CBC reporter Mellissa Fung made the following promises to herself as she lay in a literal hole in the ground: "I am not dying here. Dying is not an option. Help is coming."
In an exclusive interview with the CBC's Anna Maria Tremonti from an undisclosed location — her first since being released Saturday — Fung said she struck one of the armed men as she was forced into a vehicle at a refugee camp in Afghanistan on Oct. 12.
"Two guys with big guns came out of the car and grabbed me," she said. "I think I hit one, and he stabbed me in the shoulder. They stabbed me as I was getting in the car.
"Next thing I knew, I was inside the car on the floor."
Fung, who is from Vancouver and is normally based in Regina, was on her second tour reporting from Afghanistan and had been in Kabul almost a month.
She described the criminal gang who held her as a "family business" eager to "finish her case" and get paid a ransom.
The lead kidnapper, Khaled, was about 19 years old, and told her his father ran the operation from Pakistan. He told her he would have preferred to take a man, because it wouldn't be "as much trouble."
"He said, 'I saw you. We were in a hurry. We needed to get out of there so we grabbed you.'"
It's not reported in the CBC.ca story, but Fung used her cellphone to call a former CBC colleague who now works for CTV -- Paul Workman, CTV News's South Asia bureau chief who has done multiple stints in Afghanistan (he was a foreign corro with the CBC before he joined CTV -- which also employs the likes of me).