The Leader wanted me to stop the ship and he was getting agitated. I was going through my rigamarole—“Ship’s broken, you must have done something to it”—when he finally barked at me, “STOP NOW!”
I raised my eyebrows and, pretending I was trying to understand, dragged my index finger across my throat. You mean, kill the engine?
I heard a voice behind me. “Will you please,” said Colin, “stop giving ’em the international sign for murder?”
I smiled. “Okay, okay.”
The next thing they wanted was a cell phone. “We want to make phone call.”
“Sell?” I said. “You want to do what?”
“They’re saying they want to make a phone call!” shouted Colin. He didn’t understand what I was doing, and he thought I was going to get myself—and him—shot.
“I got it,” I said out of the side of my mouth. “Relax. I know what they’re saying. Just let me talk to them. Just relax.” I was trying to slow every conversation down.
Finally the Leader pointed to the satellite phone on the bridge and gave me a number to dial. It was a Somali country code.
The mother ship, I thought. They want to get further instructions.
The Leader watched me closely as I walked over to the phone. I dialed the number and waited. The numbers appear as you punch the buttons, so I couldn’t misdial, but I didn’t complete the final step. On most sat phones, there’s a last key you have to hit to send the call when you’re done.
I didn’t do that. I showed the Leader the phone.
“No work,” I said. “Phone broken.”
He came over, glaring at me. “Let me see,” he barked.
I showed him the LED display. There was his number, but the call wasn’t going through.
I shrugged sympathetically.
“No cell coverage,” I said. “Bad phone.”
They gave me another number. Maybe it was their warlord or their backer in Somalia. Obviously they wanted to report they’d taken the ship and maybe get the ransom process started or get supplies or reinforcements out to the Maersk Alabama.
That wasn’t going to happen. I kept dialing and the Leader kept glaring at me.
“Radar,” he called out.
I went through my usual “What? Excuse me?” routine before pointing him to the console. He waved the gun that I should go first. I walked over and he stood by me and peered down at the screen. It was blank.
“Seventy-two,” he said. “Seventy-two mile scale.” He wanted to increase the range of the radar. So he knew something about navigation and onboard technology. More and more I was coming to believe that the Leader wasn’t a simple fisherman. This guy had a little training.
I did him one better. I turned the knob to ninety-six miles. He stared down.
“Nothing there,” I said.
He was perplexed.
“Where is that?” he said. “What is this showing?”
I knew by how surprised he was that the mother ship wasn’t out there. He was stunned that the radar didn’t show a nice comforting blip within a few miles of us. It was like his getaway car had disappeared off the face of the earth. By now he must have been convinced that he’d stumbled on the most broken-down, ramshackle ship in the U.S. Merchant Marine. Nothing on the entire ship seemed to work.
“There’s nothing there,” I said.
The three pirates started speaking in Somali. I turned my back and brought my handheld radio up. For some reason, they’d let me keep it. Maybe they thought I needed it to call the crew to the bridge or to run the ship. I intentionally kept it in my hand by my waist constantly so they’d get used to the sight of it. But I used it only when they were distracted or looking away, and then I would key the button and talk without raising the radio to my lips.
“Four on the bridge,” I said. “No mother ship yet.” I rattled off the Somalis’ positions on the bridge again and their weapons.
“Cap,” someone said. I looked over. Colin was motioning to me.
I walked over to him. He was sweating and his face was pasty, from the heat or nerves I couldn’t tell.
“Cap, just give them the money,” he said.
I looked around. I hoped the pirates hadn’t heard.
Every captain carries cash in his safe, for supplies and for emergencies. I had $30,000 stowed in mine, in large and small denominations.
“Colin, they’re going to want more than thirty grand.”
“Just give it to ’em,” he said.
I wanted to keep him calm. After his questions about being taken hostage earlier in the trip, I didn’t want Colin freaking out. We were all scared, but it was crucial we didn’t show it. Fear meant weakness, and weakness meant sloppy thinking. We couldn’t afford that.
“It’s an option,” I said. “We’ve already given them cigarettes. We’ll hold the money in reserve in case we need it.” I couldn’t care less about the money, but I wanted to slow things down and give myself a chance to strategize.
“I think you should just hand it over,” he said.
I walked away.
The Leader went over to the VHF radio, very high frequency, which basically lets you talk to anyone from horizon to horizon, a range of fifteen to twenty miles. It had originally been set to Channel 16, which is the international hailing and distress frequency. Everyone monitored that channel—it’s how you call other ships and report an accident onboard. But I’d flicked it to Channel 72 when no one was looking. Nobody ever monitored 72. The Leader might as well try calling the moon.
He rattled off a hailing call in Somali. He had to be trying to raise the mother ship. But he was getting no answer.
I watched the Leader. I knew I had to monitor his mood very closely. All the other pirates were taking their cues from him: when he got angry, they got angry. When he was cool, they were cool. He was like the detonator wires on a bomb. I’d have to watch him very carefully.
I was beginning to wonder just how far I could push the Leader. I wanted to get inside his head. What would he want to do next? How could I get there before he did?
