It was when the fourth jumped nimbly onto his ship that Captain Kwan became wary.
As he opened his mouth to question the seriousness of their condition, the four men with the blankets let them drop away. Concealed underneath were AK-47s with the wooden butts crudely cut off. Aziz and Malik, the two other crewmen from the fishing boat, grabbed matching weapons from a wooden chest and rushed aboard.
“Pirates!” Kwan yelled, and had the muzzle of one weapon rammed into his stomach.
He dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen. Hakeem pulled an automatic pistol from behind his back while the other armed men hustled the freighter’s crew away from the rail and out of sight of anyone who may have been on the bridge wing high overhead.
The Somali leader dragged the captain to his feet, pressing the barrel of his pistol into Kwan’s neck. “Do as you are told and no one will be hurt.”
There was a momentary spark of defiance behind Kwan’s eyes, something he couldn’t suppress, but it was fleeting, and the pirate hadn’t noticed. He nodded awkwardly.
“You will take us to the radio room,” Hakeem continued. “You will make an announcement to your crew that they are to go to the mess hall. Everyone must be there. If we find anyone walking around the ship, he will be killed.”
While he was talking, his men were cuffing the stunned crew with plastic zip ties. They used three on the muscle-bound black man, just in case.
While Aziz and Malik took charge of the other crewmen, Kwan led Hakeem and the four “sick” pirates into the superstructure, a pistol pressed to his spine. The interior of the ship was only a few degrees cooler than outside, thanks to a barely functioning air-conditioning system. The halls and passageways looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since the freighter had slipped down the ways. The linoleum flooring was cracked and peeling, and dust bunnies the size of jackrabbits lurked in every corner.
It took less than a minute to climb up to the bridge, where a helmsman stood behind the large wooden wheel and another officer was hunched over a chart table littered with plates of congealing food and a chart so old and faded it could have depicted the coastline of Pangaea. The windows were nearly opaque with rimed salt.
“How’d it go with the fishermen?” the officer asked without looking up. His voice had an odd British inflection that wasn’t quite right. He lifted his head and blanched. His big, innocent eyes went wide. The four pirates had the entire room covered with their assault rifles, and the captain’s head was bent sideways with the pressure of the pistol jammed into his neck.
“No heroics,” Kwan said. “They promised not to harm anyone if we just follow their orders. Open a shipwide channel please, Mr. Maryweather.”
“Aye, Captain.” Moving deliberately, the young officer, Duane Maryweather, reached for the intercom button located next to the ship’s radio. He handed the microphone to his captain.
Hakeem screwed the pistol deeper into Kwan’s neck. “If you give any warning, I will kill you now, and my men will slaughter your crew.”
“You have my word,” Kwan said tightly. He keyed the mic, and his voice echoed from loudspeakers placed all over the vessel. “This is the captain speaking. There is a mandatory meeting in the mess hall for all crew members immediately. On-duty engineering staff are not exempt.”
“That is enough,” Hakeem snapped, and took away the microphone. “Abdul, take the wheel.” He waved his pistol at Maryweather and the helmsman. “You two, over next to the captain.”
“You can’t leave just one man at the helm,” Kwan protested.
“This is not the first ship we have taken.”
“No. I suppose it isn’t.”
With no discernible government, Somalia was ruled by rival warlords, some of whom had turned to piracy to fund their armies. The waters of this Horn of Africa country were some of the most dangerous in the world. Ships were attacked on an almost daily basis, and while the United States and other nations maintained a naval presence in the region the seas were simply too vast to protect every ship that steamed along the coast. Pirates usually used fast speed-boats and mostly robbed the ships of any cash or valuables, but what started out as simple larceny had expanded. Now entire ships were being hijacked, their cargoes sold on the black market and their crews either abandoned in lifeboats, held for ransom to the vessel’s owners, or killed outright.
