A Captain's Duty (10 page)

I
n the merchant marine, we have a saying—“sleep fast.” Sailors can drop off in ten seconds and be ready to work again in two hours. You either learn to do it or you don’t survive.

I slept like a dead man and awoke at 6 a.m. the next morning when the sun crept under the hem of my blackout curtains. Wednesday, April 8. We’d made it to another day.

I took a shower, the freshwater pumping up from our tanks down below. I toweled off, dressed, and looked at the weather update. Sunny again. Perfect sailing weather. I checked the incoming messages—more chatter about pirates.
Tell me something I don’t know,
I thought.

I went up to the bridge. The sun was like a red-hot poker suspended above your face. I grabbed a cup of coffee and joined Shane, who was on watch. Immediately we started planning out what we needed to do that day. We were getting ready for Mombasa and that was going to be a very busy time. Pirates or no pirates, we had cargo to unload and supplies to take on and the million other things a merchant crew deals with as it approaches port: laundry, paying off, taking on new crew. Plus there’s all the unanticipated stuff that inevitably hits you: some government official decides to inspect your ship (that is, until you pay him a bribe) or a stowaway comes crawling up your line.

I was in the middle of this housekeeping when ATM, the Pakistani-born AB, interrupted us.

“Boat approaching, three point one miles out, astern.”

Shane and I swiveled to look out. There it was, a white skiff, approaching at twenty knots, at least. It looked like one of the boats that had chased us yesterday, maybe twelve meters long, with a powerful outboard engine. I could see his wake, white in the turquoise water. With the haze, visibility was down to three to four miles so ATM had gotten on it as quickly as I could have hoped.

I looked at the water. The winds had dropped down since yesterday, and the seas were calm. We weren’t going to get lucky again. We were in a race with a much faster boat and the waves weren’t going to stop them today.

“Mate, find out where the bosun has his people.”

Most of the crew would have been in their beds or just getting up and beginning their morning routine. But I knew that
the bosun was working somewhere on the ship with a team and I wanted everyone accounted for.

“He’s on the bow,” Shane said.

“Make sure he knows what’s going on in case he has to pull his men in,” I said.

“Got it.”

“Course?” I called out.

“Two hundred thirty.”

“Set a course for one hundred eighty,” I said.

“One hundred eighty.”

The quartermaster turned the wheel and I looked through the glasses. The fast boat was closing at 2.5 miles. It shifted into our new course.

There was no question now. These guys weren’t out for tuna. They were coming after us.

“Call UKMTO right now,” I called.

I didn’t have time to mess with the Brits. Shane made the call.

I could hear him answering a barrage of questions: How many people in the boat? How many guns do they have? What color is the boat? What color is the
inside
of the boat?

Finally, he hung up.

“What did they say?”

“Call back when they’re within a mile.”

I didn’t have time to ask why. I grabbed a portable radio—it would be in my hand for the coming hours—and checked the radar.

“Where’s the goddamn mother boat?” We were over three hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. There was no way
these guys had made it this far alone. There had to be a trawler out there with a leader calling the shots. But I couldn’t see it and nothing was showing on the radar. I thought,
What if these guys are herding us straight toward the mother ship?

Shane had gone to the pyrotechnic box and taken out eighteen flares as soon as we spotted the Somalis. He started breaking out flares before heading down toward the main deck to get eyes on the crew. “I’m going down to get ready, I’ll send the third up,” he called out as he dashed off the bridge.

I knew the chief was up. Mike was an early riser, and right now he’d be sitting on his bunk reading the Good Book. I rang his room and he answered. “We’re in a piracy situation, I need you in the engine room,” I said and jammed the phone back down. I needed his eyes on the engine console as we ramped up speed.

The boat was two miles away. We were doing 16.8 knots, and they were doing 21. They were chasing us down.

