawl through a small hole in the wall. There, he took note of his surroundings.

“You really had to squat to get into this hole,” he said, “and if I had a weapon in my hand — like these guys did — they're going to lose control of it temporarily to get through.”

Inside, he saw what appeared to be a dry well with a 30-foot drop. His captors joked, laughed and made him look down.

They sat him in the snow, Frerichs recalled. If he looked around, he said, “they'd kick me in the head.”

But once alone, “I thought, 'They're just going to drop me in the hole and leave me for dead.' So, I figured I got to try something.”

What Frerichs did was convert his Afghan scarf into an improvised rope. Then, he waited.

“As soon as the guy's head came through — I didn't have time to think this through — I had him in a chokehold. I had his weapon barrel in my hand. And I was thinking, 'they're on the other side. If I can at least take this guy out ... I can operate an AK-47.'”

A second man got wise to the ruse, kicked his colleague through the hole and barreled in, Frerichs recalled.

“That's when the fun began,” he quipped.

“I think that's why they kept me chained up for two years.”

A second chance

His injuries from the crash and rocky transport in the car trunk were compounded by a severe beating after his brief revolt. “I just felt like death,” Frerichs said.

Shortly after, he was taken to a safe house in Khost, a city near Pakistan, where he made a second escape attempt. Placed in a room, Frerichs frantically tried to power up his cellphone that his captors had inadvertently left.

“I get the SIM card in, get the battery in ... and the SIM card wasn't perfectly lined up. I got it in, got a signal ... and they busted me.”

The signal provided enough information to U.S. intelligence to dispatch a Navy SEALs team to Khost, but by then Frerichs was gone.

Officials believe that for most of Frerichs' captivity he was held by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network in secret locations near or over the Pakistan border.

After Khost, Frerichs spent months alone in a tiny cell with a dirt floor.

His jailers mostly kept their faces covered, so Frerichs identified them by their feet. Their tactics ranged from firing blank ammunition at his head once to beatings.

“It just depended on the mood they were in,” Frerichs said. One of his lowest points was when a guard kicked him in the jaw, dislocating it. “I was able to work it back in, but it was very painful.”

One month after the abduction, on Feb. 29, 2020, Taliban leaders and President Donald Trump's administration reached a peace settlement, allowing for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. It also allowed for the exchange of thousands of prisoners.

“I just assumed that I would be part of that deal,” Frerichs said. “I was thinking, 'Oh, I'll be out of here shortly.'

“That didn't happen.”

A 'bulldog' in his corner

Federal authorities broke the news of his abduction to Frerichs' sister Charlene Cakora and her husband, Chris, back in Lombard on Feb. 2, 2020, Super Bowl Sunday.

“I didn't believe it. I said, 'Are you sure?'” she recounted.

Reality set in soon about her brother's situation. “It was really hard to do day-to-day things that he probably was not getting. Like a bath, shower, bed, shoes, carpet, a nice roof over his head.”

In May 2020, Cakora gave a statement to The Associated Press. “The Taliban kidnapped my brother in January. In February, the U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban. My brother wasn't part of the deal.”

And that was just the start. Since 2020, she's given interviews on national television, lobbied lawmakers and appealed to two presidents.

“We were tight,” Cakora said of her relationship with her big brother. Growing up, Mark turned a knack for magic tricks into performances and Charlene became his assistant.

“I knew how to do all his magic tricks, so I felt really special. We always had each other's backs.”

Cakora believed Frerichs would somehow prevail.

“He's a strong person and I've always known that he's doing everything he can to stay alive,” she said.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden took office and the family renewed their calls for swift action on Frerichs' behalf. But as Taliban forces marched on Kabul amid a messy U.S. troop withdrawal in August 2021, their worries intensified.

The Cakoras went to the White House to meet with officials from the National Security Council, Department of Justice and State Department, and Charlene made her voice heard.

“I was nice at first, and then I really turned into a bulldog,” she said.

For Chris Cakora, “we were surprised that many high-ranking officials would take the time to listen to us. The government had a face. And the government listened and talked to us as people.”

'I didn't take it personally'

Over 7,000 miles away, Frerichs gradually lost 30 pounds from a bread-and-water diet.

His hands and feet were shackled, but sometimes “they'd take the chains off my ankles during the day so I could do some yoga or at least stretch my legs out.”

At times, Frerichs was so fatigued he couldn't move, he said.

“The thing that kept me going was that I didn't take it personally,” Frerichs said. “These kids are 20-somethings. They've been taught since birth that I represent the sworn enemy.”

Still, the ad hoc brutality and lack of any protocols kept him on edge.

“I'm in a remote location, there's no adult supervision (and) there's very little food or water or provisions. And you don't know what these kids are going to do. That's what was frightening.”

• On Monday: From amateur magician to Navy diver, how Mark Frerichs' memories helped keep him sane during captivity as a Lombard family and U.S. senator pushed to free him from the Taliban.