So, too, had the sizes of the targeted ships increased along with the savagery of the attacks. Where once only small coastal freighters were the primary targets, the pirates now preyed on tankers and containerships, and had once raked a cruise liner with automatic fire for fifteen minutes. Recently, a new warlord had started putting a stranglehold on other pirates along the north coast, consolidating his power base until every pirate in the region was loyal to him alone.
His name was Mohammad Didi, and he’d been a fighter in the capital, Mogadishu, during the chaotic days of the mid-1990s, when the United Nations was trying to stave off epidemic starvation in the drought-ridden country. He had secured a name for himself plundering trucks loaded with emergency food and supplies, but it was during the Black Hawk Down incident that he cemented his reputation. He had led the charge against an American position and destroyed a Humvee with an RPG. He had then dragged the bodies from the burning wreckage and hacked them to pieces with a machete.
After the inglorious withdrawal of the U.S. Marine Corps, Didi continued to build his power base until he was one of only a handful of warlords controlling the country. Then, in 1998, he had been linked to the Al-Qaeda bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He had given the bombers safe haven for the weeks leading up to the attack, as well as several men to act as lookouts. With an indictment at the World Court in The Hague and a half-million-dollar price on his head, Didi knew it was only a matter of time before one of his rivals would try to collect on the bounty. He moved his operation out of Mogadishu and into an area of coastal swamps three hundred miles to the north.
Before his arrival, most victims of piracy were set free immediately. It was Didi who had initiated the ransom demands. And if they were not met, or the negotiations seemed to be faltering, he unceremoniously had the crews killed. It was rumored that he wore a necklace of teeth with gold fillings extracted from the men he had personally murdered. It was to Didi that the pirates taking control of the old freighter had pledged their oath.
Hakeem and one of his men forced Captain Kwan to take them to his office, while the other pirates escorted the bridge staff to the mess hall. Kwan’s office was attached to his cabin one deck below the pilothouse. The rooms were spartan but clean, with just a couple of tacky velvet clown paintings on the otherwise bare metal walls. There was a framed photograph of Kwan and a woman, most likely his wife, on the empty desk.
Brassy light blazed through the single porthole.
“Show me crew manifest,” Hakeem demanded.
There was a small safe bolted to the deck in the corner of the office behind Kwan’s desk. The captain stooped over it and began to work the combination.
“You will step back when you open the door,” the pirate ordered.
Kwan glanced over his shoulder. “I assure you we have no weapons.” But he did as he was told. He swung open the door and took a step back from the safe.
With his assistant covering Kwan with his AK, Hakeem bent over the safe, pulling out files and folders and dumping everything on the captain’s desk. He made a sound when he opened one particularly thick envelope and discovered bundles of cash in several currencies. He fanned a wad of hundred-dollar bills under his beaky nose, inhaling as if testing a fine wine.
“How much you have?”
“Twelve thousand dollars, maybe a bit less.”
Hakeem stuffed the envelope into his shirt. He rifled through the papers until he found the crew’s manifest. He couldn’t read his native Somali, let alone English, but he recognized the various passports. There were twenty-two in all. He checked them, pulling out Kwan’s, Duane Mar
yweather’s, and that of the helmsman. He also found the passports belonging to the three men who had been on deck when they had boarded the ship. He was pleased. They had already accounted for a quarter of the crew.
“Now, take us to the mess hall.”
When they arrived, the brightly lit room was packed with men. A few smoked cigarettes, so the air was as thick as smog, but it masked the stench of nervous sweat. They were a mix of races, and even without the weapons pointing at them they were a dour lot. These were down-on-their-luck men who could find no better employment than aboard a broken-down old tramp freighter. They had maintained her well beyond her years for the simple reason that they would never find another after she was gone.
One of Kwan’s people held a bloody rag to the back of his head. He had obviously said or done something to set off one of the hijackers.
“What’s going on, Captain?” asked the chief engineer. His jump-suit was streaked with grease.
“What does it look like? We’ve been boarded by pirates.”
“Silence,” Hakeem roared.