At one nautical mile, I called to Colin, “Sound the intruder alarm.” He hit the ship’s whistle, long short, long short, long short. Then he ran to the wall and hit the general alarm, same code. That told every man on the ship to head to his muster point immediately. I looked down over the stern and saw the spray from the pirate hoses shooting out water. At one hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, that stream would knock a man down. I called into the radio, “Switch to Channel One.” That was our emergency band. Colin started issuing a succession of orders. “Get the fire pump going, hit the lights, tell the bosun to bring his men in.”

I pointed to the pyrotechnic box. “Get ready to start shoot
ing those flares,” I called to Colin. “When they get within a mile, fire your first one. Aim directly at them.” He nodded.

It was 7 a.m. ATM, Colin, and I had the bridge. The crew was mustering to the safe room. The engineers were locking themselves in the engine room. The first and third engineer were making their way to the after steering room. The chief engineer was already in the engine room. With him installed there, he could shut down the engines if he needed to, and the first engineer could take over the ship’s steering if the bridge was breached. They had a full set of controls down there, a way of bypassing the bridge.

Now I could see the top half of the men standing in the pirate boat. They were leaning forward, rocking with the bouncing of the vessel.

“Call back UKMTO,” I called to Colin. “Tell them this is real. And leave the phone line open when you finish so they can monitor what’s happening. Got it?”

“On it,” he called back. Colin made the call, then grabbed half a dozen flares and headed out to the starboard bridge wing.

I ran over to the SSA, the secret security alarm, and pressed it. That would alert the rescue center that we’d been hijacked. Colin also pressed the SSA.

All of a sudden I heard automatic fire. I could see the muzzle flashes from the pirate boat. They were strafing the ship from a quarter mile away. I heard the
slap, slam, slap, slam
of bullets hitting the metal house. Bullets were ricocheting off the smokestack.

I sat ATM down on the floor near the wheel and told him to steer the boat to my commands.

“Get in here, Colin,” I called out. He was out on the bridge wing. He ducked behind the pyrotechnic locker.

“I will in a minute,” he shouted back. “As soon as they stop shooting.”

We’re in it now,
I thought. It had happened so fast.
But where was the goddamn mother ship?
If the bigger vessel got alongside, they would be able to put twenty-five armed men onboard. Game over.

I wanted the crewman sitting on the deck. The pirates were firing up at an angle. The only way to get hit by a ricocheting bullet was to be standing up. When there was a break in the gunfire, Colin came hustling onto the bridge.

“Quarter mile away,” I called into the handheld radio. “Shots fired, shots fired.”

The bullets were making a huge racket as they slammed into different parts of the house and ricocheted off:
splat, whooom, pat.
I looked down at the pirate ship. They were now about 150 feet away. Suddenly they revved the motor and came around behind us to our port side. They were still shooting, semiautomatic mixed with automatic. The AK-47 makes a distinctive sound, a fast, deep
tat-tat-tat-tat
. I’d never heard one shot before except on TV. Bullets were pinging off the superstructure a split second after the AK-47 spat them out.

I had to do something. I grabbed a few flares and ran out to the port bridge wing and started shooting down at the pirate boat. I could see they were coming alongside at the point of our number two crane. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the Somalis’ aim had gotten better—the bridge wing was getting raked with fire and they were stitching their way across the wing where I was,
ping ping ping
. I ducked down and then
popped right back up, spotting one Somali sitting in the boat cross-legged, firing up at me. I could actually see his face, concentrating hard on drawing a bead on me.

I started popping up, firing a flare, and then ducking down behind the wind dodger, which is a metal hood that deflects the wind over the bridge. I was like a jack-in-the-box, hiding and then standing to fire. Those flares were our only chance of stopping them at this point—putting a flare in the boat, hitting a gas can…a one in a million shot—and the best way to draw fire away from my guys on the bridge.

Out of flares, I dashed back onto the bridge. “Fifteen degrees left,” I called to ATM, who was now manning the wheel. I looked down at the GPS and we were doing 18.3 knots. I was putting us into what’s called “racing maneuvers,” a zigzagging technique that makes it hard for another boat to come alongside. The deck of the
Maersk Alabama
was only twenty feet above the water’s surface. All the pirates needed to do was put their skiff parallel to our ship, toss a rope with grappling hooks on our deck, then shimmy up. “Now fifteen degrees right,” I called. You don’t want to turn too hard or you’ll kill your speed. You get it swinging and then take it back the other way.

