The Devil's Waters

by David L. Robbins

  Plucking one bundle of the cash, Yusuf held it with both hands over his head like the heart of a beast.

  “Kill the goats.”

  His cousins lowered their weapons. Suleiman came to Yusuf’s side. Guleed clapped and jogged out of the wheelhouse to issue the order that would begin the butchering and cooking of their last meal aboard the Bannon. The Indians and Malays, for the first time in months, were left unguarded. They moved unsurely, like men wearing shoes that were too big.

  Yusuf spoke to the captain: “Take your men outside. Let the French snap your pictures from their plane to show your families you’re all right. We’ll eat, then we’ll be gone at sundown. The ship will be yours again.”

  The little Indian asked, “Will your men return what else they have stolen? Our computers, cell phones, cameras, clothes?”

  Yusuf waved a bundle of dollars beneath his nose to sniff it like a bouquet. He laughed down to his bare feet on the cool floor. He said only, “Suleiman.”

  Yusuf’s lieutenant, narrow-faced and gold-toothed, raised his handgun. “Get some sun, man.”

  The captain nodded in the manner of an educated fellow, completing his judgment of Yusuf and likely all Somalis as thieves and worthless. He stepped away with an incline of his head, still the pirate king’s prisoner.

  Alone on the bridge, Yusuf and Suleiman counted the ransom. The cousins combed through banded bills to be certain of the denominations, all thousands and hundreds. When they were assured of the amount, Suleiman unzipped several satchels. Yusuf tossed him bricks of dollars.

  The merchants were paid first. For the three months the Bannon rode at anchor offshore, the villagers of Qandala had kept Yusuf’s twenty-man guard teams supplied. In daily motorboats, they ferried out fresh food, drink, Kenyan qaat leaf to chew, laundered clothes, time cards for the guards’ cell phones. Yusuf pitched to Suleiman enough packets for $300,000, a 200 percent profit. The chief of the suppliers was Suleiman’s brother-in-law. His sister had married outside the Darood clan, a Rahanweyn, the farmer caste, ashraf. This generosity should help keep the peace.

  Second came the large share for the financiers, faceless money that flowed from offices in Dubai and Mombasa. These funds were made available to only the best crews, all arrangements done in secret. They paid for Yusuf’s equipment, and in return took a one-third interest. The moneymen had provided skiffs and motors, weapons and ammunition, radios, food, and the fuel used at sea while Yusuf and his boarding crew searched for a suitable target.

  The financiers’ portion required a large duffel. One million, one hundred thousand dollars. A massive profit. A car and unnamed armed men would arrive at Yusuf’s compound tonight.

  Next came the local elders, odayal. The Darood chiefs granted anchoring rights off Qandala; from the south, the Hawiye of Hobyo in the Mudug allowed Yusuf to hunt in their waters. Suleiman stuffed two bags each with $184,000, 5 percent.

  Now, the class A and class B members of the crew. One B share was worth the prearranged amount of $10,000. Yusuf’s company of men had hired forty-five of these as militiamen to guard the hostages and the ship during the negotiations, as interpreters, cooks, janitors. Most of these were teenagers, poor boys who flocked to join the pirate companies, many of them younger relatives of class A shareholders. They were unproven, often illiterate, but they were given tasks and weapons. Most of their guns were left without bullets in case the hostages revolted, tempers flared, or someone grew angry or dulled by too much qaat. They pilfered from the captives in petty ways that Yusuf allowed, and earned a pittance from the pirate trade that would change their lives for the better. Suleiman snagged $450,000 out of the air from Yusuf.

  That left $1.5 million for the A shares.

  These men had risked their lives with Yusuf on bad-weyn, the deep water, to capture this ship. For a week in April, well before the monsoon season, Yusuf, Suleiman, and a dozen others had floated in the Gulf of Aden on their dhow mother ship. Hundreds of freighters passed them, all bound north to Suez or south from it. The commercial ships formed convoys passing Somali waters, escorted by coalition warships from forty countries that shadowed the convoys and spoiled for a fight with pirates. Other Somali crews trolled these waters, but Yusuf’s dhow was familiar to them, and they kept a distance. For a week in the gulf, Yusuf, Suleiman, and ten others bobbed and plotted, navigated, caught and cleaned fish, did their shifts in the deep of the night and the stink of diesel. They found no ships they felt sufficiently vulnerable; all were either too fast, too tall, or too close to the warships. Yusuf turned his dhow east into the Indian Ocean, away from the nuisance of the coalition’s guardians. For ten days more they scanned the blue swells for passing freighters and tankers, looking for a sluggard, loaded to the hilt, low freeboard. They found the Bannon five hundred miles west of the Seychelles doing only sixteen knots, stacked with containers, unwary of pirates. Yusuf and his crew sped alongside in wooden skiffs. They raked the steel sides with bullets, held high their rocket grenade launchers to threaten the behemoth into slowing more. They boarded her easily with grappling hooks and ladders. They fired no more shots, cowed the ships’ mates into hostages, and turned her for the Somali coast, home to Qandala.

