Perspective: Come, or we'll kill you -- worlds collide in Iraq kidnapping

It was an ordinary Monday afternoon. As ordinary as a day can be in Baghdad.

Roy Hallums was in his second-floor office, sitting at his desk, bent over his computer keyboard. Even in a well-to-do neighborhood, in a fortified complex with armed guards, he was used to hearing the sounds of war.

But this was the first time he'd heard them coming up the stairs.

Shooting. Yelling. Pounding feet. Hallums stood, waiting for whatever it was to burst through the door. Four men slammed in, balaclavas covering their heads, guns pointed. In heavily accented English they said: Come with us or we'll kill you.

Hallums didn't need to be told twice.

He went.

Across the courtyard, stumbling through a gunfight between his kidnappers and his private contracting company's guards. Out to a car, where he was beaten to the floorboard.

Don't move or we'll kill you, said the man who pinned his head.

His heart pounded in time with his racing mind. The car bounced hard across a potholed road. Money, he thought. They want money. His thoughts switched gears. They want to cut off my head. On camera. Like they did six weeks ago to Eugene Armstrong. Or to Nicholas Berg, before that, after they'd made him beg.

His fear sped with the car. They're going to kill me, Hallums said to himself. And they're going to take a long time doing it.

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Part 2 of the Roy Hallums story