Friends of an American held hostage in Saudi Arabia by a group linked to al-Qaeda awaited word of his fate as a deadline imposed by his captors ticked down.
A candlelight vigil for Paul Johnson was planned for 7pm yesterday behind a firehouse in this rural community about 32km north of Atlantic City.
"We all hope Paul comes back," Dan Pomponio, a neighbor of Johnson's sister in Little Egg Harbor, said on Wednesday. "You can only cross your fingers and hope."
The gathering in Johnson's hometown was to take place within a day of a deadline set by his captors, who threatened on Tuesday to kill him in three days unless Saudi authorities release al-Qaeda prisoners.
The threats were made on a video shown on an Islamic Web site following Johnson's abduction over the weekend; it was not clear exactly when the deadline would be, since it was not clear exactly when the video was made.
Johnson, 49, moved to Florida in the early 1980s to work for Lockheed Martin, and had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade. At the time of his abduction, he had been working on targeting and night vision systems for Apache helicopters.
As friends on Wednesday remembered the clean-cut young man who liked fast cars and motorcycles, officials in Washington said US and Saudi authorities had teamed to find Johnson.
Johnson's son on Wednesday appeared on CNN to implore the Saudi government to find his father.
"Please let him return home safely," Paul Johnson III said. "He will leave your country. You will never see him again. I just plead with them to get him home safely."
But US Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey said he was discouraged after an hour-long meeting at the Capitol with the Saudi government's top foreign policy advisor, Adel al-Jubeir.
"They're at a loss. He says they're using every resource that they have to try to free him," Lautenberg said. "Right now the prospects are gloomy."
Late Wednesday, Saudi security forces and police surrounded a house in Riyadh, but withdrew hours later, witnesses said.
It was unclear whether anyone was detained.
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