But it’s a fine line between deceiving your captors and getting a bullet in the forehead.
TEN
Day 1, 0900 Hours
“We are like hungry wolves running after meat.”
—Somali pirate leader Shamun Indhabur, Newsweek.com, December 18, 2008
The bridge was getting steamy. The temperature on the water in the Gulf of Aden can reach 100 and above. I knew we were going to get dehydrated quickly in that glass cage. The pirates had the bridge door, which was usually left open to let in a breeze, shut tight.
“Where are the crew?” the Leader asked again.
“I have no idea where they are, I’m here with—”
“Bring up crew NOW!” he screamed. “You have two minutes. If not, these guys are going to kill you.”
Suddenly the two pirates at the wings rushed in and raised their AK-47s and pointed them over the console at ATM and Colin cowering on the floor. They jabbed the barrels down toward their faces, screaming.
“You want to die?!” they shouted. “Two minutes, we kill you.”
“Calm down, calm down,” I said. “I’m doing my best.”
“Now minute thirty,” Tall Guy yelled, his eyes bulging. He pointed the gun at my belly.
“They’re serious,” the Leader said. “I told you this. Bad guys, bad guys.”
I got back on the PA system. “All crew, all crew,” I called. “Report to bridge immediately. Pirates want you on bridge now.”
The Leader looked at me, his eyes cold.
“Can you do something with these guys?” I said. “Before someone gets shot?”
He just looked at me and shrugged.
“I’m just a poor Somali,” he said. “But I tell you this. You better get somebody up here right now.”
“One minute!” said Tall Guy. “We kill everyone.”
I gestured with my hands, Easy, easy. My heart was racing, my hand
s felt like they were covered with porcupine quills. Was I going to watch my two crewmen die? If they shot one, I knew, they would go through the ship and shoot us all.
“Pirates threatening to shoot us,” I called on the PA and radio. “They want people on the bridge now.”
“Thirty seconds!” Musso shouted. “YOU HEAR ME? Thirty seconds and you die.”
Tall Guy and Musso rushed toward Colin and ATM and jabbed their AKs violently down, as if they were daggers and they were going to impale my crewmen. The look on Colin’s and ATM’s faces was pure terror. The Leader ran over and put his hands on Tall Guy’s chest and pushed him back.
“Dangerous pirates,” he said to me. “Bring someone now!”
“What else can I do?” I yelled at the Leader.
He shrugged his shoulders.
I keyed the radio. “If you don’t hear from us in one minute, we’ll be gone. You’ll get no quarter from them.” I wanted the crew to know they’d have to kill these guys if the shooting started. There would be no other way out of this. No surrender.
“Bring the crew up now,” the Leader said. “Bring them up to the bridge now or we’ll blow the ship up.”
I stared at him. Did he just say “blow the ship up?”
“Yes, we have a bomb. We will blow up the ship in thirty seconds.”
I didn’t believe them. I’d seen the bucket come up and there was nothing that looked like explosives in it. I began to sense they were bluffing for a quick end to the crew’s standoff.
Young Guy, watching me from the bridge wing, smiled at me. There was something odd in his face, as if he were enjoying what the Somalis were putting us through. As if he were watching this all on TV.
The deadline passed. I took a deep breath. It was our first hurdle—they weren’t willing to kill us just yet.
I was running around shutting off the alarms, which kept tripping and restarting. I would occasionally key my radio and send off a quick update on what was happening on the bridge. Or I would strategize.
I had an idea where the crew was—the aft steering—but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe there were guys still sleeping, maybe wandering the hallways. They were keeping their positions secret, so that the pirates wouldn’t storm down and take them hostage. Later I found out that at that moment, Shane was up in the forward crane, spying on us. And the chief engineer was walking around the ship. The other guys were in after steering, the backup safe room we’d discussed during the drill when the chief engineer brought up the idea of having one. I knew they must be suffering down there; it would be 100 degrees or above. And there were guys in their sixties and seventies on the crew. If I left them there too long, hyperthermia—heat stress—would set in. They would get dehydrated, then the symptoms would hit them: confusion, hostility, intense headache, reddening skin, dropping blood pressure. Then chills and convulsions as the condition progressed. And, finally, coma.
There were really three clocks ticking on us: how long before the arrival of the mother ship; how long before my crew was affected by heat stroke; and how long before the cavalry arrived. I tried to calculate all three in my head at once.
But I knew I had to get the pirates off the ship as soon as possible.
The minutes clicked by.
Musso and Tall Guy charged back onto the bridge.
“Two minutes!” Musso shouted. He stood above Colin and pointed the AK at his face from five feet away.
“Captain, bring up the crew,” the Leader said from behind them. “Pirates angry now.”
“I’m here with you!” I half-shouted. “What do you want me to do? I don’t know where these guys are.”
“Crew NOW!” yelled Tall Guy. “Or we shoot everyone.”
You can’t pull the same trick twice and expect it to have the same impact. As menacing as those automatic rifles were, I felt the Somalis were bluffing. If they wanted to kill us, they would have executed one of my men already. The sight of the guns still made my heart race, but I didn’t quite believe they were going to start shooting.