  Counting out the money for this team, Yusuf grinned that they were not worthless men, though they were brigands. They were hard men of the sea, fishermen before, pirates now.

  He had twenty-five class A shares to distribute, each valued at $68,000. The assault team of fourteen had voted Suleiman an extra half-share for being the first to board the Bannon. One half-share was to be given to the widow of a clansman who’d drowned months ago on an earlier, unsuccessful trip; three shares would be split between the families of six men captured last spring by a Chinese warship, jailed now in Kenya.

  These shares went into another duffel, to be handed to the men at a celebration at Yusuf’s compound in Qandala tomorrow. The remaining shares were split between first mate Suleiman, who stuffed two into his own sack, and Yusuf, six as captain.

  The two shook hands. Yusuf’s larger mitt swallowed his older cousin’s slim fingers.

  “Mahad sanid.”

  “Mahad sanid, saaxiib.”

  Yusuf turned a circle in the wheelhouse, granting his memory a last panorama. The captain’s leather chair, the bank of radar monitors, compasses, controls, the wheel and throttle, high above a mountain of containers. These had all been his. Stolen, yes, but answerable to him. That was sufficient power to envision himself this ship’s true captain, not its captor. The money in his sack did not release him so quickly from this image as he’d like.

  “Yusuf.”

  “Yes.”

  “Time to go.”

  Yusuf shouldered his leather bag, $400,000. The weight impressed him, helped him shrug off the lure of the Bannon.

  “Hold the door open, cousin.”

  Suleiman pulled back the starboard door. Yusuf lifted the hard plastic cask. He hefted the barrel outside, onto the starboard wing. With one great shove, he heaved it over the rail, to fall to the ocean a hundred feet below.

  The chest opened its white and emptied innards, a clamshell with the pearl gone. The current dragged it down the length of the ship and away. Shots rang in salute. The French photographers’ plane, believing the bullets were aimed at it, skittered off to a safer distance.

  Sharks thrashed at the heads and hooves, the scraps of the goats tossed overboard. The Somalis, raised to believe in animal omens, cheered. Fires burned in fifty-gallon drums cut in half, filled with charcoal, fitted with grills. Hoses washed away blood from the slaughter, drawing more sharks.

  The Bannon’s cooks pitched in to prepare the meal. When the meat was done and carved, the Malays ate with their guards, glad to be rid of them soon but glad, too, for a hearty meal. Ashwin and his officers stayed apart, clucking tongues at the mess, finally free to express their disdain. Suleiman circulated, keeping order. Yusuf watched from four decks above in the smoke of the braziers.

  Below, his
men concocted stories to spread once back on shore. Perhaps the blood they’d washed overboard had belonged to a Malay crewman they’d butchered. The sharks ate the pieces of his body. They spoke of the many seamen they’d had to kill to capture this ship, then beaten the rest to keep it. The cruelties of Yusuf, the cleverness of Suleiman. How the captain, owners, and insurers of the great freighter Bannon bowed to them. The terrible things done at the command of Yusuf Raage, the bloodiest of Somali pirate chiefs.

  Yusuf did not come down for the meal but stood in full view throughout. He let the tales about him whip up with the rising shore breeze.

  After an hour, with the sun low over the rocky coast, the meal was abandoned, the fire pits left to smolder. Five fast skiffs sped out to the Bannon from shore. Yusuf climbed down from his perch. His cadre of young guards, filled with goat and curd, some glassy-eyed from chewing qaat leaves, lined up on the starboard rail. Weapons hung lazily over their shoulders and in their hands, the job done, money and sleep on their minds.

  Guleed, younger and even thinner than Suleiman, lowered the long gangway. The metal stairs dipped to the waterline. Yusuf beckoned for the Indian captain, Ashwin.