I looked down at the water and couldn’t believe what I saw. The pirates were lifting this beautiful long white ladder into the air. I thought,
Where the hell did they get that thing
? It looked like something you’d get at the Home Depot, a pool ladder with rungs that hook on top. Usually, the Somalis used grappling hooks or a pole or a line, but this damn thing seemed custom-designed to take our ship. It had two vertical pieces that connected nice and tight to our fishplate, a piece of solid metal that comes six inches high off the deck.

I saw the hooks fasten onto my ship. Within five seconds, a head popped up over the side, followed by a body jumping quickly to the deck. He was a little aft of the number two crane, so he was about seventy feet away from me. It was the guy I would come to know as the Leader.

Goddamn it,
I thought.
They’re onboard.

“One pirate aboard,” I called into the radio. “We’ve been boarded.” The Somali didn’t have a weapon in his hand. I leaned over and saw he was bringing up a white bucket on a yellow line. That’s where his gun would be. And right behind the bucket was a second pirate.

“One pirate aboard, one pirate climbing,” I called into the radio.

We were sliding down a slippery slope toward disaster. The pirates had guns and we didn’t. All that we had to fight them were our brains and our willpower. Most guys would take the guns in that contest, but we had to play the hand we’d been dealt.

I ran back onto the bridge wing with fresh flares in my hand. The Somali on the deck turned and raised his hand and I heard
pow, pow, pow
. He had his gun now and he was shooting. I shot back a flare and it bounced off the deck and tumbled into the water. I ducked down just as the guy blasted off a few rounds and
BAMMMMM,
a bullet slammed into the wind dodger directly in front of my face. I looked up and saw the dent in the metal.

“Oh, shit!” I said. If it had gone through the steel, that bullet would have caught me squarely in the face.

I hopped up. The first pirate was gone.
He must be hiding behind the containers on deck,
I thought. I knew his ultimate
target had to be the bridge, but it would be a while before he could reach it.

The second pirate came over the top of the ladder and landed on the deck.

“Two pirates aboard,” I radioed.

I faced a decision: Give up the bridge now, lock it up tight, fall back to the safe room, and wait it out. Or I could hold the bridge and pray the pirates couldn’t make it through the piracy cages and up seven stories.

I didn’t want to give up my ship.
Hell, no,
I thought.
I’m not giving up the bridge to anyone.
There’s something about the bridge that’s special to a captain: It symbolizes your control of the ship. It’s like a pilot in the cockpit of a 747. You’ve been trusted with this thing. You don’t want to hand it over unless you absolutely have to.

It was what I call my first mistake. I should have begun the retreat right then. But I thought I still had time. I wanted to be in control for as long as I could. It was hubris, I guess.
Come and take it from me
.

I fired a couple of flares at the second guy. I could see the pirates were very thin and dressed in dirty T-shirts and shorts with rubber sandals. The second guy immediately sat cross-legged on the deck and began firing up at me with his AK-47.

From down below, I heard three shots that sounded like a rifle. I later realized it was the first pirate shooting off the locks on the chains that secured the outside ladder. But I still thought he was tucked behind those containers on deck, waiting for the other guys to join him. The pirates had time on their side. They knew we weren’t armed. There was nothing to stop them except the piracy cages. If they got through those,
we were hostages. But until the Leader started coming aft, I still felt secure on the bridge.

I dashed back onto the bridge, ready to lock up and start our pullback into the depths of the ship. ATM was crouched on the floor, looking up at me anxiously, waiting for the next order while Colin was moving around the bridge. I opened my mouth to talk when I thought I saw a shadow in the corner of my eye. I turned. It was the first pirate, and he was outside the bridge door pointing a battered AK-47 at me through the window.