Read an excerpt from ‘No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir’ by Jane Ferguson

Special correspondent Jane Ferguson has reported from all over the globe, from combat zones in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Yemen to the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Turkey. Tuesday on the PBS NewsHour, Ferguson sits down with Amna Nawaz to discuss her new book, “No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir.”

Read an excerpt from her prologue below.

PROLOGUE

Several dozen reporters filled the Serena’s lobby, some trying to leave, others trying to figure out how to stay. Few had any way of going anywhere. The Afghan drivers who had worked for news organizations wouldn’t pick any reporters up, including ours. Who would want to be stopped at a Taliban checkpoint with Westerners in the back of your car?

The hotel security chief walked by and I grabbed him by the arm. A blond British former soldier, he looked awkward in a suit. It was too tight around his wide, burly body. I’ll call him Mike. “Is it safe to stay here?” I asked, eyeing him for an honest assessment.

“I can’t get the security staff to come for the next shift of work at the gate,” he replied, whispering in my ear to avoid frightening the others. “I’m leaving to go to the Baron hotel by the airport,” he said. “The British paratroopers are based there managing the evacuations.”

Mike agreed to give us a ride to the Baron in his armored car. My cameraman Eric and I would relocate just for the night, to be safe.

When Mike came marching across the carpark to his armored SUV, he had changed. He had taken off his suit and wore camouflaged body armor and an ammunition belt around his chest. A 9mm pistol hung from his hip, and he carried a military-grade automatic rifle in his hands. As we climbed into the back of the vehicle, I was painfully aware that we looked like soldiers. The decision to leave the Serena and careen out into Kabul’s streets as the Taliban arrived was impossibly tough. Was it safer to stay and take our chances with potential looters at the hotel, totally unprotected, or to make a run for it with this former British soldier? It was too late to change our minds now, I realized as we pulled out of the hotel gates and Mike cocked his gun with a loud clack-clack. My heart beat fast as the city’s streets, once so familiar and benign to me, rushed by, now so unknown and dangerous.

At first there was no one around, the roads and sidewalks completely abandoned. After we made it past the outer walls of the U.S. embassy and swung around the Ahmad Massoud roundabout, we headed down the airport road. Traffic was backed up in the direction of the airport. Everyone was trying to make it there. The commercial flights had stopped shortly after Eric and I had landed. Crowds of people were gathered outside the gates, desperate to get in. The road was jammed with cars filled with fleeing families and whatever belongings they had been able to gather.

Mike started to panic. Total chaos had gripped the area outside the airport walls. Government officials and Afghan special forces in Humvees and flatbed trucks had driven there, trying to get to the airport, too, further clogging up the roads. Groups of people were abandoning cars and carrying luggage above their heads the last few hundred yards. Others, standing on the sidewalk, approached our car and stared through the windows in disbelief at what was happening.

Watch: Jane Ferguson’s reporting of Afghanistan, Ukraine and more

A wooden fruit cart had been left on the side of the road, blocking our way forward. Mike was irate. It was starting to get dark. Eric and I asked each other quietly if we should get out and make a run for it. The crowds were too thick, perhaps angry. It was too risky. Mike began yelling at the people standing around the car. “Get the fuck out of the way!!” he roared, now pointing his pistol through the car’s bulletproof glass at a group of men at the hood of the car.

Now I was losing my own cool, panicked this irate British gunman was going to get us all killed. “Please calm down,” I begged. “Don’t point your gun.”

On the sidewalk, Afghans stood and stared at the traffic, watching the city fall. Suddenly I saw two Talibs walking nonchalantly down the sidewalk, their long curly hair, leisurely gait, and automatic rifles unmistakable. They were walking in the direction of the city center. I slid down lower in my seat.

“Did you see that, guys?” Mike asked from the front. “Two Taliban on the right.” Yes, I had, but I’d hoped I was somehow mistaken. Mike placed his pistol on his thigh. His finger was still on the trigger.

Jane Ferguson and cameraman Eric O’Connor report from inside Ukraine during the war.

Vehicles started passing us on the left, heading into the city. I sat frozen in the back of the SUV as cars and pickup trucks full of Taliban fighters drove by. I felt certain that we had only seconds before a Taliban commander spotted us, stopped our car, and ordered us killed or detained. The fact that we were still alive seemed so improbable the scene felt dreamlike, yet the dread racing through me was far from real. They didn’t stop us, seemingly content that we were headed in the other direction. As one truck passed us at a painfully slow crawl, the driver and passengers, all Taliban, with long wavy hair and wide eyes, guns on the dashboard, stared at us as we stared back, unable to look away, at the same time completely entranced and gripped with intense fear. No one honked their horns, fired their guns, or even shouted. We watched the Taliban drive back into the city they were driven out of almost twenty years prior.

For the first time in two decades, the Taliban were taking back Kabul. When they were last here, in November 2001, I was a teenage girl in high school in Northern Ireland living under a different sort of conflict. But it would be this war, this city, that would define me.

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This is an excerpt from “No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir” by PBS NewsHour special correspondent Jane Ferguson.