  “You did not eat, Captain.”

  “Nor did you. Captain.”

  “I’ll eat tonight.” Yusuf shook the bag in his grip. “I’ll eat well. Right now, I need you and your officers for one more chore.”

  “We are finished. You have your money.”

  “I don’t have it in my vault. Nor do I have myself behind my walls.” Yusuf pushed a finger at the purpling dusk. “It would be a very easy matter for a warship helicopter to visit us while we’re headed for shore. We’ll be very exposed. Wonderful targets. You see? Everyone wants to hold up a Somali pirate’s head.”

  Ashwin seemed disappointed. “You are a clever man.”

  Yusuf chortled. “Who starts these rumors? Yes, perhaps. Now, to the point. You will ride in the skiff with me. Each of your officers will go in one of the remaining boats. After the sharks have not eaten us and we’re on shore, the skiffs will bring you back here. You may weigh anchor and go wherever you like.”

  Ashwin did not wait for Yusuf’s dismissal. He turned to inform his officers.

  The first of the skiffs puttered alongside the dropped gangway. Suleiman, waiting on the platform, climbed in. He carried his own bag and the dollar-stuffed duffel for the financiers. Five militiamen clambered aboard with him, then Chugh, the Bannon’s first mate. This was repeated until all the Somalis and Indian officers were on their way toward shore, each skiff bearing one of the money satchels. Yusuf stepped off the gangway into the last boat. He reached up to Ashwin, allowing him to be the final man off the ship. In the fading afternoon a shark’s shadow rippled under the surface.

  The skiff skipped over the even seas, running flat out. Yusuf did not know the boy at the tiller, but the lad beamed, seeming honored. On the sandy shore, a reception party waited for Yusuf and the money. The Bannon grew small in the skiff’s wake.

  The two miles to shore went fast. Yusuf stood in the bow, a figurehead for the skiff. Nearing the beach, the boy did not glide in to have Yusuf step out in knee-deep water like the other skiffs but powered onto the shore, wedging the hull into the sand for a dramatic arrival. Yusuf braced himself at the bow, then hopped over the gunwale. He did not turn to Ashwin to bid farewell.

  One hundred meters inland, the beach became a hardscrabble desert. Scrub brush grew in the sand, wind-tossed plastic bags hung snagged in the scraggy branches. Huts of rock, driftwood, and mud had been raised at the rim of the beach by Qandala fishermen who had no boats. The town itself stood two miles away at the end of a dusty track.

  The late-day sky remained quiet, without helicopters or photographers’ planes. A lone buzzard wheeled. Yusuf looked up to the bird and marveled that it knew.

  Yusuf’s twenty militiamen formed up behind him, Suleiman in the lead. Even the boy in the dried-out skiff jumped down with a rattling old AK-47 to stand with Yusuf. The boy must have been Darood.

  To Yusuf’s right, out of the way, a handful of old men in long robes were gathered. Each gray beard quivered while they spoke among themselves. They were not the law. No one was.

  Across thirty meters of sand, with gun stocks pressed to their hips and barrels level, stood a firing line of Rahanweyn, as many as fifty. Yusuf did not bother to count; he was well outnumbered. Their weapons were a mix of vintage carbines and beat-up submachine guns, enough for fools to feel brave. At their head slouched Suleiman’s brother-in-law, Madoowbe. This was his proper naanay; privately he was called Wiil Waal, “Bold Boy.” He was too fond of chewing qaat.

  Yusuf motioned forward young Guleed.

  “Take the money bag to the odayal. Stay over there.”

  “No, cousin.”

  Yusuf patted the teenager’s narrow shoulder. “Who would you have me send? Who else can I trust?”

  Guleed spit in the sand. He stared after it a moment, committing himself to the duty of murdering Wiil Waal later. He jogged off with the bag. Yusuf called after him, “Good boy.”

  When the elders had received their cash, Suleiman gestured for the satchel with $300,000 that was to be given to the Rahanweyn. He dropped the bag at Yusuf’s bare feet.

  In the beached skiff, Captain Ashwin ducked, to peer over the gunwale.

  Yusuf spoke to Suleiman at his side. “Do not raise guns. There’s no need.”

  “You and I define need very differently.”

  “He’s your family. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s a footo delo.” An asshole.