The Somalis counted down again, minute thirty, minute, thirty seconds, twenty…. ATM and Colin had their heads bowed. I felt the sweat roll down my forehead and sting my eyes.
Again, the deadline came and went. Tall Guy and Musso stared angrily at me before saying something to the Leader and walking off to the bridge wings. I felt my spirits lift. These guys were just businessmen, after all. Crooked, violent, thuggish businessmen, but they weren’t going to waste precious resources like human lives unless they had to.
All of a sudden I heard a knock. I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone was knocking on the bridge door looking to get in with the pirates. I thought to myself, I bet I know who that is.
The pirates didn’t hear a thing. They were too fixated on terrifying us. I prayed, Let him just go away.
Knock, knock. Louder this time.
The Leader looked at me.
“Do you want me to get that?” I said.
He nodded.
I walked over to the bridge door and swung it open.
It was one of my sailors. I pointed toward Colin and ATM. “Come on in,” I said. “You’re dead.”
The newcomer looked at me.
“Go sit over there with the rest of them,” I said.
“Okay, Cap,” he said, and walked toward his mates.
The sailor’s appearance seemed to give the pirates an idea. Instead of waiting for the crew to come to them, they would go track them down. After all, if this sailor was just wandering around the ship, knocking on doors, how hard could it be to find the rest of the sailors?
The Leader pointed at me.
“We want to walk around,” the Leader said. “You come with me.”
I keyed my radio and started talking.
“You want to go search the ship? Okay, fine. Let’s go. Let’s start on E deck. That’s a good place to look for the crew.”
I walked through the bridge door and the Leader backed off. He didn’t want me too close to him. I pointed to the door to the chimney and he nodded. I led the way down the stairs to E deck.
A ship that’s dead in the water on emergency power has a spooky feel. It’s just drifting, ghostly and very, very quiet.
A container ship like the Maersk Alabama can be compared to a skyscraper laid flat on the ocean. It has multiple rooms, thousands of square feet of space, passageways and service corridors to hide in. My knowledge of the ship itself was really the only tactical advantage I had over the Somalis. I began to think of how to keep the sixteen men hiding below me away from the pirates and how to get the three remaining men on the bridge into one of those rooms and to safety.
It was like a three-dimensional game of chess. I move my man here, you counter. I protect one player, you make a move on another. I just had to figure out the pirates’ strategy before they figured out mine.
The Leader had left his gun with Tall Guy, so he was unarmed. He was maybe five foot nine, 135 pounds. Even though he was young and spry, I could have tackled him and stuffed him in a room somewhere. But what would I have done then? I still had three crew on the bridge. My getting away solved nothing.
“Open up this room,” the Leader barked.
E deck held my room and the chief engineer’s. There should have been no one in any of the quarters up here. I took my key out and inserted it in the lock of the first door and swung it wide open.
The Leader stepped in. There was a TV and a bed with the bedspread tossed aside and some clothes and a desk with a chair. The place was quiet as a tomb.
We went down the corridor and inspected the chief’s room. I was chatting up a storm, in case one of the crew had somehow decided to lock himself in his quarters. My voice would act as a locator beacon, telling the men we were on the way. I also had the radio by my side with the key pressed down so anyone with a handheld set would know where we were.
I was scared. Really scared. But I had to maintain that appearance of control. Without it, I had nothing.
> We went down, deck by deck. I unlocked another door and let the Leader pass by me to check it out. He let out a gasp. I thought, He’s found someone. I turned the corner quickly and rushed into the room.
The Leader was pointing down. There was a prayer rug on the floor. Above it, swinging from a desk lamp, was a pointer that read “Mecca” with an arrow.
“Muslim? Muslim?” the Leader said. He seemed happy and confused at the same time.
“Sure,” I said. The room was ATM’s.
We went back out to the corridor.
“That’s it for C deck,” I said. “You want to go to B?”
He nodded.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
As we went lower, I started to worry. On the ring I was using to open all the doors were keys for the engine room and the after steering, where most of the crew were supposed to be. If the Leader demanded I open them, the jig was up. I had to get him to skip over some rooms, even though all the doors had signs on them with their functions written on them: chief mate cabin, engine control room, whatever. I had to hope that the Leader’s English wasn’t that good, or that I could distract him with my banter.
We dropped down to B deck. The Leader pointed out a door.
“Oh, that’s just a locker, nobody in there,” I said.
“Open!” he said, and jabbed his finger at the door.
I smiled. I wanted to build trust with him so that when we got to the really important rooms, I could skip them. I opened the door, and indeed it was a locker filled with wrenches and other tools. He nodded. The same thing happened a few minutes later. “This one’s another locker, but I want you to be happy,” I said. I opened the locker. Nothing but janitorial supplies.
After that he trusted me. When we came to the engine control room door, I used another key and it wouldn’t work. I just waved at it and kept walking. “Locker,” I said. “Waste of time.”
We did seven decks and the main outer deck before walking back up through the chimney to the bridge. We walked in and the faces of Tall Guy and Musso registered shock. They started asking the Leader questions in Somali. He barked out short answers. They were clearly not happy.
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