He went through the stacks of passports he’d brought from Kwan’s office, comparing the photographs to the men seated around the mess until he was certain every member of the crew was accounted for. He had once made the mistake of trusting a captain about his ship’s complement, only to find that there had been two others who had beaten one of Hakeem’s men to death and almost managed to radio a Mayday before they were discovered.
“Very good. No one is playing hero.” He set aside the passports and looked around the room. He was an excellent judge of fear and liked what he saw. He sent one of his men out to the deck to cast off their fishing boat with orders for Abdi to make for their base as quickly as he could with the news they had captured the freighter. “My name is Hakeem, and this ship is now mine. If you follow my orders, you will not be killed. Any attempt to escape and you will be shot and your body fed to the sharks. Those are the two things you must remember at all times.”
“My men will follow orders,” Kwan said resignedly. “We’ll do whatever you say. We all want to see our families again.”
“That is very wise, Captain. With your help, I will contact the ship’s owners to negotiate your release.”
“Bastards won’t spring for a gallon of paint,” the engineer muttered to a table companion. “Fat luck they’ll pay to save our hides.”
Two of the gunmen had been in the kitchen gathering up anything that could be used as a weapon. They emerged dragging a linen bag full of forks, steak knives, kitchen knives, and cleavers. One gunman remained in the mess while the other continued to haul the bag out into the hallway, where it would most likely be thrown over the side.
“These guys know what they’re doing,” Duane whispered to the ship’s radio operator. “I would have gone for a knife as soon as their guard was down.”
Maryweather hadn’t realized one of the pirates was directly behind him. The Kalashnikov crashed down on the back of his neck hard enough to drive his face into the Formica-topped table. When he straightened, blood dripped from a nostril.
“Talk again and you will die,” Hakeem said, and from the tone of his voice it was clearly the last warning. “I see there is a bathroom attached to the mess hall, so you will all remain here. There is only one way in or out of this room, and it will be barred from the outside and guarded at all times.” He switched to Somali and said to his men, “Let’s go see what they are carrying for cargo.”
They filed out of the mess and secured the door with heavy-duty wire wrapped around the handle and tied to a handrail on the opposite wall of the passageway. Hakeem ordered one of his men to stay outside the door while he and the others systematically searched the vessel.
Given the ship’s large external dimensions, the interior spaces were remarkably cramped, and the holds smaller than expected. The aft holds were blocked by rows of shipping containers so tightly packed that not even the skinniest pirate could squeeze by. They would have to wait until they reached harbor and the containers were unloaded before they would know what was inside them. What they discovered in the forward three holds made whatever was in the containers superfluous. Amid the crates of machine parts, Indian-made car engines, and table-sized slabs of steel plate, they found six pickup trucks. When mounted with machine guns, the vehicles were known as technicals and were a favored weapons platform across Africa. There was another, larger truck, but it looked so dilapidated it probably didn’t run. The ship was also carrying pallets of wheat in bags stenciled with the name of a world charity, but the greatest prize were hundreds of drums of ammonium nitrate. Used primarily as a potent fertilizer, the nitrate compound, when mixed with diesel fuel, became a powerful explosive. There was enough in the hold to level half of Mogadishu, if that’s what Mohammad Didi wanted to do with it.
Hakeem knew that Didi’s exile into the swamps wasn’t permanent. He always talked about returning to the capital and taking on the other warlords in a final confrontation. This massive amount of explosives would surely give him the edge over the others. In a month or less, Hakeem was sure Didi would be the ruler of all of Somalia, and he was just as sure that his reward for taking the freighter would be greater than anything he could imagine.
He now wished he hadn’t sent Abdi ahead so quickly, but there was nothing he could do about it. Their little radio couldn’t pick up anything beyond a couple of miles, and the fishing boat was already out of range.
