Mark Cobb was so close to the terrorists, he could hear their footsteps. Steve Wysocki escaped after hearing his boss taken hostage next door. Nick Frazier was on a bus that al Qaeda-linked militants sprayed with hundreds of bullets.
Although the three Americans escaped the harrowing attack on a petrol plant in Algeria with their lives, they are still racked with guilt, plagued with nightmares and haunted by memories of their ordeal and the co-workers they left behind.
Cobb, Wysocki and Frazier described the attack — in which 37 workers died — to Charlie Rose in an extensive 60 Minutes interview which airs Sunday.
Cobb, who is a manager at Ain Amenas field in the Sahara, described how he hid under a pile of maps in a locked room with several co-workers after gunfire broke out on January 16.
“If they started poking at the maps with an AK-47 or peeling maps off the top…I knew it was over,” Cobb told Rose.
“I heard them kick open the front door. That’s I guess at the point, in all honesty that I felt pure terror… I elected to begin to make my calls to my family and say my goodbyes.”
Cobb’s door was one of two the militants failed to kick in and he eventually escaped to a nearby Algerian Army base through a hole in the fence.
“The nightmares for me are all the same thing,” Cobb said. “It’s the sound of those footsteps as they came down that hallway towards that door.”
Oil and gas expert Wysocki also escaped through the fence, but not before hearing the terrorists find his boss, Gordon Rowan, who did not survive.
“I’m like ‘Why couldn’t I have done something to help? And…(I) feel guilty that I was paralyzed with fear and not do(ing) anything,” Wysocki told Rose. “I’m especially guilty because they lost their lives and I didn’t.”
BP petrol engineer Frazier described how his bus was peppered with hundreds of bullets before Algerian army soldiers rushed to the rescue, resulting in a 30-minute gun battle.
“They saved our lives,” said Frazier. “They returned…heavy, heavy gunfire…they stood by the bus and shot back and kept the terrorists from getting onto the bus.”
Rowan and gas workers Frederick Buttaccio and Victor Lovelady were the three Americans who died during the standoff, which ended when Algerian special-forces stormed the facility, freeing 685 Algerians and 107 foreigners. More than 30 militants died during the attack.