  Yusuf chuckled. He let the laughter stay in his voice when he called across the beach to Madoowbe.

  The man shouted in reply, “Salaamu alaykum.”

  “I have your money. A very good amount.”

  “How much?”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars.”

  Wiil Waal’s men whistled and stirred around him. Though he would surely cheat them, this was enough to go around. The tall man took several strides ahead of his clansmen. When he did, he revealed the woman behind him. Suleiman’s sister, Aziza.

  Bold Boy would put his wife in this sort of danger. He would use a Darood woman as a shield against Darood men. Yusuf spit in the sand where Guleed had.

  He propped a hand against Suleiman’s advance.

  “You do not lead while I’m alive.”

  Suleiman did not retreat, but did not press forward.

  Madoowbe called across the darkening beach, “How much do you have in your own bag, Yusuf?”

  “We’el,” someone behind Yusuf muttered. Bastard.

  Yusuf held it up for Bold Boy to see.

  “Four hundred thousand.”

  The Rahanweyn leader strode farther away from his clotted guns. He stood alone and fearless halfway to Yusuf like a gladiator on the sand. Bold Boy waved his arms as he spoke, agitated and high.

  “I have fifty men here who worked for you for three months. Hauling everything you needed back and forth to that fucking ship.” This lash at the Bannon struck hard in Yusuf’s ear. Bold Boy spoke like a farmer, with no love of the ocean.

  “Your men did a fine job.”

  “We did. And now you tell us that you, one man, are worth more than my fifty. We had expenses!”

  He yelled this as if it were some final argument that could not be overcome.

  “You keep our bag, Yusuf. We want yours. We earned it.”

  Ten steps behind Bold Boy, his wife, Aziza, pressed hands to her mouth. Yusuf knew her, and she him. He would never hand over the satchel on his shoulder, for it was not money he would surrender.

  Yusuf heaved his duffel to the sand.

  “Come get it,” he said. “Ha cabsan.” Don’t be afraid.

  Madoowbe turned to his fifty clansmen for a short, manic laugh. He asked them, “Why would I be afraid?”

  He pivoted back to Yusuf, pointing with the barrel of his gun. “Bring it to me.”

  Yusuf bit his lip. Bold
Boy had forgotten his place.

  Madoowbe waited halfway between the two armed clans. This looked like courage. Yusuf hefted his satchel. To Suleiman, he whispered, “Do nothing.”

  Yusuf took the fifteen strides slowly, kicking his sarong with his steps. Madoowbe covered him with the rifle.

  “Will you shoot me?” Yusuf closed the distance until he pushed his chest against the black ring of the rifle’s barrel. “In front of the elders? My clan?” Madoowbe’s eyes were wide and wild, qaat-stained and seeing more than he ought, that he might kill Yusuf the pirate and take all the money.

  Yusuf dropped the satchel. He had no desire to die today. To live, and to save his clansmen, he gave himself over to wickedness.

  “Wiil Waal.”

  Madoowbe slatted his eyes. Yusuf dared him to his name. Be bold. Boy.

  Yusuf surged forward and pushed his chest into the barrel, moving the gun backward, for an instant raising Madoowbe’s finger off the trigger. In the split second that gained him, Yusuf shoved the gun barrel down, aiming it into the sand. Madoowbe squeezed, firing near his own feet. Yusuf flashed his free hand to the small of his own back, snatching the onyx-handled knife from his waistband under the khameez. In a blinding backhand sweep, the well-whetted blade hacked deep below Madoowbe’s left ear, slicing the neck vein. Swiftly, with a crossing flick, Yusuf slashed again at the Rahanweyn’s throat. The two gashes cut a sudden V below Madoowbe’s chin, both burbling. Bold Boy jerked back a step, coughing. He spit blood from his lips and new gills onto Yusuf’s blouse, spraying red over the bag of money. Yusuf caught him before he could spin away, snatching Madoowbe by the tunic. He took away Madoowbe’s rifle, barely held. Bold Boy wriggled, painting more blood on Yusuf.

  Madoowbe’s mouth rounded, gasping for air that would not reach his lungs. His eyes batted in shock and at what frightful thoughts he might have. His long legs bowed. Before he could collapse, Yusuf gripped Bold Boy’s hair. He let the Rahanweyn’s knees bend but held the torso erect. Madoowbe knelt to Yusuf, dying. He continued to spew blood from his heartbeat and wasted gasps.