He returned to the bridge to enjoy the Cuban cigar he had pilfered from the captain’s cabin. The sun was sinking fast over the horizon, turning the great ocean into a sheet of burnished bronze. Dusk’s beauty was lost on men like Hakeem and his band of pirates. They existed on an ugly, cruel level where everything was judged based on what it could do for them. Some would argue that they were the product of their war-ravished country, that they never stood a chance against the brutality of their upbringing. The truth was that the vast majority of Somalia’s population had never fired a gun in their lives, and the men who aligned themselves with a warlord like Didi did it because they enjoyed the power it gave them over others, like the crew of this ship.
He liked seeing the captain’s head bowed in defeat. He liked the fear he saw in the sailors’ eyes. He had found a picture of the captain and a woman in the office, the captain’s wife he assumed. Hakeem had the power to make that woman a widow. For him, there was no greater rush in the world.
Aziz and Malik entered the bridge. They had helped themselves to some new clothes from the officers’ quarters. Aziz, only twenty-five but a veteran of a dozen hijackings, was so slender that he’d had to cut extra holes in the belt to keep his new jeans up around his waist. Malik was in his forties, and had fought at Mohammad Didi’s side against the United Nations and the Americans. Shrapnel from a street fight with a rival gang had left the right side of his face in ruin, and the blow had affected his mind. He rarely spoke, and, when he did, little of what he said made sense. But he followed orders to the letter, which was all Hakeem demanded of him.
“Go get the captain. I want to talk to him about the company that owns this ship. I want to know how much he thinks they will be willing to pay.” He studied Aziz’s eyes. “And lay off the bang.” He used the African nickname for marijuana.
The two pirates descended the stairs to the main deck. With the sun setting, the interior of the ship was gloomy. There were only a few functioning lamps, so shadows clung to the ceilings and walls like moss. Aziz nodded to the guard to untie the wire. He and Malik had their weapons at the ready when the door creaked inward. All three men gaped.
The mess hall was empty.
THREE
Malik and Aziz had just stepped into the empty mess hall when the guard felt a presence down the hall. He peered into the gloom, raising his rifle. Had he not been so spooked by the crew vanishing, he would have calmly explored the passageway. But every nerve in his body tingled with electricity as if a mild current had been applied to his skin. H
is finger curled around the trigger, and he unleashed a wild, ten-round burst. The juddering flame from the barrel of his AK-47 revealed the hall was deserted, while the bullets did nothing more than scrape more paint off the dingy walls.
“What is it?” Aziz demanded.
“I thought I saw someone,” the guard stammered.
Aziz made his decision quickly. “Malik, go with him and search this deck. I will tell Hakeem what has happened.”
The pirate leader had heard the gunfire and met up with Aziz halfway down from the bridge. He was holding his pistol like he had seen in music videos, arched at arm’s length and turned flat on its side, and his eyes were bright with anger.
“Who was shooting, and why?” He didn’t slow his pace when they met, forcing Aziz to double back quickly.
“The mess hall is empty, and Ahmed thought he saw someone. He and Malik are searching now.”
Hakeem wasn’t sure what he was hearing. “What do you mean the mess hall is empty?”
“The crew is all gone. The wire was still on the door and Ahmed was awake, but somehow they are gone.”
The mess door was barely ajar when they arrived, so Hakeem kicked it open with all his strength. It crashed against the doorstop with a booming echo. Just as they had left the crew hours earlier, all twenty-two members were still seated around the tables. They all had tense, anxious expressions.
“What was that gunfire?” Captain Kwan asked.
Hakeem gave Aziz a murderous look. “A rat.”
He grabbed the younger man by the arm and pushed him from the room. As soon as the door was closed behind Hakeem, he slapped Aziz across the face and backhanded him in a perfect follow-through. “You fool. You’re so stoned right now, you don’t know which is your dung hand.”
“No, Hakeem. I swear it. We all saw—”
“Enough! I catch you smoking bang during one of my operations again, I will shoot you where you stand. Got it?” Aziz’s eyes were cast down, and he said nothing. Hakeem grabbed Aziz’s jaw so their eyes met. “Got it?” he repeated.